The Latest Tech, Computers and Gadgets

Archive for October, 2011

As a business owner or manager, the decision to opt for offshore software development can be difficult. As anyone who has experience knows, there are advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing software development. How then, do you balance the risks and rewards and come out on top? Here are five tips to ensure that you receive an excellent return on investment:

1. Complex project management experience. When selecting an offshore software development company, ensure that they have extensive experience in complex project management. The company’s internal team should run like a well-oiled machine, and they should have longstanding relationships with their own subcontractors.

2. Specialized knowledge and expertise. The most agile software development companies have an extensive network of specialists. These specialists may not be on the company payroll (which is why the company can offer you significant cost savings), but they can be depended upon to complete the necessary tasks on time and within the budget.

3. Knowledge of your industry. In theory, offshore software development companies should be able to perform custom software development for any type of business. There will be less of a learning curve, though, and greater chances for success, if the company has knowledge of your industry or a related industry. For this reason, ask for referrals and determine if the projects the company has managed are similar to or in alignment with the goals of your project.

4. Delineate areas of responsibility. Chances are, you’re considering hiring an offshore software development company because you don’t have the in-house expertise to get the job done and know that it is more cost-effective to outsource the project. Nonetheless, you will need to actively participate in a needs assessment and at various benchmarks throughout the life of the project. By creating a clear delineation of areas of responsibility, you will have a clear understanding of the number of staff hours you need to devote to the project, and plan accordingly.

5. High standards. Both you and the offshore software development company you choose should adhere to high standards. Aside from the talent of the technical experts involved, successful custom software development depends upon rigorous testing. The most dependable companies use the highest industry standards in testing each aspect of the products they create so that you receive a product that is ready to implement.

Essentially, the most successful offshore software development companies are competent and flexible, and see their role as an information technology partner who solves your software problems, supports your team, and manages your projects from beginning to end. When you choose such a company, you can rest assured that you will receive an excellent return on investment.

There has been a ton of buzz lately about Apple’s iPhone and for good reason. The iPhone is an innovative take on the cellular phone handset and it incorporates a lot of really great features. Having said that, should you rush out to buy the 1st generation Apple iPhone or wait for future releases of the handset? In this article, I’m going to give you some food for thought that you should consider before making a decision one way or the other.

As with virtually any new technology-related product release, there will be iPhone bugs to deal with. The first generation Apple iPhone is already catching criticism for things such as earpiece volume, battery life, and battery replacement. If I know anything about Apple, I know that they listen to user feedback and you can bet the ranch that the biggest complaints voiced over their 1st generation version will be addressed in future iPhone models.

Another reason to wait is pricing. As you’ve already seen, Apple drastically lowered their iPhone pricing just months after the initial launch. To be honest, I expected to see a price drop, but not that soon and certainly not by that much. Anytime you purchase the newest technology riding on a wave of hype and excitement, you’re going to pay top dollar for it.

So the verdict? If you can control the urge to buy the latest and greatest toy from Apple for just a little while longer, you’ll most likely end up with a product that you’ll be more satisfied with, and at a price that won’t pull on the pursestrings quite as hard. Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPhone and think it’s a fantastic product worth buying, however, it would serve you best in my opinion to wait for the next release. No matter what you decide, enjoy it… it’s a great gadget!

Microsoft Word is an extremely easy tool to start using. However there are lots of interesting features “under the bonnet”. Some of these features can save you a lot of time when producing documents. I am amazed that they are not as well known as they should be. These top seven tips are my favourites and I cannot imagine life with Microsoft Word before I found them!

1.    Oops. I left Caps lock on!

We all know that feeling. You are typing away merrily and then you look up at your screen to realise that you had hit the Caps Lock button. Now everything you just typed is in the wrong capitalisation. Don’t despair. Highlight the text and goto the Format menu and select Change Case from the drop down menu. Then just select your desired case from the list provided, which will probably be tOGGLE cASE.

2.    While we are talking Cases.

Some useful shortcut keys:

Highlight your text and click Control Shift A to set it all to Upper Case.

Control Shift K will set it to Small capitals.

3.    Moving quickly around your document.

Try these shortcuts to get around your document quickly.

Control Alt Page Down: Next Page
Control Alt Page Up: Previous Page
Control Home: Go to the top of your document
Control Alt End: Go to the end of your document

Also, with later versions of Word there is a clever little button beneath the vertical scroll bar called the Select Browse Object. Click on this and select one of its options to browse through your document going straight to the next table, graphic, heading etc.

4.    I’m lost. Where was I?

Forgot where you just made a change in your document? Try pressing Shift + F5.
This will take you back to the last place you made a change. You can do this two more times to go back to the two previous changes.

5.    One click find

One of the annoyances of the Find screen when you are looking for occurrence of text in your document is the fact that it always seems to appear right over the text your are looking for! However there is no need to keep the screen open. Once you have used the Find command to find the first entry, close the Find screen. You should notice that the small double arrows below the vertical scroll bar on the right of Word have changed to blue. Click on these to go up and down your document finding your text.

6.    Numbering the rows in your tables

How many times have you created a table where you just want the first column to be a numbered list. It’s easy to do this quickly. Simply select the column and click on the Numbering button on your Word toolbar. The same thing works if you select a row and want to have numbering across your columns

7.    Fast Page breaks

My final tip is really simple and is probably the one I use the most. To insert a page break quickly, simply use CTRL + Enter