If you didn’t attend today’s developer webinar, then you may not know that salesforce.com’s new Chatter feature is now in a developer preview.

Chatter is similar to twitter and facebook updates but all native to salesforce.com and accessible via the force.com API.

Check out the chatter resource page at: http://developer.force.com/chatter
Check out the chatter discussion board at: http://community.salesforce.com/sforce/board?board.id=chatter

There is already a lot of documentation up on the site and the force.com developer group is planning on hosting a contest for the best chatter based apps. Do you have a great idea, we’ll work with you to build it. Let us know in the comments!

Taggart Matthiesen delivered an amazing tech talk last week on Batch Apex and Custom Settings functionality. Not only did he demonstrate some basic Batch Apex functionality but also gave some promising insight into the future of Apex (safeharbor applies of course).

Some of the big news items included:

• Increasing the max size of collections to whatever the heap will support
• Being able to schedule Batch Apex (currently in pilot)
• Being able to do a mixed DML operation with custom settings

Great job Taggart, thanks for the extremely informative and educational session.

The webinar was recorded, so you can check it out here if you missed it:
http://wiki.developerforce.com/index.php/Tech_Talk:_Whats_New_in_Apex_Code

Let us know in the comments what you plan on using Batch Apex for!

David Green wrote a succinct post on what it takes to be a successful developer. I think the post is definitely worth the read even if you’re not a developer since the entire list really applies to any job not just developers.

Since it’s almost time for new year resolutions, might as well give it a read and plan on how you can improve in the upcoming year.

Check out the post and the rest of his blog at: greensopinion.blogspot.com