Software Testing Blog

Once we announced the Search Engine Bug Battle results, the press rooms were buzzing. Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the top coverage the uTest community received this week. The headlines say it all – Google comes out on top, but Bing definitely impressed our testers.

• “Google Still Dominates in Search Engine User Testing”

• “Bug Testers: Google is Clean, Bing is Buggy”

• “Bing is the Buggiest (But Second-Best) Search Engine”

• “Bug Testers Prefer Google to Bing”

• “Google Tops Bing, Yahoo in Bug Battle”

For a complete list of bug battle coverage, check out the uTest Newsroom!

We couldn’t have done it without our talented, bug-hunting uTesters – thanks again for all your hard work and feedback!

And by trophies, we mean nearly $4000 in cash prizes.

Yes, the results of the Battle of the Desktop Twitter Apps are final. The week-long QA competition – in which more than 600 testers  searched for bugs in five of the most popular Twitter apps – was a  success. As expected, we received hundreds (320 to be exact) of interesting GUI, technical and functional bugs, so selecting a handful of winners was obviously no easy task.

In fact, it was so difficult that we decided to expand our winners list. Also, be sure to download our free special report (PDF), detailing the results of the post-battle usability survey.

As you’ll see from the results page, the Battle of the Desktop Twitter Apps saw several repeat winners, along with some fresh, new uTest talent. Here’s a top-line list of the winners:

• Top Tester: Bernard Lelchuck (Israel)
• Top Novice: Tyler Ritchie (USA)
• Top US Tester: Joseph Ours

Tyler and Bernard also finished 1st and 2nd in the “Best Bug” category. Other winners for “Best Bug” included:

• Claire Pelayo (Philippines)
• Bryan Fisk (New Zealand)
• Aymen Chehaider (India)

As far as the apps were concerned, the uTest community ranked Tweet Deck #1 in terms of usability, feature set and overall quality. Coming in second (also in every category) was Seesmic Desktop, followed by Twirl, Tweetr and Twitteroo.

The results have already been featured in a Mashable story yesterday, ase well as a bunch of other news outlets, and of course, hundreds of individual tweets.

Once again, congratulations to all of the Bug Battle winners, and thanks to all those from our community who participated. If you’re aleady looking forward to our next competition – and we know you are – be sure to send us your ideas. We can be reached at marketing@utest.com, and of course, on Twitter.

Interested in building an iPhone App?  If so, there’s a must-read article over at Mashable.  In their words:

Ten23 Software has created an entire 37 page guide to the development process (below), decisions they made and what they learned during the creation of their PhotoKast app. Their hope is that the document might provide insights for other developers when they start out on iPhone App development projects.

Have experience building mobile apps for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android or other mobile platforms?  If so, drop us a note and share your experience and tips.