The mere thought of air travel during the holidays is annoying enough to send most people running to their nearest bus or train station. The crowds, the lines, the delays, the zip-lock bags and 3 oz bottles of shampoo… but wait, there’s more!
Late last week, a five-hour computer glitch caused flight delays across the U.S. that were still rippling through the transportation system for most of the day. The problem was made worse by the fact that the National Airspace Data Interchange Network failed at both its locations — Atlanta and Salt Lake City. (Ed. note: I’ll try hard to avoid using the word “crash” in this post.)
The Federal Aviation Administration blamed a four-hour software failure for causing airline delays and cancellations across the U.S. The shutdown lasted from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET after “a software configuration” malfunction today in Salt Lake City.
On Wednesday, Mashable announced the finalists in its uber-competitive Open Web Awards competition. And after 450,000 votes for more than 80,000 different sites and blogs, I’m proud to report that your humble software testing blog (that would be us) has been named one of the five finalists for the “Top Corporate Blog”.
If you know how popular Mashable is in social media circles, you know that this is a big deal. We take a great deal of pride in using the uTest blog to bring you the latest news from the software industry, best practices on mobile app testing, uTest company info, and original content (from us and guest posts from some of our top testers). So sincere thanks and congratulations to the entire uTest universe… we couldn’t do any of this without our amazing customers, testers, investors and friends in the media.
And if you want to help us go for the gold, you can vote for uTest in the final round every day between now and December 12th!
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 desktop and mobile environments present when creating web apps.
Doron was among a select group of speakers chosen to present at GTAC, including Microsoft, smartFOCUS Digital, Sauce Labs and of course Google, where he examined the complimentary role a community of professional testers plays in mobile testing.
Check out Doron’s presentation below! All other presentations can now be seen on YouTube.
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 report no fistfights or arrests thus far).
Remember, this Bug Battle competition ends Wednesday, November 11th at 11:59pm EST — and there’s nearly $4,000 in prize money at stake. So if you have been sitting on the sidelines, it’s not too late to seize the opportunity now. Remember, it just takes one interesting bug to win!
If you prefer usability testing, you can also test the navigation and workflows of these three e-tail leaders with the feedback survey portion of this Bug Battle competition. We’ll be awarding prizes for the best feedback, as well as the highest-quality bugs. As always, it’s the quality of your testing work — not the quantity — that catches our judges’ attention!
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 this event to recognize companies that are exploring new and innovative avenues of communications and marketing. We were fortunate enough to be among those companies and agencies who were honored for our use of new media to build and engage our community.
It’s great to be counted among those who are pushing the limits of social networking, blogs, forums and other forms of media, but we’re just getting started. We’ve already established a vibrant presence on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but we’re always on the lookout for new ideas.
So with that, I’m inviting you to drop us a comment or shoot us a note with your thoughts about how we could make our social media more useful, informative or entertaining.
While scanning Wired.com this weekend, I came across an article that’s scary enough to fit right in with Halloween. Most security
(Click to enlarge chart)
studies 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, tr.im).
And while Twitter and URL shortening services aren’t dangerous in and of themselves, they present a wonderful tool for blackhats. In this case, Wired published the findings of a study from computer security firm, Kaspersky.
As many as one in every 500 web addresses posted on Twitter lead to sites hosting malware, according to researchers at Kaspersky Labs who have deployed a tool that examines URLs circulating in tweets.
The spread of malware is aided by the popular use of shortened URLs on Twitter, which generally hide the real website address from users before they click on a link, preventing them from self-filtering links that appear to be dodgy.
1 in 500 doesn’t sound so scary to you? Check out what that .2% really means after the jump.
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 networking that will be held in the STPCon exhibits area. There, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with your peers, connect with execs from uTest and STP, discover new products and features and talk to the experts who created them.
Another great perk for attendees is that you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the latest and greatest trends with industry leaders such as James Bach and Michael Bolton.
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 why we need your help to get the Software Testing Blog into the running for Mashable’s Open WebAwards in the “Best Corporate Blog” category.
So if you like the uTest blog, this is your chance to cast your vote and support uTest and our community. Here’s how it works:
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 flight schedule back to normal.Engineers found a malfunction Saturday morning in the system that controls the airspace across the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland, a statement from the National Air Traffic Services said.
The agency said it had reverted to back-up equipment as engineers worked to fix the system. The agency said the problem did not create a safety issue but could cause delays in flights that could last hours.
We usually associate software glitches with apps that we interact with every day — operating systems, social networks or mobile apps. But it’s easy to forget about the software apps that now run our air traffic control, our automobiles, our hospitals and our financial systems.
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:
The mere thought of air travel during the holidays is annoying enough to send most people running to their nearest bus or train station. The crowds, the lines, the delays, the zip-lock bags and 3 oz bottles of shampoo… but wait, there’s more!
operating systems, social networks or mobile apps. But it’s easy to forget about the software apps that now run our air traffic control, our automobiles, our hospitals and our financial systems.
