Posted on October 13th, 2009
Another post I wrote about software testing and crowdsourcing from the uTest blog.
House MD, one of the most popular television shows in the US and globally, is a weekly medical mystery where a patient with a rare and unsolvable disease is diagnosed by Dr. Gregory House – the title character. Dr. House is a brilliant diagnostician who can solve almost any medical puzzle, but this past Monday the show featured an entirely different way of diagnosing a medical problem: crowdsourcing. Over the course of the episode, House’s team dealt with many advantages and disadvantages of crowdourcing while trying to diagnose a patient with a tricky disease.
Even though House is fiction, there’s a lot we can learn about crowdsourcing from the characters’ experiences. Here are four of my favorite crowdsourcing lessons from House MD. Be warned, MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW! Stop reading now if you don’t want the episode spoiled for you.
Update: The full episode is now available for US viewers on Hulu.
Keep reading…
Posted on August 30th, 2009
These days, I’m writing more about software testing for the uTest blog than for my own, so I want to begin linking to some of my posts as I write them.
First up:
The Hassles of Supporting Older Products – Adobe vs. Apple
On Friday, Apple released version 10.6 of their Macintosh OS X operating system. “Snow Leopard,” as this new version is called, is an unusual release for Apple. Whereas previous updates of OS X often brought big usability changes, Snow Leopard is all about under the hood improvements. It’s faster and better, but not different.
So it came as a huge surprise last week when John Nack, senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop, announced that Adobe wasn’t supporting the two and half year old CS3 version of their products on Snow Leopard and would instead encourage their customers to upgrade to CS4. Nack later clarified that the CS3 products actually work fine – Adobe just couldn’t allocate resources to fix any undiscovered problems. Despite these assurances, many people were confused and upset, especially because Snow Leopard wasn’t supposed to be a major upgrade for Apple.
Keep reading…
Posted on March 1st, 2009
I’ve been so neglegent in keeping this blog up to date, but the good news is that’s because I’ve been incredibly busy. uTest has been growing like crazy, and marketing has been growing along with it. I would like to resolve to post more often, and maybe I will be able to in the coming months.
Until then, I post to Twitter on a regular basis. I also have a few minutes each day to drop in to Facebook. If you’re on either site, definitely connect with me. Also, I write posts on a somewhat regular basis for the uTest blog. Definitely drop by, especially if you’re interested in software development or testing.
Posted on August 22nd, 2008
I have been insanely busy this week at uTest. We had our General Availability launch and got a lot of excellent coverage from around the world for our software testing services. Some of our highlights include:
There’s more on our uTest news page, and here’s a link to our press release as well. Or see what we’re up to in the uTest blog.
So I wanted to write a very brief personal update for all those who are not immediately aware of my life happenings. Let’s do bullet points:
- Gwen and I returned from a trip to Peru a couple of weeks ago where we hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Excellent trip, and I have over 600 photos that need sorting through.
- Gwen and I are also engaged (no wedding date yet)
- All this means I’m moving to Boston…
- …where I have a job at a great little startup called uTest. I’ll be their outbound marketing manager and I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about them both here and otherwise. They’re a rocking company.
I think that’s all of the exciting news for now. We now return you to my regular blog postings.
