General

Blog Review 2016

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Blog Review 2016 - Adventures in QA

The year 2016 was yet another awesome year for me. Not only from a professional point of view but also from a personal one. Maybe you have noticed that I wasn’t blogging a lot since August this year :). Well, this has one awesome reason. I became a dad in August and since then I spend my free time mostly with my wife and my son to enjoy every minute. However, from a blogging and professional point of view the year was great, too. This year my book Hands-On Mobile App Testing has been translated into german, which is really really great. I published a new eBook about Smartwatch App Testing on leanpub and I gave my first keynote at a conference.

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know that I love to share insights of this blog and to provide a blog review of the past year (see 2015 here). Since a couple of month I also share on a monthly basis numbers of my blog, like in this tweet:

Before I go into details, I want to say THANK YOU to all of my readers. Thanks for reading my blog from time to time, to leave a comment and to share my posts with other people. Still, the feedback I get for this blog is great and just awesome and motivates me to continue producing content on a regular basis. I will try to keep up the pace for 2017 ;-).

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Win a Mobile App Testing Book

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Mobile App Testing

It’s bin a long time since I wrote my last blog post. At the moment there is not so much time for me to write down all the posts I have in draft mode. Sorry for that! However, since christmas is almost there and the german edition of my book Hands-On Mobile App Testing is available since end of September with the title Mobile App Testing, I want to give all my german speaking blog readers/ lurkers 😉 the opportunity to win a signed copy of the german edition.

https://twitter.com/dnlkntt/status/780091988553129984

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The State Of Fitness Trackers 2016

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Wearable devices constitute a major part of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), which explains the incredible growth of the industry in just a few years. Besides fitness, these wearables have had far reaching influence on the fields of education, disabilities, medicine, gaming, transportation, and entertainment.

The miniaturisation of sensors and electronic devices combined with pervasive connectivity and lowering of costs have facilitated the rapid growth in the number of fitness trackers being conceptualised and launched in the last few years.

But the future of this market segment depends on how well it can match the aesthetics of user tastes and preferences via optimal styling and overcoming design challenges. For instance, one of the biggest concerns for smartwatch makers is the ability to match the design sensibility of luxury time pieces, which are, first and foremost, identified as a fashion statement.

Other challenges include the limited battery life of most devices and the requirement for regular recharging, privacy issues, and functional bugs, among others.

But even with these obstacles, many new companies continue to enter the fray in the wide range of fitness trackers and wearable technologies. Some examples include:

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Workshop at Testbash Netherlands

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Workshop Testbash Netherlands - Adventures in QA

It’s TestBash time! This time TestBash Netherlands 2017 in Utrecht. In the beginning of September Huib Schoots announced the program for the first TestBash Netherlands in 2017. If you have ever been to a TestBash conference, you know how fun and awesome this conference is. The style is completely different compared to other conferences and is all about the software testing community.

The conference will take place in Utrecht from 26th January (workshop day) – 27th January (conference day). The first day is always full of great workshops and if you plan to attend the TestBash Netherlands next year, you have the choice to attend my workshop about mobile testing.

Here is my workshop description:

Is Mobile Testing Really Different? – By Daniel Knott

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20 Days Of Testing at XING – Day [18|20]

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20 days of testing at XING - Adventures in QA

And here we go, another testing challenge for the next 20 days. This time it is a internal challenge at XING. The challenge was setup by Maik Nogens and Ionut Oancea and is inspired by the 30 days of testing challenge from Ministry of Testing. If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you have probably read my progress in the 30 days of testing challenge here.

You can also follow the progress of Lalit here. If you search for the hashtag #20DaysOfTesting@XING on twitter you may see more blog posts and tweets from colleagues.

Day 20: TEST YOUR PRODUCT FOR A QUALITY CRITERIA, WHICH NORMALLY IS NOT A FOCUS IN YOUR BUSINESS UNIT

Security testing is usually not in my business unit at XING. We have a dedicated security team which takes care about this topic. I like the topic, but I am by far not a security expert but I know some basic techniques to perform some simple checks. However, when testing mobile apps I use the OWASP lists to get an idea what to check and what to do. If you are working in mobile testing as well, you should take a look at the Mobile Top 10 Security Risks. As a starting point to check for security I use Charles proxy to intercept the communication between the mobile app, the network and our backend systems. While performing this check e.g. make sure the requests and responses are encrypted. If you have no idea about security testing at all, I highly recommend to hire security experts who will help you identify possible weak spots.

Day 19: SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT THE THING YOU JUST TESTED

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