Running test scripts vs live human testing

On February 1, 2010, In Technology, By CS

I’m pretty certain I’m speaking for most developers, but we hate testing. Like proof reading your own paper, not only can you never find your own errors, but the more you look at it, the less excited you get about your creation.

So some people choose to automate the testing process, through the solve it all word of the IT word (to managers at least), “Scripts”. There are now programmers who make a living designing testing scripts, and plenty of consultants out there who would gladly take your money to help you with some testing scripts.

Testing scripts are designed to mimic user behavior, and truly excels at stress testing. It can also successfully find many bugs that a user would encounter as he navigates your software or website. However, while a script might be able to find a 404 error, it wouldn’t know if a link is pointing to the wrong area, or that Chrome is rendering your image a few pixels off from where Firefox does it.

This is where human testing comes into play. Fact is, most of us never report bugs and glitches to the webmaster. For every time someone finds a glitch that actually report it, you know thousands have seen it. This is a huge loss of confidence for your product, unless you are Google or eBay, people seldom forgive glitches and continue with a purchase.

Pay4Bugs is a system designed to solve this problem. Our global team of testers use a wide variety of platforms, and each behave differently from the other. The key is our testers will report everything they see, so you can fix it before your real paying customers see the inevitable error.

The best part? Pay4Bugs is free to use.

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My thoughts on OSI (Options Symbology Initiative)

On January 25, 2010, In Finance and Investing, Guides, By CS

For year, trading stock on your computer was deemed too difficult, something that should only be done by those in the know. I remember growing up watching my uncle operate his fancy terminal, and listening to his success and failures. Then in the late 90s, everyone was trading online, and terms like “market order” or “limit order” became general knowledge for anyone interested in managing their own finances.

Options trading, however, was still a bit of a mystery to the general public. Understanding calls and puts, strike prices, expiration dates, and the option chains, which contain so many symbols.

However, we have also seen the dramatic pickup in options trading volume in recent years. Now the Options Clearing Corporation wants to make it simpler.

Instead of a 5 character symbol, such as GOPBV representing a Google option, the new format is simply “descriptive”. The same Google option is now displayed as “GOP Feb 2007 $520 Call”. In the back end, it’s being passed to the exchange like “GOP0000100219C00520000″.

While this is a nightmare for brokerage firms in the short run, in the long run it opens many possibilities, one of which could be the path towards daily options. By stating expiration dates explicitly and not worrying about symbols, you can have daily expirations.

I suppose for me, covered call writing will be easier as well. However please keep in mind that while operating options with OSI is easier, it is still a risky, speculative instrument.

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The blogging life of internet entrepreneurs, and some essential tools.

On January 3, 2010, In Entrepreneurship, Technology, By CS

Entrepreneurs will do whatever it takes to be successful, and among them blatantly promoting their own product through every medium available. For the SEO minded entrepreneur, every mention of your start-up or product on the internet means eyeballs, back links, pagerank and profit.

To go further on this topic, every entrepreneur I know runs multiple blogs, I’m no exception.

  • This blog you’re looking at right now. My technical life stream.
  • My food blog EatBigApple, which is my personal interest. This also generates a small revenue plus is a test bed of many of my start-up’s products.
  • That food blog also has a Chinese equivalent.
  • The official Attigo blog, which promotes the Attigo family of products. Including Pay4Bugs and 87id.
  • and once again the equivalent Chinese version, The Attigo Boke (blog in Chinese)
  • The official Firstrade blog, from my day job at the online brokerage firm.

For the past 3 years, I honestly cannot remember a day without blogging, monitoring traffic, or simply checking comments and spams. All of this gets tedious and overwhelming after a while, so here are some tools and suggestions for the up and coming start-up talent.

  • Run your own blog. Sure going with Wordpress.com (notice the dot com) or xanga or blogspot is convenient, but you don’t get the flexibility of your own blog, nor do you get the opportunity at good ad revenue. Oh, and don’t forget some of these blogging services are banned in China, which as some of you may know, is quite a big market.
  • Get an OpenID. All those passwords really get tedious. Get yourself an OpenID (get one at my start-up’s free service 87id.com). Then install the OpenID plug-in to your blog.
  • Speaking of plug-ins, they really make your life easier when it comes to maximizing your SEO effect. Download AllinOneSEO, AddThis, GoogleXML Sitemap, and many other SEO friendly plug-ins.
  • Establish a frequent update cycle, don’t abandon your blogs.
  • Participate in other discussion, and sometimes comment with link back to your blog. Don’t force it, only when it’s relevant.
  • Link to other blogs. I know for a fact I check where visitors come from, and often I pay them a visit back.
  • Don’t forget to install the Google Analytics code, to pickup whatever Wordpress.com stats cannot see via the power of Google.
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