QUEST, one of the top software testing conferences, will be held in Dallas this year (April 19-23).  And uTest is getting geared up and is thrilled to be a part of this conference.

In addition to inviting Doron to be a keynote presenter, QUEST features a week-long agenda packed with more than 100 opportunities for attendees to build new skills and prepare for the testing professions of the future.

From exploratory testing to test automation to security audits to crowdsourced testing,  QUEST will cover a wide range of testing topics that give attendees insight into the latest best practices and innovative approaches to testing today. To learn more, here’s a sneak peek at the QUEST Magazine.

Special Note: Members of the uTest community interested in registering for QUEST are eligible for

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With our testing community currently hammering away in the “Bug Battle of the TV Networks” this week, it’s time to take a moment to reflect on our February bug-iversary.

On February 11, 2007, during its very first overseas deployment to Okinawa, Japan, six F-22 Raptors flying from Hawaii experienced multiple computer crashes, including navigation, communication and fuel system crashes, when crossing the International Date Line.

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Bug-iversary Alert! Tomorrow is the 20-year anniversary of the “crash” of the AT&T Long Distance Network. On January 15, 1990 faulty software was installed on the AT&T Electronic Switching System (Number 4 ESS): a one-line bug incapacitated the entire system, disabling switches throughout half the network.

Known as one of the most serious telecom bugs in history, more than 75 million calls were not connected during 9 hours, an estimated $60 million loss.

Dennis Burke of California Polytechnic said it best: “The Jan. 1990 incident showed how bugs in self-healing software can bring down healthy systems, and the difficulty of detecting obscure load- and time-dependent defects in software.”

Speaking of “load defects,” AT&T — after signing up to be exclusive U.S. provider of iPhone service — has recently come under fire for the quality of its network coverage. Businessweek‘s top headlines read:

• An AT&T Mystery: Abrupt New York iPhone Shutdown
• AT&T Mulls Plans to Deal with iPhone Data Demand
• Can AT&T Meet iPhone Network Demands?

In light of this bug-iversary, I can’t help but wonder if more testing should have been done before AT&T took on the massive data demands of modern 3G smartphones? What do you think?

Breaking news! This week, we officially announced the results of our Q4 Bug Battle – Battle of the E-Tailers – along with a few prominent media outlets, including USA Today, Fast Company, Mashable! and eWeek.

Curious about the results? Check out the articles below:

• Study: Amazon Most User Friendly by Byron Acohido (@lastwatchdog)
  

• Amazon Trumps Target, Walmart in Bug Battle by Kate Rockwood (@katerockin)

• Holiday Shopping: Amazon FTW! [STUDY] by Christina Warren (@film_girl)

• Amazon Is Least-Buggy Retail Site, Says Report by Nicholas Kolakowski (@eWEEKNews)

So, the battle begs the question: Which e-tailer do you trust the most?

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.

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 results of a new study based on the thousands of servers they manage in their data centers, and the results are surprising.  Memory error rates are thousands of times higher than anyone previously believed.  (CNET has a good summary of the research here.)

For software testers, this represents a significant new wrinkle in identifying bugs.  Wonky behavior and computer crashes could really be a hardware problem, and these sorts of hardware issues are way more common than we previously thought.

So what does that mean for your testing?  Here are a few thoughts that could help.

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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 featured a bug of a much scarier kind: H1N1 flu.  Over one hundred gamers have been diagnosed with the virus, many of whom have since traveled back home carrying it with them.

So as a reminder – get to know the symptoms of H1N1 flu and see a doctor if you feel ill.  Stay healthy everyone!

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 and went at it to show off their web testing skills. Those who discovered the most creative and valuable bugs were awarded an iPod Touch, an iPod Nano and an iPod Shuffle.

We had a great time networking with Boston’s testers, developers and students.  We hope to see you soon in the uTest community reporting showstopper bugs for the biggest software companies in the world.

Great to meet you all in person and we look forward to doing it again later this year.  Stay tuned for details on our next P.E.S.T. event.

Check out the uTest Flickr page to see more pics from this event and other uTest gatherings.

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 new blog.

As you’ll notice, only six of the plagues have been published thus far. The seventh and final software testing plague was intentionally omitted, as he is accepting submissions from his readers.

Before you send him your suggestions (we included an email address at the bottom of this post), here’s a few excerpts from some of the plagues he’s discussed so far:

The Plague of Blindness: “Software testing is much like game playing while blindfolded. We can’t see bugs; we can’t see coverage; we can’t see code changes. This information, so valuable to us as testers, is hidden in useless static reports. If someone outfitted us with an actual blindfold, we might not even notice.”

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After web browsers and social media sites, you were probably wondering how we’d top ourselves for the next uTest Bug Battle. Well, after months of debate and deliberation, uTesters will compete to find bugs in six of the top Twitter desktop apps!

Unless you’ve been asleep, in a coma, or camping in the wilderness for the past two years, you’re likely aware that the Twitterverse is expanding at a mind boggling rate (thanks, Ashton and Oprah). And since hundreds of apps have been created around the popular micro-blogging site, we figured they’d make a perfect subject for our now famous Bug Battle. Here are the Twitter apps we’ll be testing, in no particular order:

1.    Tweet Deck 0.25
2.    Seesmic DESKTOP
3.    Twhirl 0.9.2
4.    Tweetr 3.4
5.    Twitterific 3.2 (mac only)
6.    Twitteroo 1.5 (pc only)

The contest kicks off RIGHT NOW (12:01am ET on Thursday) and will run through 11:59pm ET next Wednesday, June 3rd.

During that time, members of our QA community will be searching for the most serious, compelling bugs they can find, including technical, functional and GUI bugs. uTesters can focus their efforts on as many or as few of these as they choose.  We will be awarding more than $3,000 in prize money for:

* Top overall tester (based on quality of bugs and feedback)
* Top novice tester (same criteria)
* Top US-based tester (same)
* Top five individual bugs (severity and complexity)
* Best feedback (post-contest survey about the feature set, functionality and usability)

You can get more info on the Twitter Bug Battle. To find out how you – yes you! – can win the money finding bugs in these Twitter applications, be sure to check out the Bug Battle thread in our testers-only forums.

Have questions or ideas for future Bug Battles? Drop us a comment. Want to keep up with the Bug Battle action while it’s going on?  We’ll be sharing real-time updates throughout the weeklong Twitter contest on (where else?) Twitter.