1. Right click on the Google Chrome shortcut (or executable) 
2. Select the “Run as administrator” option
3. Accept the UAC warning
4. When Chrome is open, go to Options > Basics and click on the “Make Google Chrome my default browser” button.

The next time you start up Chrome (as you would normally) it’ll be your default browser!

So what exactly have I been doing?The company I’m working for is called Fitness Footwear. They are a successful e-commerce company and I have been doing some works for them which include: web development, web design and SEO. I have also done a lot of user and usability testing on their newest website, also dedicated to sell shoes on the internet.It has all been a great experience.

The whole internship was orgasnised by an agency called Wenta. The internship scheme is called “Shell Step” so if you are a 2nd or 3rd year university student in the United Kingdom, I strongly recommend to apply for this scheme as you will have the possibility to a) earn some money and b) gather invaluable hands-on experience.

If you are familiar with the Facebook API you know how it works. You can write an application which uses any features of the facebook API but when you are actually requesting data a built-in login window appears which asks for your login details to Facebook. If you provide the correct username and password the data you requested from your application is being displayed (or rather you can use the requested data as you wish).
It was between the login and the data display when my application gave me the error message “requested value ‘UnitedKingdom’ was not found” and it crashed. To resolve this error, this is what you should do:

Open the original Facebook API project (if you downloaded it from Microsoft’s website, the default installation directory is C:\Program Files\Coding4Fun\Facebook\Source). Look for the file “location.cs” which contains an enum list of all countries, states (US) and so on.

Simply open that file for editing and search for the enum called public enum Country. Add the value UnitedKingdom to this list, recompile the project and you are done. Don’t forget to add the newly created dlls as references to your project.

(clicking on the image will open a PDF file with the evening’s schedule)

Let me discuss my presentation hereby. As the article’s title shows I was doing a presentation on Open Source. I had 4 sections in my presentation which are:

• What do we mean by Open Source?
• What are the benefits and issues assiciated with Open Source?
• What’s available and where has it been successful?
• Example project built with Open Source tools

First you have to understand what is the difference between Freeware and Open Source. Many people tend to confuse these two terms however there is a very important difference:in freeware applications you are not able to see the source code. While both freeware and open source are free the significant difference is important as it has an impact on the customisability.

So how does one can really benefit from using open source? As mentioned before the source code is available. This enables businesses to tune and improve their code and it’s also possible to port the code to new hardware, to adapt it to changing conditions (e.g. just think about the business processes. How frequently they change? What if the current software is unable to perform under the new processes? A new software needs to be purchased whereas with open source it would have been a little tweaking of the code).

There is noone with the power to restrict how the software is being used. We all heard the stories where a software vendor decided to stop supporting an application or simply abandoned the project. With open source, it won’t happen. Also software vendors are not able to force businesses into upgrading to their latest software version.

The final benefit is that open source is reliable. A bug in the system is corrected literally within hours and you don’t need to wait for an update, patch or fix for days or weeks.

If there are benefits there must be issues as well, and yes there are some. As open source software is usually written by highly computer literate people they put functionality above everything else, they desire to create a perfectly well functioning application but they forget about the look and feel of the application. Inadequate design indeed has an impact on usage.

Open source applications usually lack proper documentation. What they have is a general guide rather then a manual therefore unless you are an advanced computer user you might have difficulities even installing that specific product.

Finally summing up all these issues we can say that open source applications - sadly - are made by programmers to programmers, who think that if something is straightforward to them, it is straightforward to everybody else.

The top 10 open source applications and tools are as follow:

1. Linux
2. Mozilla Firefox (which according to the latest browser statistics is used by 39.1% of all internet users)
3. Apache
4. MySQL (which has more then 11 million installations)
5. OpenOffice.org
6. The Gimp
7. PHP
8. OpenSSH
9. BitTorrent (which accounts~35% of all internet traffic)
10. Audacity

Finally a success story. Following the arrest of a russian teacher back in 2007 who was claimed to use unlicenced Microsoft products at the school where he was teaching the Russian government made an initative to change from Microsoft prodcuts to Open Source products. An investigation revealed the fact that ~70% of software in schools in Russia is unlicensed. The Russian Government is expecting to reduce sofware piracy, boost the local IT industry and avoid IT security risks.

Feel free to download my presentation.

I have finally decided what to create for my final year project. I will develop an instant messenger application using C#, WPF, WCF and XAML. Initially it will allow you to send text messages over the network and some basic file sharing/sending. If there is some time left, I will implement video conferencing/chatting as well. My choosen supervisor is Dr Paul Sant who is a senior lecturer at the UoB.  I will post updates on the progress of this project.

Next Monday I’m doing a presentation for the ABC Centre’s showcase. The title of the presentation is “Using open source software to create business solutions“. I will give further info on this presentation as well - and will surely make the slides available for download.

Before doing the research I never really thought of how projects are run these days, how many problems and barriers project managers have to face. After reading a couple of academic papers I started to enjoy this topic more and I became more and more curious. How project leaders manage time differences? What about cultural differences? How the client and the developing company establish trust? How they communicate?

As you might know already, managing IT projects have radically changed in the last couple of years. Years ago, one project was usually run by the same company and usually within one building. These days the projects are distributed, work is outsourced and both the client and the company could be offshore.

Finally I choose the academic paper by: Talha Javed, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Pakistan - Manzil-E-Maqsood, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Pakistan and Quaiser S. Durrani, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Pakistan titled “Managing Geographically Distributed Clients Thgroughout the Project Life Cycle”. (Š2006 by the Project Management Institute - Vol. 37, No. 5, 76-87, ISSN 8756-9728/03)

The authors of the paper use the 12 issues on which projects usually fail and identify 6 of them which are crucial when speaking about geographically distributed projects. These 6 points of possible failure are:

• Common understanding of project domain and requirements
• Managing changes requested by client
• Managing delays from the client side
• Understanding and meeting the client’s definition
• Sufficient communication and involvment
• Successfully negotiating the contracts

Common understanding of project domain and requirements

I think I’m not going to say something new, it is vital that the project is defined clearly from the start, unclear objectives and requirements can contribute up to 18% toward the failure of a project. Also bare in mind that the overall cost of the project may go up as (more) time is spent on defining the project but results in an end-product that meets the client needs and on the end of the day, you will have a happy and satisfied client.

Managing changes requested by client

This second point is as obvious as the first one: changing requirements can contribute toward the failure of a project. Controlling and managing the changes can consume your resources. The common experience with projects is if the clients review the progress of the projects they require additions / modifications, hence expanding the scope of the projects. (This is called the “requirements creep”.)

Managing delays from the client side

Ever heard of a project finishing well after the deadline? Good. Delays can’t be only caused from the developer side but also from the client side. If the client is not keeping the schedule developers think that the client is non-serious and/or disorganised. The delays from the clients can also lead to schedule pressure at the development end which leads to excessive schedule pressure and that reduces the productivity.

Managing Time Differences

The working hours often have a small (or no) overlap, thereby the number of ways for communicating is reduced to e-mail and voice mail (or video conferencing). As a result communication between the client and the development team reduces. It is vital that the communication structures are established in the early stages. Also, an extra care as to be taken as misinterpretation could happen between the developers-analysts-client(s).

Trust and Cultural/Language Differences

In the early stages of the projec the possibility of winning business depends on the relationship established during the marketing cycle. A good way to gain trust (and enhance the communication level) is to use an onshore coordinator. It allows the offshore organisation to meet the client’s needs better and also helps to establish a strong relationship.

Due to cultural and language differences it is much more difficult to communicate one’s meaning clearly and precisely across geographical borders.

IT managers also have to explore the culture of the given country they work with. Let me give you an example. Assume you work with a development team located in Spain and you would like to call them up to discuss an important thing at 1400. I think a lot of people know that Spanish people usually have their “siesta” from 1200/1300 to 1500/1600. In my opinion these little differences make managing (geographically) distributed projects a really interesting topic.

Feel free to download my presentation: Managing Geographically Distributed Projects

Users are able to work on their documents offline and all the changes to the document will automatically be synchronised up to the online version as soon as internet connection is available.