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Perhaps the most obvious reason for automating software is to speed up a process and remove mundane, repetitive manual tasks. Software automation therefore saves time and resources, which equates to cost savings.

Examples of this abound. But in this article I’d like to talk about some other good reasons for automating software, beyond the obvious benefits of saving time and money.

One consequence of software automation is an improved understanding of the software’s interface. One of the best ways to learn to use a software product fully is to try to automate it. Testers and automation engineers have to learn the software’s interface really well, possibly better than the people who wrote it. The developers may well know the algorithms better than anyone else, but it is the person automating it who knows the ins and outs, pitfalls and quirks of the interface.

We all know how badly designed some Windows programs are. And in these days of fancy hi-res graphics and snazzy toolbar buttons it’s easy for the designers to forget about shortcut keys and keyboard navigation. The most productive way to use a PC is to forget the mouse and learn the keyboard shortcuts. You can get things done much more quickly. Yet even the most experienced Windows users don’t know half the keyboard shortcuts that exist in Windows. (For tips on keyboard navigation in Windows see: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301583)

Knowing these shortcuts makes automation so much easier and more reliable. Automating an application by sending mouse events and mouse clicks is unreliable and depends on the screen resolution never changing. Although you can use relative mouse coordinates, sooner or later something is going to change and the button you want to click is not in the place it was when the script was created.

The automation/test engineer is the one who figures out the keyboard shortcuts and finds the simplest, most reliable way of navigating an application. People who automate applications regularly have a good understanding of the different ways to move around Windows and Windows applications. Automated Software Testing can help find issues in the interface just from the process of building the automated test, even before the test script has been run. Building an automation routine for an application will help you find those missing or duplicated shortcut keys and other objects that can’t be driven by the keyboard.

Automation script developers spend so much time fiddling with the software’s interface that they will often become more knowledgeable than the “power-users”. Testers also have the great advantage of being allowed to try unusual scenarios that developers never think about or are too busy to try. They are allowed to break things!

So it goes both ways. Find out the Windows keyboard shortcuts and the hot-keys for the application you’re scripting and you can create a better script. Build an application with good keyboard support and your application can be automated more easily. If it can be automated easily it will be easy to use!

Software automation can also lead to improved documentation. Automation scripts are the ultimate way to document a process. A script that automates a process describes how to carry it out properly. Businesses need to document all their manual processes so that other people can carry out the task. By scripting the process it is being described at the same time. As well as saving time by automating it, it is also now easy for someone else to see how the process is carried out.

Finally, an important benefit of software automation is in contingency planning. Contingency goes hand in hand with documentation. If only one person in the organisation knows how to carry out a task there will be problems if and when that person is sick, on vacation, or leaves the company. Not all absences are planned. By documenting a process the business is ensuring that someone else can carry it out should the usual task owner be unavailable.

Automation takes that one stage further. If the process is scripted and automated it is easy for someone else to take on ownership of the task in the future. The task will continue to run and the script itself describes how the task works.

Therefore software process automation not only allows businesses to save considerable time and human resource, but it can also improve documentation and contingency; aid in software development and testing and help towards building better user interfaces.

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Marcus Tettmar is founder and CEO of MJT Net Ltd, specialists in windows automation and publishers of Macro Scheduler, the leading automation tool for Microsoft Windows; and WebRecorder for Web Application Automation. Find out more at www.mjtnet.com

Converting text to speech has been a hot topic for many years. Not only because this is significant technological advantage, but because of the importance of its uses.

Converting text to speech or the so called “speech synthesis” is the artificial production of human speech. A text to speech system converts normal language text to speech. The two most important factors of the process are the similarity of the artificial voice to a human one and its ability to be understood.

Nowadays computers are used to do this kind of conversion. The first computer that was able to do this was developed in the late 1950s and the first complete text-to-speech system was completed in the early 70s. Since then the process of developing better systems continues. The main challenges in front the people developing TTS systems are to improve the semantic representation of the text being converted, to improve the pronunciation according the punctuation within the text, to improve the pronunciation of the words within the text as well as the numbers.

The most common use of speech synthesis systems is providing accessibility for people with serious disabilities. Visually impaired, people with dyslexia or other reading difficulties can use computers, read and work normally because of such systems. TTS systems are also used by pre-literate children, by companies seeking ways to improve their customer service or developing mobile phone applications.

It is not hard to get a text synthesis converter. Nowadays all computer operation systems support it. Apple was the first that integrated a TTS system into their operation system. During the years they invested into developing the feature and now their operation systems come with a fully supported program to text conversion Plain Talk. Windows users can also benefit from TTS integrated into the operating system. Windows systems also feature a voice recognition engine so that voice commands can be given to the computer. All Windows versions after Windows 95 have a speech synthesis program called Narrator, directly available to users. Moreover Windows Server 2003 features a complete package for voice synthesis and recognition, for commercial applications such as call centers. Linux users can also benefit from text to speech applications such as Festival Speech Synthesis System.

Internet also offers various text to speech synthesis tools. Power Text to Speech Reader and Text Aloud are just an example of software that can read messages from a mail client or web browser. Since the latest trend in web development is mainly to make web more accessible, many websites implement narrators to help disabled people read their websites.

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Keith Londrie II is the Webmaster of texttospeech.coffee-info.info A website that specializes in providing information on Text to Speech that you can research on the internet. Please Visit texttospeech.coffee-info.info Today!

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You can access it thanks to the built-in conversation history features of your favorite instant messenger, such as ICQ or MSN Messenger. Your conversations are stored on the hard drive of your computer for your future reference.

But what if you are away from your home computer? Or, what if you chat on several different PCs? In that case, you would have parts of your conversation history stored on different computers, which causes all kinds of problems from simple inconvenience to invasion of your privacy and security leaks. Using your work computer for chatting, when allowed by employers, is particularly prone to this problem. The worst part is that you cannot even synchronize those PCs to have one solid conversation history as this operation is not on the list of most instant messengers!

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CEO of IM-HISTORY (www.im-history.com)