Saw this over at “In search of simplicity, quality and tranquility in software engineering“; a series of posts on SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle. Thought a good series to follow and read it over the weekend. Love the graphics on each post!

1. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … what’s the point? (part 1 of many)
2. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … closer look at basics (part 2 of many)
3. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … exploring common models (part 3 of many)
4. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … agility strikes back with energy (part 4 of many)
5. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … is prototyping  part of the good, the bad and/or the evil? (part 5 of many)
6. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … analyzing the battle ahead (part 6 of many)
7. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … designing the blueprint (part 7 of many)
8. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … testing, the moment of truth (part 8 of many)
9. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … flashback, component-level design principles (part 9 of many)
10. SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … Visual Process & Estimating (Guessing) Software Deliverables
11. To scrum or to Run … that is the agile question? (new)
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Yesterday I found this cute yet very informative review on Liz’s blog about “HP Mini Vivienne Tam” and fell in love with it instantly. It’s almost the size of my diary and has other fashion accessories, bag and scarf, to go with it. The color and the design is just so captivating that I just want to have a feel of it. The design is somewhat like a Japanese Kimono…

Check out the specifications too, not too bad isn’t it?

Operating system: Genuine Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3
Processor: Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor N270 (1.60GHz)
Memory: 1GB DDR2 System Memory (1 Dimm)
Hard drive: 60GB 4200RPM PATA Hard Drive
Graphics card: Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Display: 10.1″ diagonal SD LED BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1024 x 576)
Personalization: HP Mini Webcam with HP Imprint Finish (Vivienne Tam)
Networking: Wireless-G Card
Included Mobile Broadband: No Included Mobile Broadband
Keyboard: HP Color Matching Keyboard
Primary battery: 3 Cell Lithium Polymer Battery

It’s perfect for everyday blogging and having a memory of 1GB and 60GB hard drive is ample enough for some simple usage. Check out detail product description on amazon.com. Oh, how I wish I could grab one and roam around in town showing it off.

How sweet! Now you don’t even need Gtalk desktop installer for voice chat, both voice and video are available on browser based Gmail chat. All you have to do is, grab this plugin and start rolling. Well ofcos’ you need a webcam.

Just click on the new “Video & more” menu in a Gmail chat window and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don’t, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat.

Watch the demo video and read detail here. I haven’t tried it yet. I’ll give it a shot once I get home. Not too excited about video but voice on gmail is good enough for me. That would reduce the pain of having to install a desktop program just for voice chat.
Thanks google team for this new feature.

I came across this “C# Yellow Book” by Rob Miles, MVP and a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at University of Hull, and thought of sharing.

I think this would be good introductory reading for those of us learning C#

The C# Book is used by the Department of Computer Science in the University of Hull as the basis of the First Year programming course.

Download: Rob Miles CSharp Yellow Book 2008.pdf(1.4M)

I rolled his blog also; he posts pop quizzes every now and then.

Just going through my feeds and this one interests me. There is an announcement of the next version of Visual Studio and .Net Framework: Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0.

Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 mark the next generation of developer tools from Microsoft. Designed to address the latest needs of developers, Visual Studio and the .NET Framework deliver key innovations in the following pillars:

• Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
  Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) crosses many roles within an organization and traditionally not every one of the roles has been an equal player in the process. Visual Studio Team System 2010 continues to build the platform for functional equality and shared commitment across an organization’s ALM process.
• Enabling emerging trends
  Every year the industry develops new technologies and new trends. With Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft delivers tooling and framework support for the latest innovations in application architecture, development and deployment.
• Inspiring developer delight
  Ever since the first release of Visual Studio, Microsoft has set the bar for developer productivity and flexibility. Visual Studio 2010 continues to deliver on the core developer experience by significantly improving upon it for roles involved with the software development process.
• Riding the next generation platform wave
  Microsoft continues to invest in the market leading operating system, productivity application and server platforms to deliver increased customer value in these offerings. With Visual Studio 2010 customers will have the tooling support needed to create amazing solutions around these technologies.
• Breakthrough Departmental Applications
  Customers continue to build applications that span from department to the enterprise. Visual Studio 2010 will ensure development is supported across this wide spectrum of applications.

Here is a full overview of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 and some more reading on vSTS 2010 (code-name “Rosario”): What’s new in Visual Studio Team System 2010. Read some more detail announcement on Somasegar’s (senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft) post: What’s next for Visual Studio and .NET FX?

Ok, that’s about it for now.

This little apps, “Open Street Map” is getting popular among my colleagues and quite becoming the topic of discussion this morning. It’s all started from strangepants who pass on the word to my bro zatlite and now everyone at the office started adding street names for their residential areas. As for me, I just observed the site but haven’t done any actual work on it since almost every streets in our area has already been added by my bro. Anyways, here is how this cool little thing works.

It’s a wiki sort of world street map where anyone can login to add/edit the streets in your region.

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.

OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

To edit, you need to sign in first. Anyone can open an account there easily. You can also export the chosen map area into a few formats, (png, jpeg, svg, pdf, postscript) and can play around with the size, scale etc under “Export” tab.
You can also write some diaries on it or do some GPS tracing.

Ofcos’ if you are confused with how to do the tracing, you can always check out their wiki help page. In the Beginners’ Guide, there is an very well explained introductory video for you to get started with. I’m also checking out the video and briefly reading through the steps.

I did ask my bro, who actually done editing on the map, to write a post about it since it’s quite interesting to play around but as usual the lazy slime just passed me the video and ignored my request. So here I am dropping a note to whoever out there love playing with maps to check this site out.

Ciao!

I was reading this post, “Endless Conversation: The Unfolding Saga of Blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Social Sites” from Web 2.0 Blog and checked out a few twitter applications mentioned in there.

I LOVE Summize and Twitterfeed; I use them the most. I find this two, Tweetwheel and Twitter Charts, pretty interesting especially the Tweetwheel.

The result wheel is just amazing and you can hover over to see all those links in your connections.

Beautiful isn’t it? Well, if you have time, try play around with those. I bet you’ll love a few.