Daily Archives: 08/06/2012

Facebook’s app store being tested on iPhones

Facebook’s recently announced App Center has appeared on a number of iPhones, which the company says are being used as a test group for the store.

“Since we announced the App Center to developers last month, we’ve been testing it with a small percentage of users. We have no further details to share at this time,” said a Facebook spokesperson in an email to VentureBeat.

According to screenshots recently published by TechCrunch, the App Center has a similar look and feel to Facebook’s current iPhone application. There is a black side bar on the left-hand side of the screen, which lists apps you have already downloaded, as well as a link to the Center itself. Those apps with notifications are pushed to the top of the black sidebar. The store itself has two sections: social picks and top apps. In social picks, apps are listed with star ratings and the names of friends who have already downloaded the app.

Facebook, which is bent on the idea of discovering new content through your friends interests, decided app stores needed the Facebook touch earlier in May. App marketplaces are notorious for being dense. Many apps rely on making it to the top 25 categories in order to be seen, and user acquisition continues to be a hot topic of conversation amongst developers. The Facebook App Center, on the other hand, will use your social graph to help you find apps relevant to you, and it won’t confine you to Facebook-oriented apps only.

It will be a collection of apps of all kinds from any genre. Apps listed will be available for iOS, Android, and as web apps, mobile web apps, and desktop apps. The App Center acts more like an aggregator. Developers will create a page for their app in Facebook’s Center, but links to download the app will go back to its listing on either the iOS App Store or Google Play.

Source:http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/07/facebook-app-center-iphone/

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Enterprises get serious about mobile app testing

With mobility now a necessity, the software testing space is now making accommodations to ensure enterprises can extend their applications to run on devices, according to an analyst report being released on Tuesday.

Voke’s Market Mover Array Report on software testing platforms says an explosion of mobile testing companies focusing on enterprise applications is a “clear indicator of the enterprise’s need to deliver quality software to a plethora of mobile devices.” Mobile testing vendors, the report states, will ultimately be acquired by traditional testing vendors. But for now, innovation “must be allowed to flourish.” Keynote Systems’ acquisition of DeviceAnywhere last fall represents this shift in the market; meanwhile, innovation in mobile testing also is occurring from companies including Experitest, Parasoft, Perfecto Mobile, and Soasta, according to the report.

“What we’re seeing [with mobile applications] is every organization now has to have some sort of mobile strategy, and that mobile strategy has to already fit in with what they’re doing with their existing apps,” said analyst Theresa Lanowitz, a co-author of the report and founder of Voke. “There’s very little tolerance for a mobile application that does not work from a functional perspective as well as from a performance perspective.” Software testers, she said, really need to look for commercially available tools to manage “that complex grid of what they’re going to test.”

Mobile application testing is becoming more commonplace and has been moving to the cloud, she said. Keynote DeviceAnywhere’s Test Center Developer, for example, provides online access to any mobile device, network, and operating system worldwide. Perfecto Mobile has a similar SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform with its MobileCloud platform.

Overall, software testing has to be done earlier in the application development lifecycle, to make sure defects do not leave the development phase, Lanowitz said. Companies like Electric Cloud and Microsoft are offering capabilities to apprise developers of what exactly is going on with their software builds.

Voke’s report found the software testing market “currently in a renaissance,” in terms of testing professionals and vendor innovation. Market leaders could face challenges from innovators tackling emerging technology like the cloud, mobile, device software, and infrastructure as well from innovations delivering simple solutions to classic and age-old problems by leveraging virtualization. Vendors solving problems of entrenched testing tools also could pose a challenge.

Source:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227751/Enterprises_

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