Is Your eBook Reader Spying On You?

If you don't want other people to know what you read, you probably shouldn't own an ereader.

via

'Twas The Night Before Prod Release

'Twas the night before prod release, when all through the build,
Not a unit test was failing, the developers were thrilled;

The release notes were emailed to users with care,
In hopes that new features, soon would be there;

The BA was nestled all snug in her chair,
With visions of magnitude ready to share;

And I on my QA box, trying not to be stressed,
Had just settled down for a last minute’s test;

When during my test there arose such a clatter,
I opened the error log to see what was the matter;

And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But an unhandled fault, with its wording unclear;

When I showed it to dev, and he gave me a shrug,
I knew in a moment it must be a bug;

More rapid than eagles, dev’s cursing it came,
And he shouted at testers, and called us by name;

“Now, Jacobson! Now, Zacek! Now, Whiteside and Surapaneni!
On, Cagle! On, Addepalli, on Chang and Damidi!

Stop finding bugs in my web service call!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

And then, in a twinkling, I heard from the hall,
The tester who showed me, scripts can’t test it all;

As I rejected the build, and was turning around,
Into my cube, James Bach came with a bound;

He was dressed really plain, in a baseball-like cap,
And he patted my back for exploring my app;

He had a big white board and a little round belly,
That shook when he diagrammed like a bowlful of jelly;

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And he laughed when he saw RST on my shelf;

Then he spoke about testing, going straight to his work,
And attempted traspection, though he seemed like a jerk;

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dice games, how merry!
He questioned and quizzed me and that part was scary!

He told me of lessons he taught at STARWEST,
Made an SBT charter and then told me to test;

Then I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight
“Happy testing to all! ...just remember I’m right!”

via

Gift for Boss - Dilbert Style!

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta is Available Now

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta is available for download now. Download it and activate it using the key provided on the download page.

Download it here.

An overview of the product is available at Amit Agarwal's Digital Inspiration.

Ship it!

Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects

Word Verification for Comments

Hi,

I had to enable the word verification on the comments today. It follows a stream of spam comments on some of the posts. I hope this extra step wont deter the readers leaving their comments.

Google's new Web Protocol SPDY

Google has purposed a new application protocol running on SSL, intended to make the web faster, and have called it SPDY (pronounced "SPeeDY"). Google calls SPDY an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. PDY is designed specifically for minimal latency. As per Google,

"HTTP is the application level protocol providing basic request/response semantics. While we believe that there may be opportunities to improve latency at the transport layer, our initial investigations have focussed on the application layer, HTTP.

Unfortunately, HTTP was not particularly designed for latency. Furthermore, the web pages transmitted today are significantly different from web pages 10 years ago such and demand improvements to HTTP that could not have been anticipated when HTTP was developed..."

"SPDY replaces some parts of HTTP, but mostly augments it. At the highest level of the application layer, the request-response protocol remains the same. SPDY still uses HTTP methods, headers, and other semantics. But SPDY overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats."

For prototype, they have created an open source web server and an SPDY-enabled Chrome browser. In lab tests, they have observed up to 64% reductions in page load times in SPDY over HTTP.

Links: SPDY Whitepaper | Let's make the web faster - a Google initative

 Building Scalable Web Sites 

Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, Scaling, and Optimizing the Next Generation of Web Applications

Spring Batch Admin

Spring Batch Admin provides a web-based user interface that features an admin console for Spring Batch applications and systems. It is a new open-source project from SpringSource. A milestone release is likely to be available soon, and a final release is expected in early 2010.
[via Spring Source Team Blog]

Spring in Action

Spring in Action

Mockingbird — Web-Based Wireframe App

Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application. It’s a true web app (no Flash).

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Sponsored Message

Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning

[Humor] Enterprise Architecture Made Easy

Enterprise Architecture Made Easy

via: Geek and Poke

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Advertisement

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

Gina Trapani and Adam Pash of Lifehacker have put together a comprehensive guide for Google Wave. Guide is available for free viewing here. A DRM-free is expected to be available for download in next couple of weeks, followed by print version in 2010.
Link: The Complete Guide to Google Wave


Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Feeds 101

Feeds, RSS, Atom, Syndication, Subscribers... are some of the keywords floating around the web and have gained notorious prominence over the years. In this guide, Siddharth from Nettuts+ takes a look at a number of things including what feeds are, why you need to have a feed for your site, how to set up one and then publish it.

What are Feeds?

via Nettuts+

Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

MySQL as a web service from Amazon

Amazon is offering MySQL as web service in the cloud. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no up-front investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use.

Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your database, storing the backups for a user-defined retention period. You also benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with your relational database instance via a single API call. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no up-front investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)

Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Guide to Software Pricing

A highly useful guide on software pricing by Neil Davidson is available as e-book on author's website.
A printed copy can be purchased from Amazon.

e-book

Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness

Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, Guy Kawasaki explained how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are:

1. Don’t tell other people how to tweet.




2. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone.




3. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you.




4. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble.




5. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar.

To read all ten and why they impugn your intelligence, click here.

Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

The Tester's Pocketbook

The Tester's Pocketbook has been published and is available.

The book summarises the thinking on Test Axioms and the axiom definitions are hosted (and will be maintained in future) on the Test Axioms website.

The Tester's Pocketbook




Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

[Photo] Happiness is a way of Travel, not a Destination

Happiness is a way of Travel, not a Destination!






From Gatekeeper




Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

A Process Framework for Increasing the Probability of Project Success

Glen B. Alleman at Herding Cats have blogged about A Process Framework for Increasing the Probability of Project Success.

• The cost estimates for the project and the basis of estimate for those costs. The customer wants to know how much the product or service will cost


• A Work Breakdown Structure describing the products and their components to be delivered and the work process needed to deliver those products


• An Organizational Breakdown Structure describing who is participating in the project


• A Responsibility Assignment Matrix that connects the participants in the project with the deliverables of the project and identifies who is accountable for each deliverable


• An Integrated time-phased plan and master schedule showing the flow of increasing maturity of the deliverables and the sequence of work needed to produce each deliverable to its planned level of maturity


• A Work Authorization and Control Account process to allocate funding, control expenditures, and assure budget control of the project


• A means of accumulating costs from each work activity (Work Package)


• Analysis of the cost, schedule, and technical performance measures of the project


• A set of management actions that use the analysis information


• Baseline Change Control processes to maintain the integrity of all commitments of the project


• Training needed to perform the processes


• Surveillance needed to assure the process are being applied correctly and the expected benefits from these process are being delivered to the project

What form each of these processes takes is project and method dependent. But in the absence of some form of these processes, the probability of success is reduced.

Follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

A Letter To The Programmer

A Letter To The Programmer

This is a letter that I would not show to a programmer in a real-life situation. I've often thought of bits of it at a time, and those bits come up in conversation occasionally, but not all at once.This is based on an observation of the chat window in Skype 4.0.0.226.

Dear Programmer,
I discovered a bug today. I'll tell you how I found it. It's pretty easy to reproduce. There's this input field in our program. I didn't know what the intended limit was. It was documented somewhere, but that part of the spec got deleted when the CM system went down last week. I could have asked you, but you were downstairs getting another latte...

From: A Letter To The Programmer




Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Life in Balance

life in balance:

life in balance

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Agile vs Waterfall vs Iterative vs Lean Software Development - In Pictures!

Agile vs Waterfall vs Iterative vs Lean Software Development - In Pictures!: "Tara Whitaker has produced an excellent diagram to depict the key difference between Waterfall, Iterative, Agile/Scrum, and Lean software development, in pictures!

Take a closer look at it and read the explanation over on her blog, agile101.net...

Kelly.

"

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

Web Page Profilers for Browsers

Web Page Profilers for Windows/Internet Explorer: "

A 'Web Page Profiler' is a tool that is used to measure and analyze web page performance. It is usually implemented as a browser plugin or add-on, and lets you see performance of web pages/objects as they are transferred/loaded/executed/rendered.

For Firefox, choosing a profiler is a no-brainer. Firebug is an excellent developer tool that includes profiling capabilities.

• Firebug

"

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @rajneeshgarg on Twitter!

You Know You Work in Aerospace When...

You Know You Work in Aerospace When...: "

A little joke going around the office. This could be almost any place in the corporate world.

1. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for eight different managers


2. Your resume is on a jump drive, in your pocket


3. When someone asks what you do for a living, you lie.


4. You get real excited about a 3% pay raise


5. Your biggest loss from a hard drive crash is that you lose your best jokes and Internet sites


6. You sit in a cubicle smaller than your bedroom closet.


7. It's dark on your drive to and from work.


8. Fun is when "projects" are assigned to someone else.


9. Communication is something your Group is having problems with.


10. You see a good-looking person and know immediately it is a visitor.


11. Free food left over from meetings is your main staple.


12. All art involves a white board.


13. All real work is done prior to 9:00 AM or after 5:00 PM


14. You're already late on the assignment you just received.


15. Dilbert is your favorite carton.


16. Your boss's favorite lines are: "When you get a few minutes," "In your spare time," or "I have an opportunity for you."


17. 90% of the people in your company do not know what you do.


18. 90% of the people in your company do not care what you do.


19. Vacation is something you rollover to next year or a check you get each January


20. Change is the norm.


21. You read this entire list and understood all of it.

"

Presentation:CouchDB From 10,000 Feet

Presentation:CouchDB From 10,000 Feet: "This presentation takes a look at CouchDB from 10,000 ft. CouchDB is a document oriented database with a highly acclaimed REST API and replication support, that solves problems of high-traffic, distributed peer-to-peer, and offline applications. all at the same time. You will learn to decide when CouchDB is a good fit for your project and when you are better off with a traditional database. By Jan Lehnardt"

Google Web Elements - Conversation

Just added Conversation element from recently released Google Web Elements. It is available on the right side bar. Post your comments.

Publishing Blog from Email

Test Post from Email

Regards,
Rajneesh Garg

twitter.com/rajneeshgarg
rgarg.blogspot.com

[Humor] Window Washer

(3 kids see a window washer)

Kid #1: "Oh, wow! I could never do that."

Kid #2: "I thought they had robots to do that now."

Kid #3: "Well, that's the job you get if you don't go to college."

From Overheard in Chicago.

[No offences with window washing job. It is just a joke.]

Google accounts on Twitter

Like lots of you, we've been drawn into Twitter this year. After all, we're all about frequent updates ourselves, and there's lots happening around here that we want to share with you. Of course, we enjoy watching, and contributing to, the tweetstream (we hope you find our tweets useful, too). Because there are many programs and initiatives across the company, we've got a number of active accounts. Here's a list of the current ones. We'll update this list from time to time.

twitter.com/Google - our central account
twitter.com/Blogger - for Blogger fans
twitter.com/GoogleCalendar - user tips & updates
twitter.com/GoogleImages - news, tips, tricks on our visual image search
twitter.com/GoogleNews - latest headlines via Google News
twitter.com/GoogleReader - from our feed reader team
twitter.com/iGoogle - news & notes from Google's personalized homepage
twitter.com/GoogleStudents - news of interest to students using Google
twitter.com/YouTube - for YouTube fans
twitter.com/YouTubeES - en Espanol
twitter.com/GoogleAtWork - solutions for IT and workplace productivity

Geo-related
twitter.com/SketchUp - Google SketchUp news
twitter.com/3DWH - SketchUp's 3D Warehouse
twitter.com/Modelyourtown - 3D modeling to build your favorite places
twitter.com/EarthOutreach - Earth & Maps tools for nonprofits & orgs
twitter.com/GoogleMaps - uses, tips, mashups
twitter.com/GoogleSkyMap -Android app for the night sky

Ads-related
twitter.com/AdSense - for online publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsHelper - looking out for AdWords questions and tech issues
twitter.com/AdWordsProSarah - Google Guide for AdWords Help Forum
twitter.com/GoogleAnalytics - insights for website effectiveness
twitter.com/GoogleAdBuilder - re building display ads
twitter.com/GoogleRetail - for retail advertisers
twitter.com/TechnologyUK - for U.K. tech advertisers
twitter.com/InsideAdWordsDE - for German AdWords customers
twitter.com/GoogleAgencyDE - for German ad agencies
twitter.com/AdSensePT - info for Portuguese-language publishers
twitter.com/AdWordsRussia - AdWords news & tips in Russian
twitter.com/DentroDeAdWords - Spanish updates from the Inside AdWords blog
twitter.com/AdWordsAPI - AdWords API tips

Developer & technical
twitter.com/GoogleResearch - from our research scientists
twitter.com/GoogleWMC - Google Webmaster Central
twitter.com/GoogleCode - latest updates for Google developer products
twitter.com/GoogleData - Data APIs provide a standard protocol for reading and writing web data
twitter.com/app_engine - web apps run on Google infrastructure
twitter.com/DataLiberation - our initiative for complete import/export of all data
twitter.com/GoogleMapsAPI - about using Google Maps embedded in websites
twitter.com/GoogleIO - Google's largest annual developer event

Culture, People
twitter.com/googletalks - notes from our @Google speaker series
twitter.com/googlejobs - the voice of Google recruiters

Country or Region
twitter.com/googlearabia - news from the Google Arabia Blog*

twitter.com/googledownunder - Google activities in Australia & New Zealand
twitter.com/GoogleDE - Google in Germany
twitter.com/GoogleKorea - News & notes in Korean*

twitter.com/GoogleLatAm - Latin America (en Espanol)
twitter.com/GooglePolicyIt - Notes on Google policy issues in Italy

Source: Official Google Blog

How to Spin a Pencil Around Your Thumb

Have you ever watched somebody in class or at the office skillfully twirl a pencil around his or her thumb and wondered how that person did it? Have you tried to do it on your own and found that it's not as easy as it looks? By following these steps and practicing - a lot - you can amaze curious onlookers with your brilliant pencil spinning, too!

A Few Unix/Linux Tips

• Some Basic Linux And Unix Commands
• Common Unix Commands
• [vi/vim] Save on Exit
• Copy/Paste the block of text in vi/vim
• How to get CPU utilization for Unix OS?

[Humor] Why the economy fell off the cliff

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (Made in Japan) for 6 am.
While his coffeepot (Made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (Made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt(Made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (Made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (Made in Korea). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (Made in India), he sat down with his calculator (Made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today.
After setting his watch (Made in Taiwan) to the radio (Made in India), he got in his car (Made in Germany) filled it with Gas (from Saudi Arabia) and continued his search for a good paying American Job.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (Made in Malaysia), John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (Made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (Made in France) and turned on his TV (Made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he can’t find a good paying job in America.

iTune installation failure on Vista

Today, I received my iTouch, and as I tried installing iTune from Apple, I could not believe when the installation failed. I tried again, and it failed again. It kept on happening for some more tries (between the multiple reboots I did). But it did not installed on my Lenovo having Vista Home Premium. As I double click on 70 MB+ files I downloaded freom Apple's website, a DOS window disappears as soon as it appears. I am at my wits ends!!! I have been able to install softwares of my choice on this laptop, and never before, had a problem. I think there are many many Vista users who are having the trouble with new version of iTune. Help me if you know the problem and the solution. Meanwhile, I am downloading the previous version of iTune for installation.

[Update] - Installation of iTune 7.7 was successful; however, when I connected my iTouch, it refused to work with it, saying v8 or later is required! I then updated iTune from its Help menu option. The update was of 85 MB, and it went well. I connected my iTouch, and it immediately recognized it. No problems faced this time!

How Google Is Showing Off Chrome

The Google home page has been ransacked. The familiar, colorful logo is upside down. The search box and the "I'm Feeling Lucky" tab have been uprooted and now point up at a rakish angle, jutting into white space. Other links have tumbled from the top navigation bar and lie in a heap on the side of the browser. What on earth is going on? Have the hackers taken over?



The screwy design is part of a new series, Chrome Experiments, that Google is launching on Mar. 18 to demonstrate the potential of Chrome.
The jumbled home page is actually a program called Google Gravity. British interactive design firm Hi-Res! recreated the search giant's regular home page, giving users the ability to wreck the joint. With the mouse, a user can spin the traditional elements into space. They soar, they careen, they bounce, until they settle higgledy-piggledy at the bottom of the browser window.

Links: Business Week Chrome Gravity Experiment Chrome Gravity Experiment

[Vista] Change or Modify the Drive Letter and Paths

In Windows Vista, if for whatever reason the drive letter or paths assignment to a disk-drive, CD/DVD drive, USB flash memory disk drive, or external hard disk drive needed to be changed or modified, users can use Disk Management console to manage the volumes and drives on the computer, including changing the drive letter and paths.

To change the drive letter or paths in Windows Vista, just follow these simple steps:

1. 1. Right click on Computer and select Manage to open and access Computer Management Console.
2. Navigate to and expand the Storage section, and click on Disk Management to access Disk Management Console.
3. Disk Management Console display the details of all available volumes and disk drives in the computer configuration in the right pane.
4. Right click on the volume or disk drive that you want to change the drive letter, and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'.
5. Then click on 'Change' button.
6. Use the drop down list to select the new and your desired drive letter to assign to the disk volume.
7. Click OK.
8. Click Yes to confirm.
   

Any letter between C and Z can be assigned to a hard disk drive, CD drive, DVD drive, portable external hard disk drive, or USB flash memory key drive, while floppy disk drives use up letters A and B. Beside, the drive letter for the system volume or boot partition cannot be modified or changed. And if you install some applications or programs in the drive that you have just changed the drive letter, they may not functioning properly after the change due to the possibilities that the programs will also refer to the specific drive letter or original path used when installation as environmental variables.

[Humor] Customer Care in 2020

Operator : ‘Thank you for calling Pizza Hut . May I have your….’

Customer: ‘Helloo, can I order..’

Operator : ‘Can I have your multi purpose card number first, Sir?’

Customer: ‘It’s eh…, hold….......on…...889861356102049998-45-54610’

Operator : ‘OK… you’re…... Mr Singh and you’re calling from 17 Jalan Kayu. Your home number is 4094! 2366, your office 76452302 and your mobile is 0142662566. Which number are you calling from now Sir?’

Customer: ‘Home! How did you get all my phone numbers?

Operator : ‘We are connected to the system Sir’

Customer: ‘May I order your Seafood Pizza…’

Operator : ‘That’s not a good idea Sir’

Customer: ‘How come?’

Operator : ‘According to your medical records, you have high blood pressure and even higher cholesterol level Sir’

Customer: ‘What?...... What do you recommend then?’

Operator : ‘Try our Low Fat Hokkien Mee Pizza. You’ll like it’

Customer: ‘How do you know for sure?’

Operator : ‘You borrowed a book entitled ‘Popular Hokkien Dishes’ from the National Library last week Sir’

Customer: ‘OK I give up… Give me three family size ones then, how much will that cost?’

Operator : ‘That should be enough for your family of 10, Sir. The total is $49.99’

Customer: ‘Can I pay by! credit card?’

Operator : ‘I’m afraid you have to pay us cash, Sir. Your credit card is over the limit and you owe your bank $3,720.55 since October last year. That’s not including the late payment charges on your housing loan, Sir.’

Customer: ‘I guess I have to run to the neighbourhood ATM and withdraw some cash before your guy arrives’

Operator : ‘You can’t Sir. Based on the records, you’ve reached your daily limit on machine withdrawal today’

Customer: ‘Never mind just send the pizzas, I’ll have the cash ready. How long is it gonna take anyway?’

Operator : ‘About 45 minutes Sir, but if you can’t wait you can always come and collect it on your motorcycle…’

Customer: ‘ What!’

Operator : ‘According to the details in system ,you own a Scooter,...registration number 1123…’

Customer: ‘ ????’

Operator : ‘Is there anything else Sir?’

Customer: ‘Nothing… by the way… aren’t you giving me that 3 free bottles of cola as advertised?’

Operator : ‘We normally would Sir, but based on your records you’re also diabetic….... ‘

Customer: #$$^%&$@$%^

Operator : ‘Better watch your language Sir. Remember on 15th July 1987 you were convicted of using abusive language on a policeman…?’

Customer: [Faints]

[Received in an email]

How to get CPU utilization for Unix OS?

You may use top and ps commands.

Display the process utilizing the most cpu and quits to sh: top -b -n -1

Display CPU Utilization: sar -u

And use ps to display processes with the highest CPU utilization: ps -eo pid,pcpu,args | sort +1n

Read man pages of each of the above commands to get more details and supported options.

Copy/Paste the block of text in vi/vim

• Mark the location of the first character of the block of text you want to copy by pressing mx
This marks the begining of the text to be copied into a buffer 'x'.
• Move the cursor over the last character of the block of text you want to copy and press (shift)+x
By pressing shift you are moving all the characters from mark to the current position into a buffer.
• To copy (or, in vi terminology, to yank the buffered text) press y'x
This will yank everything from the buffer x. ('tick' character ' is command in vi to read from the named buffer)
• Now move the cursor above the location where you want to paste the yanked text and press p
p (for paste) will insert the copied (yanked) text at the line below the cursor.

[vi/vim] Save on Exit

I see a lot of people using 'wq' a lot but never a form 'x'.
In vi and vim, if you want to save and exit with a simple key stroke simply use:
:x

Scrum in less than 10 mins

Here is an introductory video of Scrum. Video is hosted on Youtube and is 8 min long.

Related posts:

• Scrum Vocabulary 
  
• Scrum in Five Minutes - Executive Summary
  

Maven: The Definitive Guide - Free Download

The people at sonatype have released Maven: The Definitive Guide book for free on PDF/html.

Download your copy and folow the blog.

Download eBook
Follow Blog

Staying in Touch: How Does Your Generation Communicate?

MILLENNIALS
Text and IM all day long; reach out to friends by posting status or photos on Facebook; use Skype to call a college friend who's getting a masters at Oxford; post to a personal blog; microblog through Twitter "tweets"; email Mom

GEN X
For friends, use Facebook to send messages, post photos of last weekend's party or write on an old friend's wall; for colleagues, connect through LinkedIn

BABY BOOMERS
Email or phone old friends and colleagues when there's time

THE SILENT GENERATION
Send cards and letters, with an occasional email

[Received in an email]

How Do You Want to Pay? Google?

Herald Sun reports that Google Australia is considering a plan to take on payments giants such as Visa, Mastercard and B-Pay in the booming online payments market.

The move comes as the search giant secured a financial services licence from local regulators.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission recently issued Google Australia with an authority to provide deposit and payments services to local merchants and shoppers.

While the licence does not permit Google to provide cash-based payments services to Australian clients, it will enable the group to facilitate digital or online transactions.

Web-based commerce is a hotly contested and lucrative market for payments providers and has spawned a raft of new players including E-Bay subsidiary PayPal.

The ASIC licence potentially opens a fresh revenue stream for Google which will be able to collect processing and transaction fees for bringing shoppers and merchants together via its websites.

Through PayPal, EBay has stolen a march on Google in the Australian online payments arena.

Market research published earlier this month by Neilson Online found that 7.3 million Australians shop over the internet.

The survey found that credit cards were the most preferred form of online payment, followed by PayPal and BPay.

Payment from a personal bank account was the least preferred method.

www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24982159-664,00.html

How to make WSAD ask for workspace location?

When WSAD starts-up, it ask for the workspace location to open. In the same dialog box, there is a checkbox below the workspace location and it reads like - Use this workspace as the default and donot show this dialog box again.
Accidently, I checked the checkbox, and alas, I was unable to change my workspace. So, what to do now? How to get the dialog box prompt back?
Right click on the WSAD icon and go to Properties -> Shortcut -> Target. Add -setworkspace to Target, and we are ready to go.
After making the changes, Target should read like the below-
"C:\tools\IBM\WebSphere Studio\Application Developer\v5.1.2\wsappdev.exe" -setworkspace

Next time, you open WSAD, you will be prompted to select your workspace!

[Vista] Delete files using Disk Cleanup utility

Do you know whenever a program crashes in Windows Vista OS, it stores some 100 MB of system information on your hard drive, so that it can send to Microsoft to tell them why customers are unsatisfied with their product? One can only imagine the amount of data Microsoft’s servers have to handle!

However, there is a built-in utility (Disk Cleanup) that allows you to free your system from unnecessary files, creating some extra space, and making the computer a bit faster. It removes temporary files, empties the Recycle Bin, and removes a variety of system files and other items that you no longer need.

• Disk Cleanup can be found in the Start Menu by going to Accessories -> System Tools. Alternatively, you can always use the search box and type the word "disk".
  
• In the Disk Cleanup Options dialog box, choose whether you want to clean up your own files only or all of the files (i.e. for all users) on the computer.
  
• In the Disk Cleanup: Drive Selection dialog box appears, select the hard disk drive that you want to clean up, and then click OK.
  
• Click the Disk Cleanup tab, and then select the check boxes for the files you want to delete.
  
• When you finish selecting the files you want to delete, click OK, and then click Delete files to confirm the operation. Disk Cleanup proceeds to remove all unnecessary files from your computer.
  
• [Instructions are available at Microsoft's site at Delete files using Disk Cleanup].

Run Disk Cleanup on regular basis to reclaim the disk space. Better run CCleaner after running DiskCleanup.

Learn AJAX with Google's help - Google's AJAX Playground

Google today released a new browser based tool that will make learning and testing code for Google's Javascript APIs a lot easier. Google's AJAX API Playground gives developers an easy to use interface to write some basic Javascript code for Google's eight Javascript APIs (Maps, Search, Feeds, Calendar, Visualization, Language, Blogger, Libraries, and Earth).

The programming console provides sample starter applications for all APIs but you are free to change the source code and save the modified version to your own Google Account for referencing later.

The Playground runs on top of Google's App Engine and was developed as a '20% project'. It will also be Google's official way to show Javascript samples.

For anyone interested in exploring various Google APIs, I am sure this could be a great way to get some coding experience.

Link: Google AJAX API Playground

[Humor] New Stock Market Definitions - Have a laugh while still you can!

New Stock Market Terms

• CEO —Chief Embezzlement Officer.

• CFO — Corporate Fraud Officer.

• BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

• BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.

• VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.

• P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

• BROKER — What my broker has made me.

• STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.

• STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

• STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

• FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

• MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.

• CASH FLOW— The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

• YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

• WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

• INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.

• PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use

[Received in an email forward]