Visual Studio Team System 2010 focuses on application quality
Microsoft is making significant strides into ALM with the upcoming Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 that it says will better enable developers and QA professionals to collaborate and focus on application quality.The company has not committed to a release date for VSTS 2010. Dave Mendlen, director of developer tools at Microsoft, noted that it would be part of the next wave of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.0. Microsoft will also ship a standard edition of Visual Studio 2010 concurrently.
VSTS 2010, formerly known by the code name “Rosario,” expands the company’s ALM vision with more roles and fewer walls between them, effectively “democratizing” ALM, said Mendlen. Modeling plays a heavy role in how that is accomplished.
Google Chrome (BETA Browser) for Windows
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
WinMerge 2.8.6 is the latest stable version, and is recommended for most users.
WinMerge is an Open Source (GPL) visual text file differencing and merging tool for Windows. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions. Read more
How to Work with Linux Partitions from Windows
by Blake EliasDo you dual-boot Windows and Linux? If you do, then you’re probably familiar with the different file systems that the two operating systems use and the difficulty in transferring files between the two. While most modern Linux operating systems can read and write to Windows file systems (NTFS and FAT/FAT32), Windows can’t read or write to Linux file systems (Ext2 and Ext3). Read more
IE 8 looking like a November release
Mozilla did its best to throw a spoiler into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 2 launch on Wednesday. But the new Ubiquity add-in for Firefox doesn’t sound all that different from what Microsoft is doing with the version of its browser due to ship in November.That’s my take, but you can form your own opinion. Starting today, August 27, at 3 p.m. EST, Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 2 became available for download by anyone who wants to give it a whirl.
30+ Free Security, Encryption, Firewall and Antivirus Apps for Windows
By Joel FalconerIt’s hard to maintain a secure, virus-free Windows set-up. The Internet is like a minefield, where a poorly protected computer can become infected by all sorts of virii or allow malicious individuals to tinker with your hard drive’s contents, or worse, your operating system itself.
Don’t waste any time getting your Windows computer secured. You don’t need to shell out hundreds of dollars to do this — and if you have a computer that’s not secured already, you may be unaware that not all free software is malicious. In fact, free, open source software makes up a huge chunk of the software ecosystem today, Firefox being one prevalent example.
Which reminds me—if you’re using Internet Explorer, the first step is to grab Firefox, get rid of IE, and come back to this page in your new browser.
Security isn’t about blocking malicious actions, it’s about keeping your data safe. While much of that is about keeping virii or hackers out, it’s also about keeping backups so hardware failure, natural disasters or malicious attacks don’t destroy your primary copy for good.
1. TrueCrypt - free open source disk encryption that works in real-time.
2. GnuPG - a free open source alternative to PGP, the public key encryption software.
3. Steganos Locknote - allows you to encrypt your sensitive data such as bank account details and account passwords as Locknotes.
4. AntiVir is anti-virus software that features a resident background monitor and a manual hard drive scanner.
5. AVG Free features a resident background monitor, manual hard drive scanner, continuous email scanner, and the ability to repair files affected by virii. Read more
QualityLogic offers ATS-IF test files
By David WorthingtonA test tools and services company is selling the test pages for developers to validate their applications’ ability to consume and process files from top-selling programs.
Last Wednesday, QualityLogic began offering ATS-IF test suite intermediate files, which are raw data files used in printer/driver testing, for sale at the QualityLogic Online Storefront.
The files are designed to allow test teams to validate the accuracy and performance of their file manipulation processes. ATS-IFs can be sent through a print driver just as an end user would send a print job, according to the company.
ATS-IFs are available for both Windows XP and Vista, in English as well as several Asian languages. Test files are available for applications from Adobe, Corel, Microsoft, OpenOffice.org, Quark and others.
Squish 3.4.1 released
Today the latest version of Squish was released.