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After school lets out on Fridays at the Jonas Clarke Middle School , two dozen boisterous students descend on the computer lab to fiddle with the computer code that powers their projects, from a "Star Wars" lightsaber duel to a flying hippo animation.
The goal: turn a daunting subject usually taught in college and considered the domain of geeks into an integral part of education for the grade-school set. MIT researchers hope the program will promote a broader cultural shift, giving a generation already comfortable using computers to consume content online a set of new, easy-to-use tools to change the online landscape itself.
The lab has also created a social networking site to provide Scratch users of all ages a community in which they can critique each others' projects.
"All the social networks out there now are basically about chatting with one another; not about creating things or sharing their creations," said Mitchel Resnick , head of the Scratch development team. "We as a society are moving in a direction where creative thinking is more important than ever before. Just learning a fixed set of facts in school isn't going to be enough."
As the projects among sixth- and seventh-graders in Lexington audibly and visibly demonstrate, Scratch -- unlike other forays into computer science -- fosters projects that bear the distinct imprint of "kid culture," Resnick says.
Christine Leung and Nancy Chomitz , both 12, began by making simple animations in which characters talk onscreen, but have begun to try interactive projects. Nancy's "flying moon hippo," for instance, blurts out funny phrases when people press different letters. In their current project, a snowman floats across the screen; when he gets into certain spots, a cartoon bubble appears saying, "OMG!! I'M MELTING!!"
MIT has "a very long history of working in this area; finding ways to really engage students at a young age, to encourage their interest in computing and programming, and to give them a sense of mastery to help overcome the false conception that this is a really hard area and you have to be a genius to do it," said Chris Stephenson , executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, an organization based in New York that promotes computer science education.
Efforts to make computer programming accessible to young people began in the late 1970s with the advent of the personal PC, when another programming language with roots at MIT -- Logo -- allowed young people to draw shapes by steering a turtle around a screen by typing out commands.But the path to mastering most programming languages has been strewn with obstacles, since students needed to figure out not only the underlying logic but also master a brand new syntax, observe strict rules about semicolons and bracket use, and figure out what was causing error messages even as they learned the program.
By contrast, Scratch -- a free download at scratch.mit.edu -- is easy enough for kindergarten-age children to use some of the functions, according to Karen Randall , a teacher at Expo Elementary School in St. Paul, Minn., who has been testing the program before its official launch.
"It is very, very easy to share projects online now, giving kids the motivation of having an audience for their work," Randall wrote in an e-mail. "The kids really 'own' their work, it matters to a wide range of kids, not just the computer nerds."
In place of programming jargon, Scratch offers users jigsaw-shaped programming pieces, which people can click and drag in order to create sequences of code that do things like make a character move or change costume or trigger a series of events -- like have a cop car chase a gangster as in a game by Cheyan Setayesh , 11, who used a line of code that reads "when touching cop 1 is true change health by -1" to ensure that when the cop car catches up with the gangster car, the computer takes power away from the gangster car.
The program doesn't appeal only to children. At Harvard University Extension School, Scratch has been tried out in some introductory computer science classes, as a way of giving students the opportunity to craft something flashy during their first programming experience.
In the past, said David Malan , a graduate student in computer science at Harvard University who has taught Scratch to students who later learn to work with more complex languages like Java or C++, beginners had the opportunity to create "visually uninteresting -- if not boring -- programs that add two numbers together or take the average of 10 numbers. Those demonstrate useful features of programming, but certainly are not compelling.
"With Scratch, we get rid of a lot of the overhead and let students sink their teeth into the concepts -- literally after a day of programming in Scratch they have their own games and own artwork," he said.
Media Lab partners such as Samsung, Microsoft, and Motorola, are working on new applications for Scratch -- including a version that would work on cellphones, but Resnick says the potential for change extends well beyond the electronic world.
"They're learning about the process of design -- what it takes to create something, how to debug it, how to revise the thing you've created," Resnick said. "That process is important whether you're designing a building or a newspaper article or an animation on the screen."
Leading software solution provider Symantec Corp today announced its vision for protecting customers from next-generation threats targeting their information and interactions through the systems.
The concept Symantec calls 'Security 2.0' brings together an ecosystem of products, services, and partnerships to help customers remain confident in today's connected world.
Talking to newspersons here, Symantec Corporation Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman said 'Security 2.0' broadens Symantec's focus to deliver next-generation security solutions that address the dynamic nature of business, the increase in real-time collaboration and online interactions, and the need for faster access to information.
'Security 2.0' delivers the next generation of security products and services that provide customers comprehensive protection, he said adding "for consumers, Symantec is building solutions based on the fundamental tenets of identity and reputation, which are critical to furthering confidence and trust online." Mr Mark said "for enterprises, Symatec is helping organisations to manage new types of security and compliance risks, enabling them to pursue the business advantages of increased information access for customers, employees, partners and suppliers." Outlining the role of Symantec's India centre for innovation in 'Security 2.0', Vice president of India Technical Operations Anil Chakravarthy said "about 36 per cent of Symantec's invention disclosures are filed from the India Centre." Commenting on how 'Security 2.0' will impact the Indian security landscape, he said according to Euromonitor, Indians with debit cards have grown from 0.25 million in 1999 to over 50 million now with Rs 1,000 billion in transaction value." "The sheer numbers and competitive pressures are driving organisations to embrace more online collaboration and information sharing among their increasingly distributed workforces and their suppliers and partners," he said adding "the ecosystem that 'Security 2.0' promises will ensure that Indian customers and enterprises are in a safe and secure connect world."
Continuous integration is a software engineering term describing a process that completely rebuilds and tests an application frequently. Although the underlying concepts existed earlier, "continuous integration" typically refers to the extreme programming practice.
As originally done in Extreme programming, continuous integration is accomplished via a serialized build process. At the completion of a task, the developer (or development pair) takes a build token and runs the build process, including tests. If the tests pass, the task can be committed to the source code repository and release the token.
The more popular form (also known as Automated Continuous Integration) takes the form of a server process or daemon that monitors a version control system for changes and automatically runs the build process (e.g. a make script or Ant-style build script) and then runs test scripts (e.g. JUnit or NUnit). In many cases the build script not only compiles binaries but also generates documentation, website pages, statistics and distribution media (such as Windows MSI files or RPM files).
Scheduled builds, if done frequently enough, would fall under continuous integration. However, nightly builds are too infrequent to qualify.
Continuous integration is frequently associated with extreme programming and other agile software development practices, but can be, and has been, adopted by more conventional methodologies too.
The main advantages of continuous integration are:
Notable examples of continuous integration software include:
What is Cobertura?
Cobertura is a free Java tool that calculates the percentage of code accessed by tests. It can be used to identify which parts of your Java program are lacking test coverage. It is based on jcoverage.
FeaturesIn a recent interview, James Gosling mused: "I don't think anybody tests enough of anything" (A Conversation with James Gosling).
The fact is, software today is horrendously under-tested. Software maintainence costs are spiralling because few pieces of software can be changed with any degree of confidence that new bugs aren't being introduced.
Without continual change and improvement, software is unable to continue meeting its users' needs. But without comprehensive automated test-suites, such change can also expose users to very undesirable risks: the risk that critical features no longer function as before, the risk of data loss and the risk of a system crash.
Agile software development methodologies are helping improve the quality of software. Test-driven development, where tests are written to test features before those features are added, ensures that every piece of software is coupled with a test-suite.
No matter how good such methodologies are, and how diligently they're followed in an organisation, it isn't possible to ensure that software testing is as comprehensive as it could be. That's where tools can help.
Cobertura is a free, simple and easy-to-use tool that will complement your existing Java development practices. It helps you discover exactly where your software is being tested and, more importantly, where it isn't. Cobertura will help you to view your software from a number of levels, from the entire system right down to an individual line of code.
Sure, there are other coverage tools around, so what makes Cobertura different?
Coverage analysers work by adding instrumentation. For Java, coverage analysers fall into three categories: those that insert instrumentation into the source code, those that add instrumentation to the Java byte-code, and those that run the code in a modified JVM. Cobertura adds instrumentation directly to the bytecode. We feel this is the best approach, since it does not require a modified VM, but still retains a big speed advantage over having to compile all your source code twice.
Secondly, Cobertura is easy to integrate with Apache Ant. It comes with it's own Ant task definitions for you to use. You can choose to instrument any code you wish, from a single class to an entire system.
Finally, Cobertura is completely free and not time-locked, so you can begin to use it today, without having to worry about what to do at the end of an evaluation period. What's more, we believe Cobertura is so easy to use, you'll be up and running in no time. So why not spend the next 15 minutes getting up and running with Cobertura. In that time, you'll certainly find out which parts of your code are completely tested, and where your code could do with a bit more testing.
Getting startedThis chapter assumes you are already familiar with the Ant build tool from Apache. If you're unfamiliar with Ant, you can find out about it at http://ant.apache.org/.
Cobertura seemlessly integrates with Ant using custom tasks. But before you can use these new tasks, you have to declare them in your Ant build file, typically named build.xml. This is done using the taskdef element, as shown below. Place this element anywhere in your Ant build file.
Now we're ready to start using the Cobertura tasks.
Cobertura works by inserting instrumentation instructions directly into your compiled Java classes. When these instructions are encountered by the Java Virtual Machine, the inserted code increments various counters so that it is possible to tell which instructions have been encountered and which have not.
You instruct Ant to create instrumented versions of your classes using the instrument task. The example below assumes your classes are in the directory build/classes.
Once your classes have been instrumented by Cobertura, you can continue testing your application as you would normally via the JUnit task.
Simply include a classpath entry for the instrumented classes before any reference to the original classes. This will ensure that the instrumented classes are loaded in preference to the original classes.
...
The instrumented classes found in ${build.instrumented.dir} will be loaded before those found in ${build.classes.dir} ensuring that the instrumented classes are used by JUnit.
An instrumented class serializes information into the file cobertura.ser. Any existing information found in this file will be merged with the current information. In this way the instrumentation for several sessions of a running program can be merged together, producing a single coverage report. For example, the instrumentation from unit and functional tests can be merged together to produce a single coverage report.
An instrumented class serializes coverage information to the file cobertura.ser. Using the report tag, Cobertura can generate coverage reports in either HTML or XML format.
The default format for a Cobertura report is HTML.
The type of report generated is controlled by the format attribute of the report tag, which may be either html or xml. If the format is not supplied then it defaults to html.
Sometimes it is necessary to merge several Cobertura sessions together, for example, to produce a single consolidated coverage report from several different test runs of an application.
The above fragment from an ANT build file, will merge together any serialised instrumentation that has been generated by Cobertura and produce a single consolidated instrumentation record.
All too often testing is something that is left until the end of the development cycle. For example, a coverage report is run on a weekly basis over the codebase, only when the coverage metrics fall below a certain pain threshold are the developers directed to increase their test coverage and quality.
With Cobertura, development teams can choose to enforce test driven development on their codebase, by using the cobertura-check tag in their ANT build scripts.
After each instrumented unit test sequence, Cobertura can do a health check to ensure that the codebase is being tested to the standard that has been demanded by the team. If coverage standards fall below the criterea set by the team, cobertura-check will fail the build.
Our intention with cobertura-check is to ensure that test driven development practices are being followed by the entire development team. Inadequate testing will result in an immediate automated build failure, without having to study the entire coverage report.
This article is taken from official website of Cobertura http://cobertura.sourceforge.net
You can visit that for more information about coberura
Benefits of Using Nightly build tool
The most important benefit of using nightly build is utilizing resources while they are free.
Build automation is the act of scripting or automating the process of compiling computer source code into binary code. This automated build is in contrast to a manual build process where a person has to perform multiple, often tedious and error prone tasks. It involves automating a wide variety of tasks that a software developer will do in their day-to-day activities including things like packaging binary code, running tests and deployment to production systems. The goal of this automation is to create a one-step process for turning source code into a working system. This is done to save time and to reduce errors.
JUNIT TEST CASE EXECUTION IN THE NIGHT
You can have set of JUNIT testcases for your project which you can configure to be executed automatically in the night time and you can view results in the day and have corrections. No need to execute each testcases manually one by one
Code Coverage
While running nightly build you can also include ant script to do the code coverage instrumentation before executing JUNIT test cases so we can get to know how much code is covered by executing testcases.
Code Style
You can also include ant script for checking code style like empty block of code, using logger instead of System.out.println or System.out.err and so on...
How to use Luntbuild as an nightly build tool http://technical-tejash.blogspot.com/2007/06/creating-nightly-build-coverage-junit.html
Official Website for Luntbuild is http://luntbuild.javaforge.com/
Prerequisites
1) Install Tomcat
2) Install Apache Ant
3) Add jar files for Antelope Apps and Antelope Tasks or any other required jar files of tasks to
4) Start Tomcat
5) Install all dependent softwares for the project
Luntbuild Installation
1) Execute installation jar file
2) Specify luntbuild installation directory
3) Provide following parameters for customizing web application
Session time out [min]: 30
Luntbuild Account password: luntbuild (luntbuild is admin account for Luntbuild web application)
Path to war deploy dir: E:\tomcat\apache-tomcat-5.5.20\apache-tomcat-5.5.20\webapps (tomcat webapps dir)
4) Provide database configuration information
5) Provide information for LDAP authorization (if required) (Not required in out case)
Configuring Luntbuild
1) Login to Luntbuild web GUI (http://localhost:8080/luntbuild/
) using default username and password (luntbuild, luntbuild (or what ever password you have given while installation))
Note: The web GUI will automatically login as anonymous user, hence first you need to logout
2) Go to Users tab and create necessary users
3) Go to Projects tab
4) Create new project - Click on Icon which is bellow Logout in top right side of the page to add new project
5) Fill the following details for creating new project
Name: Name of the project
Description: Nightly Build
Project admins select the users who should be assigned the role of 'project admin'.
Project builders select the users who should be assigned the role of 'project builders'.
Project viewers select the users who should be assigned the role of 'project viewers'.
Notification methods : Email (You can select other methods also)
Notification users select the users who will get notified for the builds of this project.
Variables nightlyVersionIterator=1
releaseVersionIterator=1
Log level verbose
6) After filling necessary details click on save button to save new project
7) Now got to VCS adaptors tab and click on icon bellow logout in top right side of the page to add new Version Control System for the project
8) Fill the following details for the VCS Adaptors
Version Control System: Dynamic Clearcase
View tag: luntbuild_myproject
Clearcase view stgloc name
Explicit path for view storage For Windows machine share some directory on the machine where you want to create a view storage for luntbuild
and provide the shared directory location with view file name as follows:
\\mypc
Config spec Provide clear case config spec for the project
Note:
1) Here you can copy & paste the config specification of your existing view
2) For windows machine remove the directory name where the View is mapped and give only relative path in config spec.
Modification detection config
Options for mkview command
Path for cleartool executable
clearcase_home = D:\atria\ClearCase or C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase
Note: Only provide the path up to where cleartool executable is stored and do not include the cleartool.exe in the path
and do not specify like this D:\atria\ClearCase\bin\cleartool.exe
History format parameters
MVFS Path : M:
Project path:
Quiet period : 5
9) Click on the save button after filling necessary details to save the VCS configuration
10) Now go to Builders tab to create the builder for the project
11) Click on the icon bellow Logout at top right side of the page to add new Builder to the project
12 ) Fill the following details for the builder
builder type: Ant Builder
Name: nightlybuild_myproject
Command to run Ant: E:\apache-ant-1.7.0\bin\ant.bat
Build script path:
Build targets: main
Build properties:
artifactsDir="${build.artifactsDir}"
junitHtmlReportDir="${build.junitHtmlReportDir}"
coverageHtmlReportDir="${build.publishDir}/coverage_html_report"
properties.files="file name containing properties"
clearcase.viewtag="luntbuild_myproject"
luntbuild.clearcase.vob.prefix=""
Environment variables: JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_09
ANT_HOME=E:\apache-ant-1.7.0
ANT_OPTS=-Xmx512m
Build success condition result==0 and logContainsLine("BUILD SUCCESSFUL")
13) After filling necessary details click on the save button to save the Builders details
14) Then go to Schedules tab and click on icon bellow Logout to add new Schedule for the project
15) Fill the following details for the schedule
Name: Schedule_myproject
Description:
Next build version nightlybuild-${#currentDay=system.(year+"-"+month+"-"+dayOfMonth),#lastDay=project.var["day"].setValue(#currentDay),#dayIterator=project.var["dayIterator"].intValue,#currentDay}.${project.var["dayIterator"]}
Work directory
Trigger type cron
Cron expression: 0 0 6 * * ?
Build necessary condition: alwaysIfFailed or vcsModified or dependencyNewer
Associated builders : nightlybuild_myproject
Associated post-builders:
Build type: clean
Post-build strategy: do not post-build
Label strategy: do not label
Notify strategy : notify always
Schedules the current schedule
depends on:
Dependency triggering strategy: do not trigger any dependent schedules
Build cleanup strategy: keep build by days 7
16) After filling all necessary details click on the save button to save the schedule
17) You can also configure Login mapping of luntbuild users with the VCS login
for that go to "Login mapping" tab and click on the icon bellow Logout to create new VCS login mapping entry
For Manually building the project
1) Now go to Home > Select Builds tab > click on the Icon which specify the to trigger the build to trigger the build manualy
2) Fill the following details to trigger the build
Build necessary condition
Build as version
Build type
Post-build strategy
Label strategy
Notify strategy
Dependent triggering strategy
When to build Select one the following
Now start building now
After start building after specified minutes
At start building at specified time in hh:mm format
3) Click on the save to save the building details for the project
View the Build status:
1) Go to home > select Builds tab
here you can view all the projects and their current build status
2) You can click on the link in the "Schedule" column for the project to see the schedule details of the project
3) You can click on the link in the "Last Build" column to view the success or failure details of last build of the project
Here you can find build log, revision log and artifacts for the project
Some troubleshooting tips:
1) While adding new VCS adaptors
a) Use new "view tag" which is not being used
For Example, luntbuild
b) Do not specify any thing for "Clearcase view stgloc name"
c) Use shared location on the local machine for "Explicit View path"
For example,\\mypc\luntbuildShared\luntbuild_view.vws
d) While working on windows machine in config spec specify all the path relatively without giving mapped directory name on Unix machine
For Example,
Instead of giving paths in config specs as follows
core projects
element /mydir/myproject/abc/xyz
give paths as follows (i.e. do not use /cntdb at beginning)
core projects
element /myproject/abc/xyz
2) While configuring Builders
a) Give the proper location as per for Command to run Ant (Exact location where ant.bat is stored)
b) Give complete path for "Build script path"
c) Specify following things correctly in "Environment variables"
JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_09
ANT_HOME=E:\apache-ant-1.7.0
ANT_OPTS=-Xmx512m
3) If luntbuild is giving the following error while building the project
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not reserve enough space for object heap
Could not create the Java virtual machine.
Ant builder failed: build success condition not met!
For the above error you need to increase heap size of the JVM as follows:
a) Go to Home > Projects > Builders
b) Edit the existing Builder
c) In Environment variables" which is ANT_OPTS=-Xmx512m
you can use ANT_OPTS=-Xmx1024m or higher as per the need
This article is taken from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/calendar-for-mobile-devices.html
Google realize that more people in the world have mobile phones than have computers, and people take their cell phones with them everywhere. Since one of our main goals on the Calendar team is to make planning your events and maintaining your schedule as easy as possible, starting today, you can access your Google Calendar account from your cell phone!
Just visit calendar.google.com from your phone, and you'll see your agenda of upcoming events, complete with details like date, time, location, description, and guest list.
Permalink Links to this post
It can be frustrating to find out that the photos you're trying to share, or the presentations you're trying to send at the last minute, are too large for your email's attachment limit. Some of you have pointed out that we recently increased the allowable attachment size in Gmail from 10MB to 20MB. We think the higher limit will help make the storage in your Gmail account a little more useful. So the next time you've got to send a PDF that's a bit on the larger side, relax. You've got some more room to spare.
An IMEI number-The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number
is an international identity number used to uniquely identify a mobile
phone. The 15-digit IMEI number is an electronic fingerprint transmitted
every time a phone is used, which reveals the identity of the mobile
handset.
How can I find out my IMEI number? IMEI numbers are independent of the
phone number and are usually written underneath the battery or on the
back of the handset. Mobile phone users can also check their 15 digit
IMEI number by dialling *#06# on their mobile handset. Mobile phone
owners should make a note of their IMEI number and keep the details in a
safe place.
If u lost your mobile, send an e-mail to cop@vsnl.net with the following
info.
Your name:
Address:
Phone model:
Make:
Last used No.:
E-mail for communication:
Missed date:
IMEI No.:
"No need to go to police station"
Source: THE HINDU, 13.5.06
It seems social networking has become the majot idea of dotcom startups.
More and more social networking websites come up these days and the best part of it is all are doing well. Very very well. Here is a list of few social networking site along with their registered users.
Name Registered Users
Bebo 22,000,000
Classmates.com 40,000,000
Facebook 16,000,000
Friends Reunited 12,000,000
Friendster 29,100,000
Graduates.com 650,000
MySpace 155,000,000
Orkut 44,000,000
Rediff Connexions 1,400,000
Reunion.com 25,000,000
Windows Live 30,000,000
Xanga 40,000,000
Are you restricted from using your favorite chat clients (messangers) at your school. college, organization. Here's a solution to that.
I have tried the following web based chat clients...
These are some of the chat clients that will solve your problem.
Just try it out.
If there are any others, do let me know.
