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Great Free Business Prototyping Tool
2008-01-28 16:51:00
Serena Software has recently released Prototype Composer 2.4 ? a tool for prototyping dataflow, processes, activities and user interfaces. The tool also proposes functionality for managing projects which is quite simple but probably enough for small projects. Prototype Composer supports export to MS Word, collaborative work (e.g. prototype sharing, review requests and reviews), and integration with larger systems by Serena and Microsoft VSTS.The tool can be used by businesses with medium and high prototyping and collaboration demands and by individual contractors who will utilize only a small part of the proposed functionality.The user interface prototyping tool almost repeats one by Axure. It is convenient for building both wireframes and graphically rich UI prototypes.The largest disadvantage I was able to find so far is absence of wizards and sample projects.Prototype Composer home page (Downloading the tools requires submission of a short form.)List of screen mockup prototyping ...
More About: Business , Free , Great , Tool

W3C: Compliance for the Sake of Compliance
2008-01-24 16:29:00
It's a well-known fact that many popular websites fail W3C validation. There is a brisk discussion on Digg about this subject.Being valid eats resources and doesn't provide any benefits to visitors. Working in the web development industry I observed that none of the clients are going to pay additionally just to make their websites W3C valid. However, of course, all clients would accept such a gift from a web development contractor.I think it's better to spend those resources for being useful, interesting and popular. If leading web resources do so then perhaps this approach is reasonable. If they can't afford spending resources for being W3C-valid then smaller websites can't do this all the more.W3C says that "... household-name companies expect people to visit because of the name and in spite of dreadful websites". Are Technorati top-20 blogs dreadful? Is Yahoo! dreadful? I believe you'd rather say "nope" than "yep". W3C is the company with years of tradition so they are ju...
More About: Compliance

Service Review: websitegrader.com
2008-01-22 15:20:00
Submit your website's URL and get the marketing efficiency report. The analysis takes some time which probably depends on your website's size. Analysis of my small blog took about 2 minutes.The report is very user-friendly. Figures are accompanied by meaningful explanations and advices. You can subscribe to receive you website's analysis by e-mail every month.You can also download a free "Internet Marketing Kit" which is 2 videos and a 12-page whitepaper with SEO and conversion tips. Download requires submitting a short form. Yep, that's their conversion form so they follow their own advice.Bookmarks on del.icio.us and Digg.com were not detected but I know they exist so such a defect in the service is not a big problem.The tool shows the number of inbound links which differs a lot from the figure returned by for instance Google. It would be a good idea to list the links or at least link domains to provide users with criteria on making the decision on how reliable their figure is...
More About: Review , Service

Calculate Your Blogging Efficiency!
2008-01-21 12:02:00
As you can see I?ve started blogging only several days ago but those several days were enough for me to realize that blogging isn?t easy thing and it takes time and efforts to attract readers. Perhaps everybody knows this but why not try to calculate how much time we spend for generating each visit? To measure is to control. To control is to succeed.The formula is very simple:Efficiency = Number of your hours you?ve invested to your blog / Number of Visits to Your BlogIf you?re going to vote on ?What?s Your Blogging Efficiency?? poll please follow the simple rules below to make results more unified and ensure we all have the same foundation to evaluatethem.Choose any time period you like. This poll is only for fun and to turn your attention to the fact that we can measure and track efficiency of our activities. I don?t see the way restricting time period will add value to the poll results.Try to remember how much time you?ve spent on your blog, including technical activities, postin...
More About: Calculate

How to Browse the Web Quicker or Do You Use Opera?
2008-01-18 15:14:00
I use Opera for over five years and now I have a blog where I can spread the word about this wonderful web browser. So let me do!Just to Say Ahh!Today Opera is much more popular than it was when I've started using it, but even that time I was very serious about buying it. Not just to remove the banner from the top of the browser window but to thank Opera team for what they're doing. But... Ooops... They've made it free! They are always two steps ahead. Ahead in usability. Ahead in technology. Even ahead of your wishes! And that's what I love them for.To Be a Bit More SpecificOpera browser has numerous features that'll make your not only browsing quicker but also using the web without a need of having several tools. In Opera you can download files (and yep BitTorrent is supported), store notes, manage your passwords and much more! A built-in email client, widgets, skins are there too! View the full list of Opera features ? it worth!But what really makes browsing in Opera more ef...
More About: Browse

Another Way to Improve Language Skills
2008-01-16 10:51:00
All of us know that to improve our language skills we need to have practice read, write and speak. We also know of such ways as having a small personal dictionary, learning N words per day, etc.I?d like to introduce another way I?ve invented. Perhaps it?s not an easier way. This is just one more trick we can use and combine with other ones. And I suspect I?m not the first who invented it.So the Method IsWhen you see something or think about something, check yourself ? do you know what is that word in English (Spanish, Russian, etc.). If you don?t, write that word down in the language you know immediately (you can just remember ? that?s enough if you are not trying to learn too many words daily). And check it out in the dictionary once you have access to it.The difference from just learning N words from a dictionary is that you learn words that describe your surrounding and your life so you are more likely to use words learned this way in practice.It helps me and will hopefully hel...
More About: Language , Improve , Skills

What QA Really Means
2008-01-15 16:44:00
I?m going on meeting people who are into the IT industry but do not distinguish between quality assurance and quality control. Many of us say that QA is testing. I think this is partially because of "tradition" ? we tell a word and know that we are understood correctly, and this is Ok. But I?ve noticed that often this ?traditional? usage is not always accompanied with understanding of the formal terminology.When we have finished producing something, we control its quality. In case of software development this activity called testing. Based on the evaluation of the results of quality control we can learn and adjust our process to ensure better quality in future projects or iterations.So when quality control is usually performed by testers only, quality assurance involves all members of the process. Managers contribute to quality assurance by developing and keeping instructions, guidelines, etc. up to date and making sure that employees follow the process. Employees? quality assurance...

The Paralysis of the Analysis
2008-01-14 15:48:00
Do you remember how many times you had ideas on starting doing something? How many times you have actually started? I believe that many of us do not start even one percent.Many startups die even not being started. Many people start analyzing an opportunity by thinking mostly about how their startup may fail but not how to it succeed. Anal yzing best practices and success stories and looking at successful people and companies or popular websites or blogs we see how far we are from success. We think about many serious problems we are going to face and how it is hard to succeed and how much time it will take. All those thoughts prevent us from even trying to do something. From even starting something we want to start.Of course analysis and planning is essential for success but we cannot analyze everything beforehand. Doing first steps we learn. We find out more about the problems and ways of solving them. We not just increase our chances to succeed. We basically give ourselves those cha...
More About: Analysis

How to Get 1000+ LinkedIn Connections in Two Weeks
2008-01-12 17:18:00
A year ago I had about 20 LinkedIn connections and had no idea how to make even 20 more. In December 2007 I made 300 connections in 2 hours. Now my network is 1,400+.The fast and easy way to make 1000+ LinkedIn connections is to declare yourself LION (LinkedIn Open Networker), register with The LIONs' Lair, download a list of LIONs, import it into LinkedIn and mass-send invitations. And wait. Your 1,000 connections will come in two or three weeks.To grow our networks more we need to find other ways because the number of LIONs is limited and will always be. Zale Tabakman has posted some advices on how to generate 100 LinkedIn invitations a week. Ok, I haven't generate so many but Zale's post is obviously helpful.But having a large network and getting use of it are two different things. I'd recommend reading the post about LinkedIn addiction by Ray van den Bel.
More About: Connections , Weeks , Linkedin

How to Test a Web Service
2008-01-10 13:12:00
As a web service is something that has no user interface, we can?t interact with it without a special tool. That tool should allow composing XML requests via its own user interface. Commonly such user interfaces are text editors where you write your XML requests and controls for posting requests to the server.Why not just unit tests?Unit test is essential for every piece of program code. In many companies there is even a convention that code that did not pass unit test is not given for testing by quality control people. Unit test is simply part of development, not testing.The minuses of considering passing unit tests enough acceptance criterion for a web service are:Unit tests are developed by a developer. Usually by the same person who has developed the application being tested. If a developer misunderstood a requirement or made a mistake in program code, many of his faults will be duplicated in the unit test.Classical unit tests are designed to test internal program code. But what...
More About: Service , Test , Soap