Hosted test bed for applications involving downloads
If we are to believe in the upcoming applications renaissance, then we have not seen anything yet. New Web 2.0 / Voice 2.0 applications will keep coming every day. And while I have tested over a hundred so far, I am not going to test one every week, let alone one every day. One of the reasons is that for a lot of these services there is a downloadable. As such I have to go through the ritual of downloading and installing and testing and uninstalling (if I decide not to keep the application).
There has got to be a more efficient method of testing these new services. Perhaps a site that hosts a test account where feasible. The developers could work directly with the site owner to arrange a test account (or several such accounts). People like me would certainly want to use such sites rather than download-and-install things all the time.
Such a site becomes more valuable if you are using laptops and PDAs since over these devices we judiciously load applications than over the desktops. Also I won’t be violating the company policies about software loading on the systems when at work -not to mention the bandwidth consumption issue.
Having suggested the above, it seems logical to develop more and more applications in Flash and Java since there are no downloads required.
