It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about what I’ve been working on lately, so I thought I would provide a quick update to whoever still reads this thing .

A few posts ago I talked a little bit about our latest and greatest audiobooks-related initiative at the time: UnlimitedListening.com. This was a website which offered unlimited audiobook downloads from a selection of several thousand titles. The service was powered by the Simply Audiobooks Download Hub, a piece of software designed to simplify the entire process of downloading and listening to an audiobook.

Fast-forward just six months and things are already dramatically different.

First of all, the UnlimitedListening.com project has been “replaced” by the new Audiobooks.com service. I say “replaced” and not “modified” or “re-branded” because there are a handful of very fundamental differences between the two services.

Here is a quick list of new features which separate Audiobooks.com from its predecessor:

Streaming

The most significant change with Audiobooks.com is the move from downloading to streaming. Now, instead of having to wait for your audiobooks to download before you can listen to them, you can hit Play and start listening right away!

Mobile

Another cool addition to Audiobooks.com is the new mobile version of the website (which is compatible with most smart phones). If you visit the website using a mobile device, we will automatically detect this and bring you to our mobile-optimized website. This means that you can now listen to audiobooks on your phone anywhere you want so long as you have an active internet connection.

Thousands of New Titles

Every single day we are adding more and more titles to Audiobooks.com. We now have several thousand more titles than we did when we launched UnlimitedListening.com!

Anyways, that’s it for updates. As usual, please feel free to contact me with any feedback (positive or negative) that you may have, or even if you have an idea for a cool new feature that you would like to see!

The Rexall centre is fairly large. It is basically a giant tennis stadium surrounded by ten or so smaller tennis courts. It was cool to be able to see some of the best women tennis players in the world play right in front of you (many of the matches could be viewed from less than 20 or 30 feet away!).

Although getting to see each of the qualifying matches was entertaining, we actually spent most of our time watching the “practice” courts. Many of the world’s top women tennis players were there to practice, including Caroline Wozniaki, Francesca Schiavone, and Li Na.

Can’t wait for the 2012 Rogers Cup next year in Toronto!

Some more Simply Audiobooks news …

We just finished launching our most recent project: UnlimitedListening.com!

For those not familiar with the project, UnlimitedListening.com is a brand new website which allows you to download audiobooks each month for a monthly subscription fee. The website currently boasts over 3000 titles (in M4B format) and, unlike many other sites out there, does not place a restriction on the number of books you can download.

Feel free to check out the site and let me know what you think!

Happy Listening,

Jim

For those not familiar with Simply Audiobooks, it is an online business (www.simplyaudiobooks.com) that allows you to Rent, Download, and Purchase audiobooks from the comfort of your home. I’ve been working with Simply Audiobooks for about three and a half years.

The Simply Audiobooks Download Hub is a software program designed for the Windows operating system. It is free to download, and you can begin downloading books for as low as $14.95/month. Some of its current features are:

• The ability to sign up for a Simply Audiobooks download account (monthly fee).
• The ability to browse more than 6,000 audiobooks available for download and add your favorite books to your download shelf.
• Multiple file formats (MP3 and M4B) for most books.

To learn more about the Simply Audiobooks Download Hub, click here.

Jim

But there was one question that really caught my attention because it got me thinking about the common denominator behind why certain people succeed in the software industry and why others are less than successful. The question was: “What are the most important software development skills?”. I know, simple question right?

I briefly contemplated answering the question by listing off a few bullet points of technical skills and technologies that I thought would serve an up-and-coming student well if they were coming into the industry today. But the truth is that the software industry, and more generally the technology industry as a whole, is in a constant state of change. Current technologies are improved upon or become obsolete, and new technologies are constantly under development.

I ended up answering the question by listing just two skills. Although I have only been working in the software industry for about three and a half years, these two skills seem to play a major role in the success of people in the industry:

1. The desire and willingness to constantly learn new things
2. The ability to balance business objectives with software best practices

The first point is motivated by the fact that the software industry is constantly changing. The people that tend to succeed are not necessarily the people that know the most today. I’ve seen people starting off with relatively few technical skills surpass other more veteran developers simply because they had a greater appetite for knowledge.

The second point is also very important. As software developers we always want to write perfect code so that it will be easy to extend later if new features need to be added. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s important to balance this desire with the objectives of the business we’re working for. Business have deadlines and it’s important to write the best code that you can in the promised amount of time.

Feel free to drop a comment if you have your own thoughts about what the most important software development skills are. I’m really interested to hear other people’s thoughts!