2 Free Scrum ebooks & a Checklist

I came across these free ebooks on the InfoQ website that look like good reading material -Scrum XP From The TrenchesKanban and Scrum - making the most of bothScrum ChecklistsDownloading them requires prior registration.The first book on the list has some good reviews on Amazon...

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IRCTC Alternatives

The IRCTC.co.in website has to be the most trafficked e-commerce site in India as you can book a train ticket online within minutes by paying a few rupees extra rather than buying them from a Railway ticket counter which has perennially long queues. In April 2010, there were over 7 million transactions carried out. The website has an Alexa Rank of 474.These impressive figures are probably not due to the quality of the website but due to the monopoly...

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Book Review: Learning jQuery 1.3

In a brief span of four years, jQuery has become one of the most popular JavaScript Frameworks. Among the many websites & organizations that have adopted it is Microsoft and we are going to see a lot more of jQuery being used in ASP.NET websites than earlier. I've been using jQuery on & off for more than a year now. I more than agree with jQuery's motto that you will start writing less code & doing more with this nifty JavaScript Framework....

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Page Speed or YSlow

There are a bunch of web page performance analysis tools like Page Speed, YSlow, AOL Pagetest, MSFast, VRTA, neXpert  but the first two are probably the most popular among web developers. I have used YSlow in the past & was curious to know how it differs from Page Speed. There are a few articles that talk about the differences but the Page Speed FAQ sums up it up well -YSlow and Page Speed use some common "rules" that are based on industry...

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Google Doodle Pacman game available online/offline

Google has made available the Flash-based Pacman game that it put up as the first-ever playable Google doodle commerating the 30th anniversary of PAC-MAN. It was first intended to be there for only a few days.Expecting the Flash-based Google Pacman game to be taken off, some enterprising Stack Overflow users have put together an offline copy of it on GithubCommenting on the playable Google doodle, a friend tweeted - Waiting for #google to celebrate...

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What is the difference between R2 & SP?

Like me, if you have wondered how the R2 in Windows Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2008 R2 differs from a SP (Service Pack), the freely download-able MS Press ebook "Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2" has a good explanation - An R2 release is more than an SP, but less than a full major release. Beginning with Windows Server 2003, Microsoft moved to a server release cycle that was designed to have a major release every three to fve years (Windows Server...

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Twitter For Dummies

I discovered today that you could just type the command "F username" into the What Are You Doing? text box to follow any user on Twitter. I picked this tip from the Cheat Sheet of the book Twitter For Dummies that is excerpted on the Dummies website.Impressed with all the tips I found on the Dummies website, I've started following it on TwitterA fading alert shows up to notify confirmationI noticed that when you copy and paste content from that site,...

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jQuery is now on W3Schools

Whether you are getting started with Web development or need a good reference, W3Schools is a great online resource you can turn to. In over a decade of it's existence, the Norwegian family-owned company Refsnes Data that runs W3Schools has meticulously created tutorials on close to 50 Web development topics. The tutorials are in plain-English, thorough and to the point. I was glad to see today that jQuery has been added to that growing list of topics. ...

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Free MSPress eBook on VS 2010

Microsoft Press plans to release an ebook "Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" for free later this year. It has the following parts:Part I, “Moving from Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2010.”Part II, “Moving from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2010.”Part III, “Moving from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010.”The draft of the 6 chapters that make up Part II & III are currently available in PDF &...

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jQuery, Cloud Computing, Sharepoint 2010 sessions at MUGH Meet

Microsoft User Group, Hyderabad (MUGH) was formed in 2003. It has members from many of the 100+ software companies in Hyderabad. Since being at the very first UG meeting, I've made many friends over the last 7 years at these meets. For long, I've been a member of the audience but last Saturday on May 15th, I delivered a session on jQuery. I had a kind & patient audience who sat attentively for more than an hour while I went on with all the jQuery...

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Tips on working with remote development teams

As the software industry gets increasingly globalized, getting along with counterparts in other countries to accomplish team goals is going to be a challenge.Jeff Atwood & more recently, Scott Hanselman have shared their experiences & tips on working with remote development teams. It's essential reading for geographically distributed teams.Also see:Top 10 Developer Skills for the FutureBuilding non-technical skills...

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Google Translate can now SPEAK Hindi

Although Hindi is the national language of India, it is spoken by less than half the population. For those among the other half & non-citizens who want to learn Hindi, Google Translate's text-to-speech functionality can be a good tool. Hindi is currently the only Indian language supported.On clicking the Speaker icon in front of the translated text, the Hindi words are read out by a female voice. This feature relies on Flash. The translation...

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HOW to continuously refresh any web-page in IE8 & FF

Have you ever felt hassled by a website that provides continuous updates (like cricket scores or live event updates) but requires you to reload the page manually? While Opera browser has an option to automatically reload a web page at pre-defined intervals, Internet Explorer, Firefox & Safari do not have any such feature by default.I found this code for a browser bookmarklet to automatically refresh any web-page in IE on StackOverlow-javascript:(...

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Raman Effect can fingerprint the universe

This week's Swaminomics column in the Sunday Times of India, based on an article in The Atlantic Magazine explains how India's Noble prize winning scientist C.V. Raman's discovery has finally become a breakthrough technology.Handheld scanners called Raman scanners, weighing just one-third of a kilo, are being used by US narcotics squads and airports to detect drugs.The scanners work by detecting the molecular structure of the object they are scanning....

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Web Security Tutorials from Google & MS

Google Code University hosts tutorials on a variety of topics including Web Security. A recently added tutorial is called "Web Application Exploits and Defenses". A blog post announcing this has an interesting statement -The maxim, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is only true if the eyeballs know what to look for.For web developers interested in security, Microsoft E-Learning offers a two-part course called Microsoft Security Guidance...

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Collaborative JavaScript debugging tools - jsFiddle & JS Bin

Stuck with a JavaScript issue & need help debugging it? jsFiddle & JS Bin are online Web editors that save your samples & generate a random URL for it so that you can share it on a forum or with those who can help you with it. Though both are not ready for prime-time, jsFiddle currently appears to have more options than JS Bin. It can format code to make it more readable. Both of them help you build quick & dirty code samples using...

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Learning Resources on Computers & Programming for School kids

Life is a team sport - Janine Benyus If you have to engage school-going kids constructively, there is nothing like introducing computers to them  through the Tux4Kids line of free & Open Source products -Tux Paint  is a free drawing program for children (ages 3 to 12) TuxTyping is an educational typing tutorTuxMath is a fun way for kids to practice their mathematicsTux the penguin can only catch the fish if you type the right letters...

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