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I particularly think that the literary incentive is very important for our country. To write is to expand one’s horizons beyond the boundaries of writing and let creativity take the reader beyond the limits of imagination.

A poem, when well written, will take you on a journey of “rhymes of invented prose” that flow in synchronicity in an attempt to sharpen the feelings of the reader towards sensations and feelings.

In October 2009, the National Journey of Literature occurred in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul. The show was dedicated to the theme “Art and Technology: New Interfaces” and is symbolized by a book robot.

In the middle of the circle of participants is the Book Robot, the mascot of the event.

The Journey discussed other forms of art such as music, theater, dance, architecture and literature and counted on the presence of personalities like Pierre Lévy, Nélida Piñon, Guilherme Arriaga, Fernando Bonassi, Zuenir Ventura, Clara Averbuck and others. In the figure above, they appear in clockwise order, beginning at the top.

As an incentive, there was an award of R$100,000 for the best Portuguese novel published in the past two years. Incentives like this not only acknowledge the quality of artist’s work but also magnify the soul of the reader and the culture of the country.

And without Culture, Pen and Memories, no human being can achieve success. Because while Culture positions us for the future, the Pen is what draws out our present and Memories are the pieces of our history that we bring from the past.

For more information about the event, click here.

Natália Pessanha

Natália Pessanha worked as Localization Engineering Trainee at Ccaps from April 2008 to October 2009. She has a degree in Chemistry from a Technical High School and obtained a degree in Information Systems. Her work at Ccaps involved the preparation of files for translation, QA and client handback. When she is not at work, Natália spends time with her friends, listening to music, going to the movies and doing courses.

The US National Museum of Language, a dream in the making for 11 years, opened its doors on May 3, 2008 just in time for UNESCO’s International Year of Languages (2008). Located in a Maryland College town, the museum offers a humble but interesting look at both in-museum language exhibits and online exhibits, which anyone in any country can enjoy.

Rather than focusing on specific languages, the museum focuses on the specific structure and nature of language and linguistics. The underlying themes of the Museum will focus on “Language in Society,” “World Languages,” and the “Universal Aspects of Language.” The museum hopes to encourage visitors to learn other languages as well as promote a better understanding of language and its role in history, contemporary affairs and the future. It recently held a contest asking users to create a flag that is representative of language and of the museum itself. The winning design is below.

The three shades of green of the leaves represent living languages, dead languages and future languages, on a brown two-tone tree trunk. The stylish curves flowing away from the tree represent the spread of knowledge gained from languages. The original flag will be displayed at the Museum and hopefully at other sites as well. “Although the flag belongs to the Museum now, it also belongs to the world,” says Gregory Nedved, the project coordinator.

The online Exhibits include a PowerPoint presentation of Arabic Calligraphy and Calligrams, an American Sign Language resource page, a Chinese calligraphy presentation, writing guide and quiz (including iPod downloads), a Cherokee Syllabary presentation, and other presentations including Ge’ez, Japanese, Esperanto, Latin, Vietnamese and the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights.

The Resources page offers web links to various language societies and history/anthropological societies, a link to the Allen Walker Read Library, Papers, Podcasts, Presentations and the National Language Museum Wiki.

The Kids page offers resources for kids to learn about languages as well as the possibility to learn languages including games and activities.

The Events page shows a schedule of speakers and events that will take place at the museum. Recent speeches include “Informal Language Learning for Families,” “Paper, Rock, Bone and Bronze–An Epigraphic Odyssey,” and “Persian Poetry and Calligraphy.”

The website is a plethora of language information that is useful to anyone of any age. The only thing the website is missing is translations to other languages. But judging by the welcome greeting in various languages, it looks like that that is soon to come.

Entrance to the museum is free (as is all its online content) and the museum relies mostly on membership donations.

Personally, I like my chickens well-mannered and reasonable. But hey, everyone has a different taste!

In this second post about software quality, I am going to talk about the comments sent by Jefferson Costa, from QAI Brasil. After reading my first post, The Quest for Quality Software, he sent the following questions:

What is “Quality Software”?
What are the factors involved in this measurement?

In regards to the measurement factors that determine if a software program is of high quality, ISO created a standard the clearly defines how to measure the quality of software. The so-called ISO/IEC 9126 standard goes far beyond stating that quality software is software without bugs. It is divided into six categories, each of them with a corresponding, fundamental question. They are as follows:

Functionality: Does it meet the requirements?
Reliability: Is it fail proof?
Usability: Is it user friendly?
Efficiency: Is it fast and lean?
Maintainability: Is it easy to modify?
Portability: Is it easy to deploy in different environments?

Therefore, we can say that these are the factors that enable quality measurement.

While reading about this standard, we can have an idea of what is quality software: it is software that combines each and all categories mentioned above. But the quality of software is also directly linked to the quality of processes used during development. But that’s another conversation, as we would have to talk about the project life cycle, CMM, etc.

Who knows, maybe in the next post? =)