Friday, October 30, 2009

Twitter list is now available for everyone.


Twitter list is a new feature from twitter for allowing users to create different groups (e.g team, family, friends).

Till today, it was available only for few people. It seems twitter is making it available for everyone today.

We can create our own list and we can follow the list also.


Lists can be either private or public, Others can view and subscribe to your public list for getting tweets from each user in your list without following each user individually.

For example, you can simply subscribe to our News list for getting tweets from many news providing Twitter Users.

Each twitter profile is now showing number of lists in which they are listed.

I was surprised to see that @google is listed in more than 4K lists in very short period.


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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

New blogs for reading news archive


As I mentioned in my previous post, we are continuously working on for improving our News Channels.

Currently the latest news is getting displayed in this blog. But we can not read the old news.
So, recently we have created new blogs for showing the old news also.

You can read the old Technical news and News about Google in http://readnewsarchive.blogspot.com (Update: now it News Site is moved to RtoZ.org)

And, you can read the older Medical News in http://medicalnewsarchive.blogspot.com/.

If you face any difficulty or any issue in reading the current news and/or reading the news archive, you can inform us thro' comment section or by sending email to qualitypointmail@gmail.com.


And, we welcome your suggestions for improving the News Channels.



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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Similar Image search feature enters into Google Image Search from Google Labs



Google has announced that Similar Image Search will be added into Google Image Search.

This feature was in Google Labs for sometime. Now it will be available for all thro' normal Google image search.

But it seems this feature is not yet implemented in all country specific Google search engines.

For example, I couldn't see this feature in our (India) default search engine http://images.google.co.in

I had to manually change it into http://images.google.com for seeing this new feature.

This new feature will be very useful for narrow downing the search for seeing the required image. So, ultimately it will save our time.

When I searched for flower I got the below search results which include "Find similar images" link for each image.



If I click the "Find similar images" for Rose, then it is showing only the images of rose.



If I click the "Find similar images" link of any sketch image, the search result is showing only the sketch images.




We can do further "Similar image search" from the search result itself.

I have tried lot of scenarios for evaluating this new feature. It seems this feature is working in Excellent and unbelievable manner.

You can share your review about this new feature thro' the comment section.

And, if you have any idea to improve Google image, you can submit it here. You can see more than 27 ideas that are submitted by others, and you can vote for an idea which attracts you more.

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Monday, October 26, 2009

We can use Google voice without changing current phone number


Google Voice is enabling us to use single number for all our phones.

Currently we have to choose a new Google Voice number for using this facility.
Today Google has announced that it will be providing an option to choose our existing phone number while registering for Google Voice. i-e We can use Google Voice without changing our current phone number.

But anyway, it seems this option won't support all features of normal Google voice service (i-e Google voice with new number).

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Embedding Wave in Blog Post


Google Wave can be easily embedded into blog post.

Here I will explain about embedding the Wave into a blogger blog (i-e blogspot.com).

First, you have to get the Wave ID of your wave.

This article will explain the steps for getting the Wave ID.

And, then we need to specify the below code in our post.
<div id="wave_<wave_id>" ></div>
And we have to include javascript code before </body > tag in the blogger html code.

You can follow the steps/code specified in this blog post for embedding the Wave.

I have created one public wave. Wave ID for this wave is "VkPxeecSL". I have embedded this wave below.


If you logged in with your activated Google wave account you will see the the embebbed wave saying "Testing public wave creation". Others won't see the embedded wave, instead they may see some default message/video from Google Wave.



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Making Public Wave


Yesterday I got invitation for Google Wave, and I started exploring the features of the Google Wave.

But the important thing is, I couldn't explore many features without having other participants in my Wave.

If you want to include myself as participant in your waves you can add me (rajamanickam.a@googlewave.com).

Anyway, I came to know that we can search public waves and then we can participate in the pubic waves.

public waves can be easily searched by entering with:public in the search bar of the Wave.

If you want to limit the search results, you can include the search keyword also as with:public <keyword> (e.g with:public software). You can refer the below screenshot.



By doing search for public waves, I came to know that there are lot of public waves available. People have created lot of public waves based on name of the cities and name of the universities.

One thing I have noticed in the search results is, non-english waves are also getting displayed in the search results. I am just looking for a way to show only english (and Tamil) waves.

I was surprised to see many public waves with Tamil content.

Now, let us see how to make your Wave public.

Just do the below steps.
- Add public@a.googlewave.com in your contact list. You will get error message (e.g public@a.googlewave.com is not a Google Wave account.).
You can just ignore the error message and just proceed. You can add easypublic@appspot.com also as specified in the Google support forum.

-Create a new Wave and add public@a.googlewave.com as participant. This new Wave will become public and it can be searched by anyone and anyone can participate in this wave.

Refer the below screenshot which shows one public wave created my me.


I have noticed one simple thing about FavIcon.

Background of Google Wave FavIcon is not transparent. It is showing as white. So it looks odd when seeing it in non-white browsers.





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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Got Invitation for Google Wave


Today I got invitation for using Google Wave..

I am exploring the features of Google wave. I will write about my Google wave experience later.

Actually, I had applied for Google Wave invitation 4 months back itself (At the end of May month). Now only I got the invitation.

It seems Google wave invitation is in High Demand.

I came to know that even people are selling the invitation for 70$.

I can send 20 invitations. But, according to Google "Invitations will not be sent immediately"



I have planned to use these invitations for our blog readers.
So, if you really want to use/explore Google Wave, let me know thro' comment section. Before requesting Google Wave, better you can read about Google Wave.

It will be nice if you write feedback/review (both positives and short-comings) about our Google Wave article or about our blog/website/knol/quiz/news along with your request for the Google Wave invitation.

And you can request an invitation for Wave from Google.

You can follow @googlewave to get updates from Google Wave Team.

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Friday, October 23, 2009

Bing and Google will search tweets also to provide Real-time search results


Real-Time Search is becoming very important in online search.

For example, today blogger was down for few hours.

I have noticed error message when loading our blog. I wanted to know more details of this error. i-e I wanted to know whether this issue occurs in all blogger blogs or occurs only in our blog. And, I wanted to know when it will be rectified.

So, I did google search for the keywords "blogger" and the error code returned from our blog. But it didn't give any useful search result.

After that I did a search in Twitter search, and got more information about this issue.

I came to know that more people are facing this issue, and also I came to know that blogger (Google) is working on to resolve this issue.

This incident clearly indicates the need for real-time search.



Both Microsoft and Google are knowing the importance of this real-time search.

So, they are trying to integrate feature of searching tweets with their search engine.

Microsoft has released the Beta version of Twitter search with Bing.

currently it is having below features.

Hottest Topics on Twitter
Most recent Tweets about <search keyword>
Top links shared in Tweets about <search keyword>


Google also announced that it had made an agreement with Twitter for searching the Tweets to provide real-time search results.

Some people are raising some concerns in this integration.

It seems already some real time search engines such as collecta.com are available to make real-time search.

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Blogger blogs were down for more than an Hour




Today blogger blogs including this blog were down for more than an hour.

Blogger restored the blogs after an hour. If you want to get the updates about blogger you can follow @blogger.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Children's day Doodle Selection.



We can vote for selecting the Google Doodle which will be displayed in Google India Home page on November 14 for celebrating Children's day. You can read this knol about children's day .

You can vote for a Doodle in each of below three groups.
1. Standards 1-3
2. Standards 4-6
3. Standards 7-10

From the 3 winners Google will select one Doodle for displaying it on Novermber 14.


Are you able to predict the winning doodle which will be displayed in Google home page on November 14?

In this case you can specify your prediction here thro' comments.

Let us see on November 14, who's prediction is correct.

Specify the group number (1 or 2 or 3) and the Doodle number in the group. For example if you predict this Doodle as winning Doodle then specify it as 1-13 in the comment. And, if you predict this Doodle as winning Doodle then specify it as 3-13.

Specify only one Doodle.

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Added new Topic "HTML" in our Quiz


We have added a new topic "HTML" for having HTML related questions in our Quiz.

And, we have added more than 100 questions in this topic, and working on to add more questions.

We are already having questions in the below topics.

PHP
Javascript
MySql
dotNET
Testing
QTP
English
Aptitude
General Knowledge
Science

If you feel any question/answer is incorrect, you can send mail to qualitypointmail@gmail.com

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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Twitter API for creating your own Twitter application.


As I explained in the previous post, twitter is becoming the leading social media and micro blogging site.

Web interface of Twitter is having limited features only. So there are lot of twitter applications available for providing more features.

If you want to create your own Twitter application for any specific need, you can do it by using twitter API.

If you know CURL you can easily create any new Twitter applications.
For example, below simple php code using cURL can be used for posting message with tiny url into your twitter account without using web interface.

I will be writing more details about cURL in coming posts.

If you are new to cURL, you can bookmark this blog for further reading, or you can subscribe to our blog feed.

$twitter_url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
$uname = '';//example "qualitypoint" for twitter.com/qualitypoint, or email address
$pwd = ''; //enter the password
$title='' ; //enter the message
$url=''; //url that needs be included in the message

$tiny_url = getContents("http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=" . $url);
$status = $title . " " . $tiny_url;

$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_URL,"$twitter_url");
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_POST,1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,"status=$status");
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_USERPWD,"$uname:$pwd");
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);

Contact Us if you want to develop your own Custom Twitter applications.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Advantages of using Gmail


Email is becoming very important part in any Business.

There are lot of free email services available.

We have to be very careful and do more analysis before choosing any email service provider.


Gmail is leading all the email services. And, it has lot of features and many advantages over others.

In this post we can discuss the advantages of using Gmail.


1. The very first advantage is Speed. It will be surprising to see the very fast mail delivery and mail reception in Gmail. We need not refresh the web page to see the new mails. It works using Ajax.


2. We can access Gmail in many ways. Gmail offers free POP3 and IMAP accesses for downloading the Gmail messages into your preferred email client.


3. Enough Storage Space. It seems currently Gmail is providing around 1 GB free space. And, we can get more space by paying reasonable cost.


4. Powerful Search within the mail message. We can find the desired mail easily by doing search.

5. Our mails and their reply mails will be combined as Forum like "Conversation". It will be helpful to understand the entire conversation in the mail chain.


6. Using Google Gear, web based Gmail can be used in offline.


7. Very useful feature of gmail is, spam filtering. Gmail is excellent in filtering out spam mails. Getting out of spam mails will save lot of our time.


8. Gmail Team is very efficient in recovering your account if someone else is trying to use your account by stealing your login credentials. I am not sure whether they are doing it manually or automatically, but I was surprised to see the steps they had taken to give our account back to us when someone tried to hack about account.

9. We can set up Gmail to forward the copy of mails to other mail accounts as backup copy.


10. Integration of Gmail with other Google products such as Google Talk can be done effectively. For example, we can search the chat history from the mail without doing any additional steps for storing chat details.

11. Even it can establish effective integration with other products also. This knol will explain about synchronizing Goolge Calendar with outlook events.


12. Labels are unique feature of Gmail. They will help to arrange the mails in desired categories. Comparing with Folders, Gmail Labels will save storage space as they will keep only one copy of message even when the message belongs to two different categories.

13.Many Gadgets can be integrated within Gmail.

14. Lot of Gmail UI Themes are available. We can choose any theme according to our wish.
15. Comparatively down time of Gmail is very less. Recent Gmail outages are being discussed in many blogs and forums. But anyway Gmail is more stable comparing to other email services.
16. You can manage your tasks from Gmail.
17. Contacts can be managed effectively.
18. Google labs is providing more innovative features (but not stable). If you want you can turn on these Labs features in your Gmail.
19.(Newly added on Jan 2010) Gmail is enjoying some priorities in Google's own smartphone Nexus One.

Gmail is not having default read receipt. This knol will explain the reason.

Some classified or job websites won't allow Employer acccount creation if we use gmail id. They will be allowing only the emailids with domain of company website.

I used to think why these sites are expecting emailid with specific domain name while gmail is superior in many ways such as speed, Spam filtering, and archive management.

Finally I am able to find the reason. All these sites are having some partnership with hosting companies, and they are trying to promote their hosting packages.
That's why they are forcing the companies to have emailid with company domain name .

You can read official Gmail blog to know more about Gmail.

Gmail Tips and tricks
Top Advantages of Gmail

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Latest Google Holiday Logos (Doodle)


Holiday Logos / Doodle from Google is getting popular every year.
Some of the logos will be visible to entire world. Some of them are specific to some countries.
You can see below the latest Holiday Logos from Google. New Logos will be added automatically.

And, you can see the complete list of Holiday logos here. It will show the Google Holiday logos starting from 1998. You can see this as video also.






Some blogs are showing funny logos by imitating Google Holiday logos. You can see below some of them.
Some blogs display some fun logos based on the Google

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-01-05-n11.html
http://www.richswebdesign.com/googlelogos2001.shtml
http://www.funnygoogle.com/google_funny_logos.html

Find below YouTube video which is created by collecting the Doodles.







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Workaround for handling Virus which injects iframe in index page


It seems thousands of websites are getting attacked by a virus which injects iFrame for loading some other pages in hidden manner when loading our web page.

It will help them to improve their Traffic Ranking (e.g Alexa Ranking).

People are saying that some Hosting companies will do this intentionally as an Advertisement program.

If your website is getting attacked by this virus, you can follow below steps to get out of this issue.


  • Rename all the .html and .php files having name as index, home, default and main. For example rename the index.php into firstpage.php

  • create a new file with the original file name (e.g index.php, index.html, default.php,...)


  • Place the below redirection code in new file
    <script language="javascript">
    window.location.href="firstpage.html";
    </script>


  • Do the above steps for all the sub-folders.



By doing these steps, website can be displayed without any issue even when it is affected with virus.

If it doesn't help you can make the index files readonly so that they can not be changed by the virus.

If anybody knows the ways for removing this virus and for preventing this virus, you can share it thro' the comment section.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Job opening for freshers (Engineering/MCA)


Currently we are looking for Software Engineers.

Desired Candidate profile:

  • Having Good Technical Knowledge and willing to work hard for learning new technologies.

  • Team work.

  • Sincere

  • Good communication skills.

  • Knowledge in PHP/mySql, C# is preferred.

  • Willing to work in any technology.

  • Job location :Chennai and Ottapidaram (Tuticorin District)

  • Experience 0-1 year


If you are really interested please send your updated resume to qualitypointmail@gmail.com. Please specify Reference as "Blog" in the subject of your mail. And also, specify your location preference (Chennai/Ottapidaram) also.

And specify your Expected Salary also.



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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Forwarding mails from Gmail to other mail accounts.


Gmail is having lot of useful features. One of such features is forwarding mails to other mail accounts.

It can be done easily done and it will be more useful for keeping backup copy of your important emails.

For doing this click "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" in "settings" tab. Specify your email address to which you are going to forward the mails. And specify other options also.

Refer this article to know more details.


This feature can be used as mail backup and also it will be useful if you want to read mails from all of your different mails account using single mail client.


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Monday, October 12, 2009

Accessing Remote machine over Internet.


Viewing and accessing remote computer is essential for troubleshooting any issue in remote computer applications or for doing any demo of new product or for developing any new code collaboratively.

Remote Desktop (RDP) service in Windows XP can be used to access your remote computer from your home computer.

i-e RDP can be used for doing Support over Internet.

You can read below articles to use RDP for accessing remote computers.

Get started using Remote Desktop with Windows XP Professional
Understanding the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)

You should have VPN access or your computer should have static IP for using RDP.

If you are not having static IP, you can use TeamViewer for achieving the samething (i-e accessing remote machine thro' Internet)

You can download it and use it freely for non-commercial purpose.

You can use either automatically generated number or registered user id for identifying and accessing the remote computer.

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Friday, October 9, 2009

Enhancing our News Channels


We are providing below News Channels by combining many RSS feeds in effective way using Yahoo pipes and Feed burner.

Tech News Software Testing News News about Google Business News Medical News Tamil News

We are tweeting these News content @GlobalTechNews

And, we deliver them to mobile Phones as free SMS also (within India only). e.g QualityPointNews.

You can read our previous post if you need more details.



It seems many people are impressed with our News Channels. For example, within very short time period (around 1.5 month) more than 1000 people are following @GlobalTechNew.

So, I decided to enhance our News Channels even better than current level.

Currently we are tweeting our News using twitterfeed.com only. Using this site we will be able to send the tweets in minimum 30 minutes interval only. We can not reduce this interval below 30 minutes.

So the reader may see slight delay in the News. So to improve this, I have decided to tweet the news using twitter API php code instead of using twitterfeed.com or in addition to using twitterfeed.com.

I searched the internet and found the twitter API php code, and tested it thro' browser successfully. But our hosting company is not providing cron job tab for scheduling the execution.

I came to know that some online cronjob service sites are available. But it seems they will charge once after exceeding particular number of cron job execution.

So, I decided to find some other good alternative. I found a php code which can do the scheduling without requiring cron job. But it seems it needs some manual firing of events to make it work.

We are still working on to improve it better. And, let me know if anybody face any issue with our News Channels.
And you can read the old news at News Archive.
We welcome your suggestions for enhancing our News Channels.

I believe these enhancements will attract much more visitors.

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Why Alexa ranking?


Most of the people are giving more importance to Alexa ranking of the website when fixing price for advertisement or when selling/buying domain.

But the fact is, Alexa will give rank to any website based on the visitors who have installed Alexa toolbar in their machine.

I hope only limited people will use alexa toolbar. So, I am wondering why people are giving much importance for the Alexa ranking?

If anybody knows the answer you can share it here thro' comments.

One more interesting thing is, Alexa tool bar is showing rank for our blog(qualitypoint.blogspot.com) by considering the domain name as qualitypoint.blgospot.com.

But it is showing rank for our another blog(youcanstart.blogspot.com) by considering the domain name as blogpsot.com.

Anybody have any idea why Alexa is behaving like this?

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Win-Win approach to win in any Business


As of now, I am not an Expert in Business. Anyway I can strongly say that win-win approach is very important to achieve long term success in any business.

I can say this by observing lot of successful businesses.

First of all, what I meant by saying win-win approach?

Suppose if you are doing any business deal with someone, your deal should be designed or formatted such that it will give benefit for both parties i-e for you and for the other party.


You should not accept any deal if it doesn't give any benefit for the other party even when it gives more benefit for you while creating the deal. Because it won't give the benefits for you in the long run if the other party is not getting benefit from the deal.

For example, if you have option for selecting one of two websites for reading news. Assume that one website is showing advertisements along with News, and another website is not showing any advertisements.

In this case you have to choose the website which is showing advertisements.

Because, if you select the website which is not showing advertisements, the deal won't be a win-win deal. The reason is, the website won't benefit from you.
In this case the website can not provide enough support or enhancements in long run.
So finally you will be the loser.

And also, obviously you should not accept any deal which is not giving any benefit for you. You may accept the deal without any benefit for you during the deal creation time. But in long run, you may change your mind. So it may break the entire deal itself.

If you see the activities of the successful company "Google" you can see this win-win approach in each and every deal.

So, make sure that any deal you involve gives benefit for both you and other party.

I am writing this post just by observing deals made by successful companies.

So, if anybody has other opinions based on your personal experience you can share it thro' comments section. (i-e) someone may be thinking that we need not care about benefits of other party while doing any deal. Or someone may be thinking that we can accept the deal with broadmind even when the deal doesn't give any benefit for us.

You can bookmark this blog for further reading, or you can subscribe to our blog feed.

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We can use Browser address bar itself for doing search


For doing search, we can type the search keyboard in address bar of the browser itself.

We need not open separate tab or window for loading the search website such as Google.com and bing.com.


If you enter the search keyword in the browser, the search will be done by default search engine.

For example, if you enter the keyword in address bar of FireFox or Chrome then search will be done by Google. If you enter the keyword in address bar of IE then search will be done by bing.com

Anyway, if you enter domain name in the address bar the homepage the domain will be loaded instead of doing search.

I thought most of the people will be knowing about it. But after reading an article in a blog (mashable.com) I came to know that still most of the people are first loading the search engine webpage for doing any search.



So, I wanted to write this article so that readers can save some time by not loading the search engine webpage for doing search.

Apart from this address bar option we can always use search tool bar if you have installed it.



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Monday, October 5, 2009

Be aware of phishing frauds.


Phishing is the fraud process of gathering sensitive information such as username, password and credit card detail by pretending as trustworthy entity in electronics communication mostly e-mail.

Hackers use lot of phishing techniques such as Social engineering and Link manipulation for collecting the sensitive information.



In Social engineering phishing technique, the hackers will send mail with subject similar to "to restore access to your bank account .."

In Link manipulation technique, the link text will be different from the actual link.

As a user, we need to be very careful so that we are not becoming victim of phishing. We need to make sure that link text and actual link getting showin in address bar are exactly same.

Mostly, manually type the url in the address bar instead of clicking the link from email message when you are going to load any online banking website.

As a web developer, we need to do enough penetration Testing to avoid cross-site scripting which will help the hackers to do phishing.


It seems Google Chrome is giving alert when we click any phishing link.

Social Media such as FaceBook is becoming the target of phishing frauds.

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Converter for connecting SATA Hard Disk Drive into IDE port.



Today I came to know that converter is available for connecting SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) into old mother board which is not having support for SATA Hard Disks.

IDE hard disk used in one of our computers was failed. I thought of replacing this failed IDE hard disk with new SATA hard disk drive. But I realized that the mother board of this computer is not having support for SATA hard disk.

I bought a converter (IDE to SATA Zippys)for connecting the new SATA hard disk into the old mother board.
We need to provide separate power supply for the converter also.

Interestingly, the same converter can be used for connecting IDE Hard disk into the SATA port of new mother boards.

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Saturday, October 3, 2009

Software Testers need to know about "business" background of the application under test.


As I explained in my previous post Software Testing plays an important role in the Software Development Life Cycle.

V-Model mandates the need for involvement of Software Testers from beginning of the Software Development life cycle.

But in most of the cases, Software Testers are not having enough exposure to "business" background of the application.

Just blindly writing (and executing)test cases by reading the business or functional requirements is not enough to test the application-under-test.

Software Testers should learn more about domain and background of the application.
It will help them to understand the requirements in correct context and will help to find any issue in the requirements itself.

Having enough business background knowledge will make the Software Testers to act as effective bridge between the Business Analysts (BA) and the Developers.

Especially, Domain knowledge is very important for testing BFSI applications (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance).


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