Beta Testing

Beta Testing is the period of time when the software - be it a virtual world, a graphical image editor, driver suite, or any other part of the process - is not quite ready yet. It is almost there, but not quite and there are still a fair few bugs or unknown factors involved.

Beta testing is thus releasing the software to the userbase or a select portion of the userbase to test it out free of charge and with the understanding there will be bugs, and any bugs encountered are to be reported back.

As a side-note, some virtual environment manufacturers are infamous for paid beta testing – releasing the new version as a pay-for product, and thus having their beta testers unwittingly pay to test extremely buggy software. Always avoid the temptation to go down this route, as practically nothing will lose you customers more quickly than the userbase figuring out that this is what you are doing.

See Also: Alpha Testing

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Beta Testing

UAT

User Acceptance Testing

Results by page [1]   

Brain prosthesis passes live tissue test

Industry news, originally posted 14-11-2004. The world?s first hippocampus prosthesis has passed the first stages of live testing.

When a Biochip Lab is not enough: Massively parallel Biochip Labs
Biochip laboratories are a long way from standard equipment in every doctor's office, of course. The technology has left the lab, but only just. Still, there is plenty of room for improvement. After all, what do you do when testing hundreds of samples all at once, is just not enough? Why you increase the throughput!

Robot Researcher For Glass-Glues
Computerised researchers are becoming an increasing trend it would seem. We've seen an increase in recent years of drug-testing robots and automated researchers. Glass researchers are apparently the latest field to be hit with the automation bug.

CYCLOPS - Robot Blind Person
CYCLOPS is a novel robot, with a noble purpose. Created by researchers at the California Institute of Technology, it is designed to be used as a surrogate for blind persons in the testing of visual prostheses.

Production Testing and Bug Tracking
It's standard in the software development timescale, to leave bug-tracking, and problem solving until the Alpha development phase, when balancing is usually handled. This article from the game development professional's point of view, looks at why that is a bad idea, and strategies for handling bugs before they get to that stage.

Augmented Reality, Designed for Space, Half a Century Behind Everyone Else
The European Space Agency (ESA) have released details of a new augmented reality interface they have been testing and how it actually benefits astronauts when in space. Quite scarily they actually believe they are the first organisation to implement an AR interface, according to their press release.

A new route to Retinal Displays - Holographic Lenses
Retinal display systems have been under development for many years with few successes. A new, and fundamentally different approach to the problem is now being trialled by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Professor Shy Shoham and team are testing the power of holography to artificially stimulate cells in the retina of the eye, with the intent of bionically restoring vision. As a side-effect it would of course create a whole new class of retinal displays.

Results by page [1]   [2]