Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Wednesday 5 September 2007, 8:25 PM
Top 10 Software Freebies
Stepping slightly outside the core areas that I normally blog on I thought I’d be slightly light hearted for a moment. As we’re in the midst of conference season and I don’t seem to out of a software symposium or conference for more than five minutes this month, I wanted to list the top ten best freebies I’ve picked up this year.
In no particular order of ranking, here’s what my travel bag seems to have become cluttered with over the last few weeks:
1 – Moleskinned notebook (oh so geeky, but nice)
2 – Inflatable head pillow for plane travel (dribble resistant)
3 – Victorinox laptop protector (posh)
4 – Drinking flask (basic, but always good)
5 – Oidz magnets (great to give to nephews)
6 – Gel hand warmers (pointless, but interesting)
7 – Post it note holder/wallet
8 – Pedometer (how far have I walked between sessions?)
9 – International electric plug adapter
10 – Mints (boring, but you always need them)
NB – you’ll notice that I haven’t included T-shirts in this list despite their ubiquitous presence at every software industry event from Seattle to Sydney. If you’re wondering why, well, let me just say that I had to wait 20 minutes in a queue to get into the Microsoft Tech.Ed conference one year just to get around the glut of developers blocking the entrance hall trying to get their hands on a free t-shirt. Even I have my limits.
Have you noticed these kind of freebies? Do you like them or do they annoy the hell out of you? Maybe you have one of your own to add – or your least favourite perhaps?
Friday 31 August 2007, 6:08 PM
We don’t need no education – actually, maybe we do
You’ve probably aware that journalists get invited to press conferences and various other publicity-driven shindigs. Of course we’re offered interview opportunities and even the odd lunch with the spokesperson du jour. We also get to go to roundtables, conferences and once in a while the occasional ‘jolly’ where we’re not even expected to write anything, but just get to know a company’s execs a little better.
But today, I’m in San Jose at the Adobe headquarters attending (along with a bunch of other technical writers) a slightly different event – a press ‘study tour’. This is a series of learning sessions designed to give us a better understanding of the company’s latest technology iterations in the Rich Internet Application space.
This made me think about how unusual the software business is. While we’re being given extended demos and Q&A sessions to dig into the guts of how you build front end data centric applications, can you imagine this kind of thing happening in any other industry?
Rather than a quick factory tour, would the baking industry sit the catering press down to explain state of the art dough-mixing techniques? Instead of a nice little test drive, would BMW or Ford offer a group of motoring journalists a two-day boardroom session on torque ratios and their new brake pad roadmap? (no pun intended) Can you imagine a throng of movie reviewers studying cinematography best practice for the best part of week? I think perhaps not.
I don’t have to explain why we get the chance to attend this type of event – software engineering is, in short, complex. But I think it resonates with the same reason that many of you are developers in the first place. This complexity inherently brings power and that is what makes working with software attractive. Am I right?
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