Latest News from Jennifer Moebius

uTest CEO Presents at Google Test Automation Conference (GTAC)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:48:37 EST

As promised, Google has made the slides and video presentations from GTAC 2009 (Google Test Automation Conference) available on the GTAC website and on YouTube. This year’s GTAC was a huge success! The theme was “Testing for the Web,” and now anyone can watch these leading thinkers discuss test automation strategies, tools, and the challenges [...]

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Test ‘Til You Drop: Three More Days Of Q4 Bug Battling!

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:58:28 EST

With only three days left in our week-long Q4 E-tailer Bug Battle, 350+ bugs have already been reported by nearly 100 testers from around the globe. While testers may not be experiencing the all-too-familiar “shop ’til you drop” phenomenon, there’s been no shortage of crowds, enthusiasm or effort during this testing marathon (we’re happy to [...]

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uTest Awarded By Society Of New Communications Research

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:11:32 EST

Just a quick note to share some good news from inside the halls of uTest. On Friday night, our marketing team attended the awards event of the SNCR at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA. This event included blue-chip brands like HP, Intel and Stanford University, as well as innovators like HubSpot. The SNCR holds [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

E-tailer Bug Battle Off To Fast Start

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:03:42 EST

Quick update from the (bug) battlefield: We’re 40 hours into our Q4 Bug Battle competition between Amazon, Walmart.com and Target.com, and we’ve already had almost 200 bugs reported by 60+ testers from around the globe. It’s still early (the competition ends Wednesday, November 11 at 11:59 ET), but this is already shaping up to be [...]

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Bah Hum-Bug: Battle of the E-Tailers Begins

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:59:33 EST

Long lines, screaming kids, rude employees, rip-off prices, poor selections – all things of holiday’s past. That’s because virtually every major retailer has now set up shop online. But just because holiday shopping can be done from the comfort of one’s own living room, doesn’t mean there aren’t complications (i.e. bugs). To prove our point, [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Safari Bug Actually Costs You Money

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:53:08 EST

Mobile bugs are becoming a bigger and bigger problem, and iPhone users are the latest to be affected by buggy software. Techcrunch reported yesterday that a bug in Safari causes it to consume bandwidth even when it’s closed. The problem arises with the use of Motion JPEG (or M-JPEG), a video standard that is built [...]

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Do You Know Where That Tweet Has Been?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:19:55 EST

While scanning Wired.com this weekend, I came across an article that’s scary enough to fit right in with Halloween. Most securitytudies address issues in operating systems, browsers or other core systems. This one, however, addressed the uber-popular Twitter and the URL shorteners that are widely used because of its 140 character constraints (eg: bit.ly, tinyurl, [...]

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“Life’s a Glitch, Then You Die” (Happy Halloween from uTest)

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:53:16 EDT

I can’t take credit for the pun in the title (it’s from The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror*) but it fit so well with today’s theme, I just couldn’t help myself. That’s right, it’s Halloweekend (that lame pun is mine). And so despite the warnings from that old guy in Pet Sematary who said that “Sometimes…dead is [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

New in Wordpress: Easy Plugin Reputation

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:29:28 EDT

Plugins have long been a double edged sword for software. On the one hand they make software more flexible than it would be otherwise. On the other hand, plugins can be poorly maintained and full of bugs. That second issue is so much of a problem that a little while back I wrote a post [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Version 2.7 – Better Mobile, Faster NDAs, Smoother Workflows

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:12:07 EDT

Last night, our development team unleashed version 2.7 of the uTest platform. This release includes some great enhancements – many of which were based on requests from our customers. We’re especially excited about a few features in particular: Enhanced Mobile Releases Mobile app testing has always been something we’re proud of, but as the number of [...]

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Security Threats To Rise For Mobile Apps

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:01:27 EDT

Mobile is the next great frontier for games, music, media and more. In fact, Gartner says that more than 139 million smartphones were sold last year. And the phone makers aren’t slowing down: Apple is planning to launch the iPhone into the Chinese market and a more affordable Android handset expected to hit the market [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Crowdsourcing: Testing the Limits with John Winsor

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Having grilled some of the top minds in the software business, this installment of Testing the Limits will deviate slightly from the norm. With us this month is John Winsor – author, entrepreneur and crowdsourcing expert. After a successful career as a journalist and magazine publisher, John founded Radar Communications in 1998, where he implemented a [...]

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STP Rolls Out The Red Carpet At STPCon Reception In Cambridge

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:14:15 EDT

Earlier this week, several members of the uTest team took in the opening reception of Software Test & Performance’s STPCon event. We overheard some great conversations, and even jumped into the fray a few times ourselves. It was a lively crowd and a great venue (the Hyatt Regency) right along the Charles River. The event [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Tomorrow’s Software – Creating Bugs Since 1983

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:29:38 EDT

Most bugs are never so terrible that they call into question the very nature of causality in the universe. But for engineers working on the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, it may be necessary to rethink their assumptions about cause and effect. For those who don’t know, the LHC will soon become the largest and most [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

STPCon 2009 Kicks Off with Tester Meetup on Wed, Oct 21st

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:51:42 EDT

Calling all New England QA and software testing professionals! We will be co-hosting a free tester meetup with STP (Software Test & Performance) as part of the kickoff reception for their big event, STPCon 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge. This meetup will be Wednesday, October 21 at 5:30pm. Join us for a great evening of [...]

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Vote uTest for “Best Corporate Blog” in Mashable’s Open WebAwards!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:21:56 EDT

Thanks to you, uTest blog traffic has more than doubled since the beginning of ‘09. And since our relaunch in mid-May, we’ve use this space to share breaking industry news, testing events and meetups, uTest company info, and original content from around the QA industry through our guest bloggers and “Testing the Limits” interviews. That’s [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Software Testers: The “Eyes of the Battlefield”

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:04:14 EDT

We’re happy to have Brian Rock as our Guest Blogger this month. A resident of Austin, Texas, Brian has brought more than 10 years of software engineering and leadership experience to the uTest community (where he is among the most active members). Prior to his software days, Brian served as Sgt. for Combat Arms Forward [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Mobile Innovation Flies “Under the Radar”

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:05:00 EDT

Speaking of the mobile app market blowing up, I wanted to give you a heads up regarding a great mobile event: Under the Radar on 11/19 in Mountain View, CA. From global carriers and handset manufacturers to media companies, branding partners, press and VCs — anyone who’s anyone leveraging new mobile tech and interested in catching [...]

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Check Out Mass Innovation Night — Wed, Oct 14th

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:52:54 EDT

Calling all Massachusetts-based startups, entrepreneurs and innovators! Tonight is October’s Mass Innovation Night down at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation (Moody Street, Waltham). If you’re in the area, it’s a good event. We’ll be there, so if you see a uTest name tag, tap us on the shoulder and introduce yourself. These monthly [...]

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Danger in the Clouds: Four Lessons from the Sidekick Disaster

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EDT

The Sidekick is made by Danger, a company acquired by Microsoft in 2008. As one of T-Mobile’s flagship mobile phones, the Sidekick was one of the first and most popular consumer smartphones. Featuring a real keyboard, it offered an instant messaging application at a time when many phones were still figuring out SMS. For IM and SMS addicts, the Sidekick was THE phone to own. One of the Sidekick’s key features was that it kept all of your important stuff “in the cloud.” That meant it stored all of your contacts, messages, photos, and just about everything else on a server managed by Danger. This made it easy to recover your data in case your phone lost power or failed. What nobody anticipated was the cloud server itself failing.

Bug vs. Plane… Bug Wins

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 21:56:00 EDT

When does a bug beat a plane (or in this case, dozens of planes)? CNN has the answer. Dozens of trans-Atlantic flights from the United Kingdom were delayed Saturday after a glitch in an air traffic control system in Scotland, but the problem was fixed a few hours later and authorities were working to get the [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Mobile App Market Blowing Up (in a good way)

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:06:50 EDT

By now, it’s painfully obvious to all of us that the market for mobile apps is BOOMING and shows no signs of slowing down. But I was still amazed by the stats/news that back up the hype. Within the past few months, GigaOm has reported the following mind-blowing proof points: Apple users downloaded 2 billion [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Software Bugs Giveth, Police Taketh Away

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:51:22 EDT

Remember that scene in Office Space where Michael Bolton (no, not him) realized that he’d botched The Plan? If you recall, he and his accomplices developed a computer virus that was supposed to deposit pennies from each company transaction into their own private accounts. This money would of course grow at an exponential yet unnoticeable [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)

Google: Your RAM is Out to Get You!

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:13:34 EDT

Your computer just crashed taking with it that document you’ve been working on for the past hour. Naturally, you cry out in anguish over all those terrible software bugs that conspire to crash your computer and drive you nuts. But new evidence suggests that something else could be the cause: bad memory. Google just announced the [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (6 votes cast)

Four Crowdsourcing Lessons from House MD

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:31:11 EDT

House MD, one of the most popular television shows in the US and globally, is a weekly medical mystery where a patient with a rare and unsolvable disease is diagnosed by Dr. Gregory House – the title character. Dr. House is a brilliant diagnostician who can solve almost any medical puzzle, but this past Monday [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)

Major Milestone: uTest Tops 20,000 Tester Mark!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:55:10 EDT

Earlier this week, uTest blew past the 20,000 tester mark in our humble “little” community. As we’ve all witnessed on the Tester Forums, the uTest community continues to grow – not only in sheer size, diversity and coverage – but also in the level of testing skill, engagement and collaboration. In light of this big news, [...]

Rating: 4.6/5 (10 votes cast)

Crowdsourcing: Which Businesses Are Best Suited For It?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:50:22 EDT

I read a great article in ebizQ last week outlining why crowdsourcing is no longer just for startups. Dion Hinchcliffe (@dhinchcliffe) writes: “While Internet startups have had considerable success with crowdsourcing, it’s only recently that they’ve focused on creating the tools and communities that can be readily consumed by enterprises.” Crowdsourcing enables companies – from bootstrapped startups [...]

Rating: 4.1/5 (9 votes cast)

Testing the Limits with Jack Margo SVP of Developer Shed, (part 2)

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:15:29 EDT

Today, we’re wrapping up with our September ‘Testing the Limits’ with Jack Margo, SVP of Internet Operations at Developer Shed. If you’re not familiar with them, Developer Shed operates 20+ tech sites — many devoted to open source products, developers and communities. They serve millions of visitors per month, for every breed of developer or [...]

Rating: 4.4/5 (7 votes cast)

Testing the Limits with Jack Margo SVP of Developer Shed, (part 1)

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:57:07 EDT

In recent months, we’ve ‘tested the limits’ with QA notables like James Whittaker, Rosie Sherry and Andrew Muns. This month, we’re jumping over to the dev side of the aisle by sitting down with Jack Margo, SVP of Internet Operations at Developer Shed . Developer Shed is owned by Ziff-Davis and manages a bunch of [...]

Rating: 4.5/5 (8 votes cast)

Version 2.6: uTest Unveils New And Improved Tester Profile

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:36:09 EDT

The uTest dev team has been busy (and sleep-deprived) of late. Last night, we released version 2.6 of our platform, which contains our new and vastly improved tester profile. This will enable us to more precisely match our customers’ testing projects with the right members of the global community. And for testers, it means we can [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (8 votes cast)

Software’s Next Frontier: Grand Central Dispatch

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Have you heard of Grand Central Dispatch? If you’re a Mac addict, then you might know that it’s Apple’s new easy-to-use tool for parallelizing code. If you’re not a Mac addict, then the first thing you should know is that GCD is one of the most exciting innovations in software development in years. The second [...]

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Names of Q3 Bug Battle Winners Leaked (by us, but still)

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:52:38 EDT

As you may have heard, we recently wrapped up our 3rd quarter Bug Battle competition. This time, we pitted search engine heavyweights Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo and turned our community of testers loose on them to do exploratory testing, report bugs, and then complete an extensive user survey. The official results won’t be announced until [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

A Bug of a Different Kind

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:22:18 EDT

Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade are normally hilarious. Their thrice weekly comic is a must read for anyone who loves gaming, and their yearly PAX conference has grown to be one of the most influential gamer gatherings in the world. While games are prone to having bugs, this year’s conference (which ended Sunday) also [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

The First Famous Software Bug

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:31:54 EDT

I’m sure many of you are familiar with this story from back in the days when a computer took up two parking spaces, but Todd Dailey over at Wired ran a great piece today about this date in 1947. It was on this date 62 years ago that the operators of the Mark II Aiken [...]

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The Boston Test Party

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:41:00 EDT

Last night, uTest co-hosted our second Boston-area tester meetup with our UK partner, TCL, at The Kinsale. About 25 of local software testers showed up ready for some testing games, pizza, beer and networking fun at this P.E.S.T. (Pub Exploration Software Testing) event. Attendees got a sneak peek at a soon-to-be-released version of the uTest platform [...]

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Exploratory Software Testing: A New Book From James Whittaker

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:15:13 EDT

The Lonely Businessman Tour? The Supermodel Tour? The All-Nighter Tour? The – ahem – Taxicab Tour? You know where this is going, don’t you? Get your mind out of the gutter! It’s going to lead to better exploratory software testing, according to Dr. James Whittaker. In his latest publication, Exploratory Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, And Techniques To [...]

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A New Way That Bugs Can Bite You

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:11:35 EDT

Catching up on my reading and came across an interesting article on the App Store from Jason Kincaid over at TechCrunch. Ostensibly, this piece is about Apple’s overly strict and seemingly random App Store approval process and a high-pressure NSFW rant from a high-profile developer, Joe Stump, whose popular app has a new version that is [...]

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Join Us @ uTest Tester Meetup on Sept 2 in Boston!

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:04:39 EDT

Tester meetup alert! Please join us this week in Boston at the Kinsale Bar on Wednesday, September 2 @ 6:30pm for uTest’s software tester meetup. Also known as a P.E.S.T. (Pub Exploration of Software Testing) event, the meetup will be hosted with partner and testing consultancy TCL. This networking event is informal, free, and open [...]

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The Hassles of Supporting Older Products – Adobe vs. Apple

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:38:58 EDT

On Friday, Apple released version 10.6 of their Macintosh OS X operating system. “Snow Leopard,” as this new version is called, is an unusual release for Apple. Whereas previous updates of OS X often brought big usability changes, Snow Leopard is all about under the hood improvements. It’s faster and better, but not different. So it [...]

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Vote for uTest’s Forrester Groundswell Award!

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:17:49 EDT

With a GREAT first year behind us (thanks for all the birthday wishes), we’re looking ahead to what’s next! To kick things off, uTest has been nominated for the Forrester Groundswell Award in the “B2B – Embracing” category. Stemming from the bestselling book groundswell by Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, the Groundswell Awards recognize [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Living with Plugins

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:45:00 EDT

Last week I wrote about some of the issues with plugins (especially those in Wordpress) – they’re often times poorly maintained, buggy, and insecure. We got some great feedback, both on and offline, and today I want to give a few ideas for making the most of plugin based platforms. 1.) Popular Plugins Hint at Missing [...]

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Happy Birthday To — Well, Us!

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:10:52 EDT

It was 12 short months ago that a little shop (and a big idea) named “uTest” set out to improve the way that companies tested their web, desktop and mobile apps. Since our public launch last August, we’ve had some big-time fun and come a long way: Added hundreds of great customers Recruited thousands (and thousands) [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Testing the Limits with Andrew Muns, President of STP (part 2)

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:03:02 EDT

This is the second half of our recent interview with Andrew Muns (@amuns), the president of Software Test & Performance. Today, we’ll cover his thoughts on how testers can get more respect, predicting STP’s future, and who would win in a fight between James and Jon Bach. If you missed it, check out the first [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Testing the Limits with Andrew Muns, President of STP (Part 1)

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:29:00 EDT

In the latest installment of our “Testing the Limits” series, we sat down with Andrew Muns (@amuns) the President of Software Test & Performance (of STP Magazine and STPCon fame), to discuss how testers are perceived by execs and developers, the future of media companies, and the changes that are underway at STP. This is [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Name That Plague (software testing plague, that is)

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:39:34 EDT

Frequent readers of the uTest blog are by now aware that we’re big fans of James Whittaker – software testing expert, author and now one of Google’s top QA guys. Over the past few weeks, James has been writing a provocative series called the “Seven Plagues of Software Testing”. You can find it on his [...]

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The Problems with Plugins

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:40:25 EDT

Last week, the Wordpress team fixed a pretty nasty bug and released version 2.8.4 of their blogging engine. Prior to that, version 2.8.3 fixed a security bug in version 2.8.2 which was a security update for version 2.8.1 which itself fixed a number of security issues in version 2.8. The Wordpress team has certainly been [...]

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Last Call: One Day Left in Search Engine Bug Battle

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:15:00 EDT

With roughly 24 hours left in the 3rd quarter Bug Battle, here is a brief summary of the results thus far. We've had more than 500 bugs reported, with more than 30 of them relating to the mid-competition addition of Google Caffeine to the Bug Battle mix. Remember, the software testing competition ends Friday, August 14th [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (3 votes cast)

Adding Caffeine to the Bug Battle Mix

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:00:00 EDT

The announcement of Google’s new engine “Caffeine” could not have come at a better time. In light of the current Bug Battle competition, we have decided to add Caffeine to the lineup of search engines to test. The competition is roughly halfway through (testing ends on Friday, August 14th at 11:59pm) with a running total of [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)

Version 2.5: Faster, Better, More Compatible

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:18:00 EDT

Late last night, we launched version 2.5 of the uTest platform. This new version incorporates a number of infrastructure improvements and bug fixes. And while some of these things aren’t visible to the naked eye, they are based upon feedback from our customers and testers, and we’re confident they’ll help to improve the overall user [...]

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What You Need To Know About Writing Effective Test Cases

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 08:00:34 EDT

Our guest blogger this month is Valerie Dale – one of the first (and finest) testers to join our global community. In this post, Valerie will address the importance of writing clear and effective test cases for specific audiences. Despite all evidence to the contrary, test case design is often seen as work with no [...]

Rating: 5.0/5 (4 votes cast)