Good News: Just Saved A Lot on Qual Assurance

Every child’s dream is to become a video game beta tester, and I think this is the closest I’ll ever come.  The DailyMe team has—at long last—completed the new site, and the programmers selected me to participate in the “QA” process before it goes public.  Though not quite a nomination for a Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes, you can still imagine how honored I was…and am. 

            My only worry is that I seemed under-whelmed when initially recruited by Mrs. Boss.  This was mainly because I didn’t know what “QA” stood for (much like I don’t know how to end that sentence without a preposition).  I first mused that I was being invited to a “Question & Answer” session about the site, but this theory was just as soon thrown out: I know nothing about the site to answer, and I doubt that phrase is ampersand-optional.  The team quickly explained that it stood for Quality Assurance, which leads me to where I am now: a “practice” consumer, viewing our product with a critical eye before someone less forgiving does so.  I’m not going to lie: it feels pretty cool to tell my friends that I’m “QAing” today, but the incurably pedantic ones need time to get past the “Q not following directly by U” thing. 

            My main area of focus on the site is in the keyword search field.  Our server uses a set of precise algorithms to match up a user’s keyword preferences with later articles, and I want to assure that this process is accurate.  You can imagine a customer’s dissatisfaction upon feeding the “word” baseball and receiving only obituaries (though I’d say the two topics are equally boring), and that’s what I want to avoid. 

            Other aspects of QAing are equally important, but far less exciting.  I’ve made sure that DailyMe arrives where and when a customer’s preferences suggest, and the rest of my time has been spent searching for broken links.  The latter is tough, because such links are never obviously messed-up to the naked eye.  Fortunately enough, my eye usually wears undergarments…which explains why I was chosen for this task. 

            In due time, all users will be able to give our site the ole’ college try.  And I hope it’s soon—because I’m getting lonely(grl15) on dailyme.com.

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

www.dailyme.com