The Firefox O.S. – Mozilla’s latest thunder!

The Firefox OS, codenamed Boot to Gecko (aka B2G) has been launched quite recently and is a topic of speculation in tech-circles. This O.S. is uses a Linux kernel and runs HTML5 based apps (which couple up with the Firefox browser)

Firefox O.S. aims at controlling the hardware (integration) using JavaScript (now how cool is that!), and its basic reason for coming to existence is ‘to create a true OSS (open source) O.S. for which apps would freely be available on the Firefox Marketplace’.

The first Firefox O.S. based smartphones should be shipping as early as the the first half of 2013.

From the GSMArena -

Mozilla is officially launching their Firefox OS for mobile phones and are proud to announce that they have deals with 18 carriers, a partnership with Qualcomm to use their Snapdragon chipsets and four manufacturers - ZTE, Alcatel, LG and Huawei. The first two also showcased phones with Firefox OS at the MWC.

Also, as per the latest reports, Sony is planning to launch its own Firefox O.S. based device in early 2014.

This could be a game changer for next year’s mobile technology (imagine the app development scenarios!)

Only thing which remains to be seen is how fast can market penetration actually help Mozilla, and oh, there is the current popularity of iOS and Android to add spice to the ‘market dominance race’ too!

Technorati Tags: Firefox,Mozilla,Linux,kernel,JavaScript,GSMArena,Android,iOS,apps

Samsung Galaxy S4 Final Specs! Everything official about it.

Just the links here for the while -

Korean site - http://www.ddaily.co.kr/news/news_view.php?uid=101028

Translation URL – HERE

One confirmation is that Home button is there.

Will post when further details become available.

Get both JSMag & GroovyMag for Feb 2013, free!

That and the latest issues of JSMag and GroovyMag!

Get the latest JSMag issue where yours truly has a “good enough to brag” article on HTML5 and a write-up in the and GroovyMag’s Plugin corner too (both with my good Friend one who cannot be named*)

This is how you get it -

1. Register at the URL - http://www.jsmag.com/ for JSMag

2. Go to the CART option and use the following coupon codes –> rcmm9pb

3. Go to your account option to download and access your free issue of JSMag Feb 2013!

This is how you get it -

1. Register at the URL - http://www.groovymag.com/ for GroovyMag

2. Go to the CART option and use the following coupon code – 7p0d237

3. Go to ‘My Account’ option and select the ‘Review magazine purchases’ to download and access your free issue of GroovyMag Feb 2013!

Simple!

As of writing, this has only 20 uses left! So hurry up and get this while it lasts!

You can thank me in the comments ;-)

Technorati Tags: goovymag,groovy,plugins,JSMag,free coupon,HTML5

Links for fellow QAs… Contd.

Here is another good collection of QA related tutorials – QATutorial.com

Excerpt from the site itself-

…a website which provides essential Software Testing material for QA and Testing enthusiasts.

Here you would be able to find information on all the different stages and areas of Software Testing.

Some of the Priority Areas being,

* Manual Testing
* Software Test Management
* Software Test Automation
* Interview Questions
* Software Testing Templates.
* A Forum area for discussion.

Do post in your views and links, I will update them here.

So you are a QA? Oh wait, don’t answer that!

Life may turn on its boring face if you have been a QA analyst (in any software firm) since a while.

Because, well let’s face it, a QA’s job is never easy. He/She is the person without any real (or developer) friends and most of the times, if the poor QA is one of ordinary luck, he handles the repetitive job of manual testing rather than interesting and challenging stuff like automation and scripts and so on.

These poor souls are found going through the same application functionalities day after day (like a zombie), to catch that elusive but obvious bug, which has to rear its ugly head on the staging, and during the client demonstration too!

And yet, it is only a proper QA process which provides that level confidence to both the developers and their customer about the application’s robustness.

So dear QA’s, fear not, as starting today I will make some effort to scout the net and post in or blog here some interesting links on QA fundamentals and topics, which should help some of you get back that spark of self-confidence!

So here we start with the QA section in TheServerSide.

The server side’s QA section titled Software Quality Assurance, contains whitepapers with stress on App-DLC, and the upcoming changes in QA domain WRT the now prevalent mobile and portable platforms too. only caveat is you have to register for access, but this is easy and free too, and completely worth it.

And do get back to me with comments etc. if you want me to mention any specific sites which help you out in your daily QA activities.

Technorati Tags: QA,SQA,testing,whitepapers,SDLC

How To - Find GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) of installed programs!

Well, this is for something my friend needed @ work.

Fire up either the local command prompt (start –> cmd) or the PowerShell prompt (for O.S. > Windows 7) – start –> Windows PowerShell

and then on the CLI, just this -

wmic product list

This generates a list of all programs on your computer with their “Globally Unique Identifiers” listed as well.

Will take some time, so be patient!

The PowerShell though, will give a better formatted output than the plain cmd one.

For even more, refer -

wmic product get

and better still save it somewhere like -

wmic product get > C:\ProgramGUIDList.txt

Simple!

 

Technorati Tags: GUID,windows,powershell,howto