Anything besides Google?

I've been thinking a lot about search lately. Specifically, what are the most popular, creative and unknown, but perhaps extremely effective ways for developers to find information? And with Google's recent updates, I figured its time to blog about it.

More than anything I'm really curious how developers are find finding answers to their technical how to types of questions. Quickly finding answers problems is key to being a productive developer, and hitting project milestones. Clearly the folks at Searchcoders have realized this, and they've done a great job aggregating resources for Flex developers and making it easy for people to find answers. If you haven't seen their demo, or downloaded the Apollo based desktop version of their work, its really worth checking out.

So how do you find answers to your questions when developing stuff with Adobe technology? Do you Google it, and that's it? (And is there anyone that doesn't use Google as their default search engine? If so, what are you using?) Or perhaps you use Google's advanced search capabilities to search, like inside a specific domain.

But what if Google doesn't find your answer? Then what do you?

Do you come to Adobe.com and search for an answer? And when on Adobe.com where do you look? Do you browse through the Developer Center? And check out things like the Flex cookbook? Visit the forums? Check out livedocs (that's a link to the Flash CS3 livedocs)? Use Adobe.com search? Search for knowledgebase articles in the Support Center?

Do you check out sites that index code and APIs for you like gotapi.com and Krugle?

Or perhaps you just look to your specific community for the answer, and post your question for others to help you out?

I'd love to hear from people in the Adobe community on this. So please comment away in my blog and let me know how you find answers.

Developer Idol: Launching the Adobe Developer Spotlight

Note that the voting for the Developer Spotlight ending on May 14th, 2007.

We know that developers using Adobe technologies are doing great things every day. Some build cool apps; some answer questions on forums and lists. Others blog, write books, develop extensions or components, or work on open-source projects to extend our products. Others provide us with valuable feedback by reporting bugs or supplying ratings and comments on our website—the list goes on and on.

Some of the most active developers out there in the Adobe developer world are part of a program called Adobe Community Experts. But we want to do more to recognize—and introduce you to—the efforts of our developer community. So starting very soon, we're going to be launching a new feature on the Adobe Developer Center called the Developer Spotlight. This new area will periodically feature a developer who is doing some cool stuff. You’ll be able to gain deeper insight into what these developers are working on and find out a bit more about who they are.

We thought that a great way to kick this off would be to highlight some of the folks in the community who have shared their knowledge with others through their articles in our Flex Developer Center. So we've taken the top authors of Flex Developer Center content and given them a shot at getting our first Developer Spotlight.

But here's where it gets fun: We're not making the call. You guys are. So please vote using the polling widget on the right side of my blog.

If you’d like to find out more about this group before you vote, check out their articles on the Flex Developer Center, including their biographies at the bottom of the first page of each article. The first-round nominees are:

• Yakov Fain

• Derek Wischusen

So lastly, you may be wondering a few things about how this will all work. It’s a new thing for us, and we haven’t figured out all the details, but we didn’t want to wait any longer. Here are some answers to some of the questions we think you may have about the Developer Spotlight.

Q: How often will Adobe be featuring developers on Adobe.com?
A: We are shooting for once a month.

Q: Will it always be open for the community to vote on?
A: Perhaps. We're going to see how it goes.

Q: What if I want to be in the Developer Spotlight or want to recommend someone for the Developer Spotlight?
A: In the near term future, we'll have a way for the community to submit themselves or others to be considered for the spotlight. But we’re not there just yet.

Q: What do you get if you are featured in the Developer Spotlight?
A: Admiration (most likely) from the community and...um…and that’s about it. But we think that’s a pretty good start...

Q: How many times can I vote?
A: Once. So no, this isn’t exactly like the “idol” signing contests taking place around the world. You can’t vote as many times as you want. Just one vote per person.

So vote away via the poll on the right side of my blog. And let us know what you think of this idea, by providing comments on this blog.

Please Note: When this post was originally published on the evening on May 6th 2007, Renaun Erickson was also listed in this post and the associated poll. As soon as I found out that Renaun is now working at Adobe, I opted to remove him from the running. I'm thrilled Renaun is working here, but this was a vote for non-Adobe authors of the most popular Flex content. As a result the vote was reset at 8:52 am PT on May 7th, 2007 and it now only includes Yakov and Derek.

Developer Social Networks

So I know I'm new to the blogosphere and given that, I've been thrilled and surprised by how many people read and commented on my first few posts. But then the well dried up.

My last post was read by bunch of people, but I didn't get any comments. Maybe the post just didn't connect with readers. Or maybe no one really cares. But I have to believe that people must have some opinions about this and want to share them under them premise that this info could help Adobe deliver better resources for developers.

So I'll ask my questions again, and if you have an some thoughts please share them. If not, I promise I won't beg for feedback on this stuff again. Ok, at least for a little while. But I'll definitely be asking for opinions on other stuff very soon.

Here are my questions about developers and social networking:

• Are you a fan of social networking? Why or Why not?
  
• What social networking sites do you use? Why?
  
• Do developers need better social networking capabilities? What do you want to see?
  

Tweet, space, or link?

Are you a member of a social network? Do you use Twitter, My Space, or LinkedIn? (Ok, I'm not an expert here, but I'm not sure if everyone even agrees that Twitter really is a social network. But I think it is)

Anyway, there are social networks cropping up all the time it seems, especially with the Web 2.0 Expo this week. I was excited about Visible Path after they were TechCrunched. But after a quick exploration of it yesterday, I'm less excited. Time will tell though... And one of the more interesting developments I've noticed is the Expo Cal/iCalico app being used for the Web 2.0 Expo. Now I'm not actually using it because I'm not at Web 2.0, but it still seems interesting.

And of course, everyone is Twittering. Well, not everyone. I'm not. I do have a Twitter account and a few friends on Twitter, but have never actually posted anything. I just can't seem with to come up with a compelling reason to tweet. I don't think anyone I know really cares about the specific details of what I'm up to, or what I'm thinking at an exact moment in time. But then again, I'm slow to adopt this stuff. Plus most of the people I know aren't on Twitter - yet. By the way, there are number of slick Twitter applications out there using Apollo. I personally like this one, and if I was actively using Twitter, I'd use this app.

There also have been a wide range of posts I've seen about LinkedIn recently. For example, this one. Now I actually find LinkedIn useful for tracking people I know, and most of the people I know are on LinkedIn. Just this morning I got a connection from a longtime colleague to connect with someone in my network. Not only do I hope that turns into a fruitful conversation, but it also led me to reconnect with him. And I'm using LinkedIn right now to try to connect with folks that have worked on similar projects to what I'm working on in the past.

So that leads to my questions associated with this post. Feel free to answer any or all of them, or just provide your comments.

• Are you a fan of social networking? Why?
  
• What social networking sites do you use?
  
• Why should I Twitter?
  
• And here's the biggie that I really hope a few folks will shed some light on. Do developers need better social networking capabilities?

Oh yeah, if you are curious, you can find me on LinkedIn here. And if I ever start using Twitter, you can find me here.

Do you participate?

Before I started my blog, I asked some folks for advice on what makes a good blog. Mike Potter told me that he recommended having catchy post titles. And clearly, John Nack, Photoshop product manager, and if you ask me, blogger extraordinaire, has mastered this art. So I was going to call this post "Why even bother?" but figured that might just come off as a bit negative.

Anyway, today's question is this -- do you participate in online activity, or just consume information? If you post comments, rate content, tag items, provide feedback, answer questions on lists and forums, why do you do it? Now I also realize that the consumers of info, those who don't immediately participate, may not be immediately inclined to provide feedback, so I'm anticipating that my comments will include lots of participants, but not a lot of folks that prefer to only consume info.

So if you don't normally participate in the conversation, well here's your chance to break out -- why don't you more actively participate in shaping great content, helping other developers, etc? What would it take you stop doing what you are doing, and jot off a quick note, suggestion, some feedback, or even click on some stars to rate content?

And since we're at it, is this whole community participation thing just a passing fad, or is it here to stay? I'd argue that forums and mail lists have been around for years, and we're just experiencing a natural evolution...But like my first post a few days back, this isn't really about what I think, its what you think. So please, comment away....

Am I too late to get feedback?

So I'm late to the game. Its taken me a long time to spin up my blog, but with a bit of a new focus in my job, I realized its time. So here it is...my entry into the blogosphere.

But if you have found your way here and don't already know me, then you are probably asking yourself, in the immortal words of Admiral James Stockdale, who am I and why am I here? So I'll explain that, and I'm definitely hoping for better results than the Admiral's.

I've been working at iterations of Adobe since early 2000, starting with Allaire, then on to Macromedia, and since December of 2005, at Adobe. Before that I spent time at Powersoft, Sybase, Silverstream and IBM. So I've been thinking about and working with developers a lot over the past 15 years, and specifically working on developer relations over the past 15 months or so.

And in the last month or so, I've started to focus even more deeply on developers, specifically around the area of developer programs. So it clearly became time to blog, not only to share some insight into things we are thinking about, things we are working to better support developers, but to use this blog as a way to get your opinions, feedback and ideas.

So with that, yes I'm late to the game, but I'm here. And while I'm thrilled to have comments welcoming me to the blogosphere if anyone wants to do that, more than anything I want to kick this off by getting input from people that develop applications with Adobe technology. What do you think --what does Adobe need to do to provide better support for developers? Is it better content, more community connections, easier ability to find code, etc? All ideas and suggestions are welcome.