Better Not to Receive

Written By
Peter Coffee
Peter Coffee
Published: Dec 23, 2006
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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Our Killer Apps list continues to inspire conversation, much of it missing the point that I’m not saying a Killer App is necessarily a good app: only that it appeared at the right time, with the right functionality or appearance thereof, to drive users’ platform choices. No more, no less.

But killer apps are nothing compared to killer toys. Personally, I think that concern about toy safety can easily be overdone. Have you tried to buy a real chemistry set lately? But some of these blasts from the past are beyond even my high threshold of healthy fun.

Have a safe and happy holiday.

Peter Coffee

Peter Coffee is Director of Platform Research at salesforce.com, where he serves as a liaison with the developer community to define the opportunity and clarify developers' technical requirements on the company's evolving Apex Platform. Peter previously spent 18 years with eWEEK (formerly PC Week), the national news magazine of enterprise technology practice, where he reviewed software development tools and methods and wrote regular columns on emerging technologies and professional community issues.Before he began writing full-time in 1989, Peter spent eleven years in technical and management positions at Exxon and The Aerospace Corporation, including management of the latter company's first desktop computing planning team and applied research in applications of artificial intelligence techniques. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, he has held teaching appointments in computer science, business analytics and information systems management at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Chapman College.

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