US Advanced Technology

What is an iPod? Who are you, my mother? Well, its a reasonable enough question. Chances are that you are probably aware that its an iPod is a little gadget that your grandson wants for his birthday and that its costs a lot of money and what wrong with this transistor radio anyway? Whats wrong? Everything.

You want to know what is an iPod? Its a product created by Apple. Depending on which version you have its possibilities for functionality are seeming to approach limitless. Lets assume that youre going to pick up the new 5th generation for the grandkid, because if hes like most kids nowadays, hes probably rude, disrespectful and ungratefulunless he gets exactly what he wants; which is a 5th generation iPod.

When he opens it up and starts it up hell be looking at the possibility of storing up to 15,000 songs, and oddly enough he will too. Hell be able to load his iPod up with 25,000 crystal clear color photos. His new best friend has the capacity to store up to 150 hours videos or movies that all have the same quality as the photos. And he can roam the mean streets of your quiet town for 20 hours before this thing runs out of batteries.

So aside from everything that should have tempted you to buy the kid one long ago, excellent quality, great capacity, podcast possibilities, etc; youve got every reason in the world to push aside your concerns. The new iPods are smaller, lighter, and have more options than one could reasonably want. The new 5th generation iPod does so many things that you wont be asking what is an iPod, but what isnt an iPod.

Background
Search engines are particularly interested in websites with constantly updated, relevant content. Websites that appear static without a supply of fresh content may be viewed as dormant and in their drive to provide the latest, most relevant search results to users, search engines may rank such a website lower than a website that is updated regularly.

What Is It?
RSS to Blog Pro is a fully automated blog posting tool offering self-updating websites. It’s a PHP script that is installed on a single web hosting account. From this centralised installation, multiple blogs can be maintained with fresh content from various sources. Also available is an earlier, non-pro version, which has the same basic functionality, but requires a separate install for each blog it maintains.

What Problem Does It Solve?
Adding fresh – and importantly, relevant – content to websites can be a resource consuming task. Either you spend time finding and creating new content or you pay someone to do it for you. Without fresh content, your websites can appear stagnant and drop off the search engines radar. This impacts your website rankings in search results and ultimately has a detrimental effect on any free traffic coming from the search engines. If your websites rely on search engine traffic then this can mean their downfall.

What Are The Benefits?
RSS to Blog Pro tackles the problem of needing to regularly update website content by automating the whole process from finding relevant content based upon keywords that you provide through to posting content to your website blog. In the eyes of search engines, updating a website with irrelevant content isn’t nearly as good as having relevant content. The tighter your niche, the better chances you have of ranking higher as you’ll be competing with a smaller number of websites. Using a scattergun approach to website content can mean you end up competing with websites across a large number of niches.

If you’re building content websites with the aim of earning an AdSense income then you’ll know that the ads shown are dependant upon the surrounding content on your webpages. Irrelevant content results in ads that are irrelevant to your website visitors, which means they’ll have no interest in clicking on them and your generated income will be poor.

Features

* Supports multiple blog types including WordPress, Blogger Blogs, Movable Type, Type Pad, Live Journal and MSN Spaces.
* Keywords and RSS feeds can be specified for automatic content generation or you can supply your own content.
* Posting to your blogs can be scheduled at random intervals e.g. once or twice a day so that posting appears natural.
* There are no ‘footprints’ to identify the content as being automatically generated.
* Log records are kept so you can see exactly what has been posted and to where.
* Built-in ping functionality for blog and ping.
* A single installation will post to an unlimited number of blogs.
* Regular updates.
* User support forum.
* Two tier affiliate programme offering 40% commission to the top level and 10% for any sales from affiliates you recruit.

My Experience With RSS to Blog Pro
Since August 2005, I’ve been using RSS to Blog Pro on an increasing number of blogs in various niches. I’m pleased to be able to say that my income from AdSense has increased month upon month since then. With the software installed on my virtual private server (VPS), I currently manage around 50 blogs, posting relevant new content every day or two. I’d recommend that you don’t install RSS to Blog Pro onto a shared server because if you’re updating a large number of websites or you’re running the script frequently (every couple of minutes) then your host is likely to take a dim view on it. Considering how inexpensive and how much more reliable a VPS is to operate there just isn’t any reasonable justification for risking a shared server. A VPS is like having your own server, completely isolated from any other peoples websites so you can’t affect them and they can’t affect you. There is the exception of disk IO, but that isn’t something that should be of any real concern.

The issue of relevancy is really what makes the difference between an effective auto content generation tool and one that will never do anything for your bottom line. I can’t stress it enough; without relevant content, search engines won’t be able to categorise your niche and won’t be able to rank you fairly amongst your peers. That means you won’t do well in searches in your subject area. It also could mean your website will serve ads for tennis equipment when your niche is dog care. Visitors looking for information about dog care are highly unlikely to be interested in tennis equipment when they come to your website because it’s not something which is relevant to their needs at that time.

There’s no doubt that this helps to keep those websites looking fresh and my website stats show a constant stream of visits to my blog pages each month. And of course, lots of targetted visitors and lots of targetted content means a lot of clicks on targetted ads!

Support-wise, Michelle (creator of RSS to Blog Pro) has answered my email queries promptly and there’s an active user forum for peer support. Michelle also visits the forum to provide assistance although some queries can take a couple of days for a response, however the user base, support forum and software is mature enough to be able to cope with almost every common question a new user might have.

Fortunately, the software is easy to install and set-up so you can expect to be running within an hour or two.

One feature that I haven’t used is the ability to ping blog directories from within RSS to Blog Pro. The reason for this is that if I pinged these websites for every post made to each of my blogs then I’d actually end up pinging up to 50 times a day from the same domain (the domain on which RSS to Blog Pro is installed). Rather than risk being blacklisted for pinging too much and hogging the resources of the directories, I use the ping facility from with my WordPress blog software instead so that the individual pings come from the individual domains. Again, this will appear to be a lot more natural and it also helps RSS to Blog Pro to work more efficiently by decoupling some of the work away from it.

Conclusion
After 6 months of constant usage, I’m pretty happy with RSS to Blog Pro’s performance. and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is wanting to have self-updating websites that attract targetted traffic. Care needs to be taken when selecting a host for the script, but once installed, operation of the script is simple and reliable. An excellent script in the toolbox of AdSense earners and affiliate marketers alike.

Whether you have a desktop, or a laptop, you need various computer accessories and peripherals to derive the maximum benefit from them and also optimize their use. There are quite a lot of accessories available in the market today, and new ones are making their entry on a day-to-day basis.

In most of the cases these accessories and peripherals are available with your computer, but if they aren’t then, they are available at all computer shops. Some of the special items in this regard, will not be available with your computer, but can be bought from exclusive vendors.

The different types of computer accessories and peripherals

The keyboard

Everyone knows what a keyboard looks like and its functionality. All computers come with their own keyboard, and you don’t have to buy them separately. However, there does come a time, when you find that they don’t suit you or they do not have the features that you are looking for.

Its arguably one of the most important of all computer accessories and its primary activity is to input data. The amount of choices available in terms of keyboards and their functionality is enormous.

These days you also get a wireless keyboard, and even a keyboard that is ergonomic in nature. Ergonomic keyboards are a great buy for people who spend a lot of time typing. They prevent strain resulting from the same.

The mouse

Though you can control your computer without the use of your mouse, it’s still much easier and comfortable to do so, using the mouse. All operating systems, that are available today, are configured to work with the use of a mouse.

Mouse, as an accessory, is an overriding necessity and you simply can’t do without it. It is available in a variety of designs, and are configured to suit various requirements of the user.

There are various types of mouse available in the market. The most affordable out of all this variety is the simple mouse that contains a ball underneath, which helps in the movement of the cursor. Other expensive varieties include the optical mouse and the wireless mouse.

The printer

Printers cannot be called a necessity in terms of computer accessories and peripherals, but are required if you want to print material on a regular basis. However, they are a helpful addition to all computer systems.

The market is replete with numerous options, when it comes to printers. Today, buying printers is not difficult or even expensive. You can go for the black and white variety or opt for a color printer. Laser printers are the most expensive of the lot, but in the long run, help save a lot of money.

The scanner

Again, like the printers, it’s not a primary requirement when it comes to a computer system. A scanner, basically, helps you scan various images, and documents onto your computer.

After you get them on your computers, you can edit them and even print them. The purpose of a scanner is to make a graphic image of your document and save them into your computers.

Scanners are not cheap, but to call them expensive wouldn’t be right either. Today, you can buy a combination that includes both a scanner and a printer. Such models can be a good buy.

The speakers

All computers come with their own sound cards, which enable you to hear sound played from your computer. This can be done using a set of speakers that are reliable and give out good sound.

You can buy a host of speakers, dependant on size, price, design, and style. Sophisticated speakers are expensive, but are recommended if you are going to use your computer to watch DVD films or play computer games.

Web cam

Web cameras are the miniature version of regular cameras and their images can be accessed using the services of the World Wide Web. These web cameras are a combination of digital cameras, with a capability to upload all images on a particular web server.

These cameras are attached to a PC, enabling people to see each other, when they chat or do video conferencing.

Flash drive

A flash drive is essentially a storage device. It’s called a flash drive, because it uses a flash memory rather than the traditional methods of data storage.

Many a times, they are used as a replacement for hard drives, and most of the times, their functionality, size, shape, and even user interface is similar to these hard drives.

Pen Drive or USB Flash Drive

These drives are integrated with a Universal Serial Bus or USB connector, and are generally small, removable, rewritable, and lightweight. They are the new age replacements for traditional data storage accessories like floppy disks or even data CDs.

They are able to store more data, are easy to use, and are inherently more reliable.

There are many more computer accessories and peripherals that are available in the market. Such accessories have exclusive uses and are only used for specific purpose. The ones listed above are the ones that are commonly used.

Better to fail for real than fail to really fail. Huh?
We know you’ve experienced this. Let’s say you just added some new functionality into your software, and you run a new build. And let’s say that 50% of your test cases fail. What is the first thing you assume?

We’ve asked this same question as our “teaser pitch” last winter to 100 developers and QA professionals who walked up to our booth at a recent conference, and 95 of them had the same answer! The tests must be broken!

This creates a cascading set of bad assumptions that will make your manager recite the adage about “ASS out of U and ME” on the whiteboard at the next project meeting. Here’s why.

* You assume that the problem is not with your application, it is with the test cases themselves being broken or no longer valid.
* So you spend time comparing the test cases with whatever changed in your new build.
* Then you dig into the test scripts to try to figure out why the test case is no longer passing, and rework them until they pass.
* Or you just give up and try validating by clicking through your old Word document test cases. Fun busy work.

How can you possibly call this testing? Rather than using the test to validate the application, you are using the application to test the test case – which is a program you coded!

Yes, unit tests are important for finding structural bugs in your code. But once a unit test tries to get beyond that granular level of testing, it becomes another fragile program in your development environment.

It is outrageous to assume that relying on coded unit test cases alone offers you any value in functional testing. In fact, the whole process is so manual and highly inefficient, that you wonder if you are doing anything more than making busy work for your own team.

Unit testing has its limits. There are methods people have tried to get beyond these limits, but it is like challenging the theory of gravity.

* Attempting to code for reuse – may seem possible but can only get you to the edge of Unit testing’s limits.
* Attempting to test the UI with your QA group, doesn’t really work if you can’t see those middle and back-end layers.

What makes false failures so dangerous? Besides the fact that they are a morale vampire that will make the team give up on testing, false failures impact the overall effectiveness of testing. If you don’t know if a failing test case is even valid, what do you really learn from testing? It is like a detective that never gathers evidence.

Time to declare war on false failures.

Excel Workbooks: Can’t Live With Them – Can’t Live Without Them

Excel…. When it comes to spreadsheets, it’s the only game in town. For basic formatting, calculations, and the rare chart or two, it has all the functionality most users need. However, those who regularly use advanced features to create Excel workbooks understand the program’s limitations. The hair pulling starts when you have to repetitively perform virtually the same formatting and analysis steps on new data for the same fields and continues when you discover that there is virtually no re-usability for the work you perform in Excel. Each time, it’s almost like starting from scratch.

But what if there were products that could streamline the creation of workbooks, so that what usually takes hours could be accomplished in mere minutes? Imagine a world where you could format data on an ad hoc basis or new data for the same fields on a repetitive basis in a way that would create formatted worksheets, a PivotTable, and a PivotChart utilizing more Excel formatting and analysis features than you could ever implement manually? It would be a world of sheer bliss.

After looking at all of the products on the market, there’s one that stands out above all others: Xcelerator. In essence, it transforms Excel from a cumbersome necessity into a fast, powerful, easy-to-use report writer. By automating Excel’s most frequently used features, it completely eliminates repetitive, mechanical, and time consuming manual formatting tasks. The best part of all is that the program never touches the original data, whether it’s manually maintained Excel data, data extracted from databases, or data imported into Excel from other applications.

If you find yourself constantly formatting new data for the same fields, Xcelerator’s workbook creation and formatting process is completely automatic. Because it creates templates, it literally takes less than one minute and produces new, identically formatted Excel workbooks every time.

Although Xcelerator isn’t a substitute for a thorough understanding of Excel’s features and capabilities, it does streamline every step of creating Excel workbooks. But it goes beyond simply making a more efficient mousetrap because it has a number of powerful features that are exclusive to Xcelerator, such as mixing multiple subtotal types at each subtotal level and dragging the field contents of non-breaking and non-totaling fields to any subtotal level.

As if that wasn’t enough, the program also allows you to print out charts and tables with headers and footer, making it ready for presentation.

Although Excel workbooks have their inherent limitations, products like Xcelerator tear down those walls and keep you from tearing your hair out!