News

We had a chance to highlight Graphic.ly - a company that opted to release early (and imperfectly) in exchange for valuable user feedback. As co.s look to their peers and audiences to help define product features, there's a greater need for scalable testing platforms. Here's a summary of eight useful services that will help put you on the path to product greatness (including uTest!).

Outsourcing and off-shoring typically involve the displacement of large-scale project resources, lack of accountability, and hidden management costs, and companies are searching for an alternative. Executives are tired of being burned by time zone challenges, inflexible contracts and a loss of control and quality. For a growing number of companies, the alternative is crowdsourcing.

A battle of the e-tailers was recently fought between online heavyweights Amazon, Walmart and Target, which were all ranked by experts according to pricing, usability, product search and reported bugs. The competition uncovered a staggering 500 bugs among the big three with Target leading the way as the online glitch champion. Find out how the slugfest (or bugfest) played out.

Online shopping during the holidays may not be as seamless as customers might want. A new study from software testing services firm uTest, which asked 600 testers from 20 countries to examine three popular shopping sites for technical, functional and security bugs, found that Target had the most reported holes (261), followed by Walmart (150) and then Amazon (94).

Thanks to Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales, e-tailers are getting more visitors and making more sales than this time last year. But which online shopping destinations are the easiest to use? Which have the fewest/most usability bugs? uTest, a service that lets software developers crowdsource their bug testing, recently conducted a study titled “Battle of the E-Tailers” to find out.

I was very impressed with uTest, I must admit. CEO and Co-Founder Doron Reuveni introduced me to the service. It’s an application testing platform, that uses real phones in the field to do their testing. Called “wild testing”, this platform now has over 21,000 testers in its network across the world. GoMo 1-to-1from Cian Gomo on Vimeo.

uTest was one of only five companies chosen to participate in the Graduate Circle, a select group named “sector leaders” from prior Under the Radar events, who are gaining rapid market adoption and momentum. Here Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest, is being interviewed by Michelle Sklar from bnetTV on the growing challenge and importance of mobile app testing.

Matt Johnston, VP-marketing and community, uTest “It's easy to think of search marketing as a combination of tactics: keyword selection, bid management and landing page design—and these are important to search success. But the most valuable lesson I've learned is..."

uTest business model was not a surprise for me as I’ve gotten interested in the space some while back but it was very interesting to hear it described first hand by Doron himself. As the mobile market is exploding day after day, the crowdsourced testing model does make more and more sense and Doron did a good job at presenting us with the challenges & benefits.

uTest, which provides crowdsourced QA and software testing, announced that it has more than 20,000 testers in its community. I recommend that anyone with some spare time and a desire to make extra money look into becoming one of the company’s testers. The uTest community continues to expand in sheer size, diversity level of testing skill & tester collaboration.

Matt Johnston is VP-marketing and com-munity for uTest, a software testing market-place service. When assembling his marketing staff for this startup, Johnston said he didn't necessarily look for the usual suspects: advertising agencies or PR. Instead he looked for potential employees with experience in conducting primary & secondary research, and writing clearly about it.

Today on the Software Testing & Quality Assurance FaceBook Group I found a Discussion Thread about uTest.com as a way for testers to make some extra income. Say no more! I’m all about finding ways to make money. Today I really did take the time to explore and found the model to be a very interesting way to handle software testing by the masses!

It's an alluring premise: buzzword-turned-reality “crowdsourcing” is the act of passing busywork onto a nebulous cloud of humanity. In large part, the crowdsourcing movement has been held up by the lack of business tasks suitable to practice, but as the Web expands and crowdsourcing companies produce APIs, these barriers are starting to disintegrate.

A recent uTest survey of 1,100 software usability testers worldwide showed that Google’s search engine is still the favorite and that, although it has issues, Bing managed to impress nonetheless. uTests’ “Battle of the Search Engines” survey looked at bugs in Yahoo!, Bing, Google, and Google Caffeine and ranked each based on accuracy, speed, relevance, and usability.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) took first place in every category of uTest's "Battle of the Search Engines" while Bing had the most reported bugs. The search engine survey was conducted during a week-long testing period in August and is based on the opinions of 1,100 software usability testers from more than 50 countries. The testers tried out Bing, Google, Caffeine, and Yahoo.

I received a press release today with the results of a uTest comparison of Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Google's new sandbox search engine, Caffeine. uTest used "crowdsourcing" for their comparison. The 1,100 testers were competing with each other for cash prizes.They ranked the search engines based on result accuracy, speed, real-time relevance and usability.

Still, it looks like there's a lot more work to do: A company called uTest had software developers test the various search engines and offered them money for any unknown bugs they discovered. Not surprisingly, the new-ish Bing revealed the highest number of new bugs.

uTest released a study they named “Battle of the Search Engines” which measured the relevancy of Google, Yahoo, and Bing based on “search results accuracy, page load speed, real-time relevance and usability.” The report found that there were over 600 “bugs” found in Google’s search results. By “bug” I believe they mean links that lead to dead ends, i.e. broken links.

An independent search engine bug bash gave high marks to Google's bug testers and found that while Bing is buggy, it's also doing a lot of things right. A company called uTest solicited 1,100 software developers and set them loose on the four major search engines of the day: Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Google's new Caffeine update. Google had the fewest number of bugs.

Google leads Microsoft Bing and Yahoo in search results accuracy, page load speed, real-time relevance and usability, according to a new crowdsourced software quality test from uTest. However, while Bing was found to be the buggiest, it also received high marks with 10 percent of 1,100 testers saying they would make Bing their search engine of choice.

uTest talked to more than 1,100 individuals in over 50 countries, and reported about 90 percent of respondents picked Google as their favorite search engine. Its victory was sealed because, in terms of accuracy, "Google led the way with a top two box score (those rating it as 'excellent' or 'good') of 90%...Yahoo and Bing trailed with 53% and 42%, respectively."

The premiere installment of this interview series features Doron Reuveni, CEO and co-founder of uTest, an international community of software testers that broke new ground in crowdsourcing. uTest is an online marketplace that matches software developers with testers and provides a platform on which they can collaborate.

Using examples such as CrowdSpring, PopTent, Innocentive, and uTest (in addition to Dell and Starbucks), John emphasized how crowdsourcing truly offers people more opportunities to innovate, build a reputation in their field of expertise, and make some money too. As Edward pointed out, “Crowdsourcing is here to stay.”

It has been a good quarter for crowdsourcing start up uTest. But while uTest is growing, debate over the need to certify testers is intensifying in the community forums. As a registered tester in the uTest community, I get invited to several projects a month. For example, I was recently invited to a mobile testing project.

uTest co-founder and CEO Doron Reuveni interviews with Startup Trek about his fast-growing company during a break at the AlwaysOn 2009 conference. uTest is a venture capital funded startup based in Boston, MA which has invented a “crowdsourced” testing model for mobile device applications. uTest has invented a way to globally “crowdsource” mobile application testing.

The Mass Technology Leadership Council has announced a second batch of finalists for its Technology Leadership Awards, this time naming the emerging executive, CTO, investor and emerging innovative company of the year. uTest is up for emerging innovative company of the year! The top 5 innovators chosen are uTest, American Well, CloudSwitch, Ksplice and WiTricity.

uTest recently held a contest to find bugs in popular Twitter apps, and proving the utility of its service, more than 300 bugs (20% considered “show stoppers”) were found. In the process, uTest handed out hundreds of dollars in prizes to the top testers. The Battle of the Desktop Twitter Apps - which lasted one week - had more than 600 testers from 29 countries. Great work, guys!

What if you had a really good Tweet and got cut off in mid-sent . . .Twitter, the popular social-networking site, has elevated spur-of-the-moment commentary and outbursts to must-have business strategy and political tactic. But some users are finding their best work is going unheard because the software applications they use are buggy and can crash.

TweetDeck might have the lead when it comes to Twitter Desktop app users, but is it also the top application when put through usability testing? uTest, a service that lets software developers crowdsource their bug testing, recently conducted a study to find out which Twitter (Twitter) app is the buggiest (or least buggy as the case may be).

Crowdsourcing the testing of Twitter apps has revealed how actual users rate Twitter five apps for function, usability and bugs. More than 600 testers from 29 countries tested the five applications in the week-long competition, finding 320 bugs. Three of the five apps were extremely popular: Tweet Deck, Seesmick Desktop and Twhirl.

uTest: Uses a community of professional testers, i.e. crowd sourcing, to help developers identify software bugs and other issues. Types of testing include functional testing, load and performance, and usability. Customers can view the backgrounds and profiles of 18,000 on-demand testers and grade the quality of their work.

uTest won the Stevie Award for "Best New Company of the Year" in The 2009 American Business Awards. More than 2,600 entries from companies of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted. uTest won the honor over worthy finalists, incl. Aster Data Systems, Carpio, Evolve IP, HubSpot, Jivox, Mazooma & Zuora.

A soured economy has prompted a boom in crowdsourcing, but this is a creative, efficient trend that will outlast the recession. The current global economic conditions have forced all of us to do more with less. Unemployed workers may not be able to find traditional paid work in their chosen field, so they're turning to crowdsourcing marketplaces such as uTest.

uTest has an article about the consequences of shoddy software. In this case, software that runs breathalyzer machines in NJ is extraordinarily buggy and is causing innocent people to be convicted of DUI. I urge you to print this article and hand it to your boss each time he thinks about shaving time from the test cycle, skipping the QA process, or cutting the budget.

Software testing company uTest has added an interactive global map to its website, where site visitors can browse testers by country, operating system and experience level. There is also a community forum where over 17,000 testers in 152 countries share ideas and best practices, company executives said. Featured testers are profiled through a thoughtful reputation system.

uTest announced it has been included in Gartner’s list of "Cool Vendors" in Application Development for 2009 . Gartner highlights that "cool vendors and their products represent key trends, directions and emerging practices in application development." uTest’s inclusion in the Cool Vendor report by Gartner is further validation of our crowdsourced software testing model.

Southborough, MA-based uTest, a Web-based service that helps software companies crowdsource their quality assurance processes to freelance testers, relaunched its website today with an emphasis on collaboration tools for its community of more than 16,000 testers. A new forum area allows testers to create personal profiles and share their best practices.

uTest launched a new website that increases visibility into its global testing community and enhances collaboration and information sharing among QA professionals. The new site introduces a “Meet Our Testers” application featuring an interactive global map, a Community Forum and a complete website redesign highlighting the human face of software testing.

"The software space is more competitive than ever -- for example, iPhone just reached its one billionth app download. And with stakes this high, app quality and time-to-market are critical," said Doron Reuveni, uTest CEO. "uTest enables our customers to fulfill their application testing needs, and to do it at a fraction of the cost of the alternatives."

In show #22 Bob and Pat talk to Matt Johnston, VP of Marketing & Community for uTest. uTest has nearly 16,000 testers in 153 countries who get paid for finding bugs in online, desktop and mobile software, and can make pretty nice money doing so. Bob has a bit of advice - test the “usability” of your web site marketing message for a pittance.

Launching a business is hard enough--doing it during a recession takes major guts, a heck of a value proposition and a serious threshold for disappointment. And yet, as layoffs mount (the U.S. unemployment rate is at 8.5% and climbing), the number of start-ups is on the rise too. uTest's CEO Doron Reuveni shares obstacles encountered along the way and some timely advice.

The words I use to describe writing code: “Meep Mopping.” It’s my way of describing the black magic that happens when you’re head-down, meep mopping away, then, voila: something real is born! Code becomes a software product. Something that others can interact with…. Even “oohhhh” and “ahhhh” at. One of the most painful steps in the development process is testing.

I had a lively conversation with Matt Johnston, vice president of marketing and community at uTest, a company whose tagline is "software testing community." Imagine having a pool of 15,000 QA professionals in 150 countries available on call, with each member having a profile of capabilities, and you'll get a good picture of what uTest is all about.

At the risk of sharing some self-serving factoids, I nonetheless found the results of uTest 's social networking Bug Battle interesting. In all, 1,119 testers (using uTest tools) from 64 countries around the world competed in the quarterly contest to find bugs in the three top social networking platforms -- Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

uTest, a startup that allows companies to outsource their QA testing to ‘the cloud’ has just concluded its latest quarterly bug battle, during which it put some of the world’s largest social networks to the test. Hundreds of participants did their best to uncover flaws across Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

uTest offers mobile applications developers professional quality assurance services via its global community of professional testers. uTest provides mobile application developers with comprehensive testing coverage based on location, language, handset manufacturer, wireless carrier, operating system and more.

The economy has many businesses retrenching or in a holding pattern -- but mobile applications designed to be accessed via smartphones or personal digital assistants (PDAs) are poised to be one of the next big things, according to many experts. If so, what impact will that have on enterprise quality assurance (QA) and testing organizations?

Boston based software application testing company uTest sent us a release today to announce it has appointed Peter Roberts to its Board of Directors. Roberts is a partner at venture capital firm Longworth Venture Partners, which was the lead investor in uTest's recent $5 million round of funding. Roberts also represents Longworth Venture Partners on several boards.

uTest is a new Israeli startup with a unique mission: to allow both small companies and more established ones to save money by "crowdsourcing" all their QA needs. Crowdsourcing refers to the idea that functions that were once performed by an individual can be done more effectively by outsourcing it to an undefined and generally large network of professionals via the Internet.

Boston-based software testing company uTest has expanded into the online games arena, offering technical, functional, usability and load testing services. The company employs 13,000 testers globally, and offers online game developers real-time access to its services. It aims to help developers address usability issues unique to online games.

Growth in the indie gaming industry over the past few years has spurred on the creation of many new tools which are designed specifically to ease game development. Microsoft's XNA platform, for example, makes the coding side of things much easier with its cross-platform support, while devices like the RealView 3D scanner make the creation of art assets easier.

crowdsourcing as a "neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people, in the form of an open call. Jeff Howe gives a better definition and describes crowdsourcing as "the application of Open Source principles applied to fields outside of software."

UTest Inc. has secured a $5 million Series B round of funding, the company said. New investor Longworth Venture Partners LP led the round, joined by Eagan Managed Capital LP. Returning investors are the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp. and Mesco Ltd. The new funding brings uTest’s total investment to $7.3 million.

UTest, a marketplace where companies can “crowdsource” the testing of their software, has raised $5 million in a second round of funding. Chief executive Doron Reuveni describes the outsourced testing industry as “an old space that has been there for a while, and it needs innovation.” The company raised a $2.3 million first round.

Venture capital is drying up, with less money flowing in fewer deals, but at least one company managed to score a tidy sum. On Tuesday uTest — which crowdsources software testing — announced it had secured $5 million in Series B financing.

uTest is hosting a "bug battle" beginning at midnight (EST) tonight. Over the next seven days, users running Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.1, and/or Google Chrome can submit defects that they find within any of these browsers. At the end of the testing period a significant cash award will be given to the tester who reported the most valuable bugs.

The range of tools for automated testing—whether unit, integration, acceptance, or load testing—has greatly expanded over the past several years. At the same time, automated tests cannot completely replace humans in uncovering certain types of software bugs. uTest's Doron Reuveni explains the benefits of having human testers be part of an application's testing cycle.

uTest today announced that Solid State Group, a content management, web applications and services consultancy, is using uTest for a professional social networking website. The flexibility of uTest's SaaS platform and the ability to meet tight deadlines is a huge draw.

My old pal Bob Dylan never spoke a truer phrase than when he said the times they are a-changing. Not a million years ago, the concept of software as a service began taking off; then Salesforce.com launched the platform as a service concept with its Force.com application development platform. And now we have testing as a service, from a company by the name of uTest.

Need your software tested for functionality, usability, and durability by a global supply chain of assessors? A company by the name of uTest, based in Ashland, Massachusetts, is today announcing the general availability of its network of service specialists for the software developer arena. The network is intended to offer a controlled, pseudo real-world trial of a particular application.

Exposing your applications to the globe via the Internet can be downright scary, but exposing your applications to a global community of testers on-demand can be downright effective, according to three companies that recently completed pilots with uTest. uTest offers a hosted infrastructure for QA and usability testing with a pay-per-bug business model.

Crowdsourced QA service provider uTest made waves late last year when the company raised $1.7 million in funding. Nearly two months later, I got a chance to speak with uTest’s CEO, Doron Reuveni, to see what the next steps would be, now that the company has launched its beta and is beginning to gain traction.