Technology


Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category

Technical Writing: An art of delivering technical information.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Simply, technical writing is the presentation of information on any logical, engineering or technical topic in the form most suited to its user. A technical writer basically creates documentation for anything like a user guide or software so that is becomes easier and understandable for the end user to use the product.

Technical writing is mainly concerned with communicating scientific, technical, and business information so that readers can understand and use it. The first rule of technical writing is to know for whom you are writing. Too often technical writing becomes dim and wordy. Technical writing is best done by company personnel who are already well-versed in the products and technology.

Technical writing involves the designing, writing, and organizing documents to deliver clear and consistent technical information. It is in high demand especially in industries where competition is fierce and segregation is the name of the game. It involves a complex combination of skills and the writer should always keep in mind that his main purpose of writing is to make it user friendly.

All the software and hardware produced needs the support of technical writing in the form of help files and user manuals. All the online help systems and software user guides need to understand the user’s needs where they want to find the information and how they are going to use it. Writing technical documentation involves a step-by-step procedure of organizing information. The main goal of technical writing is to convey information precisely and clearly. It is very essential for a technical writer to research on a topic before writing an article, report, or other material, and technical writing is no different. Therefore, effective technical writing is clear, accurate, and correct. It is a no-ambiguity zone.

Keeping everything simple is the core of technical writing. Everything you write should be simple and easy to understand. Don’t make life difficult for your target audience. The goal should be to present this data simply and clearly. Writing simply is crucial when writing processes and instructions. Think of all the instructions you read when you buy a new product. Some of these are good. Others are confusing. If you confuse the end user, you fail as a technical writer. Writing simply and clearly is easier said than done. The challenge of technical writing is to shave off the unnecessary information and only include what’s relevant to your target audience.

Technical writing is a rising field in India. It can be considered as an art of delivering technical information users in a simple and easy to understandable format. A person who represents the technical information in a user adaptable format is called as a technical writer. It needs good knowledge and skills to gain proficiency in this art. It is termed as an art because the prime requirement for this form of writing is the complete technical knowledge of the subject you are working for as well as the way how you can present it so to make the readers attract to read it.

Role of a Software Developer.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

A Software Developer is a person who analyzes the problem and gathers the information about a particular program. Based on the analysis, the programmer makes error free software that meets all the requirement of the company. The developer is also responsible for developing software within the fixed period. He should do proper documentation of the program so that it will be easier for a newcomer to easily understand the code and modify it according to required needs.

Software developers create things that matter to individuals, team, organizations, countries, and civilization. Software developers have the honor of delivering the stuff of pure intellectual effort that can heal, serve, entertain, connect, and liberate, freeing the human spirit to pursue those activities that are purely and uniquely human. Developers manage their time differently. Some developers prefer to work alone for hours while others like to discuss with one or two teammates throughout the day. Some work best in the morning and others in the evening. Programmers are rarely very productive when working for eight consecutive hours. Occasional rest breaks in between the working hours help to achieve the focus.

Software developers’ job is tough because individuals and organizations depend on the objects software developers create; they have an obligation to deliver software of quality in a manner that applies scarce human and computing resources intentionally and wisely. As professionals, software developers also have a moral responsibility. Software development is a human activity, not only because it emanates from the human intellect, but also requires the cooperative activity of others to make it real. As professionals, software developers constantly seek better ways to deliver quality software that matters, simply because their tasks are too complex to squander their time and energy. This is why software developers look at successful projects, analyze why they were successful, and similarly look at failed projects so that software developers may learn from their mistakes. Software developers have a relatively limited toolbox. They are expected to be able to use the development environment including compiler and debugger for the language(s) they have chosen as well as a handful of the common tools that every member of a development team is expected to know how to use. These tools are typically integrated into one platform that functions as both a compiler and debugger. This is typically the same tool that was used to learn the language so learning a development environment is not typically a big challenge. In some organizations, a basic familiarity with the automated testing tools is also required. This includes unit level testing tools designed to test basic code assumptions as well as tools designed to perform system level tests. Generally, others primarily operate testing tools; however, developers may need to activate scripts written by others to verify that their changes have not adversely affected the build.

Search Engine Optimization- A Booming Profession.

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Search Engine Optimization is a very crucial part in a website success. The objective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to achieve high natural search engine placement for relevant keywords or keyword phrases. Until some time back, SEO was not recognized as a profession in itself but now more and more people are choosing this as a career. A career in SEO can be described as a suitable blend of intelligence and dedication.  Many people have actually made a successful and satisfying career in Search Engine Optimization. There are some very good reasons for choosing SEO as a profession:

1. Increasing demand for SEO services: A large number of big and wealthy companies are constantly investing in SEO nowadays. With the increase in volume of website, it has become important to hire an SEO specialist to maintain the website. Therefore, the demand for SEO specialist is increasing day by day.

2. Good income through SEO: There is good money in SEO. It might not be consistent all the year round-it it sure to give good returns in boom days. The SEO employees receive more compensations than the designers, marketers and developers. If you have good skills and confidence in you then you can start your own business or work for the SEO job.

3. Lots of Learning: All those who think that the people who have a background in designing, developing and web administration will downgrade their skills if they move towards SEO, it is not true. By moving towards SEO, you will only boost your knowledge and upgrade your skills for a better future.

4. Increasing demand of SEO as a career: SEO has been recognized as a full time profession where you have many exams available in the market to become a certified SEO specialist. SEO professionals are fast acquiring the tag of glamorous profession. More importantly, there are more certified degrees and courses available in this field.

SEO has great promises to make to the next generation, if you are looking at a career in the near future, and with the rising trend and usage of internet as a marketing medium, it has great deal of opportunities and a whole lot of young generation is turning to this field and making their careers in Search Engine Optimization. SEO has a very bright future for you if you have great analytic and writing skills. If you have perfect writing skills, it will provide you a definite edge over others in the market. People often consider SEO as a technical or highly scientific thing, but actually, SEO is an art. It is an art of selecting right keywords for the website, also an art of researching the competitors for those keywords, and it is an art of defining right strategy for scaling dreadful competition for high rankings. To become a successful SEO specialist, you ought to be a good planner with a great marketing mind.

Software Testing

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

In simple words, Software Testing can be defined as the process of validating and verifying that a software application meets the stated requirements. Software Testing is a method of identifying faults in the product before it is released. This includes defects in the software code and its execution, as well as any potential gap between what the code is supposed to do and what it actually does. Software Testing can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.

Software testing is a process that ensures that the new software that will be released will work. Software testing helps the developers to find out whether there are technical problems in particular software before it is released. Software testing also ensures that the software that is being released by its manufacturer has passed standard quality tests. Software testing helps to avoid the hassles and cost that may be caused by faulty software’s that have been released in the market. When software that has not gone through software testing is sold in the market, it is likely to have technical issues that can arise from the software usage. This may have costly result particularly when software is used in applications that are crucial in the operation of business organizations.

There are mainly two types of software testing used by all software testing companies in India and across the globe, Manual testing and Automated testing. Manual software testing generally involves manual interaction with application, and observing the outcomes very carefully. In addition to this, a manual testing allows the tester to execute random testing in comparison to automated testing. However, automated testing is different from manual testing. Automated testing provides you with the facility to run automation against code that changes regularly to identify regressions in a sensible manner. Automated testing provides you the ability to run automation in mainstream scenarios. The latest techniques in software testing increase the quality of software products in a number of ways:

1) reduces the cost of software development and testing.

2) reduces the time spent on the development of new software products.

3) Improves the software performance. The benefits of using software testing tools directs to increase in team motivation and decrease in the time of testing the application.

Prevailing employment outlooks

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

A quarterly global survey of hiring and firing trends covering more than 7000 organizations in 34 countries has found job prospects for professionals and managers improving for the first time since the autumn of 2008.

The Global Snapshot from an international recruitment firm asked 7397 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was up from 46% of respondents in the spring to 50% now. And the percentage of organizations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 44% to 48%. At the same time the percentage of organizations intending to shed staff had fallen from 35% in the spring to 25% now.

You have been worrying about handling a possible layoff and might be keeping an eye on the happenings in the job market. Not only you, is the market itself vigilant on the issue. Many surveys have been conducted in the past few months to gauge the impact of the recession on the Indian job market. It’s amazing to know how fast the scenario of job opportunities is changing!

In February 2009 India, the safest employment destination a survey by an HR consultancy firm, predicted in February that salaries would continue to rise at an average of 8.2% in 2009. It further said that India was one of the safest options for employments because only 16% of the Indian companies were considering layoffs as an option whereas 55% of the US companies and 30.6% of the Chinese companies were considering layoffs as the most viable option. The survey also projected that about 60% companies were still thinking of hiring new employees. 9 out of 10 companies were also giving promotions to the right candidates. In April 2009- Recruiters say no layoffs but freeze fresh hiring. Then came the survey report which said that most Indian companies were against layoffs but they had also stopped fresh hiring and staff incentives with a curb on outstation travel for executives. The information technology and outsourcing, which were the booming sectors of the past, had become more conservative with 84% recruiters stating that there will be no more hiring.

And now comes the latest report of the survey conducted by Naukri.com which has brought some relief by stating that 44% of recruiters predict addition of new jobs. The hiring scenario of industries such as pharmacy & medical, construction & engineering and telecom is positive where over 50% of the recruiters are planning to create new jobs during 2009. About 15% recruiters from IT industry indicated that there is no possibility of recruitment during the year, while 4% went off to say that there would be layoffs.

Current India hiring levels are up to 51% from 29%. The hiring and firing of staff is one of the most effective measures of business confidence and there is no denying that, with a few exceptions, the jobs market for professionals and managers is improving all around the world.

 
Customer Speaks
 
 
Our Team Lead from Q3 was in Chicago with AMB this week. We have been involved in many demonstrations and meetings with customers and partners including Microsoft. We have been asking a lot of the Q3 AMB Team and they have surpassed my expectations on deliverables and efforts to deliver new features and functions, such as the new Address Correction, Cross Database, the e-commerce website, new data sources, testing - this product is near impossible to break, and more. These have been important for all of our prospects, customers and business partnerships.

I truly thank the team for their professionalism, efforts beyond most others and retaining a great and excited attitude and work ethic. Though I must say they have worked with these ethics and strength from their first days on this project.

For these reasons AMB has very long plans for utilizing Q3 and this team for years to come. Thank you, Q3 AMB Team !!
Steven Meister
CEO, AMB Dataminers Inc.
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