just to let you know

Podcatcher on a Stick

Adam Curry's DailySourceCode podcast made me aware of Podcatcher on a Stick, a brilliant new podcatcher app. Now we all know those standard podcatcher applications these days, but this one is a light, little app that fits onto your memory stick or memory card. Even better, it runs on Win and MacOS - and also Linux, I think. Good thing is that is makes you a lot more mobile when you're working on different machines and are unable to install software on them.

I am currently using it together with my P910i/SanDisk MobileMate MS+ combo and it works a treat.

SAP TechEd - booked !

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing I finally booked myself a place for the SAP TechEd in Vienna. I still do not know if certification will be offered at this year's instalment of the conference which takes place in the Austrian capital.

SAP TechEd - unfair treatment for european developers

As some of you might know, I earn a fair amount of my daily bread rolls through SAP development. Now that I do freelance work, I decided to invest into my skills and visit one of SAP's developer conferences: TechEd. Like every year, there are TechEds all over the world: this year Vienna, Boston, Tokyo and Bangalore were chosen. Since I am based in the UK, visiting Vienna is the obvious decision (unfortunately it is also the most expensive option, but that's fair enough). When I started researching each of these conferences a bit more, I soon discovered that SAP offers certification courses for their developers too. Part of the offer is that -included in the registration fee- SAP offers certification exams for their Netweaver product whilst visiting the conference. "What a marvellous idea!", I thought. But when I clicked a bit further into the individual conference descriptions, I found that not all parts of the SAP development world are equally treated by the software giant. In fact, Vienna -and for a while Boston, too- did not offer any certification opportunities for their visitors. So far, only Bangalore and Boston (which looked like a late certification entry) offer the valuable extra exams. There is no information available on Tokyo just yet - Vienna will definitely not have any certification opportunities.

I was and still am very disappointed about this state of affairs and the unfair treatment of european developers and turned to Shai Agassi's (member of SAPs executive board) weblog on the SAP developer network. Shai writes on there about "fighting the common enemy" and Outsourcing/Outtasking. I took the opportunity and posted a comment. He kindly replied:

Michael,

Fair point. We are trying to establish TechEd in India, as an entry to the market we have to behave like the rest of the market behaves in India. In the future we will probably need to re-evaluate this policy of no-charge.

As you can imagine, I wasn't really happy with this response, as it still doesn't tell us european developers why there are no certification opportunities at the european edition of TechEd and if SAP will start to treat us all equally again.

Lastly, I have also inquired about the registration fee for TechEd in Bangalore, as SAP does not mention it on their website: 15,000 Rupees (ca. $350). In comparison, the Boston registration is between $2045 and $2345. I leave it up to the reader to form an opinion about this. Of course you can argue that salaries and cost of living in India are lower as well, but when I spoke to a SAP developer from India about this, he only shook his head and said: "15000 Rupees is peanuts.".

London Bombings

I guess all the previous announcements and drills did kinda prepared us all for this - a set of terrorist attacks on the UK's capital city.

Sal and my thoughts were with our friends & family living in London and we were very relieved when we heard that none of them were hurt. However, the mere thought that there are people who lost their dearest as an outcome still leaves me breathless.

I remembered that the bus incident in Tavistock Square is only a few steps away from a hostel I stayed in when I did some work practice in London back in 1995. I know this is crazy, but knowing that I have walked along this place about 10 years ago makes the whole thing even less believable for me.

It's such a shame that London has to go through this roller coaster of emotions in such a short space of time. We all were thrilled and excited when the IOC announced London as the host for the 2012 Olympics - how quickly all this changed.

On the way back from work yesterday a signpost along the motorway read: "Avoid London. Listen to radio.".

SanDisk Mobile Mate MS+

Just had a first play with my new Memory Stick Pro Duo card reader from SanDisk. It's an amazing little reader/writer, which works flawless under XP, OS X and (tadaaaa) Suse Linux 9.2 !

Padstow & Bedruthen Steps Coastal Walk

I took this picture on a recent trip to Padstow, Corwall - one of my favourites. Some other photos of a coastal walk to the Bedruthen Steps can be found here

Java con leche, bitte !

Slowly but surely I am fighting my way through my Java tutorial book - it is hard, I must admit, since I am still getting to grips with "real" OO programming. All these years of ABAP have left their traces...

I am amazed how flexible and compact a language Java can be (once you've come to grips with it). However it will take me a while until I am more used to Polymorphisms, Casting and Constructors.