uTest is preparing to launch its pilot program for community-based software testing. Tester hopefuls can sign up now to be included in the first round of application testing. Tester profiles will include information on the tester’s education, experience, specialization, and available hardware.

Software vendors can use these criteria to hand-pick testers or release their product for the community to review. Companies pay only for unique, verified bugs which begs the question of how testers will avoid working out a bug only to find another tester has beat them to the report. Vendors who participate in the pilot will have those projects tested at 75% off uTest’s standard rates.

uTest has been putting its money where its mouth is by paying testers who report bugs in its own registration process. I made it halfway through the sign-up only to find that I could not complete the forms. Sadly, someone has already submitted the bug so I neither completed registration nor got paid for finding the error.

A social networking component of the system allows testers to rate each other’s performance, influencing the price-per-bug that testers can command and effectively allowing competitors to determine each other’s value.

This seems like a pretty clever application of crowd-sourcing, but the company’s site leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. How will vendors verify the resumés provided by the network of testers? Will testers spend valuable time testing applications only to find that others have already claimed the prize? How will honesty in the performance rating system be guaranteed? How do I finish my registration so that I can get paid?

Read more on uTest’s blog.

With the explosion of MySpace and Facebook the last few years, many of the clients/prospects I talk to are looking to integrate some form of social networking into their website programs. I don’t think I’m alone in getting asked about this.

Many of the Presidential candidates this cycle built full blown social networks on their public sites (Clinton, Obama, McCain, etc.). In addition, a variety of Fortune 500 companies have launched niche social networks. Interestingly, the two highest profile corporate social networks I am aware seem to have been shuttered. Wal-mart shut down its socnet aimed at teens a year and a half ago. Nike’s soccer themed-social network, Joga, appears to have also been shut down as the site is now nothing more than a placeholder page. Although to be fair Nike has a network around running that appears to have been more successful.

When clients ask me about integrating social networking into their public web programs, I usually encourage the integration of light social features, like commenting on articles, message boards and simple user profiles, but caution against trying to build a full on social network (friending, groups, user blogs, etc.). The reason I do this is that in most cases these top down social networks end up barely being used. In most cases they just don’t work for a variety of reasons:

• The people that are interested in social networks are getting all of it they have time for on massive sites like Facebook and MySpace.
• Even if someone has time, there is something counterintuitive about participating in a social network around things like Wal-Mart or a brand of shoes or a political party. It just seems off and most of us don’t want to turn over our social graph to these folks.
• The nature of even the most full featured social networks is that most fade into oblivion no matter how full featured and cool they are. I’ve joined countless social network that I’ve abandoned after quickly realizing that they are ghost towns and/or that no one I know (or want to know) uses it.

When I hear folks talk about launching social networks I’m reminded of what people say about opening a restaurant: proceed with caution because nine out of ten fail in the first year.

For nearly all organizations, the best approach is to (1) add some light social features that encourage interaction around your content to your own site and/or (2) participate in established, external social networks. It is a lot cheaper and easier for you to go to where the people are than to try to bring them to you.

Last night I got an e-mail about a new site named LiveNewsCameras.com from Fox Television Stations.  It has culled many live video feeds and presents them in one place so that people can easily find what's going on throughout the country and the world.

The e-mail pitched the site as an interesting way to observe TV coverage of Super Tuesday, which involved over 20 states having their Democratic and Republican primaries or caucuses for the 2008 Presidential Election yesterday.  Why watch national television, when you can watch coverage from a local perspective?

As I visited the site to write this post today, there is a woman who is manning a live news feed that starts when one visits the site.  She monitored and highlighted local coverage of the bad winter weather in the midwest.  Thus, she calls attention to feeds with interesting footage coming in.

This seems like an interesting site.  While there are many sites out there that enable people to access video feeds from around the web, the fact that this site has a live "anchor" calling visitors' attention to certain feeds is interesting.  What do you think?

We have an opening for a programmer here at The Bivings Group.  Job description is below.  You can apply on Craigslist or by emailing jobsint@bivings.com.

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You election junkies out there should check out this site tonight as you watch the Super Tuesday results roll in. It is a mashup of Google maps and election-related Twitter posts. Right now it is just pulling in relevant posts about Super Tuesday and displaying them based on location (see screengrab below), but the site says it will overlay the results after the polls close.

Check it out.

Now more than ever, presidential candidates are making their respective presences felt online. Mediums such as blogs, YouTube, and social networks like MySpace and Facebook are giving candidates a new platform to utilize. Inspired by TechPresident and the Social Media Index concept, we decided to take an aggregate snapshot at how much buzz the candidates are getting in advance of Super Tuesday. Those making the biggest splashes on the web aren’t necessarily the same ones leading the polls. While pollsters employed by the likes of ABC News and CNN show Hillary Clinton and John McCain as favorites to square-off for the White House in November, the two aren’t their own party’s most popular candidates online.

With over 12,000 links to his official website from Google Blog Search, 350,000 Facebook supporters and more than 15,000,000 people viewing his YouTube channel daily, Barack Obama seems to have the internet race won among Democrats. Compare those numbers to Hillary’s less than 9,000 Google Blog Search links, less than 88,000 Facebook supporters and only 5,693,448 in daily YouTube viewership. Obama also enjoys more support on MySpace, with over 252,000 friends to Clinton’s 171,761, all according to the latest techPresident stats.

As for Republicans, the most popular man online is ironically the same one sitting next to last in the polls. Ron Paul has 14,215 Google Blog Search links to his official site, more Facebook (81,639) and MySpace (125,733) support, and more daily YouTube viewers (12,104,767) than anyone else competing for the Grand Old Party’s ticket. No other Republican comes close to Paul’s online celebrity. Mitt Romney is second on Google Blog Search with 5,905 links. Mike Huckabee has the second most YouTube viewers a day with just over 5,000,000. John McCain is second on MySpace with 44,689 friends, and Huckabee is currently second among Republicans with 47,510 Facebook supporters.

As most of you know, The Bivings Group was a part of the team that built Fred Thompson’s Presidential campaign website. Our main client contact on the project, Michael Turk, has a good post up rounding up the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of the online program we all put together. It is worth a read.

In the piece, Turk points out that one of the most successful aspects of the program was the campaign blog, the Fred File. He writes:

As an example of the strength of Thompson’s online effort, look at the Thompson campaign blog and you’ll see something remarkable for GOP candidates - comments. And not just a few comments, but hundreds and even thousands of comments.

Rudy’s blog doesn’t allow comments. Romney’s gets a few per post. Ron Paul just recently launched a blog (despite the fact that blog software is largely free). He currently gets between a handful and a few dozen comments.

I don’t think this indicates a lack of supporter enthusiasm as much as it indicates that the campaigns have created a blog with nothing to say on sites that are so scrubbed of interesting content they’re almost sterile. Most of the posts are rehashed press releases, rehashed campaign e-mails, or occasionally a video so overscripted it becomes almost completely unwatchable.

I think Turk is right on here. With any successful blog, 90% of the battle is producing readable content and engaging with readers. Many, many campaigns want a blog in theory but don’t have the stomach to do the heavy lifting that will make it actually work.  The Thompson campaign, lead by staffers Sean Hackbarth and Austin Walne, deserve the lion’s share of the credit for the success of the Fred File. But I also think there were some small, more technical decisions that were made that helped give the blog a greater chance to succeed. (more…)