And neither is IE6. In the past, we’ve called IE6 the zombie browser that can’t be killed and it’s certainly lived up to that moniker. However, regarding that last piece of news (Microsoft’s upcoming automatic updates) it looks like IE6 may finally get phased out. For real this time. Or maybe not.

Here’s Webmonkey.com with the details:

The new auto-update feature will only apply to users who’ve opted into the automatic updates through Windows Update. Those that have opted in will be upgraded to the latest version of IE available for their system. If you’re still on Windows XP that means you’ll be updated to IE 8. Vista and Windows 7 users will move to IE 9. The Windows Blog notes that when upgrading, your home page, search provider, and default browser settings will not be affected.

Web developers still supporting IE 6 may not need to do so much longer if Microsoft’s auto-update strategy pays off. Since the new auto-update mechanism will apply to IE 7 as well, it too may not need to be supported much longer. Of course, even in the best case scenario where IE 6 and 7 users drop below 5 percent worldwide, web developers would still need to contend with IE 8. While IE 8 was a huge step up from its predecessors, it still lacks support for most of the HTML5 and CSS 3 features found in modern web browsers.

Somehow, IE6 usage currently stands at 8.4% worldwide. That includes a whopping 27.9% in China. As such, we’re going to hold off on pronouncing IE6 dead for the time being. However, the browser’s days are clearly numbered. Right?

We’re 17 days away from the new year, and far before Auld Lang Syne begins playing and we pretend to know the words (after all the champagne, who can remember the lyrics we optimistically Google’d the day before anyways?), we’re pondering what changes are in store for us the next twelve months.

In a whitepaper released by ABI Research this week, their tech analysts took a collective look into the crystal ball for 2012 and (in their words) “have drawn some bold lines in the sand on a plethora of top-of-mind topics.”

But instead of predicting what WOULD happen in the mobile and telecom space, they took a different spin on the usual list and forecasted what WOULDN’T happen.  Nice twist.  (And a really good read.)

One of their more interesting predictions for those of us in software testing is by Patrick Connolly, Senior Analyst of Telematics and Navigation:  “Indoor location will NOT become commonplace in 2012.” 

It’s easy to see how this could be true…but also surprising.

After all, for as many articles that have been written about the technological challenges in making Indoor Location Based Services (LBS) a reality, there has been an equal amount of big name, big buzz announcements about it over the past few months.  There are dozens of industry-leading companies—including Apple, Navteq, Qualcomm and Nokia—tackling the challenge from every angle.

There are even some major apps launching to give Indoor LBS a jolt from vision to reality.  For instance, Google announced on their Mobile blog in November that the new Google Maps 6.0 gives users (on Android OS 2.1 mobile devices) the ability to Map the Vast Indoors, vis-à-vis:

“When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall, retail store, or other public space, Google Maps 6.0 for Android brings the freestanding map directory to the palm of your hands –helping you determine where you are, what floor you’re on, and where to go indoors. For example, in this busy travel season, you can use Google Maps 6.0 to help you find your way around airports.”

So what does Connolly think we can expect in 2012?  He proposes that there will be “isolated mobile applications and services around individual high-traffic public areas like airports and malls.”

For software testers, the proliferation of LBS (indoor and out) means it’s becoming ever critical to move a portion of the testing out of the lab and into the wild so apps can be tested in real world conditions.  After all, if LBS is inaccurate inside a mall by 100 feet—and the store we’re trying to find (hello, Cinnabon!) isn’t anywhere near where we thought it was– it might as well be off by a mile.  The ball is increasingly in our court to make sure this cool, new tech is a consumer delight… not a dud.

As an industry, we’re on the cusp of some exciting indoor location, tracking, mapping, and navigation apps that will enrich the user experience.  And we’re playing a critical role in making it possible.

We’ll toast to that.

Previously, the issue was whether I should I invest in iOS and start the conversion over from a lifetime on Windows.  After all, my dad was a 30-year IBM vet, which put food on the table and paid my tuition.  I grew up seeing mammoth mainframes, punchcards…glowing green DOS.  No Apples of any color in our Big Blue household.

But on this occasion, it wasn’t a question of brand loyalty. It was the obvious: the loss of Steve Jobs.

I still find myself processing his passing both emotionally and practically. I remember how the AP alert popped up on my phone and it literally felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.  I admired him for living authentically, taking billion dollar gambles on ideas, picking himself up after billion dollar failures, and holding steadfast (stubborn?) to his vision.

I’m convinced his near-religious zeal over every minutiae of product design stemmed from the same social ethic that led to Apple’s creation:  to make computers so easy and user-friendly that everyone could benefit from computing’s powerful potential.  Not just the technical, highly-educated and elite. Computers for Everyman.

Attention to detail.  Risk-taking. Singular focus. These are among the core values of the Apple brand. As I considered buying the iPad, I wondered:  Are these values sufficiently infused in Tim Cook and the company DNA to continue on without Steve?  Or will Apple employees slowly lose direction like followers of the North Star left without guide over too many cloudy nights?

The only constant in life is change, it’s said.  And over the next 3-5 years, it’s going to be interesting to watch every stakeholder in the Apple ecosystem silently cast their vote about the saliency of the brand, and collectively determine the company’s future.

Consumers will judge with their pocketbooks whether iDevices remain revolutionary.  Enterprises will decide to invest in the iPad…or not.  Talent will vote with their pen, signing job offers from Apple…or not.  App developers will watch marketshare and and competing platforms’ ability to drive revenue with app discovery and merchandising technologies. Suppliers will re-evaluate their strategic alliances and preferred partners.

And investors? Competitors like Google?  Watching all of these subtle harbingers like hawks.

Acutely aware of his fragile mortality, Steve Jobs must surely have accelerated his succession planning and spent hours meditating on how best to expand a corporate culture of entrepreneurialism.  I can only begin to imagine the burden of responsibility he (like all CEOs) must have felt to maintain job security for the nearly 50,000 Apple employees worldwide.  And not the least, the utter determination he must have felt privately to ensure that his vision…his passion… continued beyond his lifetime.  This was a man who worked on Apple until his last day.

In a 2008 interview with CNN Money, Jobs confirmed:  “I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”

Time will tell.

What do you predict for Apple in a post-Steve Jobs world?

According to CNET:

“Developers who created their apps specifically to run on Honeycomb-based tablets will need to tweak their APKs (Android packages) to either prevent or support their installation on smaller-screen devices.

The [Google Android developers] blog also offered some recommendations for tablet app developers on how to ensure that their design of the Action Bar widget works on smaller handsets.”

Additionally, be on the look out for the release of the ICS SDK, rumored to be available in a matter of weeks. According to Google:

“We haven’t released the ICS SDK just yet, but you can start preparing your Honeycomb apps by thinking about how they should work on smaller screens.”

Well, it’s just enough to whet anyone’s appetite! We shouldn’t have to wait too much longer before we learn more. For now, I’ll save this dessert for later.

We decided to launch it at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco because the very concept of in-the-wild software testing (versus traditional methodologies) is, well…disruptive. 

Sure enough, TechCrunch Disrupt turned out to be the perfect event!  There were more than 2,600 innovative, entrepreneurial-minded techies, investors and exhibitors (35% more attendees than expected) filling the halls of the Design Concourse Center from Monday to Wednesday.  In its usual fashion, the conference itself attracted top industry-leaders such as Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Marissa Mayer of Google, Vinod Khosla, and even Ashton Kutcher.

uTest hosted a ton of terrific activities over the course of the event:

On Sunday, we spent the day at the Disrupt Hackathon, selecting a winner for uTest’s “Most Likely to Succeed in the Wild” award, which came with a prize worth $3,000 of uTest’s services.  Wow- what a day!  More than 700 participants worked overnight and coded a record number (130!) of hacks. We watched as each of the teams mustered the energy to climb on-stage and pitch their project in the allotted 60 seconds.  The sheer breadth of creativity was impressive.  Yet, we had to make a decision, so we chose the masterminds behind AirCart, which enables grocery store self-checkout through your phone, rather than the standard dedicated checkout stand. (See pic to the right)

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, we had a special surprise for Disrupt.  In order to promote in-the-wild testing, we sponsored the urban Serengeti-themed “In the Wild Oasis” RVIP, a mobile karaoke lounge created in a renovated Winnebago.  Sounds crazy and fun?  It was!  (The RVIP is the brainchild of Kestrin Pantera, who by the way, sounds dead-on like Susan Sarandon’s ‘Janet’ when she karaokes Rocky Horror.)

During Happy Hour, we were parked outside the front of the Concourse Center, where people climbed aboard, checked it out, had a drink, and started relaxing from the day.  From there, the RV– blanketed in lights and glowing like Chevy Chase’s house in Christmas Vacation– took to the ‘wilds’ of SF, providing shuttle service for folks to their hotels. But mostly getting a whole lot of smiles and laughter from people on the streets.

By 9:30 both nights, we’d arrived at the official TechCrunch after parties at 1015 Folsom (sponsored by Bridgewater) and Roe (sponsored by MailChimp).  Parked there, we partied through the night…usually until 2:00am.  Throughout the two nights, hundreds of Disrupters had climbed aboard, to have a drink, chat and network in the RV’s lounge.  Some groups had stuffed themselves into the photo booth for pics. 

And almost everyone karaoked.  How could they not?  When the entire RV is rocking from the dancing, and the whole crowd is singing Wild Thing, Hotel California or Rock Lobster…it’s impossible to resist!  Even TechCrunch reporter Jason Kincaid hung out and belted some tunes (btw: He has a great voice…who knew?).

As we’ve been known to say at uTest, “We take our jobs seriously.  But not ourselves.”  Disrupt was a great example.  People learned about in-the-wild testing and our business ideas, and we learned about theirs.  We connected with customers, old friends and partners, and made new ones.  And we all had a blazing good time.

Until next year…!

For many more photos, visit the TC Disrupt page on www.inthewildtesting.com or uTest’s Flickr page.

Being big fans of HTML5 and music videos (we were part of the MTV generation, after all), we couldn’t pass up sharing this. We’ve also included a little message in the video for all you software testers out there. Fire up Chrome and watch the whole thing here.

Even though Motorola formally stated today (see MoCoNews article) that Jha’s comments were essentially misconstrued and didn’t accurately reflect his intentions, the issue has remained a lightning rod for debate.

But for those of us in the software testing community, there’s a truly, positive message embedded in this issue:  Motorola was validating the critical importance of QA testing in the app development process.  

After all, consider Jha’s statement that, “one of the good and problematic things about Android is that it’s very very open. So anyone can put applications, third-party apps, on the market without any testing process….For power consumption, CPU utilization, some of those things, those applications are not tested. We’re beginning to understand the impact that has.”

For professional software testers, that confirms how important our work is, and actually suggests that the scope of mobile testing should be expanded.

Essentially, Jha wasn’t really referring to functional testing.  Or testing exclusively in the “clean and ideal” conditions of a lab environment.  Instead, he was describing the need for usability testing in the real-world to subjectively examine how apps and devices perform in live conditions and affect the user experience.  For instance, did the app run sluggishly?   Did it seriously tax the battery life?  These are vital questions, particularly for apps heavy on audio and video. 

At the end of the day, consumers are unlikely to differentiate whether their frustration over poor performance is caused by the smartphone or the app…or the interaction of both.  They just want to have a great experience with their new mobile “toy” or get their work done. 

Because if there isn’t enough testing on every device that the app is developed for, then (as Jha said) the smartphone gets returned and everyone– including the app publisher–loses out.

The two-day conference, which precedes the annual G8 economic forum, had many noteworthy moments all tracked to the max via twitter (see the infographic here courtesy of Mashable and Synthesio). Many of the 25,000 tweets were in response to comments from Sarkozy who called for tighter regulation of the internet. Speakers such as Eric Schmidt cautioned against regulating things before fully understanding them, saying that “we’ll move faster than any government.”

Most notable was the release of research done by the McKinsey Global Institute (highlights of the 50+ page report were published by Business Insider here), which shows the internet as being responsible for 20 percent of the economic growth for the 13 countries included in the study and for an estimated 2.9 percent of total worldwide GDP. These numbers put the internet at a more powerful driver of economic growth than agriculture or utilities.

All in all the eG8 was a great way to try and bridge the gap between the technology industry and policymakers, who often have a very hard time understanding each other. Only time will tell whether this open forum was a lot of gum flapping, or a positive sign that government wants advice from the world’s tech leaders on internet policy.

In the second and final installment of our Testing the Limits interview with James Whittaker, we get his thoughts on some recent changes to Google’s test philosophy; why certain principles cannot span all types of testing teams; mobile testing challenges; the value of software testing; subject matter for his upcoming book, How Google Tests Software; and much more.

If you missed part I of the interview, you can find it here. Also, be sure to scroll down to the end of the interview for links to more material from James Whittaker. Enjoy!

***********

uTest: You’ve been at Google now for over two years. Looking back, what’s been the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome during this time? And how much have the company’s testing procedures changed over this period?

James: My boss Pat Copeland took me aside a few weeks into my starting at Google and said something like “I know you’ve accomplished a bunch of things outside Google, but that’s all in the past. You’ve got to accomplish something inside Google. If you don’t no one will listen to you.” It was good advice. The message was that my past got me into Google but would get me no further. I took leadership and responsibility for testing of Chrome and Chrome OS, hard problems, important problems that required things I am good at and things I am not good at. That was the hardest part, being pushed outside my comfort zone. I never liked the execution part before, schedules and plans and meetings and disasters. It’s a lot easier as a consultant where you can happily imagine those things without experiencing them firsthand. I can’t believe that I used to advise people on these sorts of things before. I was surprised at how much I was learning and how much I was able to contribute. Now I take every opportunity to work outside my comfort zone. That’s where growth occurs.

As to the second part of this question, Google’s testing procedures have changed a lot. I think the Test Engineer role has been completely reinvented in the past two years.

uTest: We would imagine that a lot of testers and managers at smaller companies that will view your book as interesting, but not necessarily relevant to their daily testing lives. Explain why this is not the case and talk a little about the challenges of writing for an audience that includes teams of all sizes.

James: But it is the case! You can say the same things about my other books too. My books are meant to make you think differently about testing. It’s up to the reader to make it relevant by putting it into practice. There is no way I can write a book relevant to any specific style of testing or the practices of any specific company (except Google of course). All I can do is offer information and ideas and deliver them in, hopefully, an entertaining way. The problem is that too many people work for companies who just want them to keep doing the same old stuff. Change is too hard for them. Even if they wanted to test the way my books suggest, they can’t. I feel sorry for those people. In a better economy I would tell them to get a new employer. In this economy, well, it’s tougher. But there are also a lot of people who do own their destiny and can make changes in the way their company does testing and treats testers.

And partly, I don’t care about the effect on daily work. My books are a celebration of testing and I want testers to read them to learn and to enjoy and to appreciate that many others are involved in the same activity they are. I hope my books tie testers together and that some of the enthusiasm I have for testing will rub off and there will be more passionate people involved in this discipline.

uTest: Being at Google must have given you great insight into the unique testing challenges of the mobile world. How has your view of mobile testing changed over the course of the last two years?

James: I didn’t do any mobile testing before so I can’t say. But, dude, a device is a device. The mobile labs are cooler. The tools aren’t as highly advanced. There is a little more emphasis on manual testing (I like that). But software is software at the beginning, middle and end of the day.

uTest: It’s common for certain departments of a company to view software testing and QA as a cost-center. This doesn’t seem to be the case at Google. How can testers and test teams do a better job at showing their value to a company, like your team does at Google?

James: Don’t bother trying. Value isn’t something you can make up. It is binary. You are either valuable or you are not. Be the former and you will get recognized.

uTest: We know your book is still a work-in-progress, but can you give our readers a sneak-peak at some of the products that will be mentioned? Will you be discussing specifics for things like Chrome, Google Voice and others? Or will it be more general and philosophic in nature?

James: Actually it is “our” book as I have two coauthors Jason Arbon and Jeff Carollo. But the answer to your question is all of the above. Right now the plan is to feature all the majors like Android, Gmail, Chrome and so forth and also talk about the roles of the SWE, SET and TE plus the tools we use. Lots of specifics. Probably the most detailed and specialized book I have ever written.

Rapid Fire:

• Favorite (non-testing) blog: siliconslacker.blogspot.com. Careful, not PG 13 and very funny. But then again I am a big fan of satire.
• Last show you DVR’d: HBO’s A Game of Thrones
• Which celebrity plays James Whittaker when the book (inevitably) becomes a movie? The comedian Ron White. Southern accent, always has a drink in his hand.
• More likely audio book narrator: Morgan Freeman or Casey Kasem? Freeman, love that guy.
• You wouldn’t be caught dead where? Every answer I could give to this would offend someone. Pass.
• Favorite mobile app: Glympse: “share your where”

Editor’s note: We hope you enjoyed our latest interview with Google’s Test Director James Whittaker. We’ll be giving away some free copies of his upcoming book when it’s published. Be sure to check back in regularly to find out how to win yourself a free, signed copy!

In the meantime, here are a few links “from the vault” of James Whittaker:

Webinars:

• More Bang For Your Testing Buck
• Exploratory Software Testing
• 5 Ways To Revolutionize Your QA
• The Future of Software Testing
  

Interviews:

• Testing the Limits – Part I (2009)
• Testing the Limits – Part II (2009)
• Testing the Limits – Part I (2010)
• Testing the Limits – Part II (2010)
  

Blog Posts

• How Google Tests Software – Part one of six
• The SET Career Path
• This Code is Crap

Books

• Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design
• How to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing W/CD
• How to Break Web Software: Functional and Security Testing of Web Applications and Web Services. Book & CD
• How to Break Software Security

Two years ago, we got this crazy idea to start interviewing the giants of software testing, for a series now known as Testing the Limits. To kick things off, we shot some questions back and forth with the distinguished testing author/teacher/speaker/consultant…(deep breath)…. James Whittaker!

A frequent guest of the uTest blog – as well as the author and host of several eBooks and webinars – James is known throughout the industry as the Test Director for a little company called Google. If you’ve stopped by the Google Testing Blog at all in the last year or two, chances are you’ve read his posts.

Anyway, we’re extremely excited to have James back for his third exclusive interview – and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. In the first part of our Q&A, we discuss some recent changes at Google; a possible book deal; the future of cloud computing; testing Chrome OS; the problem with test automation; the upcoming GTAC event and why testing is (believe it or not) getting easier. For the second half of the interview, be sure to check back tomorrow.

**********

uTest: Good to have you back, James. Tell us what you’ve been up to? Anything different in your life at Google?

James: Funny you should lead with that! Yes, my role at Google is changing. I’ve passed the leadership of Chrome and Chrome OS testing to a colleague and taken over Cloud Computing. Lots of amazingly complicated back end/data center testing issues which are new and exciting. Google keeps pushing me outside my comfort zone in the most endearing way. Retirement in place hasn’t really been an option. But hey, one can dream.

uTest: We’ve noticed you’re blogging a lot more of late and you’ve started a Twitter account! How do you manage to find time for these things with the new challenges you’re faced with?

James: Believe it or not, the Cloud stuff is actually smaller than the Chrome/Chrome OS work in terms of the amount of time out of my day. The level of automation is very high and there is a lot we’ve been able to do put some very hard sub-problems on autopilot. My team here is seriously Jedi quality folk. Definitely good fodder for some future talk. But the Google-wide testing efforts in terms of security testing, testing tools, development tools and general evangelism is also officially part of my day job. I own the Google Testing blog and am also running GTAC this year. And yes, I finally succumbed to Twitter. It’s actually a lot of fun so far, 140 characters is so do-able.

uTest: Speaking of the blog, I noticed Pat Copeland mentioned the popularity of the current “How Google Tests Software” series. Any plans on turning that into a book?

James: More than plans, I am under contract with Addison Wesley and am working diligently on it. I am finding that as I dig deeper into Google internal testing processes I have to be more careful about what I publish. I have to avoid talking about confidential technology and innovations created by other Googlers who aren’t ready to discuss their work externally. So there is a backlog of stuff that requires review and once approval occurs, it makes sense to publish it all at once. The book format is ideal for that as opposed to trickling it out in blog form. Besides I love books, they are so cuddly and blogs are so not cuddly. And I also have two co-authors Jeff Carollo and Jason Arbon who I am mentoring through the writing process and that is bringing me a lot of satisfaction.

uTest: You made a comment in one of your blog posts about “automating to within the last inch of the human mind.” Can you tell us what you mean by that.

James: Hey, you’re stealing blog material from me! I was planning on describing this on the Google Testing blog as it did get a number of comments from curious readers. The central idea is that I think that test automation is often built to solve too big a problem. This broad scope makes automation brittle and flaky because it’s trying to do too much. There are certain things that automation is good at and certain things humans are good at and it seems to me a hybrid approach is better. What I want is automation that makes my job as a human easier. Automation is good at analyzing data and noticing patterns. It is not good at determining relevance and making judgment calls. Fortunately humans excel at judgment. So when I am doing exploratory testing, I want automation following me and helping. I can watch the UI (which it can’t) and it can watch the instructions hit the CPU (which I can’t). I can identify usability issues and the automation can trap exceptions and notice system issues. It’s cooperative and symbiotic. We have tools for this and are actively designing more tools where the automation gathers what it can and then presents it to the human for a decision…to within the last inch of the human mind. Get it?

uTest: Absolutely. I am sure the uTest crowd will like the message that the human mind is the most important part of the equation and that automation is here to help!

James: You bet. The human mind is key and uTest provides minds that scale. I may be trying to drive a lot of hard testing problems to extinction, but intelligence at scale is not one of them.

uTest: The theme of last year’s GTAC was “Test to Testability” – where you highlighted several methodologies and tools that could be used to build testability into products. What is the theme of this year’s GTAC conference and what are the implications for testers and testing managers?

James: “Cloudy with a Chance of Tests” It’s Cloud Computing with a twist. At Google we believe the cloud fundamentally changes not only the way testing tools and techniques are applied but also the very nature of testing itself. If this is too cloudy of an answer, stay tuned!

uTest: The world of testing moves incredibly fast at times. That said, is it possible to “future-proof” the theories and methods you write about in your books? Talk about some of the challenges of trying to stay current on the latest testing trends.

James: That’s easy. You stay current by inventing the latest trends not following them. Invention is less about being able to read the future and more about a willingness to experiment and be wrong. You should see our drawing room floor at Google, it’s a graveyard of failed experiments. We purposefully try to do things differently to make sure we’re not missing some great new idea or technique. We’ll try almost anything once and we push hard to fail fast. Staying open minded is the key. If you are willing to experiment and expect everything you try to fail, when something actually works, well, you know its something special.

uTest: Big picture question: With the emergence of the cloud, automated tools and other technologies….is software testing getting easier? Or is it a case of the “more we learn, the less we know”?

James: It is getting easier, way easier. There are so many options now. Computing power that makes testing millions of configurations a matter of a couple hours instead of completely impossible. Crowdsourcing that alleviates the need for expensive hardware acquisition and maintenance and hard to manage off-shoring. Developers who get quality are in larger number now and they write fewer bugs. Newer technology is making old and stupid test ideas and tools obsolete. Gotta love that. The web as a single platform increases test reuse. Dev to test ratios are coming in line with reality and sensibility. Anyone who says testing is getting harder is doing it wrong.

Editor’s note: Check back tomorrow for the second half of our interview with James Whittaker.