Just got back from the StackOverflow DevDays event in San Francisco. I was a bit worried that this would be overly focused on marketing FogBugz and StackOverflow. There were brief pitches on each (and I learned that FogCreek is launching hosted source control and code reviews called Kiln, now in beta and looking pretty nifty with tight integration with FogBugz) but this wasn't the focus.

I was also a little concerned that I'd be the only one there without a StackOverflow profile t-shirt. Luckily I didn't see any reputation toting pod people at the conference.

Happily the day was very code oriented, and very diverse. Spell checking in Python, smartphone development for iPhone, Nokia (via Qt) and Android, ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. I spend most of my time at the moment in C#/.NET and it was really valuable to spend a day briefly diving into different stacks and platforms.

Joel said that they'd be back next year and I'm hoping that it offers a similar diverse range of topics.

Zumbox is trying to take the paper out of the postal system. It's a laudable goal, if it takes off it would stop me from feeling that I need to do this:



Signing up is easy. Enter your mailing address and Zumbox send you a letter with a verification code. Once verified you can start sending and receiving mail online. You can mail a few people for free, bulk mail is five cents per recipient.

Of course you'll only receive mail that has been sent to you via Zumbox. It's not a mail scanning service (like Earth Class Mail) so you end up with yet another mailbox to check.

Zumbox is trying to help businesses go paperless. This includes bills and other necessary communication. It also includes junk mail.

My experience so far is mainly junk mail. I did get a circular about recycling from Gavin Newsom but otherwise just a stream of special offers.

This is a big problem because Zumbox provides very little control over email notifications:



It's all or nothing. Either I get a daily email reminding me to go look at junk mail, or I get no notification at all (and might miss the next thrilling update from Gavin).

Most of my bills and statements are already paperless via email. This isn't as secure as Zumbox, but I'm not sure how much of an advantage this is as I really just need notification.

I really want to like Zumbox, but right now it's just another source of spam.