Aundria Richard Technology

The Microsoft Windows operating system is a very powerful processing environment used by billions of people around the world. This popular PC platform OS uses the Windows registry in order to store and quickly access various data representing settings, default configurations of software applications and other system specific data entries serving various purposes. With a constantly changing database that has the size of the Windows registry, problems do not fail to arise as this part of the operating system becomes crowded with temporary data, software installation variables, partially uninstalled applications and other similar entries, making it both increasingly difficult to access resulting in larger reading times and highly hard to manage due to the high chances of operating system damaging if not done by an IT expert.

With such a problem in front of almost every PC user, software companies are constantly developing solutions and tools able to quickly scan and identify Windows registry invalid entries, fragmented sections, temporary data and orphan registry keys, generating reports and carrying fully featured tools capable of fixing each one of the most commonly found problems. These applications are some of the best registry cleaners on the market and they help non-technical PC users properly maintain and administrate their computing platform for best performance and faster overall processing times combined with greater operating system and application level stability.

We have all been there, on a project where the inevitable has happened. You guessed it, the code is late into testing, delivered at the 11th hour. Entry criteria has come under threat and possibly been ignored completely. Your test environment has been delivered but remains unproven as the code has not been available. The Project Manager has been harassed by the business stakeholders for the development delay and is not interested in your problems. IT Management are pressing to see the project delivered on time and to top it all, Marketing have arranged for a campaign launch to occur on the prescribed delivery date. As the Test Manager, you are now the primary obstacle to go live; the success of the project is resting on your shoulders. Oh yes, and your six week testing window has been reduced to four.

This is the stress (no pun intended), of the test execution phase. Not only are you now required to think out of the box in order to complete the testing, but you must also be thinking at a far wider level than just testing. There are actions that can be taken at a project level which can make a massive difference to the work of the testers.

Let’s start by looking at this from the wider perspective. I remember a situation on a very early project I was managing. Sat in a project progress meeting and being asked how we could test with an execution window reduced from four weeks to two. I dug my heels in and refused to budge, resulting in a separate meeting immediately afterwards with the PM, being instructed that this was not the right course of action and getting some early tuition in the art of testing.

You probably heard of the new Firefox browser version 1.0 recently released by Mozilla. If you are currently using Internet Explorer or Netscape, you are probably wondering if Firefox is better and why is it better. In order to answer these questions it is necessary to take a look at all the benefits that Firefox offers you as a user.

First of all, Firefox is free, which is definitely a plus. It is an open-source web browser based on the Mozilla code foundation and will work for Windows, Linux and MacOS X operating systems. These are the technical specification, but what is more interesting to you as a user is that Firefox is very fast, secure, and is easy to use and navigate. The user interface is straightforward and uncomplicated.

There are numerous benefits that Firefox has. One of them is the popup blocking capability. You no longer have to see all those frustrating popup windows since the browser will take cake of them. You also don’t need an alternative popup blocker program. Firefox also allows you to use tabs to open new web pages instead of using a new window. This feature is similar to the one that Netscape offers. However, with the Firefox, you can also open web pages in the background.

If you are trying to download some file, it will be automatically saved to your desktop. If you are using Google search engine for your search needs, you will appreciate the built in Google toolbar. Your Firefox toolbar will also include usual features like bookmarks, history, and text size and is customizable to include additional tools and features. If you would like to have an access to an email client you will need to download the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client software.

SMS, or Short Message Service, is the technology behind what we often refer to as ‘text messages’ or ‘SMSes’, as well as what allows for news alerts on cellular phones. In recent years SMS has ballooned to over a 50 billion dollar industry and is quickly taking the communications world by storm.

Short Message Service actually refers to a framework that uniquely allows computers, or in this case phones, to communicate with each other without the need of a central hub. With SMS, phones can find each other, send short packets of information back and forth, and do it all without any central computer to guide them. But because the system does not rely upon fixed lines like a land based telephone system does, the amount of information that can be sent at one time is limited in size. This depends on the language spoken, but for English letters this typically means around 150 characters (Chinese and Japanese letters are limited to 70).

Quite recently, however, new developments in the technology have allowed for even longer messages to be sent. Long or Concatenated SMS is a development that allows multiple messages to be combined to form a single message. In effect, what happens is that your phone actually sends out a few smaller messages and then the receiving phone simply compiles those messages so that for users on both ends, it appears as though the message were cohesive. While there are some limitations, the brilliance behind SMS is that because there is no need for central hubs, and thus the system can be expanded indefinitely without any concerns of it slowing down or becoming more expensive.