You can talk to us, just like you can to Siri (see http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/#siri), and you can be sure that we’ll listen and act appropriately… really, just start talking, we’re serious, ehh, sirious :-)

One of the first things I noticed when applying for a job Down Under was that where in Europe they recruit specialists, down here, they primarily recruit the ‘jacks of all trade’ Probably because there is a huge lack of really good software engineers (they are here, but there’s not enough of them). Where in Europe, the roles ‘analyst’, ‘developer’ and ’tester’ are strictly different roles. Think of it like the ‘Trias Politica’, where you differ between the power that defines law (politicians), the power that upholds law (police) and the power that checks if the other two are operating within the law (judges). ...

As some of you may know, I’m currently working on the WCMS project at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This is a large, multi-year project to replace the old web content management system with a brand new (Java) CoreMedia system which will allow the ABC to grow it’s online presence even further. As with most java based systems, we use maven to support building the project. And we use many of the plugins that are out there to do specific tasks, for instance the maven-config-processor-plugin to create the various configurations for each of the target platforms, but also the maven-shade-plugin to change some .class files in specific jars. ...

I think I’ve been using Google as a search engine from the day Google emerged as a search engine. Which, of course, was there sole business when they did. It was the fastest, most accurate and the least gruesome of all search engines of it’s time. Just this textbox and two buttons (at least, I can’t remember the day the ‘I feel lucky’ button was introduced, to me, it seems like it’s always been there) ...

I acknowledge the fact that I’ve been born a tv-native (I’ve never wondered about a tv-less world) but my children are what they call ‘digital natives’. Think of it, the communicator we’d love to have from Star-Trek, is what they call an iPhone, blackberry or if you are really hip, an android phone. We got the technology Star Trek dreamt about delivered at our doorstep. To my son, there is no difference between the tv-remote and my iPhone, just because I was that stupid to install some application that allowed me to control my tv through my iPhone. But when he grows up, there really isn’t a difference. ...