Welcome to the Artima weblog on the human side of software technology!

My name is Berco Beute, I live in the Netherlands (in a place called Groningen) and sadly enough most of my hobbies have something to do with computers. I'm either creating software or using it for creative expression (2D/3D animation and making music). My main interest is the area where software meets the user, and that's what I will be talking about in this weblog.

Before we get rolling I'd like to make a few things clear about this weblog.

First of all, and you might have noticed, my mother tongue is Dutch and not English. So even though I try my best, bare with me in the spelling and grammatics department.

Secondly, since this is a personal log I will write with a personal voice, which means that my English might sometimes be a rather colloquial.

Thirdly, I would like this weblog to be an inspiration and an open forum for software engineers that care about the user. So input is more than welcome.

The main, but not only, topic of this weblog is user-centered software, which is of course a rather broad concept. I don't have experience on all the sub-domains, so the following list shows the topics I do know something about and that will reoccur here:

1. Software platforms for mobile terminals:
I'm currently working in the telecom industry where my focuss is on software platforms for mobile termals. That includes among others J2ME, Flash, Symbian, PalmOS, Linux, BREW, and yes, .Net CF. There are interesting opportunities and threats in this booming area, making it an excellent area to cover.

2. Distributed systems:
Distributed systems in general have my interested, but I've been using [b]Jini[/b] since the day it was released, and I still strongly believe in the vision behind it. So there will be quite some Jini jamming here. Of course I am especially interested in the opportunities these distributed systems offer for making our lives easier. Therefore I will also discuss the home-networks and the such.

3. Usability
Whether it's the usability issues of software on mobile phones or usability issues of distributed systems, they all have my attention. And yes, there is still a lot of work to do in this department.

4. Multimedia:
Since the use of a computer as a powerfull creative tool is still underappreciated, now and then I will evangalise software focussed on generating 2D/3D graphics and music.

Hopefully you find this collection of topics an interesting one. Let me know!