Yesterday I stumbled upon Parleys.com. It appears that Parleys has been around for a while, providing podcasts of various tech presentations (audio only). However, the new version of the site, still in Beta, takes their offerings to an entirely new level. It now contains several videos of presentations from various Java conferences over the past few years. Not only is the content fantastic, but the user interface is very slick as well. The UI displays not only the audio in sync with the slides, but also a video of the presenter, giving you the full experience. The navigation options are also great, providing a table of contents and a time line for the presentation…letting your jump to a specific point in the talk. In addition, Parley’s provides information about the speaker and the talk, a list of related talks, and the ability to post tags and comments at specific points in the talk.
In my opinion, the best feature provided by Parleys.com is the ability to watch the presentations, with all of the UI features, offline. This is HUGE for me, as I spend almost two hours every day sitting on a train. Parley’s provides an Adobe AIR application that makes all of this possible. Adobe AIR is a runtime environment that “lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems”. The Linux version of AIR, still in Beta, works wonderfully. The AIR application operates just like the site, and provides some additional functionality to download the presentations for later viewing.
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately looking for a site like this. With the current economic conditions, I’d imagine that most companies are cutting back on the number of conferences they send their developers to. According to the site, they plan on continuing to add content. If they do, I see this as an invaluable resource for keeping up to date on what is going on in the Java community.
Tech Industry
career development, continued education, java
Merlin Mann, creator of 43 folders, was in the office today to give his talk on Time and Attention. It was a very good talk, and Merlin offered plenty of practical advice on how to manage distractions at work, and really focus on what you are getting paid to do. If you constantly feel like you can never get anything done at work due to meetings, the constant flow of emails, or some other distraction, I’d highly recommend checking out the presentation. None of what Merlin points out is rocket science. It is all simple, practical, and sound advice. I’m really going to make an effort to try some of his suggestions, and see they can’t help me spend a little more time doing what I’m good at while at work…solving problems.
Tech Industry
career development, productivity
You know that piece of code that you wrote a while back? That webapp that you wrote to help organize some aspect of your life? That library you wrote to abstract away some details of a specific task? Release it! That’s right. Set it free!
One of the reasons I set up this website was to give me a way to “showcase” and release some of the code I had written over the last couple of years. I guess some part of me thought it would be as simple as tarring up the code and throwing it on the site. Well, it turns out it’s not that simple (at least for me), and that’s a good thing.
I’ve found that releasing code forces you to make it better! Over the last couple of days, I’ve found myself adding more test cases, fixing bugs, removing assumptions, bulking up the documentation, and cleaning up the code. In general, now that the code will be out there in the public eye, I want to make sure it represents my best effort. When I write code for my own use, I generally focus on keeping it clean, and making it work. I don’t usually write doc outside of the code. I sometimes make assumptions in the code based on the box that I know will be running the code. I put up with small bugs that don’t really cause that big of a problem. But at the same time, when I use somebody else’s code, I expect more. I expect good doc. I expect that the code doesn’t assume to be running in any specific environment or on any specific setup. I expect those small bugs to be fixed. So, I’ve found myself cleaning up the code to meet my own standards. And, this is great for the code.
Releasing code also engages the community. You never know who may be out there looking for something like what you have created. You could be helping your fellow man by providing a solution to a problem they could be experiencing, perhaps the same problem that prompted you to write the code in the first place. Engaging the community has several other benefits. In true open source fashion, if users feel that your code is missing something, they will often add it. If there are bugs in the code that you missed, sometimes they will get fixed. An increased user base will sometimes serve as a source of innovation. All of these end up making your code better.
So, in short, I’ve found that releasing your code makes it better! So, release that code!
Software
career development, personal projects
