Side-projects and behind the scenes activities abound as the DevCentral team works towards the next goal on our plans for world domination, carefully sketched on Jeff's whiteboard. I'm glad to say that the extended DC team has been helping, as always, to keep the content flowing though, and there's plenty to highlight this week. Take a look at this week's Top5:

Closing in on the iRules Contest Deadline

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/jason/archive/2009/09/15/closing-in-on-the-irules-contest-deadline.aspx

Jason points out a very important, timely fact. It's nearly the end of your window to submit killer iRules for great prizes! The iRules contest is coming to a close. We've gotten some awesome entries so far and I've personally loved seeing them flow in from all over the world. There is still time, though. If you've got an iRule that you use that is cool and unique and warrants sharing, now is the time! Get it submitted and put your bid in for one of the pretty killer prizes offered to the winners. Check out Jason's post to get the details of what they are, where to apply, and a cool example iRule from the forums that could easily be submitted.

Despite Rumors to the Contrary F5 Remains In the Lead

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/09/25/despite-rumors-to-the-contrary-f5-remains-in-the-lead.aspx

Lori comes to you this week with an important news bulletin: F5 is still leading the charge in the ADC market, despite the mutterings you may have heard recently. With the release of the new Magic Quadrant from Gartner there is always a fair amount of posturing and hubbub. Lucky are we that our positioning continues to speak for itself, well in the lead. I'm not usually one to go in for marketing type stuff, but the geek in me loves that we have the coolest technology at the party, bar-none. This is one of the many indicators of that, and I was glad to see Lori point it out.

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 104 - Guru, Guy, and My BIG-IP

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/dcpodcast/archive/2009/09/24/devcentral-weekly-roundup-episode-104-guru-guy-and-my.aspx

This week's podcast was a particularly cool one, thanks to the caller that decided to join us. A few weeks ago we started dabbling in live-streaming our podcasts as we record them. This week Joe added the functionality to allow users to call in and chat with us in real-time, while we record. I was pleasantly surprised that we had a community member do precisely that, and share with us what they're currently doing with our tech. If you ever doubt that DevCentral is a far-reaching community with active members, an impromptu call from an international user to chat with us about what they're doing should cure what ails you.

Turn Your Podcast Into An Interactive Live Streaming Experience

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/Joe/archive/2009/09/25/turn-your-podcast-into-a-interactive-live-streaming-experience.aspx

As I mentioned above, the past few weeks we've been adding functionality to our podcasts. This once simple process has become increasingly more complex as we've tried to leverage new and cool features to make them more engaging and interactive for our users. With Joe at the helm we've incorporated several tools that make this possible. Today he put out a blog post detailing just how these all work together and exactly how it is that he crafted this bigger, better mousetrap. I found it quite interesting and it's a neat peek behind the curtains into one of the things we do here in DC Land.

Reduce your Risk

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/psilva/archive/2009/09/24/reduce-your-risk.aspx

In Pete's 13^th of 26 short topics about security he discusses mitigation. He touches on the fact that you should generally assume, if you're dealing with a publicly facing application, that you will eventually be the target of some malicious activity. He also details a few ways in which we all help to mitigate those risks on a daily basis. From firewalls to strong passwords to access cards to secure facilities, there are many hoops we all jump through daily, whether we think about it or not, to try and mitigate the risks inherent in today's IT world. This series is an interesting one and the pieces are easy to digest. I intend to keep following it as it moves towards topic #26, and I recommend you do the same.

There you have it, my Top5 picks from DevCentral for the week. Hopefully you enjoyed them, and I'll be back with more soon. Be sure to check out previous editions of the Top5 here - http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=101

#Colin

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