Richard drove up to the hangar just as I was checking the oil on the Husky, his prized baby float plane. Nuts. He was right on time. I was late. I'm supposed to have the plane ready to go when he … [Read more...] about Tester Pilot
Buggy Products
Nervous About Wolfram
Take a look at the screen shot, below. This is from my first five minutes of playing with Wolfram/Alpha. Do you see what's wrong with it? I'll tell you in a minute... Wolfram/Alpha is the new search … [Read more...] about Nervous About Wolfram
Quality is Dead #2: The Quality Creation Myth
One of the things that makes it hard to talk about quality software is that we first must overcome the dominating myth about quality, which goes like this: The quality of a product is built into it by … [Read more...] about Quality is Dead #2: The Quality Creation Myth
James Tam: Customer Service that Works
After Adam White's test of of Rypple.com, I decided to try it myself. I soon ran into a fairly serious problem. I was able to try the service without registering, but when I tried to register, the … [Read more...] about James Tam: Customer Service that Works
The IMVU Shuffle
Michael Bolton reported on our quick test of IMVU, whose development team brags about having no human-mediated test process before deploying their software to the field. Some commentors have pointed … [Read more...] about The IMVU Shuffle
Quality is Dead #1: The Hypothesis
Quality is dead in computing. Been dead a while, but like some tech'd up version of Weekend at Bernie's, software purveyors are dressing up its corpse to make us believe computers can bring us joy and … [Read more...] about Quality is Dead #1: The Hypothesis
WebGreeter Fails Turing Test
Beware, if you visit WebGreeter.com a disturbing thing will happen. You will be immediately accosted by what appears to be a chatbot, but is apparently a human doing a creepy impression of a chatbot. … [Read more...] about WebGreeter Fails Turing Test
Artificial Stupidity
I just tried to use the automated support system at Paypal... Sarah - PayPal : Hello, I’m Sarah and I’m here to answer your questions about PayPal. Even though I’d like to be a real person, I’m not. … [Read more...] about Artificial Stupidity
The Future Will Need Us to Reboot It
I've been reading a bit about the Technological Singularity. It's an interesting and chilling idea conceived by people who aren't testers. It goes like this: the progress of technology is increasing … [Read more...] about The Future Will Need Us to Reboot It
Amateur Penetration Testing
It's traveling season for me. London, Amsterdam, New Zealand, Australia, and so forth. That means I'm killing time in a lot of airports and hotel lobbies. And THAT means I'm testing software on kiosks … [Read more...] about Amateur Penetration Testing