Plus All The Things!
Salesforce
Just as I was about to click send, out of left field comes Salesforce+. The most recent, and least likely, entrant into the streaming wars. I can see why this would appeal to Salesforce, as it must grate them to be putting content onto platforms like Youtube rather than keeping all those eyeballs to themselves. By making everyone subscribe (for free) they will also get some highly actionable insights. Netflix of the enterprise? Time will tell. Here’s the official line.
Salesforce acquired Servicetrace, a vendor of RPA. If, like me, you didn’t realise that RPA stood for Robotic Process Automation, and knowing the full name didn’t really help you understand it, there’s a good (if a few years old) overview at CIO. Disappointingly, it turns out this a software robot concept, rather than a humanoid piece of hardware sat at a desk clicking buttons.
The hyperbole continues on the Slack acquisition - it’s now "The Digital Headquarters for Success from Anywhere”, which is quite a lot to live up to! While many people (including me) find Slack really useful, others aren’t quite so keen. On its arrival, Slack was billed as an email killer but as time went on it became something else to keep an eye on.
Not just impacting Salesforce, Chrome 92 started blocking cross-origin JavaScript alerts on July 20th, breaking lots of functionality around the web. On 4th August this was temporarily reversed to give developers more time to rewrite their apps. Only an additional 11 days though, so not that generous.
Sarah Franklin’s star continues to rise as she joins the Board of Directors of Hiya. Based on the experience of Niki Christoff, it seems likely this is an avenue which only opened up once she joined the C-Suite.
Oh, and registration for Dreamforce, or whatever passes for Dreamforce this year, is open. Spoiler alert - you’ll be signing up for Salesforce+.
Me
I read and reviewed this book, which I’d recommend
- you can read my review on Amazon
I added favourites to the CLI GUI, which has already saved me quite a bit of time creating new package versions. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but building Electron apps is just about the most fun thing I’ve found in programming.
I also wrote a post on Avoiding Returnaggedon - don’t lose a big chunk of your workforce by making them go back to the old ways of the office.
Other
Mark Zuckerberg tops the table for security expenses for tech CEOs in 2020, at an eye watering $23.4 million. I guess it’s one way to rank how disliked the leaders are :)