Posts tagged Closer
A Closer Look at Cloud-based Testing with Soasta
Jul 19th
One of the themes many of us commentators harp on about is the fact that barriers to entry for application developers have never been lower – the availability of cloud hosting, agile development methodologies, even this crazy frothy investment cycle we’re in all combine to see lots of applications being created.
One of the flip sides of al this app development is the corresponding drag on testing – that horrible stage that no one really likes, but everyone needs to do. One player looking to aid in that stage of the process is Soasta (rhymes with toaster!)
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Soasta bills themselves as the “cloud testing pioneer”, providing Web testing services to test performance, scalability and reliability of both websites and Web applications by simulating traffic spikes for both testing and production applications. CloudTest has a number of different offerings including;
- CloudTest Mobile for mobile application performance testing
- CloudTest Enterprise integrated internal and external testing with clouds such as Amazon EC2, IBM, Microsoft Azure and Rackspace.
- CloudTest Professional (Pro) more control and scale than the enterprise product
- CloudTest Standard an internal testing tool
- CloudTest On-Demand a full product+service offerings for organizations with no testing team themselves.
To this lineup Soasta is today launching a free product, CloudTest Lite, a downloadable app that gives organizations the ability to run limited testing (up to 100 virtual users, single server and behind-firewall testing only) including;
- Testing of web and mobile applications, including applications using HTML5 to REST Web services
- Test building with visual test creation tools
- Integration of application, system, and network monitoring data
- Analysis of results in real-time through a dashboard
- Upgrade path to a more scalable CloudTest edition
Interestingly this release comes only days after Atlassian announced its own new testing tool, as Klint Finley covered. The Atlassian Bonfire product is a browser plugin tool that is linked with Atlassian’s Jira bug tracking tool to give end to end testing/notification/tracking supports. As such bonfire seems much lighter weight than Soasta, focusing less on the testing and analysis of that testing and more on identifying bugs – Soasta on the other hand is a complete testing and performance tuning application. You can see some sample screen shots below:
In demos the CloudTest product had a simple and intuitive test builder functionality that makes it easier for a testing team to spend less time designing tests, and more time running them – and that’s never a bad thing. App testing has never been more important – with this new freemium offering, Soasta is hoping it will gain more customers for its suite of testing products.
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UltraViolet Moves One Step Closer To A Fall Launch
Jul 13th
A consortium of content providers, delivery services, software and hardware companies called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) is ready to launch a business-to-business content licensing program based on the UltraViolet format. Haven’t heard of UltraViolet? Pretty soon, you will not be able to escape it.
UltraViolet is the child of 70 (and growing) companies including movie studios, technology providers like AMD or Akamai, device manufacturers like Toshiba and entertainment retailers like Netflix and Blockbuster. The program is designed to permit cloud access to digital rights through a “locker” system. In other words, after you purchase music or video, you can access that content everywhere. It is the entertainment industry’s attempt to strike back at a decade of Internet piracy and will soon be a significant part of consumers’ lives.
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The business-to-business rollout of UltraViolet gives companies the chance to ensure that they meet technical specifications and are prepared to market content, services and products.
UltraViolet is an aggressive move initiated by the studios. As the primary content providers, the studios hold all the keys to legal viewing of their content. The purpose of UltraViolet is to allow all content providers to use one cloud and one set of Web standards for digital rights management (DRM).
“Consumers are looking for a better value proposition to own and collect digital movies and TV shows – a proposition that provides downloads, streaming and physical copy viewing options which are accessible on multiple platforms,” said Mark Teitell, the general manager of UltraViolet.
The format is based on the Common File Format that will play on computers, televisions, tablets and smartphones – basically, any device or platform that conforms to UltraViolet’s rules and standards. Netflix is a member of DECE and all the corporations that are part of Hulu (except Providence Venture Partners) are as well. DECE hopes to see a broad launch of UltraViolet by the fall.
Warner Bros. bought movie rating and information application Flixster earlier this year (which also owns movie critic website Rotten Tomatoes). The company hopes that application will be the delivery mechanism through which Warner Bros. brings UltraViolet content to consumers. It’s a interesting play by the studios as they try to put their foot down and control the flow of premium content across the Internet.
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A Step Closer to Social Media ROI with Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels
May 19th
Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels, currently in limited beta release, will allow marketers to take a big step in the direction of calculating the elusive social media ROI.
What is Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels?
This new fe…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Google Android Music Store Closer to a Reality
Feb 19th
A Google music service has been rumored and reported on for a while now. Those speculations have been surfacing more and more in recent weeks.
Click to read the rest of this post…
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Google: One Country Closer to Running the World
Jan 14th
Google is more than a dominant player in the U.S. Market: They’re the player to look at, and the one that every group is trying to appeal to. Even with the combined efforts of Bingahoo, Google still has more than two-thirds the market share, and a long list of additional properties that beat out competitors (YouTube being the most prominent among those). However, the picture in the U.S. and the picture everywhere else on the world isn’t identical. In many areas, Google is neck-and-neck with other search sites, and in a few regions, Google hasn’t made it to the top spot.
Well, we can add one more number one position for Google as of this month. Search Engine Land reports that the Czech Republic now favors Google, although by a narrow margin; the different Google search sites available in the region turned up with 47.2% of the market share, compared to 45.5% from “Seznam,” the leading competitor. At the beginning of 2010, Google actually trailed Seznam by 20%, but managed to turn this around thanks to television advertising.
What this means is that there are only five more countries which Google needs to conquer in order to run the top search alternative around the globe. Here are those five countries and their current search.
- China, where Baidu leads and Google has stepped out — for now.
- Japan, where Yahoo leads — but where Google will soon be providing the Yahoo search results.
- Taiwan, where Yahoo has the number one spot.
- Russia, where Yandex leads the race.
- South Korea, where Naver is the search engine of preference.
Of course, there are some regions where there simply aren’t reports which indicate who’s in the lead (comScore and other reporting groups simply don’t take the time), but of the 40 countries commonly reported on, Google now leads in 35.
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Google: One Country Closer to Running the World
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Expert claims that SEO and social media will become closer in 2011 – StuckOn
Jan 8th
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Expert claims that SEO and social media will become closer in 2011
StuckOn January is traditionally the time for predictions and prognostications made by those within the SEO industry, and 2011 is no different, with an industry … |
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Moving Closer to House 2.0: @SpeakerBoehner Leads the GOP’s E-transition
Jan 5th
Today is the first day of the 112th Congress of the United States of America. One way that the incoming Republican majority will embrace innovation and transparency in the legislative process will be increased use of video and new media. As Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote at ReadWriteWeb, commenting on CNN’s report yesterday, Facebook will livestream the opening day of Congress.
In a post on Speaker.gov, the incoming speaker invited people to visit the “Pledge to America” Facebook page to view the transition to a GOP-controlled House and comment on the feed. (The post was originally at GOPLeader.gov before Speaker.gov went live, which created a broken link from the speaker’s tweet. Even e-transitions are bumpy at times.)
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When reached for further comment, Nick Schaper, the director of new media for the incoming Speaker of the House, explained more about why they’re livestreaming the transition and using Facebook.
“Keeping with one of the pillars of House Republicans’ Pledge to America, our goal is to make Congress more open and available to the American public,” said Schaper in an email. “With over 500 million active users, Facebook is an easy way to effectively reach a large audience for the stream, while also making those that might not know much about the Pledge more aware of the new majority’s goals and priorities. Also, Facebook gives viewers the unique ability to discuss this historic event with their friends and others.”
Schaper explained that the Speaker’s staff is using the LiveStream.com plugin available on Facebook with the standard House of Representatives floor feed available on Capitol Hill to put the feed online. Notably, that also means that citizens and other interested parties don’t have to join Facebook, log in or “Like” the page to watch the transition. The feed at
href=”http://Livestream.com/SpeakerBoehner”>Livestream.com/SpeakerBoehner
is available on the open Web and can be embedded on any blog or
article – including this one.
Watch live streaming video from SpeakerBoehner at livestream.com
Livestream.com and Facebook won’t be the only options used by the new speaker’s office either, according to Schaper. When asked whether the speaker would use Current.tv or UStream or YouTube, Schaper said that “we’ve never limited ourselves or worked exclusively with any technology partners on efforts such as this. We’ve used all of the above and I look forward to finding more new tools that can help our members more efficiently connect with those they represent.”
Moving closer to House 2.0
The embrace of new technology won’t be limited to streaming live from within Facebook. Proposals will range from allowing iPads and smartphones onto the House floor to crowdsourcing budgeting proposals to posting bills online 72 hours before a vote. On this historic moment, the House of Representatives has proposed new rules that will bring one half of the legislative branch closer to the increased government transparency that organizations like the Sunlight Foundation have advocated for years.
The transition also included a virtual passing of the gavel from Representative Nancy Pelosi to Boehner on Twitter, as Twitter’s own government liaison, Adam Sharp, noted on Twitter. Speaker.gov was updated to a new version last night, including a blog post that announced the new @SpeakerBoehner account and those of his staff. The post also introduced new accounts on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, along with the Livestream.com account embedded above.
The YouTube and Flickr accounts were empty last night but Don Seymour wrote at Speaker.gov that “video of Ellie Mae – the job-sniffing GOP bloodhound -Boehner’s family reunion, responses to questions from constituents, or one of the Speaker’s speeches or interviews” will be uploaded there in the future.
In other words, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is now represented on more online platforms than ever. The White House still leads the federal government as a whole in covering the gamut, with presences on MySpace, Vimeo, iTunes, LinkedIn and even Digg now. (No word on how soon before the President, Speaker or other public officials will be available for question time on Quora.)
As 2011 begins, new media adoption in Washington is no longer novel. As with any set of tools, success shouldn’t be measured by media reports or press releases but by the outcomes from their use. The hard work of bipartisan compromise in the House, to the extent it occurs, is unlikely to be publicly visible in 140 characters, though stranger things have happened. Measuring the success of adoption new technology will depend far more upon whether more use of social media, online video and platforms for legislation or citizen engagement lead to greater citizen engagement, accountability, transparency or data-driven policy. Whether that comes to pass will rely on more than putting a transition live online.
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Taking A Closer Look At Link Changes
Dec 21st
When you’re trying to build as natural a backlink profile as possible, you need to carefully think about all the things that could make it look strange. If your typical link growth each month over the past 12 months has been 5 links, getting 100 will seem odd. Suddenly focusing on an…
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
Internet Censorship One Step Closer to Law
Nov 18th
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to pass the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), moving the legislation one step closer to reality. The law would give the U.S. Attorney General’s office the right to shut down websites that it deems are participating in piracy and “infringing activities” without due process or proof that a copyright “crime” has been committed.
The law would allow the government to blacklist a website that had “no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than” sharing unauthorized copyrighted material. Sites would be blacklisted from the Domain Name System, credit card companies would be forbidden to process payments, and advertisers would be banned from placing ads on the site.
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Techdirt has the list of the Senators involved in today’s vote, and notes that, “What’s really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against Internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it’s seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy.”
The proposed legislation is supported by groups like the RIAA, MPAA, and Screen Actors Guild. But many free speech advocates see the move as a violation of the First Amendment and dangerous first step down the road to censorship. The EFF responded to this morning’s vote saying that it is “deeply disappointed to report that the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the COICA Internet censorship bill this morning, despite bipartisan opposition, and countless experts pointing out how it would be ineffective, unconstitutional, bad for innovation and the tech economy, and would break the Internet.”
With the recent election and the shake-up in the composition of the Senate, it may be unlikely that the legislation moves forward. But the unanimity with which the Judiciary Committee approved it today is an eery sign nonetheless.
Image credits: Flickr
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