Sharon Ideas Inc

New in 2012! Now offering Project Management!

sharon — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:45:02 +0000

Sharon Ideas Inc. is now providing software project management for small to medium sized companies. Whether you’re a one person company producing one software and need someone to help you keep track of when deadlines are and need someone to take what your client want and communicate that to your developers, or if you’re a larger company with multiple projects and a team of developers to juggle, Sharon Ideas Inc. is now able to assist you with this!

A Project Manager takes the burden off the leaders in the business, allowing you to focus on bringing in business, and taking care of higher level processes, while the project manager makes sure your software, web app, etc, is developed to your client’s requirements and satisfaction, and is launched in a timely manner. We keep in close contact with you so that you are fully aware of the status of your project, we let your client know where their project stands at each phase of development, take care of any changes of scope that come up, and direct your team of developers accordingly. We then offer QA testing at each phase of development so that you know that not only is your project being managed with a personal touch and emphasis, but it’s also going to be thoroughly tested and launched with a strong start. We are available 24/7 if any issues come up, and provide follow up care for your client after launching the project. This process is geared to make your client happy and make your life easier!

This is an exciting service to offer in 2012 for Sharon Ideas Inc. Let us know how we can assist you with your projects!

New website design is live!

sharon — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:17:37 +0000

Our new look for sharonideas.com is now live! We hope you like the new look and feel and would love to get your feedback. Personally, I’m excited about it! A big thanks goes to Gecko Designs for taking care of the technical side of our website re-design–they were great to work with and I recommend them if you’re looking to create a website.

Sharon Ideas Inc. still offers the same services, with the goal of bringing a personalized quality assurance and testing service to you, so that you can meet your goals of producing high quality software, web apps, and websites to your customers. We are available to you 7 days a week so that we can fit as seamlessly into your project as possible. We work with your development team to ensure that the bugs are caught, the product is usable, everything has been tested, and your customers can have a happy user experience, which will in turn bring satisfied customers back to you!

Lately we’ve been doing a lot of website and web app testing–with many development teams seeing the trend to make products available online, this seems to be a direction almost every software company is at least considering. We’ve also been doing some mobile app testing, so if you’re producing an iphone app, we can test that as well.

So let the testing begin and thanks for checking out our new website re-design!

Quality Assurance

sharon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:27:53 +0000

Quality Assurance is a never ending process of evaluation, development, and re-assessment. In the end, it leads to happier customers, less hot fixes, missed bugs, and last minute changes. This develops a better flow from development to the customer’s doorstep.

Blog

sharon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:52:06 +0000

Keep current with what we are doing. Read our blog and keep up to date on our latest news!

Testing

sharon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:45:11 +0000

Testing is where we make certain that you look your best. We test your product under every imaginable conditions to be certain that it debuts ready to use and free of bugs.

Usability

sharon — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:43:12 +0000

Usability is one of the most important goals of any development cycle, and bringing in a fresh pair of eyes to give you that valuable feedback will be the difference between an excellent website/application or an mediocre one.

New website look coming soon!

sharon — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:08:12 +0000

SharonIdeas.com is getting a new look in the next few weeks! Keep your eyes open for a major redesign of our site with the same, personalized service you’ve come to expect. We are growing in some amazing new directions, serving some great clients and expanding the ways we can help you meet your goals for quality assurance. Whether we provide a usability assessment on your website or web app or testing for your software, you’ll be able to release a product knowing it is stable and ready for your customers. Sharon Ideas focuses on customizing the testing experience to YOUR needs (whatever they may be) and helping you to reach your goals.

Bugzilla!

sharon — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:07:47 +0000

The past week has been an exciting one for me: I’ve finally had the chance to use Bugzilla. This has been something I’ve wanted to try out for a long time. And I must say I’ve been impressed. As someone who has used Fogbugz for years, I was looking for something comparable that was open source and I think I’ve found it.

The user interface is simple and easy to customize. The administration panel provides multiple ways to set up Bugzilla and customize it. Each user has ways to customize their individual experience as well. It took me a little bit to figure out how to get email notification to work though–this is one area that the Bugzilla team could work on. Apparently some of it is back end and since I didn’t have a chance to install it on a server, I didn’t get a chance to experiment on how it’s done. It’s Linux based, which is nice. One of the most customizable areas is the New Bug interface: You can add custom fields, conditional fields, and decide exactly what you want there. There are a few areas that I didn’t see a way to customize right off, such as the “Only users in all of the selected groups can view this bug:” checkbox which I didn’t see necessary for the project I was working on but I couldn’t figure out right away how to hide this. The Browse feature is somewhat different from Fogbugz in that you can easily see the severity of a bug by the color of the text–the darker the text, the higher the severity. This is a great visual addition that FogBugz certainly hasn’t tapped. There is also a area to document and customize the workflow as well, which would be useful especially for larger projects. Personally I like the “can whine” feature which will whine to a developer, etc, if they haven’t looked at a bug in a specified time period–great reminder feature to nag developers with! Of course, depending on how the user is set up, this feature can be turned off. Users with the appropriate permissions can also watch other users and get every email notification that they do. Users can also impersonate another user as well (if they’ve been setup with the permission to do so), but that user is also notified that you are impersonating them. Reports can show information based on any information you provide for an X and Y axis, or can be exported as a CSV or show in a chart or graph. Another handy addition to Bugzilla is that you an submit or modify a bug via email, without having to directly log in. Time tracking is similar to Fogbugz. This is just a small sampling of the features Bugzilla has. For a complete list, go to Bugzilla Features. Thedocumentation is easy to ready and follow and provides a lot of great information on how to setup the administration area. I’m sure as I get more familiar with it, and work with it more, I will learn new ways to customize it and tweak it so it works even better for my purposes.

As with any new product, there is a bit of a learning curve but this is one I think will be easy to learn and educate others about. I’m definitely looking forward to working with it and learning more about Bugzilla!

A Brief Look Back…

sharon — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:07:19 +0000

As I look over the past year, there is much to reflect on. The WikiLeaks with the leak of hundreds of highly classified information. What does this mean to the coming year? Freedom of speech and yet keeping tabs on security has a new area to tread in. Facebook has undergone several updates–users initially howled about it but soon got used to the change. What is next for Facebook? I’ve heard rumors they are going to start incorporating facial recognition to photo tagging, which is sure to open a new can of worms. Users can now use Places to show their friends where they are and what they are doing, which took the place of Foursquare for many users. The iPhone4 took off like a bolt of lightening for AT&T and has kept on growing with rave reviews. My husband got one and it is indeed a huge upgrade from the iPhone3. The iPad changed many things, becoming the hot item, a technology for on the go, a way to communicate, educate and learn faster and easier. The Kinect for the xbox 360 was released in November, revolutionizing how people play video games. It is truly opening up a whole new realm of gaming, and I must say, something that has interested a lot of people who normally wouldn’t play games. Even my 4yr old daughter can play the Kinect easily! LinkedIn updated its UI, making many features easier for users, while adding new features. More and more people did their Christmas shopping this year on their mobile phones and iPads. HTML5 continues to open new doors for development and advancement. Bing as a web browser continues to grow with over 90 million users, but so does Opera and Firefox. 2011 looks like it will bring a lightening fast IE9, which will be interesting to test. MySpace has declined in usage, with talk of maybe Yahoo buying it out. The Apple App store hits 10 billion downloads. In the automotive industry, we’re seeing more and more electric cars, with more electric charging stations. Cloud computing and social media continue to grow, with the buzz words becoming more well known and accepted and implemented. People are incorporating more “green technology” and looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint on this earth. The oil spill generated a lot of media attention and a critical eye at how oil drilling has been done. The economy has for the most part, stayed the same, with more employers hiring again, but being much more picky about who they can hire due to the sheer number of highly educated people out of work.

I’m excited about 2011 and seeing what it has to offer. If it is anything like 2010, it will be a year of new developments, advancements and excitement!

Good study about Facebook usage by Mashable

sharon — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:06:50 +0000

I wanted to share an article I read this morning on Mashable’s website, “When Are Facebook Users Most Active”. I thought this was a great article for those of us who use Facebook to communicate to our audiences. I for one, never thought much about what time of day or which day I posted something. This study by Mashable clearly shows some times are better than others. This study covered an impressive range of posts, comments, and streams from August 2007 to October 2010.

Great study Mashable! Now I will remember to post at 2:50pm on Wednesdays so that when the influx of users check their Facebooks at 3:00 they will see my posts!