http://www.german-flashcards.com
This is the best site for those who wants to learn German from the scratch.I have created my account in this site and I have been getting "sentence of the day " daily since then.This sites really helps who is novice in German language and want to Expertise in this language.
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 9:08 PM 0 comments
Labels: Sites
Ten Tips to Reduce SDLC Costs
Ten Tips to Reduce Software Development Lifecycle Costs
With the credit crunch affecting IT budgets, Experimentus, the leading UK software quality management solutions consultancy, highlights ten ways to reduce software development lifecycle costs within IT departments :-
Focus on well documented Functional Requirements
Without well documented Functional Requirements, there is potential for a system to be delivered which does not meet the customer’s expectations. For example, perhaps it does not work as they believe it should – even though the development team believe that they have worked in line with the requirements as documented. This can lead to development rework, which is likely to delay the release, increase costs, and create discord between the customer and the software team.
Ensure all Non Functional Requirements are clearly defined early
Many organisations focus solely on the Functional aspect of systems – WHAT it does – rather than the Non-Functional – HOW it does it. Non-Functional elements comprise everything from performance to security to usability.
Without clear, early definition of Non-Functional requirements, it is possible that a system could be delivered which does exactly what the customer wants – but is difficult to use, slow, insecure, unreliable, or is not scalable. Once again, this can lead to development rework – although some non-functional areas are so integral to the design of the product, it can be difficult to correct them without starting the project again.
Ensure change control procedures are in place
Without Change Control, system development can find itself in an uncertain and constantly changing state. For example, development may be initially performed against what is believed to be the final version of a requirements document. However, more changes might be made to the requirements whilst development continues, each change without a proper impact assessment.
As there is no procedure for consulting with or informing development of the changes, it may not be the case that the knowledge of the changes is passed on in a timely fashion. Additionally, the impact of some changes might be so large that they cannot be incorporated into the software easily at a late stage. In this case, if the changes are deemed to be vital, major development rework might have to take place. For these reasons, every change should be strictly controlled. Change can be allowed, but should only take place after a full impact assessment to see how it will affect the project timescales and costs.
Ensure strict Configuration Management is in place for code, data and documentation
Without Configuration Management, a high quality of testing is impossible. This is because there cannot be high levels of confidence that the right version of the software or documentation is being tested, or that the right version will be released to the customer.
Organisations with poor Configuration Management might test one version of a product, and yet perhaps release a slightly different version – a version which then enters the field UNTESTED. It is viewed as untested, as potentially major faults may have been introduced which change the behaviour of parts of the system from that which was intended – or, in some cases, even disabling the entire system.
Focus quality approach on product risks, focus on preventing rather than detecting defects
It has been proven many times that the later in the software development lifecycle that a defect is found, the more costly it is to rectify it. For example, correcting a mistake in a requirements document before development begins is a far quicker and cheaper activity than correcting the software after it has been developed against the faulty requirements document.
Begin UAT(User Acceptance Testing) test design during requirement definition
If an organisation is using the ‘V-model’ of software development correctly, then the test team should be involved with the project from the very beginning – during the requirements definition. Not only can the testers use their expertise and experience to help assess whether or not particular requirements are testable or not, but they can also start to design the relevant tests, which helps to ease the test schedule later.
In this scenario, the User Acceptance Tests should correspond directly to the user requirements. This is because the requirements are the items that the user wishes to see in the system, and the tests represent the way that the system is proved to meet those requirements. It clearly follows that the best time to write the UAT is when the requirements are being constructed.
Begin system test design during the system design stage
It is important that the system is designed to be easily testable, if possible. This can only occur if testing expertise is involved in the system design stage. Collaboration between the testers and the system designers can help ensure that the system produced fulfils this aim. During this early involvement, the testers can also start to construct the System Tests, which helps ease the testing schedule. An additional benefit to this approach is the enhanced team collaboration between the system design and testing team.
Focus test effort on unit test where it is cheaper
As previously stated, correcting defects earlier in the software development lifecycle is far easier, quicker and cheaper than otherwise. Given this axiom, it is surprising that many organisations spend little or no time on unit testing activities – often with the reasoning that “our developers develop, and our testers test”.
However, not only does this approach mean that potential defects reach later stages of testing than they should, it is possible that they may not be found at all – as later stages of testing normally perform different testing activities, in different ways, to those used in unit testing.
Plan test approach using risk to define focus of test effort
Test time is often limited, due to reasons like fixed release dates, or late software delivery from the development team. This can often mean that not all tests that were originally planned are carried out.
In this scenario, it is vital that those elements of the system that are considered critical to product success have been tested. Therefore, the approach to testing should always be to focus effort on the ‘highest risk’ areas of the system first. Following this, medium risk and low risk areas of the system can be tested, in turn, as time permits.
This risk-based approach ensures that, when under time pressures, the areas of the system which remain untested (and potentially flawed) are the lowest risk areas possible from those that are left to be tested.
Use tools to test for functional and non functional errors very early on when they are cheaper and more effective at removing errors, and throughout the lifecycle
If an automated test set is created and maintained, it can be repeatedly utilised from an early stage of the software development lifecycle, as a ‘smoke test’. This method has the potential to find a lot of defects quickly at an early stage, saving time in later test phases.
Additionally, sometimes specific tools may indicate flaws in the system design – which should be exposed as early as possible. For example, early performance testing on parts of the system that are available might reveal a poorly-designed module, which would hinder the system beyond the tolerance levels of the user when released.
In this way, the module is easily identified, isolated, and fixed or replaced – an activity that would be much harder if performance testing was only conducted when the system was about to be delivered to the customer.
Martin Adcock, Managing Director of Experimentus, comments:
“At Experimentus we ensure our clients have the strategies and the most appropriate processes in place to get the most out of their software. In the current economic climate, more for less or finding areas where our clients can reduce cost across the development lifecycle are increasingly becoming the business drivers.”
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 9:29 PM 1 comments
Labels: Testing
babbel.com
This Web site is a portal to learn new languages online, such as Italian, German, French, Spanish and even English. Simply create an account, choose the language that you want to learn, and you’re all set! The course starts off with basic exercises, such as the spellings and pronunciations of numbers and small words, and goes on to more complex sentences and phrases as you progress.
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 10:45 PM 0 comments
How to Become a Millionaire
Introduction
Start by being a Billionaire. It’s an old joke. But the concept has two very important truths that you need to consider. The First Truth: Whatever level of income you are at, if you spend more than you earn, you are not on the path to wealth. If you are a billionaire and spend your money lavishly and foolishly, you very well might end up as a millionaire. The Second Truth: The concept of “The Rich get Richer…..” is true. If you are a Billionaire, with $1 billion in the bank, overnight for one night, your money has earned $2,192. That would be $66,667. per month. In less than 14 months, your invested billion dollars will create another million dollars. But, even without starting as a billionaire, it is very conceivable that if you focus on your goal and follow the laws of money, you WILL be a millionaire.
Instructions
Difficulty: Challenging
Things You'll Need SOME startup cash ,Time ,Persistance ,Resolve
Steps :
1
Step One
DEFINE what being a millionaire means to you. A banker will consider you a millionaire if your aasets are worth more than your liabilities by a million dollars. Depending on what those assets are though, it is quite likely that they could be valued differently tomorrow. YOU may define being a millionaire as having a bank account with one million dollars of disposable income. KNOW exactly what your goal is, and be prepared to work toward it.
2
Step Two
Assess your current situation. IF you possess Aladdin's lamp, you will likely be able to obtain your goal in no time at all. If not, you need to assess exactly where you are, what your skill set is, and what steps you will need to accomplish your goal. Even though I don't know your circumstances, I do know the path to get you where you want to go. If you follow these directions, you will eventually be able to reach your goal. The unknown factor is how much time it will take to get you there. Another factor, known only to you, is how much effort will you make to get here? What things will you do to accelerate yourself to the goal?
3
Step Three
Make a Lot of Money! Find a way to make money. You need to start with something. Your basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing need to be taken care of. If you have a family, you will need to attend to their needs as well. Obviously a job is a good way to start. There are other ways of making money, such as selling assets or being self employed, which are all fine. The goal is to have a consistent financial income, and a job is a good place to start.
4
Step Four
Find a way to Make MORE money! Now, CONSTANTLY ASSESS! Find a way to make more money than what you do. Perhaps you need more formal education. An investment of a few years of college gives you better earning potential for your entire life. Make yourself promotable. Discover what your company wants in its management, and BE that. Perhaps you need to have a part time job as well for a while. Perhaps you are interested in making money from your home, such as selling on Ebay. Always keep your eyes and ears open to opportunity. But weigh each opportunity carefully. Often that opportunity can come within the same company where you work. Sometimes that opportunity needs to come in a new job or perhaps even a new career.
5
Step Five
Spend a LITTLE money! Live below your means. Today's biggest temptation is to have it all and to have it all now. The problem is that the cost of that immediate requirement is often putting yourself deep in debt. You want to do the opposite. My uncle grew up very poor on a 20 acre farm. He and his brothers started a small business. While his siblings were buying bigger homes and fancier cars, he lived in a modest home and focused on reinvesting his capital into his portion of the business. Ultimately he was richer by far over his brothers and ultimately had far greater assets. Simply put, it was his dedication to allowing his investments to grow over time while he lived comfortably but modestly for several years that propelled him to wealth.
6
Step Six
PAY YOURSELF. Pretend it's a car payment, and pay it to yourself and invest it. Starting NOW! Understand the concept that you have a higher potential to make more money in a venture that has more risk. Likewise, you can lose a lot more money in a venture that has more risk. I suggest you start your portfolio of very solid (lower earning) investments. Start with 3 months salary in a savings account for family emergencies. Progress to some solid known return items such as CDs. There are other articules about investments. This one is about making you a millionaire. Try to invest a minimum of 10% of your income in known return items. Let's use 8% as a return goal, and we'll assume an income of $40,000. If you wait until the end of the year to invest $4,000, you will have $4,000 at 12/31
7
Step Seven
CONTINUALLY INCREASE your EARNINGS and your INVESTMENT amount. That may seem difficult but isn't as tough as it seems. If you work for the same company for years, you will most likely increase your salary annually by receiving raises. If you aren't getting consistent annual raises, you need to reasses yourself and your job. The important thing to remember is to invest more each time you make more. This is one of the secrets to real wealth.
8
Step Eight
UNDERSTAND and USE the POWER of COMPOUNDING INTEREST If you wait until the end of the year to invest $4,000, you will have $4,000 at 12/31. If you invest $333.33/month for each of the 12 months of the same year, at year end you will have $4,149.93. That's not too impressive, but after 10 years, the numbers look like this: $4000 invested at year end for 10 years = $ 41,221.58 $333.33/month invested for 10 years = $60,981.40 That hardly seems like it's going to make you a millionaire. But let's change just two factors, and see how you DO get there. Let's change the number of years to 40. We'll assume you start working around 20, and can retire by 60. That means you can start at 25, retire at 65, and still obtain your million dollars. Did you say you only wanted $1 million? If you invested your $4,000/year annually for 40 years, you will have your $1,036,226. If you invest your $333.33/month faithfully for 40 years, invested at 8%, you can retire with $1,163,657.64. But, you've
9
Step Nine
ELIMINATE your credit card debt. That doesn't mean eliminate your credit cards. Use them often. In fact, use them for almost everything you buy. But pay them off when the bill comes in. That will build your credit. But you don't want a lot of outstanding credit card debt, because the Power of Compounding Interest works in the favor of the credit card companies a whole lot quicker than it does for you. The amount of interest that you can earn is usually far less than what the credit card companies charge. Remember the Power of Compounding interest works both ways.
10
Step Ten
Be AGGRESSIVE! If you truly want to be a Millionaire, chances are you want to do it quickly. Use the SAME steps. Push them harder. Find ways to make more money. Find ways to save more money. Find ways to invest more money quicker. Each little tweaking of the formula will move your goal into site much quicker.
11
Step Eleven
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Year One: Start with your $40,000 salary and invest 10% (on a monthly basis, not on an annual basis.) End result: $4,149.93 Year Two: Your salary increases to $44,000 Invest 10% on a monthly basis, coupled with earnings on the $4,149.93 already saved. Result: $ 9,059.30 You're not rich yet. But after just 10 years of saving in the same manner, you would have invested $63,749 and change, and would have a cash balance of $91,320. Nice, but not a million! After 20 years of consistent saving and investment, you would have input $229,097 and would have $439,562. Hmmm. Getting interesting! After 26.25 years on the same course, Input: $ 448,640. Available: $1,000,306! It's a long time. But there's your million dollars. And you aren't close to retirement. If you start at 20, you will only be 46 years old
12
Step Twelve
STAY THE COURSE: As your investment grows, your sense of security and well being grows with it. If you enjoy your work, you'll want to keep on working. If you don't like what you are doing, you'll have enough socked away to find what you DO want to do. But, the best advice I can give is for you to stay the course. Change jobs, fine. But life spans are getting longer. As long as you are healthy, work in happiness, and continue contributing. If you continue the same path for the 40 years originally mentioned, you can retire with not one million dollars, but $5,122,791. Every small change, particularly early in the game will influence your final numbers. If you can only eek out a 6% adjustment per year, you can still retire with roughly $2.5 million. If you started late, and only have 30 years to invest, you can still retire with $1,590,000. Or, if your starting salary was only $20,000, after 40 years, you can still reach $1,261,900 with only 6% increases. It is all about CONSISTENCY, and the POWER OF COMPOUNDING INTEREST, and TIME.
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 9:59 PM 0 comments
Labels: Money
Cool Sites
Qipit
www.qipit.com
This free service turns your camera phone or digital camera into a virtual “mobile copy centre” by converting photographs of written or printed material into near-scan quality digital documents that can be easily archived or shared. With Qipit, you can turn images of documents (book excerpts, newspaper clippings and so on), notes and whiteboards into digital copies (PDFs), share them via email or fax, often even from your smart phone. Qipit is based on advanced, patented image processing technologies developed by Realeyes3D, a camera phone applications developer whose products reportedly have been embedded in more than 28 million phones.
Mozy
www.mozy.com/home
You may have heard of this Web service because paeans have been sung for it far and wide. It offers 2GB of free backup space. You don’t have to set up anything, nor are there any payments to be made, no conditions, no expiry date. Backups—especially off-site—are the best possible insurance against virus attacks, disk drive disasters and office gremlin follies. What you get in the Mozy bargain is open/locked file support, 128-bit SSL encryption, 448-bit Blowfish encryption, automatic scheduled backups, email backups and much more.
Text Analyser
www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php
If you want to analyse your text documents in terms of statistics, point your browser here. This tool gives you statistics on word count, unique words, word frequency, number of sentences, average number of words per sentence, lexical density and a rating on the Gunning Fog Readability Index (a readability test designed to show how easy or difficult a text is to read). Yes, Microsoft Word also gives you something similar, but that is limited to just character, word, line and para counts. If you think the 10,000-character limitation of Text Analyser is a handicap and want to check longer documents with even more detailed analysis, sign up as a member for the advanced version. The accompanying Word Analyser database contains information about 97,000 English words. It lets you check a word on grammatical connotations and usage simply by keying in the word.
GigaSize
www.gigasize.com
What do you do when you have to transmit a very large file across the Internet? No, we’re not talking about a 10-20MB size file. Most Web mail services today already do it with ease. We are also not talking about chopping up the file into smaller bits using a file-splitting program and then having them reassembled at the other end. We’re talking about some 500-600MB—or more—of computer-aided design (CAD) drawings, video clips, high-res images... Even file hosting services such as YouSendIt, RapidShare or MegaUpload can’t do it beyond a couple of hundred megabytes. But GigaSize allows you to zip across up to 600GB per file for free and 2GB per file with a premium account. Bookmark this for a rainy day.
Short Text Service
www.shorttext.com
This is perhaps one of the simplest, no-fuss tools to post text and messages online. You don’t even have to sign up for the service or login each time you post some text (up to 30,000 characters). You can also treat it like a permanent text clipboard on the Internet to cut-paste text between computers located anywhere. All you need to do is copy-paste or enter the text you want online into the text dialogue box on the site, click on the Create URL button, and beam it. You can also keep your data private with the help of a unique passkey, or leave it open for public viewing. What’s more, you can link to pictures or videos on the Net and also allow comments.
Rich Chart Live
www.richchartlive.com/RichChartLive
If you are tired of conjuring the same stale, humdrum, oft-seen graphs that Excel churns out every time, use this online service to generate something refreshing, visually rich and even animated. Again, no downloads or installs required. You can start with the free version—and even stick to it if you don’t mind a small logo appearing on each of your charts. The data can be input by importing, copy-pasting from Excel or typing in manually. Almost all chart elements are customizable. Once you’ve finished, you can export the chart as PowerPoint or Flash file. One major drawback: You can’t save anything on the site and come back to edit it.
Vuvox
www.vuvox.com
This is an easy-to-use Web-based presentation building service that can create some impressive Flash presentations incredibly fast. Your creations can be based on your own collection of photographs, video clips, charts, music, audio, etc. (upload 100MB in size) or you can blend in content from the Web from sites such as YouTube, Flickr and PhotoBucket. You can create a fusion of these elements, pick backgrounds, colours, textures from within Vuvox, and then share your creation with the world.
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 11:17 PM 0 comments
Labels: Sites, Technology
http://www.softpedia.com/
This is a very good site for those interested in download and devlopement stuff.. Enjoy...
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 9:53 PM 0 comments
Labels: Sites
A Little Piece of Google History: BackRub
As stunning as it might sound, Google is only the second name given to the Stanford students’ project. Philipp Lenssen, of blogoscoped.com, discovered that its precursor back in 1996 was called "BackRub" and that it was a search engine research project that was headed by who else than Larry Page, the last Page to wed, at the computer science department at the university.It was pretty impressive at the time, in August 1996, it had indexed 75 million URLs and its crawler
had downloaded 30 million pages. Given that the Internet was not the huge web it is today, that’s really a lot. BackRub was written in Java and Python based "on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux".Larry had had help from others with the project, on the homepage he thanked Scott Hassan, Akan Steremberg and (guess who!) Sergey Brin for their help, which means that, at that time, he was pretty much the owner of the whole thing. Unlike today when you hardly ever get to see him or see footage of him, back then he gave his mail address and phone number in the FAQ for help with any and all unanswered questions one might have had about the project.
Enlarge pictureThe change to Google came in 1997 and the homepage had two search boxes, one for searching Stanford and the other for searching the web, the number of search results per page was by default set to 10 and the mode of visualization was "clustering on". Philipp Lenssen refers to a cached copy of the BackRub engine from C63.be and gives the second picture on the left that has the Google logo all weird and with nasty colors. He does say that it might not be the real deal, but it’s the best piece of Google history so far. By the way, the hand in the first picture belongs to Larry Page. It was that small of a project.
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 9:50 PM 0 comments
Labels: Google, Technology
Bored of your work????
Hi Pals...Are you bored of your work ??? Want to have some fun ??? Then go through this site..
http://www.instanthumour.com/ ......
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 7:24 PM 0 comments
Want to have some fun with animation?
HI pals ..If you are really interested in animation then do visit following site http://scratch.mit.edu/howto/ and have some fun...
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 12:51 AM 0 comments
Inside Google's Manhattan Office
Google hosted a media day at their new office in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. Hare are a few photos from our walk through the building.
Hit on following link to see heaven on earth--
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,a=190145,00.asp
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 8:40 PM 0 comments
Labels: Google
Google unveils rival to Wikipedia
Search engine has unveiled 'knol', an online, user-generated reference work that will seek to usurp Wikipedia---
As on Wikipedia, content on knol (the name comes from “knowledge”) will be free to access. In a departure from the non-profit Wikipedia model, however, knol's authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.
Wait for some more days...
Posted byPrashanthNaik at 8:11 PM 0 comments
Labels: Google
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