Be A Better Tester By Being A Beta Tester

(Special thanks to Phil Kirkham for the title suggestion!)

I've gotten some good responses to the post "So You Want To Be A Beta Tester" http://strazzere.blogspot.com/2010/05/so-you-want-to-be-beta-tester.html

Beta testing can be a good way to enhance your skills as a tester, and perhaps add to your resume.

Here are a few more opportunities.  As always, be careful when you venture into Beta land.

Kaspersky

http://www.kaspersky.com/beta

Participating in beta testing enables you to:

• be among the first to gain access to the latest versions of Kaspersky Lab solutions and share your opinion with us;

• help Kaspersky Lab improve the quality of the product being tested;

• provide your suggestions on possible ways of improving the product; 

• free technical support;

• collaborate directly with developers and other beta testers using dedicated sections of our forum; and, 

• receive free versions of the product, which are awarded to the most active beta testers.

Opera

http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=31

What kind of feedback is the Desktop Team looking for?  The Desktop Team is most interested in two types of feedback: constructive criticism on new functionality and notification about new bugs. They do not need to know that certain bugs have not been fixed for several weeks. Opera Software has a bug tracking system for that very purpose.

Eudora

http://www.eudora.com/betas/

Qualcomm and other contributors are developing a new, open source version of Eudora which is currently in early beta test, and can be downloaded from our betas page.

launchpad

https://help.launchpad.net/GetInvolved/BetaTesting

The Launchpad team runs a continuous beta program, as well as special beta test campaigns.

You can get access to the beta program by joining the Launchpad beta testers team. There are close to 2,000 beta testers and we encourage enthusiastic users to join that team to get the very latest functionality in Launchpad.

DotNetNuke

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/BetaTestingProgram/tabid/1123/Default.aspx

One of the greatest strengths of DotNetNuke is the participation of its large community of users.  To augment our own quality assurance efforts, we make our latest efforts broadly available for public beta testing and issue reporting.  In addition to making the software available, we also provide a variety of testbeds for upgrade scenarios to help get you started.

Enjoy!  And let me know if you find an interesting Beta Testing opportunity that you'd like to share. 

---

My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.