Wonderful!
Nice shortcut to know when you type “change keyboard type” into the search box in Windoze Help and get “Change Windows visual effects” and “Personalize Your PC” as the only search resuls…
Monthly Archive for December, 2004
Dear CITI Community
VOIP
Deregulation and the Conact Centre, what you need to know
CallingtheCape cordially
invites you to attend a VOIP deregulation conference focused on the call
centre industry, and to meet the role players and decision makers in this
fast-growing global industry.
In research commissioned
by CallingtheCape and undertaken by Deloitte, investors identified the
cost of telephony as the major obstacle to growth in the industry. The
recent announcements by the Minister of Communications with regard to
deregulation looks set to reduce costs substantially, by allowing companies
to take advantage of VOIP. But what is now allowed? How much will prices
fall? What services will become available? And what does it mean for infrastructure
investment in contact centres?
These are some of
the questions that we hope to answer at this event. We’ll be examining
the implications of the imminent deregulation on the call centre industry,
as well as the relevant legislation and its affect on current technology,
and exploring the exceptional value offered by Cape Town as the new destination
centre of choice.
There’ll be
a moderated one-hour panel discussion, with recognised thought leaders
in the industry to clarify these issues for you, and influential guest
speakers will be sharing their expertise on the relevant aspects and what
this means to you.
ITINERARY
08:30
Registration
09:00
Luke Mills, Executive Director of CallingtheCape - Introduction
09:15
Andries Matthysen from ICASA
The facts of the deregulation and the proposed changes
09:45
Janet MacKenzie, Director of Cliffe Dekker Inc.
The legislation and what this means for the call centre industry
10:15
Tea break
10:45
A Value Added Network Service Provider (VANS) panel discussion including
major international vendors that are planning to offer VOIP services such
as UUNET, Telkom, Gateway Communications, Internet
Solutions, T-Systems and discussing issues such as:
- Providing connectivity
in off-shoring - The overseas link
issue - a services related perspective - What communication
technologies are available to the industry - New pricing models
and costs
11:45
Karel Botha, Regional Manager of Spescom
How deregulation will affect which technologies people use in contact
centres
12:15
A Case Study presented by Alain Schram, MD of Avaya
12:30
A Case Study presented by Tim Ellis, Director of Enterprise and Public
Sector business for Cisco Systems South Africa
12:45
Light finger luncheon
——————————————————————————–
VENUE : The Vineyard Hotel, Newlands, Cape Town
DATE : 27th January 2005
TIME : 08:30 to 13:00
COST : R600 (R500 for members of CallingtheCape and professional
affiliates)
RSVP
: helena@callingthecape.org.za
Dear CITI Community
The Western Cape and
Gauteng Special Interest Group in Software Testing (SIGiST) Chapters,
in
collaboration with the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA), presents
a CITI endorsed seminar:
International
SIGiST
Seminar in Software Quality and Testing
If you or your company
are seeking to improve software quality, this international seminar is
one you
shouldn’t miss. As opposed to the typical textbook theories, this
seminar offers practical guidance
from people who are actually doing testing, and improving quality techniques.
It will be a good
investment of your time and money.
The Seminar will feature:
| Tim Koomen Sogeti, Netherlands Tim Koomen graduated in 1986 in Informatica (Computer Science) at the University of Amsterdam. Since 1991 he has been a professional tester and has performed most testing functions. He has participated in several testing projects for Sogeti Nederland B.V., owner of the structured testing approach TMap®. Tim is a member of the R&Dteam, covering issues like testing Component Based Development, testing E-business and Test Process Improvement® (TPI®). Currently he is advising organisations on how to improve their testing processes, using the presented model. |
Peter Sage Test & Data Services After spending 18 years in the SA Navy in the telecommunications field, Peter started a new career in software testing in 1996. Peter started as a Tester, moved to Test Analyst, Test Manager, and Test Consultant. The majority of this time was spent in the financial industry. Peter has written numerous testing articles for Test Focus magazine, presented talks, and conducted testing training. He has attended testing conferences in the USA and Europe. Peter is currently Technical Director for Test and Data Services. |
Wayne Mallinson Test & Data Services Wayne Mallinson completed a BSc honours in geology in 1979 at Rhodes University. After practising as a mining geologist, he changed careers in 1988 when he entered the world of software testing. He studied and completed a Diploma in Datametrics through the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1990. Wayne has sixteen years of practical software testing experience. He founded Test and Data Services in 1995, and currently holds the position of managing director of this 130-person organisation. For the past four years Wayne has been the editor-in-chief of a South African testing magazine, Test Focus. |
Who Should
Attend the SIGiST Seminar 2005?
. Software or Test Managers
. Test Practitioners and Engineers
. Development Managers, Developers, Quality Assurance Managers,
Analysts, Information
Technology Directors, and Chief Training Officers
. And other professionals interested in building and delivering
better software
| Western Cape SIGiST River Club Liesbeeck Parkway Observatory Cape Town Click here for Directions |
Date: Thursday 27 January 2005 Time: 08:00 for 09:00 till 17:00 Cost: Early Bird R900 Normal R1 000* |
RSVP:
Liz Mncube
liz@cssa.org.za
Phone: (011) 315-1319
Fax: (011) 315-2276
Registration
Register for the conference now to get the Early Bird discount and stand
the change to win one
of the following books:
. “Test Process Improvement: a practical step-by-step guide
to structured testing” by Tim
Koomen and Martin Pol
. “Software Testing: A Guide to the TMap® Approach”
by Martin Pol, Ruud Teunissen and Erik
van Veenendaal
If you’re a user of some kind of syndicated content (like RSS / Atom) then you’ll be glad to know that if you use Gmail, there is a feed from your Inbox…
And if you’re a Firefox user, then you’ll be even more happy, because when you go to your Gmail using Firefox, look at the bottom right of the browser window for a little orange square. Click on it, and you’ll get a little dialogue box which allows you to put that Atom feed into Firefox’s bookmarks as a “livemark” - hence the ability to use your bookmarks to navigate through your email messages…
Pretty neat eh??
Now, if you’re a technology enthusiast or an early adopter you’ll love this feature even more as it gives you a 3 second look at what’s in your Inbox, it means that if you don’t log off from the web based Gmail then you’ll always be able to get to your Inbox without logging in all the time. Of course, if you get your Gmail delivered to your email client of choice, then it’s kinda redundant isn’t it?
Why I like this:
Google has taken a new technology that doesn’t yet have widespread acceptance and (more importantly) usage, and essentially thrown a big, recognised brand behind it. Over time more people will use it, pushing it into the mainstream…
That said, Internet Explorer (with a slipping, but still dominant market share) doesn’t make it this easy to view feeds so I’m thinking that barriers at the moment are that unless someone knows about Feeds, uses Firefox (or a browser that offers something similiar) and also knows that Gmail offers a feed into their Inbox, they’re not going to be an early adopter.
Clearly the folks at Google are listening to what’s going on in the market - at a quick glance, neither Yahoo nor Hotmail are doing it.
Why?, I don’t know - perhaps their number of users is just too high to implement (but I think that’s a crap excuse) , perhaps they’ve got their heads in the proverbial sand, or perhaps they’re working on bigger and better stuff….
Who knows?
Go look:
Gmail
Firefox
Feedster search result that sent me some referrers…
Ever entered someones contact details into your Outlook address book, only to return to the address book to find duplicate entries as business fax details?
Here you go then - http://www.mcse.ms/message1233801.html
I’ve been through the mill, so to speak, when it comes to getting everything off my PC, onto my iPAQ so that I have it available all the time and can get things off my head, and then back onto my PC if needed. Added to that, I would really like to be able to get my “stuff” onto my home PC as well so that I have one unified view of everything - “mind like water” to paraphrase David Allen.
So far, the best solution I can find, is to set up partnerships with both desktop machines, and then allow activesyn to sync as normal - the one MAJOR problem I have with this is that it does something to the calendar entries, and from my research this has something to do with the identifiers Outlook uses for each item….
I’ve installed the Intellisync trial, and it seems to do an OK job, but at the moment I’ve not the time to play with both machines to see what I have to do to get Intellisyn to talk to Activesync to talk to Outlook.
This is a good overview of what Intellisync does - the trial version I installed did pretty much what it says it can do.
This forum post seems to have an ambivalent answer, whereas this one seems to put it all together nicely, but leave out nitty gritty.
This is probably something the giant from Redmond should look into if they want to keep their marketshare (I think more and more people have the same needs) [soapbox: acquisition anyone?]
This link looks at the different options available, and if you follow the advice on the page, it leads you to this post, which in turn leads you to the giant from Redmond…
BAH!
Anyone following the white Rabbit?…
if you’re an Agenda Fusion user, the latest version (6.75) of AgendaFusion is out - looks like there are some nice improvements…
I’ve been trying to connect to my database remotely - really would prefer not to have to do .sql file exports if I could possibly avoid it…
No luck yet (will try more soon), but so far I’ve come accross this MySQL documentation, which should shed some light, and this forum thread on the SW Soft Plesk forum, which is also interesting.
Anyways - looks like a System DSN is necessary, along with a user name and password configured to allow connections from a specific machine…
I’ve been busy setting up my home desktop to function as a development machine, and have gotten tired of the legacy file structure I’ve been using in the past -
C:httpdocs/sitename
which has a local URL of
http://sitename
. When you have a development, staging and a live version of the site, it get’s quite tricky, especially when you want to start mixing up absolute and relative URL’s, and more importantly you want to keep all the files related to one project in one place - which makes for an easy backup and restore.
So, I’ve decided to upgrade my file structure, partly as a result of GTD, and partly ‘cos I’ve gotten serious about getting some stuff out in the next few months, and know that a good file structure will support that. Of course, an upgraded file structure comes with a need to upgrade my local WAMP (Windows / Apache / MySQL / PHP) server config. Hence this post - think of it as a mini-tutorial.
If you’re thinking this is anal already, then don’t read any further!
OK - all you really need to do is switch off Apache, dive into your “httpd.conf” and “HOSTS” files, do an edit, and then switch the Apache service back on…. easy eh?
Before I go any further, Wordpress tends to strip code from posts, so I’m going to have to strip out the really obvious bits and give you the stuff you *have* to change to make it work…
1. Open up your windows service control panel:
Start > Programs > Administrative tools > Services; then right click on Apache and stop.
2. Open up your Apache httpd.conf file, then go to:
C:Program Files/Apache Group/Apache/conf
and open up the file in your favourite text editor and go to the (usually) bottom of the file, and look for the bit about Virtual Hosts.
My local server Virtual Host used to have:
ServerName impistage with the DocumentRoot set to “C:/htstage” and the Directory set to “c:/htstage“.
My local Virtual Host now has it looking like:
ServerName staging.oneafrikan.com with the DocumentRoot set to C:/htstage/oneafrikan.com and the Directory set to C:/htstage/oneafrikan.com.
Can you spot the difference?
3. Open up your HOSTS file to add the changes to your system (so that Windows knows where to look when you ask for that domain):
Look for:
C:/WINNT/SYSTEM3/DRIVERS/ETC/HOSTS
and open up in your fav text editor.
Then add the new virtual hosts to the file (see my edited file below - note the differences) so that:
127.0.0.1 impistage would now become 127.0.0.1 staging.oneafrikan.com.
And that’s it really - fire up Apache again, and Bob should be your uncle…
This is really useful if you want to develop stuff with a structured approach, and if you have more than one site, or set of code you’re dealing with…
Trying to use the Google Alerts, and I get the “service unavailable” message quite frequently…
Anyone had the same?
I’m a big fan of Firefox for many reasons, and this is one of them:
Go get the web developer extension for Firefox
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