Soft skills & career advice on MS "My Career Roadmap" site

My Career Roadmap is a Microsoft India site that has resources on career advancement.   One of the learning resource there is a 32-part screencast series called “Driving Your Career” by Brian Prince. Each screencast is typically less than 10 minutes in duration and available for download as a WMV & MP3 file. There is no way to directly view it on the site.  I found some of the tips like "Use metaphors to communicate with humans" to...

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Bill Gates video on vaccines

Bill Gates has posted an interesting video on his site about his thoughts on vaccinesThe video presents facts through entertaining comic art with voice-over by BillAlso see:Software industry related com...

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7 HTTPS myths debunked

HTTPWatch Blog has a nice article debunking these HTTPS myths -Myth #1 – My Site Only Needs HTTPS for the Login Page Myth #2 – Anything can go in Cookies and Query Strings with HTTPS Myth #3 – HTTPS is Too Slow Myth #4 – New SSL Certificates Have to be Purchased When Moving Servers or Running Multiple Servers Myth #5 – Each HTTPS Site Needs its Own Public IP Address Myth #6 – SSL Certificates are Expensive Myth #7 – HTTPS Never CachesAlso see: A Web App Is As Secure As You Make It & the Browser It Runs OnPrevent identity theft with HTTPS b...

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Software industry related comics

The software industry inspires cartoonists & vice versa. From The Oatmeal: Why some emails go unansweredHere is a list of software industry related comics from a question on the Pro Webmasters StackExchange forum -Dilbert - Keyword search is now available on the site. There is also an unofficial Dilbert Strip Finder which explains its popularity. This strip where Asok, the IIT-ian intern takes a jibe at a senior colleague...

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History of Apple

Did you know, Apple was founded on April Fool's day in 1976 by Jobs, 21, & Wozniak, 25.This is how their first product Apple I looked like -Check out NY Times' History of Apple in pictures.Also see:Google TimelineHistory of MicrosoftThe Apple Museum - 30 years in 2 minu...

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WebPageTest Tips & Tricks

WebPageTest is a powerful online web performance testing & analysis tool that has been adding a lot of interesting new features.  Their list of test locations to check a page from is growing (currently 17) & now includes Delhi, India. It makes it easy to do "what-if" testing on production pages by showing what performance gains can be achieved by removing ads, widgets, JavaScript. It looks simple on the surface but once you start poking around Advanced Settings & see its analytical review of web pages you...

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Web Performance Testing - Interpreting a Waterfall Chart

Some native browser Developer tools & external  web performance analysis tools  visualize data that is generated by the series of actions that occur between a user and the server from the time a request is made till it is completely delivered, through HTTP Waterfall charts Joshua Bixby's Waterfalls 101 article explains in plain-English the parts of the Waterfall chart & how to analyze ...

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Free WebApp Security Testing tools

Performance & Security are non-functional requirements which cannot be taken for granted. Here's a compilation of Security testing tools for Web apps, drawn from an answer on the Pro WebMasters StackExchange forum & other sources -Netsparker Community Edition - detects SQL Injection, XSS & other vulnerabilitiesWatcher - Fiddler plugin that works as a passive-analysis tool Microsoft Web Protection Library (WPL)Web Application Configuration Analyzer (WACA) - analyzes server configuration for security best practices...

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Comparison of URL Shortener services

SearchEngineLand & NotLong have compared popular URL Shortener services.Google offers its own URL Shortener service called goo.gl (gl is the country-code top-level domain designated for Gibraltar). It now also has an API. Pingdom, the uptime & performance monitoring service, has found goo.gl to be one of the fastest and with 100% uptime.For spam, security or legal reasons, the goo.gl service can disable some short U...

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A new JavaScript Reference to bookmark

For years, the JavaScript section at W3Schools.com has been a indispensable source of reference for me. It will now not be my only source. After going through Stephen Walther's JavaScript Reference built with HTML5 & jQuery, I'm impressed with all the useful & up-to-date information that it contains.Unlike W3Schools which shows what browsers support (or don't support) a particular method or property, without explicitly...

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Add DOM Monster to your collection of Web Perf Analysis & Optimization tools

If you like web page performance analysis & optimization tools like YSlow, you will love DOM Monster (thanks @souders)"DOM Monster is a cross-platform, cross-browser bookmarklet that will analyze the DOM & other features of the page you're on, and give you its bill of health."The good thing about this tool is that you wouldn't have to update it when a new version comes out as it is in the form of a bookmarklet. DOM Monster suggestions...

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