We've just rolled out a tiny little app on Developer Force to better list Featured Content. It has a nice URL too: http://developer.force.com/content/

Behind the scenes, we're using the same data source to update the home page Featured Content listing, as well as the Atom feed, and of course the content listing as well.

We've also introduced "categories" that correspond with those on our home page as a filter mechanism, and "content type". I'm particularly fond of the resulting URL scheme (which uses URL rewriting, still in beta) - check out the URL for listing all App Logic tech talks:

http://developer.force.com/content/category/App+Logic/type/Tech+Talk

As a next iteration, I hope to one day add incremental search! As always, LMK what you think of the page.

Please participate in the Developer Force Survey! Yes, you do stand a chance to receive a new Macbook Air in the mail, but it's really about a chance to help shape and form Developer Force. We really value your opinion as a Developer Force community member--we want to hear from you about the website, discussion boards, content, ease of use, and much more. As you may have guessed, if you fill out this 10 minute survey by March 15, 2010, you'll also be entered into a drawing for some cool giveaways.

Take the survey!

Wow, I'm psyched by the new features in the Spring '10 release preview. Check out our Spring '10 Release Preview Page and see for yourself. There are so many things that grab me - from the small to the large. Here's a small one to start things off - "starts with a vowel sound"! I found that while creating a new object:


I'm guessing that's going go be used in the automatically generated user interface.

Then there's the rich text support driven off a new field type:

One of my favourites is XML DOM parsing. Actually no, it's probably the aggregate functions. Hmm, or the multi-level master detail relationships. Oh my!

Did I mention that collection limits have been removed?

Check them all out for yourself.

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During Tuesday night's tweetup event, it seems most folks were engrossed in networking the twitter community. As a result, there was very little participation in the trivia contest. Fortunately for apexsutherland, he was able to tweet a correct answer to win an iPod Nano.

Wednesday was the first full day, and we had questions rotating every half hour or so. We ended up with a good response rate, and the first correct answer from our winner picking script was stonecobra, who took home a Nintendo DSi! (Can you tell I don't actually know anybody's "real" names?)

Thursday the trivia game was in full swing, and we updated the frequency of the questions to change every 15 minutes, which seemed to get more folks jazzed about participation. In the end, after a full day of tweets, psplunker was our winner, also getting a Nintendo DSi.

The crowds were in full force on Friday, despite it traditionally being a slow day. The twitter wire was crackling with life and we wrapped up our last day that afternoon. Unfortunately our winner, unbrelievable had already skedaddled out of the venue, so we FedExed her the iPod Nano instead of getting to embarrass her in public with our award "ceremony" (if you could call it that, ha!)

In the end, the contest was tons of fun! If you have suggestions for questions for next year's contest, DM them to @forcetrivia. They can run the gamut of Force.com, from admin to deep technology, or just about the community in general. Maybe we'll have a prize drawing meanwhile for trivia contest submissions!

Now that we've wrapped up all the exciting times, we're thinking about the more mundane task on how to keep our community a close, happy family during the rest of the year, and while we continue expanding in numbers... specifically:

- What suggestions do you have for keeping the conversation going all year long?
- How can we build a sense of community,and belonging?
- What kinds of appreciation gestures would you developers like to see happen? Schwag and socials, or something else?

I know it just feels like yesterday when we went live with Winter '10! Well, Spring '10 planning is already under way, and besides all the new technology, there's also the important aspect of logo.

What's it going to be? Have your say and vote away!

PS. Two thing. First, that "crm" won't be in the final platform version of the logo of course ;-). Two, they call them "ladybirds" where I come from, not "ladybugs", which is so much nicer sounding!