@michaelbolton — “Like exploratory testing, Agile isn’t a thing you do; it’s a way to think and work. A means to an end, not an end in itself.” 

@lanettecream — “I’ve noticed that the longer I practice agile, the less tolerance I have for my own hoarding. Agile: not keeping sh*t in case.”

@zspencer — “OH: Definately not. If they run, they might fail. We don’t want to fail.” Context: asked to run the tests .”

@sbarber — “Advancements” in software testing often degenerate into “tired cage matches” between old- and older-school? When do we get a *new* school?”

@qahatesyou — “Actually, I’m not in a particular school of testing. I got expelled from them all.”

@FionaCCharles — “Softwaretesting isn’t a service. Software development is a service. Testing is integral to the collaborative process of sw development.”

@chris_mcmahon — “ORLY? “91 per cent of managers thought it important software development and testing be independent of each other.”

@iotashan — “Testing a process deep in my mobile app has me saying “nowhammiesnowhammiesnowhammiesnowhammiesSTOP!” with each attempt at fixing this bug.”

@testinggeek — “Agility is mindset. You can enforce process but you cannot enforce mindsets.”

@zspencer — “When code is incomprehensible, it is not the authors fault. The fault is with the environment which influences writing incomprensible code.”

@michaelbolton — “A test without human evaluation is not a test. Humans can be removed from checks, but not from design or evaluation.”

@QualityFrog — “YAGNI (you ain’t gonna need it) is a useful consideration in software dev, and in life.”

@adamgoucher — “Best quote from this week’s writing excuses: ‘i think twilight has done so much harm [to the vampire genre]‘”

@jamesmarcusbach — “We live in abstractions. We navigate abstractions. What we know as life is relationships among abstractions.”

@cowboytesting — “I’m starting to see that succeeding as an employee of most companies is frighteningly similar to getting through high school in one piece.”

As a matter of fact, the idea of using a community of professional testers to test outside the firewall was so new and disruptive to the status quo that we made it part of our mission to educate the market though webinars, whitepapers and various other mediums, including the blog that you’re currently reading.

Anyway, as time passed, we discovered that most people quickly understood the value of real-world testing, mainly because they’d already been wrestling with that very problem:  how to get accurate test results outside of the sterile confines of the QA lab. Although some tech leaders have taken these lessons to heart, many are still discovering the concept of real-world testing for the first time, so…

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, we launched our latest information campaign: www.InTheWildTesting.com. The web site – and associated social media channels, including a Twitter profile – are intended to educate forward-thinking technology leaders about the necessity, benefits and real use cases of in-the-wild testing.

Why here? Why now? One reason is that it coincides nicely with TechCrunch Disrupt, which is happening in San Francisco as we speak. More on that in a second. The other reason is that adoption of in-the-wild testing continues to grow exponentially due to market factors that include:

• Fragmentation of OS platforms, and devices like smartphones, tablets and connected TVs
• Increasing role of geo-location in personalizing the apps experience
• Exponential permutations of browsers, plug-ins and anti-virus
• Imperfect connectivity (both wi-fi and cellular)
• Increasing consumerization of enterprise mobility policies

Together, these conditions emphasize the need for organizations of all sizes to augment their in-house testing – both manual and automated – and test under real-world conditions to ensure their apps are functional, reliable, secure and intuitive when in the hands of users.

As mentioned, inthewildtesting.com is kicking things off in style at TC Disrupt. If you’re not able to attend (and especially is you are) then we highly suggest that you check out our dedicated TC Disrupt page, complete with a Flickr & YouTube stream, Twitter feed, a running diary and more.

Stay tuned for more details. Until then, happy testing out there in the wild!

However, a new approach to building websites is threatening to turn this notion of URLs on its head. Two simple characters – #!  (called either a hashbang or a shebang) – are creating more trouble than anything seen in years. Adding those to a URL makes it something else entirely, but to understand why we need to first go over a couple of web fundamentals.

Many of you are probably aware of the underlying process behind opening a URL, but for the uninitiated here’s a very simple summary. When my browser wants to open a page, it takes the URL and splits out the server (blog.utest.com) and the path (/hashbangs-the-future-of-urls-or-the-end-of-the-internet/2011/06/). The browser connects to the server using HTTP and requests whatever content is at that path. The server then sends back the data. Over the course of loading a single webpage, the browser will use this methodology to first load the HTML and then load any style sheets, images, Javascript, and more.

With the invention of AJAX, not every webpage has to be loaded like this. Javascript code running in a browser can download snippets of HTML and update portions of a page on-the-fly, giving websites the illusion of dynamic controls and content.

What if you configured Javascript to load all the content for the entire website? In other words, what if your HTML was just a skeleton, and then you had Javascript code download all the content separately? It sounds strange, but the benefit is a boost in performance. The HTML framework gets downloaded once, and then any other pageviews on that site are loaded via Javascript. There’s only one problem – if a getting to a page is really just executing a string of Javascript code, how do you create a link to that page?

Enter the hashbang. In a URL, anything after ‘#’ gets ignored by the web browser and the web server. If I load http://twitter.com/#!/utest (Twitter uses hashbangs), then the web server for Twitter never sees the “/utest” part of the request. The browser simply asks for twitter.com and ignores the rest. What Twitter sends back is a basic HTML skeleton and a big chunk of Javascript.

That chunk of Javascript runs in the browser and it knows all. It sees the text after the ‘#!’ and knows that it should request that content separately from Twitter’s APIs. After the Javascript downloads the content, it updates the HTML skeleton (or DOM) and inserts the actual Twitter content. Click on a link within Twitter, and your browser just sees you reloading twitter.com. But that same Javascript will jump in and dynamically load whatever new content you request. The bandwidth savings for Twitter are enormous, and it also results in a faster and snappier user experience.

So what’s the downside? In order to use Twitter, I must have Javascript enabled. What’s worse, if I want to write an application to automatically load or read Twitter pages, I would need to give it a Javascript interpreter to work. Also, if there’s any kind of bug in the core Javascript, then an entire site will fail (just ask Gawker about their experiences with hashbangs).

What does this mean for the humble URL? Well, hashbangs are something new. They no longer represent pages, but are instead Javascript commands. The downside is that many of the conventions of HTTP, like 404 error codes and 301 redirects, are no longer relevant. On the other hand, the user experience should be somewhat improved.

Of course, many of the upcoming changes in HTML5 may make this all irrelevant anyway. Only time will tell.

In light of the holidays, we’ve made this contest easy! All you have to do is follow uTest on all 3 social networks and let us know with a simple tweet.

RULES:
1. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and become a fan on Facebook
2. Tweet to @uTest with hash tag #FollowedAll3
3. Include your top three prizes (from grab bag below) in your tweet. That’s it!

(e.g. @uTest I want to win the iPad, Xbox 360 or Cash! #FollowedAll3)

Each week (for the next four weeks!), we will draw two names from all tweets containing the hash tag, #FollowedAll3. You can tweet once a day (to increase your chances). All winners then have the opportunity to choose one prize from our grab bag below (first come, first serve). And because we’re so excited to start the new year, the eight prizes add up to $2011! Here’s the grab bag:

• iPad ($400) – Winner: @atulangra, 12/15/10
  
• Kindle ($139) – Winner: @scottaleavitt, 12/28/10
• Xbox w/Kinect ($379) - Winner: @fcapucci, 12/17/10
• Wii ($200) – Winner: @enofal, 12/30/10
  
• PlayStation 3 ($300) – Winner: @sreenurajvarma, 12/21/10
• iPod Touch ($229) – Winner: @eat7herich, 12/23/10
  
• Boxee Box ($199) – Winner: @rriky92, 1/06/11
  
• Cash ($165) – Winner: @nandagopalr, 1/04/11

Happy 2011 everyone! The contest will run from Mon, December 13 — Fri, January 7 @ 5pm ET. As the prizes are chosen, we will list the winners and cross out the prizes right in this post (e.g. iPad ($400) Winner: @jennymoebius). Make sure to check back in to the blog to see if YOU are the lucky winner! We will also contact winners by DM on Twitter.

Congratulations to all the winners!!!

Official terms and conditions

Concern about privacy is hardly a new topic.  Back in 1999 Scott McNealy, then the CEO of Sun Microsystems notoriously said, “you have zero privacy.  Get over it.”  I love the brevity, Scott, but that is not going to get you on a Hallmark card anytime soon.  Yes, the web brought on a change in the level of privacy that users may expect, but the role of marketing has always been to predict the intent of potential customers by tracking user behavior.  Computers and the internet, however, have yielded a seismic shift in the cost, speed, availability and sheer amount of data – perhaps changing at a rate faster than humans can conceptually deal with, and thus creating debates about how to strike a balance in this brave new world.

In 2010, however, we’ve seen more information about the reconciliation of online and offline data. From cars, to finances, to the recent announcements about the TSA’s new full-body scanners, it’s no longer just our web browsing history that’s available to evil marketers like myself.  Here’s a quick rundown of a few privacy issues, how they can be exploited, and what you should know about protecting yourself:

Full Body Scanners

The US Transportation Security Administration (or TSA) recently deployed 450 full body scanners at airports.  The goal of the scanners is to provide security officials with a quick scan of a person for weapons and/or contraband.  The scanners, however, have raised concerns about safety and privacy.

While the radiation risk is to the employees operating the machinery, the privacy threat is real.  Airlines most likely knows your name, address, credit card, and anything else in their database from your online purchase.  From there, it’s not much a leap to determine precisely who you are.  Yes, you’re anonymous in number, but could airline industry marketers use such information?  What if a local gym, heath food store, or weight loss program did an instant analysis of your body fat and targeted their marketing at you? Is there any guarantee the images aren’t being stored?  Or shared? There’s a lot of uncertainty about the future of these scanners and the data they derive.

Short of refusing to fly, your options are limited.  The TSA, unfortunately, has the ultimate say in who gets on the plane and who doesn’t.  Plan for the worst, hope for the best.  …and maybe threaten to arrest them.

Social Networks

Social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, face scrutiny on two sides.  The manner in which such companies handle and utilize user data is scrutinized, but also what information will be utilized by advertisers and/or made available to 3rd parties (whether it’s evil marketers or just “friends of friends”).

Want proof of users’ respective ignorance to the power of social networks?  Look no further than PleaseRobMe.com, who consolidated Tweets about people leaving their houses unoccupied.  While this behavior and data still exists (see people going on vacation for a couple weeks), sites like PleaseRobMe and YourOpenBook.org certainly illustrate the potential vulnerability of our over-sharing ways.

It’s not just nefarious individuals who can exploit this information, though.  Corporations have long been using Facebook to profile potential employees, but can now use publicly available data to fire current employees.  Governments are also beginning to utilize data — as the Israeli armed forces recently used public information on Facebook to track down draft dodgers.

Strides have been made — big-league players like Facebook and Google publish straightforward info on how to manage one’s privacy settings.  (See Facebook Privacy Controls and Google Privacy Center)… not all global powerhouses from the past have been so user-friendly.

Behavioral Marketing

Google is a data magnet, consuming and harvesting everything in its field of in.  From mining unsecured Wi-Fi data, to Street View (and getting banned by the Czech Republic), watchdog groups have long been wary of any one company having so much data (read as: power).  Needless to say, they know a lot about you.

Companies like X+1, however, take it a step further by harnessing this information for the good of marketing.  WSJ.com recently did a nice article on the power of X+1 and their rival companies.  To oversimplify, X+1 cross references data from numerous sources to paint a picture of you as an individual.  X+1 can then use this information to serve you relative marketing promotions.  I find this level of targeting fascinating but there are tools that you can use to opt-out of this granular level of targeting.  NAI has a tool to let you mass opt-out of behavior targeting across many companies.

Location-Based Services

Location-Based Services (or LBS) such as FourSquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places, are the essence of removing the privacy layer between you and retailers.  LBS games allow you to “check in” at your favorite companies, thereby allowing them to offer you specific promotions.  While the games are currently only triggered by specific “check in” actions, there are a lot of people concerned with the potential privacy exploits.  As CNET points out, “Facebook application developers are able to store their own check-in data in the Facebook Places database and retrieve information from the database.”  In English, this means that companies could potentially access your history and more personal information than you anticipated.

Cars

For better or worse, this ain’t your father’s car.  Automobiles are becoming more wired by the day.  To be more specific, vehicles are becoming more wired for the better while drivers are becoming more wired for the worse.  Driving while texting is now banned in several US states, including uTest’s home state of Massachusetts.

GPS-based speed limits are one of the original tools of monitoring your location.  Basically the software would cap your speed based on your global coordinates, preventing motorists from exceeding the local speed limits.  Cool in concept, but are people willing to drive cars that can be remotely turned off at any point?

There’s been talk of a possible solution, though: blocking your cell signal.  The logistics of these requirement are still years away and becomes more of a political discussion than a privacy one, unless the technology utilizes your cell phone’s location to automatically turn your phone on/off to calls and data.

Before either of those concepts reach implementation I’m hoping that before we get to that point we have Google cars hit mass market (I cannot wait for the day that I can cruise down the highway to work at 100+mph… from the back seat while playing Angry Birds).  Google Cars will certainly have privacy concerns, though as it will inevitably know where and when you’re going, and possibly who you’re with (via cell phone and/or RFID’s).  And if Google wants some “test drivers” for this world-changing innovation, I think I may know where they can find ~31,000 beta testers.

I’m interested in hearing what tech/privacy options you think will be have the biggest impact (for better or for worse) in 2011.  And how will you tell your parents to protect themselves online?  As for me, I’m going into private browsing mode.

Here are a few of our faves (click to expand)…

GTAC begins!

John networks with GTAC attendees

Pradeep Soundararajan presenting

GTAC crew huddles together for a quick pic

Can you find John? Click for hint.

Doc James Whittaker presenting

Check out the spread!

Delicious authentic Indian food

CONGRATS to:

-1st place: @rodydio, the geo-party app, wins an iPod Touch
-2nd place: @Ed_Wing, the thoughtful alarm clock app, wins a Nano
-3rd place: @OrenTodoros, the swear-in-any-language app, wins a Shuffle

Thank you again to everyone who participated, including the incredible voter turn out! 621 people turned up to support their favorite apps. Special thanks to our honorable mentions @linzlovesyou, @statelessSH, @Omeriko21, @the_qa_guy and @eurekalopes.

There were so many good ideas – let’s hope someone out there is listening and creates them for us. We’d be happy to test them!

The “inventors” of the top three apps with the most votes will win new iPods! We’ll officially announce the winners this Fri, Oct 1.

Thank you to all who participated in the contest! We received many great ideas last week. If you would like to connect directly with or follow our top “app inventors,” please check out their Twitter profiles at: @statelessSH, @Omeriko21, @rodydio, @Ed_Wing, @linzlovesyou, @OrenTodoros, @eurekalopes and @the_qa_guy.

Well, here’s your chance to tell the Twittersphere your best ideas. Be creative, be innovative, be wacky & off the wall; the best ideas will win shiny new iPods.

HOW TO ENTER
1. Follow @uTest on Twitter
2. Be creative! Tweet/Reply to @uTest with your wacky or useful, non-existent mobile app with the contest hash tag #KickAssApps

Example: @uTest a video app that watches where you’re driving so that you can text, email, play doodle jump & drive simultaneously #KickAssApps

CONTEST DURATION
The contest will run for the duration of this entire week — Sept 20 thru Sept 24 (11:59pm ET) — so get your ideas in soon!

JUDGING
The top ten most creative/entertaining/funniest mobile apps will get shortlisted by the uTest team. We’ll then post the top ten best ideas on the uTest blog for three days — Sept 28 thru Sept 30 (11:59pm ET) — and let our readers choose their favorite app through a poll. The “inventors” of the top three apps with the most votes will win a new iPod! We’ll announce the winners on Fri, Oct 1.

PRIZES
–1st Place: iPod Touch
–2nd Place: iPod Nano
–3rd Place: iPod Shuffle

So, next time you’re on the road — working, gaming, social networking, reading, listening to music, taking photos, or just checking the weather — and can’t find the app you’re looking for… Ask yourselves, “Where’s The App For That?” and tweet your best ideas. Good luck!!

For official contest rules and legalese, see our Terms & Conditions.

And while this particular bug has since been squashed by Twitter’s engineers, it’s still an interesting defect. As all of the major new media heavyweights noted, this Twitter bug briefly enabled the brevity-challenged among you to stretch your legs and break free from the shackles of 140 characters. To put it more plainly, let’s bring in Alexia Tsotsis (@alexia) from TechCrunch:

The Twitter bug which has left many befuddled is exploiting a length limit flaw in the new t.co URL shortener, allowing users to tweet out non-URL links of outrageously more than 140 characters

If you’d like to reproduce the effect, and it seems to be catching, you can visit http://twitter.com/share?text=&url=yourtext, add whatever you want in place of “yourtext,” copy and paste your new t.co URL to Twitter and long tweet away.

Update: Looks like the nimble engineers at Twitter have disabled the feature within the hour this post went up, much to everyone’s dismay. Scripting News’ Dave Winer went so far as to create a web app for the Fat Tweets.

For those of you who follow Twitter (sorry, couldn’t resist), check out the entire TechCrunch article, as well as Mashable’s take.