(I'm working with OP on this)

Thanks for the feedback! We are using a setup similar to http://www.diybookscanner.org/ for this and the scan quality is very high. The sample PDF was scaled down and compressed to reduce file size. I'll put up a high-res version in a bit.

For the actual service, you can download each individual high-res page scans.

OP here. I started TestElf over a year ago. Our initial service was pay-per-use iOS testing and we launched the MVP here on HN. After working with hundreds of developers, we realized that there were still many aspects of manual testing that our initial service did not solve. Today, we are launching our first new service: pay-per-month dedicated testing aimed at larger development teams. Being a solo founder and bootstrapping since the beginning has definitely been tough. I wouldn't have gotten this far without our first trial users (many of them HN readers). Thanks everyone!

When looking at the screenshot slides, clicking on the top right corner of the image (near where the 'x' is in most of the screenshots) actually closes the slideshow. This is a nice little usability detail.

Thanks for sharing. Adding to the list, I built HN Showcase a while back with a similar goal:

http://www.hnshowcase.com/

OP here. I started Testelf a year ago to make testing easier for mobile development teams. Many of our early adopters came from HN and we wouldn't have gotten this far without the support from this community. Thanks everyone!

While cloud services have made product development faster and easier, testing is still a bottleneck. Black box testing is essential in ensuring major issues are caught before an app reaches the end user. Testelf currently provides black box testing for iOS. My goal is to build a testing service that's not only affordable, but also very easy to use. We charge a flat price ($200) per test, have a two-day turnaround, require no documentation or spec from users, and provide a very comprehensive test report.

We launched a private beta with 30 companies around five months ago and have received very good feedback. Today, we are opening up the service to everyone. While we are iOS only for now, we are planning to add Android and Mac app testing in the near future.

I think you make a great point about perceived value of testing vs SEO/design. However, with the increased proliferation of downloading software through app stores, which favors apps with better reviews/ratings, the perceived value of testing should increase. For example, take a look at apps with mixed or low ratings on the AppStore and most of them will contain complaints about bugs in the app.

(random point + small shameless plug: I founded http://www.testelf.com as flat priced testing service for iOS apps)

Thanks for the comment! Android is probably the next platform for us if all goes well. I started off with iOS because I'm more familiar with it and it has less device variations. Extending the offering won't be trivial though. Before we start support for a new platform, we'd need to build the testing tools, develop new training materials, and acquire new hardware.

OP here. I quit my full-time job almost a year ago to travel and work on startup ideas, and this is the fruit of my labor in the past six months that I hope you'll find useful. I wanted to make it easy for startups and indie devs to test their iOS applications. How does testelf work? You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective, logging what we did or saw. The goal is to charge a flat price per test, provide good coverage and actionable feedback, and have a 36-hour turnaround time.

Over the past few months, I recruited and trained a small team of testers, developed internal testing tools, and worked with a handful of startups who are piloting our service. The service is now open for beta -- I would love to hear feedback from hackers and startups on HN who can give it a shot.

"You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective..."

It seems like a user should have at least some idea of what the app is. For example, I'll read the first couple sentences of an app's description and look at some screenshots/video before I decide to download it. This might be something you want to consider instead of having absolutely no idea what the app is before running it, since I assume most users have at least some context when opening an app.

It's usually a good idea when user testing to tell testers as little as possible about the product. It's true that real-world users have more context than that, but it can be worth it to get more unfiltered feedback— the first few moments you watch a user flounder to even understand what they're looking at can be the most valuable.

Good point! There is an option to attach additional information (description, notes, link to website/app store) when uploading an individual build. We do ask for a little bit of information about the app in general when the first build is uploaded so that we have some context.

This is a pretty cool idea, and something I would have considered trying to get my boss to pay for when I was a developer. I didn't see on your website - do you test on a wide variety of hardware platforms, or just iPhone 5 and iPad? Different versions of iOS?

Also, do you have any terms, in particular, regarding confidentiality?

Thanks for asking! We do test on common devices (retina/non-retina iPad, iOS 5/6), and we're going to carefully consider which devices to cover as we grow. I am also very aware of the importance of confidentiality, such as keeping test results private -- I think the service wouldn't make sense without it. Our exact terms will be available before we publicly launch.

Brilliant idea for a business. I would love if you guys would do simple games some day. Hoping to give your service a try soon.

For those like me who wondered why this was posted since the book content was out of date: The Django Book project needs help updating the book to cover Django 1.4 and beyond. Send pull requests to https://github.com/jacobian/djangobook.com

Do you know if there's an issue tracker or list of topics that need work anywhere? I'd be interested in contributing, but I'd rather not scan the whole text for things to fix (and risk duplicating effort with others)

I made http://www.hnshowcase.com that shows thumbnail/comment count/vote count of all "Show HN" posts. You can sort by comment and vote count but right now it doesn't let you filter by time range. I think I'll look into adding that to the next version.