Everyone hates testing, and usability testing more than ever. It cannot be automated and needs human intervention every single time. We are finally starting to see products that will help with usability testing. One of the first was Clearleft’s SilverBack.
Now, dutch internet startup Usabilla wants to make online usability testing fast and simple with visual feedback. The company recently launched a private beta and is looking for testers.
To get your invite click here.
The process is simple: you create a test/project, you select the pages, add tasks, invite people and watch their feedback. Participants answer basic questions about how they think and feel about a website by placing markers or notes on a transparent overlay on the web page.
Let’s face it: testing is boring, but this could be a nice product to make UI testing easy and quite simple.
As said earlier you can get some private beta invites.
Usability testing made visual by Usabilla (private beta invites)
yellowBird creates the first 360° immersive video
Out of the many companies that launched at The Next Web, one that particularly got my attention is yellowBird.
They promise to “rock the movie industry world” and they may actually do it. They have a really cool technology, inspired by Google Streetview, that creates a complete 360° video that can be watched in any flash capable computer, and shared easily on the internet with their proprietary flash player.
“The viewer becomes the Director, who can choose what he wants to see from his position”, says co-founder Rafaël Redczus of yellowBird. He started working on this technology almost 10 years ago, but now all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place. 
“There are unbelievable opportunities for this new dimension in online experiences. Film producers can use it for their trailers on the Internet, city marketeers can use it to attract tourists, dance events become virtually
physically accessible for millions of visitors, documentaries and sports events become probing experiences, whilst this technology will bring about a
revolution in the world of advertising.” Redczus comments “Advertisers are looking more and more to the Internet. This offers them unrivalled opportunities
to present themselves.”
The Groningen-based startup may have actually created something that will change media distribution, not a minor funny technology.
Pictures, video, color video, live video, live internet streaming.. what’s next? This sounds like a good candidate. We will see how these guys do very soon.
According to Marc Groothelm, Managing Director of yellowBird, they are still the only company in the world that makes this concept accessible and available to
businesses. Keep in mind this is not intended at all to go mainstream for consumers, as the “stitching” process of the 6 video streams requires lengthy calculations by extremely powerful computers.
It is great to see such innovative startups in Europe reminding everyone that we aren’t just the artistic continent but we can have a major role in business and technology innovation.
Thanks to the guys of Creating Inspiration you can watch the video of their presentation at The Next Web:
Share your online identities in real life with E
This is E, an Amsterdam startup that launched today at The Next Web. The company promises to join all your online profiles and let you share them with any internet-capable mobile phone or using a specific usb-dongle called Connector, thus replacing business cards.
With E, you can create many different virtual cards and share the most appropriate depending on the situation you’re in (party, conference, meeting). Not only will you get all of the person’s details without having to keep their business card, but if they change their email address or phone number the changes will get automatically pushed to your contact information.
Connector, the usb device used to exchange information is equipped with a high quality lithium polymer battery which allows you to use it for 72 hours on a 2 hour charge, it holds two E Business Cards and connects to RFID tags as well as other Connectors. Wondering why would you need this? Actually you don’t need it at all, just connect to m.mynameise.com or wait for one of the native iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and WebOS apps that have been announced.
The company is privately funded and explained their business model as being a mix of premium features, b2b services and hardware (Connector) sales.
Amsterdam welcomes The Next Web conference
The european internet startup scene has gathered in Amsterdam for this 3-days amazing conference.
Technology entrepreneurs, start-ups, innovators, venture capitalists, industry journalist, bloggers and simple geeks will attend keynotes and speeches given by internet celebrities such as Matt Mullenweg, Eric Meyer and Jeff Jarvis. Speakers include high level executives from Google, Yahoo! and Level 3 as well as entrepreneurs (SoundCloud, Imeem), venture capitalist and writers.
The agenda is really interesting. While today was the “unconference”, with Mobile DevCamp and “The Current Web”, tomorrow the real show begins.
The agenda includes a “Rising Sun Start-up Rally” that will surely have an important role in the event. The 19 companies that will have the chance to pitch to VCs and bloggers have been selected out of 200 with the help of twitter and a special voting system.
Take a look at their agenda, speakers and startup finalists.
We will be back with more posts regarding the event and hopefully with videos of the keynotes!
