PHP is one of the web’s most widely used and successful programming languages.  It’s easy to learn, easy to use, and extremely powerful.  Tools like Drupal and WordPress power millions of sites on Internet, and both were built using PHP.

But mighty Facebook stands above nearly everyone as the king of PHP.  With over 400 billion pageviews per month (yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’), Facebook serves up more webpages with PHP than just about anyone else.  Facebook’s engineers credit PHP with some of their success because PHP’s simplicity makes it easy to recruit new engineers, quickly train them, and get them started with the site’s code.

But PHP’s ease and simplicity comes with a very real downside for Facebook.  Like most scripted languages, PHP is substantially slower than compiled languages like C and C++.  Smaller sites running on fast servers may never notice PHP’s performance inadequacies, but Facebook faced the real possibility of spending millions of dollars for additional servers just to support PHP’s overhead.

Read more …

The major networks have been engaged in a decades-long struggle to win the hearts and minds (and eyes) of viewers. Whether it’s news, sports or sitcoms, these battles are now being fought on multiple fronts – including the distribution of their content through their web and mobile applications.

Which brings me to our latest bug-hunting competition. This quarter’s uTest Bug Battle will challenge testers to find bugs on the web AND mobile apps of the four major TV networks: CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX.

The competition gets started this Friday, February 5 at Noon (ET). At that time, testers from our community will be given one week to search these sites for the most compelling bugs, and to report them through our online platform. We’ll be dishing out nearly $4,000 in prize money for categories like Top Tester, Best Bug and Best Survey Feedback. As an added twist, we’re also including prizes for the Best Mobile Bugs.

More details on this Bug Battle – as well the rules, prizes and deadlines – after this commercial break. Just kidding, you can find them in the “Bug Battle” thread in the uTest Forums and we’ll be sharing more details here in the next few days.

So testers, you’ve got a few days to prepare for our most challenging competition to date. Until then, stay tuned.

It’s no surprise to our community that social networks have the potential to pose big security threats this year. During the “Battle of the Social Networks,” uTesters found a combined 718 bugs in Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn; and an additional 300+ bugs were discovered in the top five Twitter desktop apps during the Q2 bug battle.

To add more fuel to the fire, today the company Sophos, which surveyed 500+ organizations, came out with a new report stating that in the past year:

• 57% of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites
• 36% of users claim they’ve been sent malware via social networking sites
• 72% of survey respondents think social networks are a danger for their companies (see Mashable article)

What’s the solution? Tina Fey, in her show “30 Rock,” recently spoofed social networks with her creation of “YouFace” (combo of Facebook & MySpace). Terms such as “finger-tagged,” “weirdsie,” and “pho-lo” (for photo and hello) had many ROFL. See video clip after the bump!

Read more …

You’ve got the next big idea for a killer web, desktop or mobile app.  It’s gonna change the world.

So what’s on your to-do list?  Well, you need a slick GUI designer to make it look hot, and top-shelf product team to get the features & UX right.  Oh, and you need some ace developers to make your app come to life.  Good, now you’re done, right?  I mean, yeah, you need to test it, but you can do that yourself… or have your developers do it… or maybe the intern… or your beta users.

Think again, says Rex Black over at eWeek.  Despite what you might think, there IS a right way (and a wrong way) to build the testing team you’ll need to launch a high-quality app:

Read more …

Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) – known widely as Joel On Software – recently penned a great article on the role of software testers. I’m sure you’re aware that most people tend to regard testers as the bearers of bad news. But as Joel correctly points out, “one of the most valuable features of a tester is providing positive reinforcement.” Many testers understand this, but few are given credit for it.

Anyway, he also provides an excellent summary of the traits that make testers successful. He says they need to be scientific, methodical thinkers who enjoy working with software. Above all, they need to be smart. But do they need to have a background in programming?

A particularly terrible idea is to offer testing jobs to the programmers who apply for jobs at your company and aren’t good enough to be programmers. Testers don’t have to be programmers, but if you spend long enough acting like a tester is just an incompetent programmer, eventually you’re building a team of incompetent programmers, not a team of competent testers. Since testing can be taught on the job, but general intelligence can’t, you really need very smart people as testers, even if they don’t have relevant experience. (Editor’s note: emphasis is mine).

That was Joel’s view. What’s yours?

Today Apple announced their much anticipated tablet computer – the iPad.  With a 9.7 inch screen, the iPad is a supersized iPhone; and it’s already inspiring both love and hate from Apple fans worldwide.  Comments so far have ranged from “I want it now” to “I was expecting a lot more than an XL version of the iPhone with no phone capabilities.”

So what does the iPad mean for developers, testers, and Apple users?  Here are a few thoughts:

Layout now matters for iPhone developers.
Up until now, an iPhone app was one size fits all.  Every iPhone has the same resolution, meaning apps didn’t have to worry about scaling up or down.  Not anymore!  The iPad is a larger device, but it runs the same iPhone apps.  While it can automatically scale up an app designed for the iPhone, the results are kind of ugly.  The bigger screen real estate opens a lot of interesting possibilities, but for iPhone developers now is the time you need to start worrying about how your app will look on a larger screen that isn’t 480×320.

New interface means new challenges.
If it’s not enough that the iPad comes in a different size, now developers will also have a slew of new interface widgets to work with.  Whether or not those widgets will be available on the iPhone remains to be seen, but whatever the case developers will have their hands full making sure their apps look correct on each platform.

Testers needed!
Read more …

I think I read somewhere that Apple may be announcing something on Wednesday. </sarcasm>

If you’ve been near any media source in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the build-up of Apple’s upcoming announcement, which is widely expected to be the launch of their new tablet device.  To watch the drama unfold, check out Wired.com’s complete coverage.

Does anyone have predictions about size, feature set, price point, et al?  Share your thoughts.  Being a software testing shop, we’re particularly interested in what types of apps that will be built for this new category-defining device.  Will there be an entirely new class of apps (and thus, more Apple-related testing)?  Will it work with iPhone apps?  Is it purely a web device?

UPDATE:  Ok, so now that we know more about the iPad (check out Mashable’s iPad coverage… or TechCrunch’s… or AlleyInsider’s), I’m curious to hear what you think — Worth the wait?  Overhyped?  Revolutionary?  Meh?  Weigh in and tell us your take.

Nick Jones over at Gartner wrote a great piece about the current state of mobile apps.  It’s a must-read for mobile app developers and marketers.

His post is written about the iPhone, but it applies equally to Android, Blackberry or Symbian apps.  It also helps to explain why mobile apps have been the fastest growing segment of the uTest biz (phenomenal growth + still evolving market = a lot of testing to do).

Here are a few realizations from his recent trip to his local Apple store that seemed especially relevant for our readers (bullet points are his and the running commentary is mine) :

Read more …

When we published our Michael Bolton interviews earlier this week, we forgot to mention that he’ll be speaking at a bunch of  testing events/seminars in the months ahead. So if you’re in these areas and want to see Michael speak in person (as opposed to Youtube) you owe it yourself to attend.

That said, here are a few upcoming testing events:

• “Why is Testing Taking So Long?” – Michael will be giving an interactive talk on this topic at the Markham meeting for TASSQ, the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality, on Wednesday, February 10, 2010.
• The Conference on Free Testing Tools: Michael will be giving a three-day public offering of his Rapid Software Testing course, and will deliver the keynote talk. The event will be sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society, and will be held in Trondheim, Norway, March 22-26, 2010.

Read more …

Stereotypes have been given to just about every profession. There’s the sleazy used car salesman, ambulance-chasing lawyers, doughnut-eating sheriffs, corrupt politicians, drunken pilots – I could go on.

Software testers are apparently no exception to this rule. In fact, the editors over at TestingGeek.com just wrote a piece on some common (and unfair) tester stereotypes. With the aid of a Top Ten list, the authors break down some of the wrong reasons why people enter the field of software testing. You should go check it out.

Of course, if you’re at all familiar with the uTest community – and if you’ve spent any time chatting in our online Forums – you’d know that software testers are an especially difficult bunch to pigeonhole. There’s an amazing cross-section of backgrounds, personalities, ages and experience levels. In other words, there’s nothing typical about them! You can read our Tester Spotlights if you don’t believe us.

Anyway, here are a few of the “wrong reasons” they listed, in no particular order:

Read more …