stuart test blog

Google have released yet another new product! This time it’s a web-based RSS aggregator called Google Reader (Beta – of course) and it has a similar look and feel to the Gmail interface with labels for different categories and a lot of snazzy javascript. This is probably one of the most beta products I’ve tested […]

News just in…. Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 is now available for download. This is the second Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback. Project page here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/ Release notes: […]

Service pack 2 for Office 2003 was quietly released today. Nothing ground breaking (update: the only major, new feature appears to be some anti-phishing tools for Outlook 2003 – I haven’t tested them yet though), just the usual collection of security/stability/performance fixes. Download links here: Office 2003 SP2 Visio 2003 SP2 Project 2003 SP2 OneNote […]

For the past year or so I’ve been using Virtual PC for setting up labs for study and testing purposes, but recently I decided to give VMware Workstation 5 a go. I couldn’t believe the difference between VMware and VPC – the first major difference was the performance improvements in VMware. I had gotten used […]

Forgot to mention this last week, but Opera have finally decided to release their browser for free! Well, they have always had a free version but it was embedded with somewhat annoying banner ads. I’ve always liked the Opera browser but the embedded ads had always turned me off. Opera are a firm believer in […]

This is a bit old, but as I recently learned, when Citrix released Metaframe Presentation Server 3 they introduced a new feature called Session Reliability. Briefly, Session Reliability allows your ICA sessions to remain active even when the network connectivity drops out. It seems like a good feature so why would you not use it? […]

I spotted this last week and have been really impressed with Microsoft’s new IE developer’s toolbar (screenshot below – click to enlarge.) I’m a long time Firefox user and try to avoid using IE as much as possible, but as a part-time web developer it’s always important to test website in a number of different […]

Ars Technica have just produced another high quality review, this one looking in depth at the iPod Nano. Highlights of the article include the stress testing and the subsequent autopsy of the iPod. Educational stuff… http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/1

Read this on the Engadget website, as a current Skype user it will be interesting to see what eBay is going to do with Skype. Not sure if I’m that keen on it to tell the truth – at least there are a few other options out there now, like Gizmo or Google Talk. Yup, […]

Just noticed that Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 has also been released so I’ve downloaded and installed it and will give it a good testing over the next couple of weeks. First impressions: Offline support has been removed from the installation options, this is now part of the standard build Product version shows up as Thunderbird […]