Editorial November 2009

Ayubowan, welcome to the tenth issue of the online IT magazine diGIT.

Our regular fans would notice a change in the web version of diGIT. After getting a few feedback from our loyal readers, we thought of making a few changes to the layout and features shown on the home page of digit.lk. We will continue to improve the interface based on the feedback given by our readers. So hope you like the current layout. If not, keep us busy by sending in your thoughts on how we can further improve the site. Do write to us and share your thoughts, we would love to hear from you.

The annual National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) was held in the middle of October at Waters Edge. It was an evening to be enjoyed by the people who worked hard in the field of IT. Many awards were given away to individuals and teams that put in that extra effort towards a software product. Do check the article to see more information on the event and to know about the award winners.

Microsoft launched its latest operating system, Windows 7. The launch ceremony was also held in Sri Lanka at Taj Samudra. Windows 7 has been viewed in a positive sense when compared with Windows Vista and it seems that Microsoft has indeed put in a lot of work to the latest OS. With Google also announcing its OS coming out next year, it puts a little bit more pressure for Microsoft to get its act together to release a stable, user friendly operating system.

This months issue also includes an article by Udaya on installing a Linux operating system. He gives a step by step approach on how anyone can easily install a legal free operating system. The article also includes insightful information on a brief history behind the operating system.

Akila gives us a good round up on interesting news that happened in the month of October. The news article includes details on a multi touch mouse introduced by Apple and is a must read. Do check his article to see more interesting news in the IT field.

As always, lets now turn our attention to 3 contributors of diGIT who have given their valuable time to help you in your search for knowledge in the computing field. Do visit the contributor page for details on all our contributors.

Harsha Gomes is the Managing Director of Vishmitha.com and Winhost Inc. He is a past employee of CINTEC, Ministry of Economic Reforms&Science&Technology, Pathfinder Holdings (Pvt) Ltd, and Sannasa Media (Pvt) Ltd. He has experience in PHP,AJAX, Flex, HTML,CSS, Javascript, MySQL, Joomla, Payment Integration, Smarty, PHPBB, Magento, OS Commerce. He is an expert in developing websites using the CMS tool Joomla.

Manoj Alwis is a graduate of SLIIT and is currently employed at GTS. He has a keen interest in basketball and has also represented SLIIT. He shows an interest towards FOSS technologies and maintains a social network website that focus on open source technologies (http://www.opentec.ning.com).

Teo is a Software Engineer from Romania with experience in Java and C#.NET. He is a Google API Guru and Student Ambassador as a top 'Hall of Fame' contributor to the Google Desktop gadget gallery and knowledge base. He also writes free productivity tools for Android. Among current research interests is the interface/functionality connection in client-side apps and AR. More info at Teo's [Desktop and Mobile Software]

Let me end this months editorial with a quotation which would encourage all of us to teach others what we have learnt similar to what our contributors are doing. It is by Lee Iacocca who once said

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

Happy reading!
W.G.T.Fernando, editor in chief (less info)