It’s almost time to unveil the SD Times 100 – the top 100 companies, project and movements that are demonstrating innovation and leadership in the software development industry.

This year, the SD Times 100 will be “officially” published in the June 1, 2010, issue of SD Times. It’ll also appear on that date on sdtimes.com.

However, continuing a new tradition begun last year, we will tweet out the SD Times 100, category by category, on Monday, May 31, starting around 11:00am Eastern, 8:00am Pacific. We’ll begin with the “Agile & Collaboration” category, and will tweet another category every 30 minutes or so, continuing through all 12 categories until we reach the biggest one: Influencers.

See all the action by following us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sdtimes.

What is the SD Times 100? As we wrote in the debut 2003 awards:

The editors of SD Times identified the industry’s top leaders, innovators and influencers, and broke them out into 10 separate industry segments. Some companies lead in one category, others in more than one. In each category, one company has been spotlighted as a star deserving of special notice.

When choosing the SD Times 100, we carefully considered each company’s offerings and reputation. We also listened for the “buzz”—how much attention and conversation we’ve heard around the company and its products and technologies—as a sign of leadership within the industry.

The SD Times 100 looked for companies that have determined a direction that developers followed. Did the company set the industry agenda? Did its products and services advance the software development art? Were its competitors nervously tracking its moves? Were programmers anxiously awaiting its developments? Those qualities mark a leader.

Subjective? Of course. But leadership and innovation can’t be measured by stock valuations or analyst reports. The SD Times 100 represents what we believe to be the best of the best….

While you’re waiting for the 2010 SD Times 100 to tweet out next Monday, please feel free to peruse the debut 2003 awards and last year’s 2009 awards.

See you on Twitter!

Those of us in the technology world – call us nerds, geeks or software developers – expect a 1:1 ratio between personal email addresses and people.

I’m not talking about business or workgroup addresses. I mean your home, non-business address, which might come from your cable TV company, DSL or wireless provider, or from a free email service like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo, India’s Rediffmail and so-on.

Many people (like myself) have dozens of personal email addresses. Some current, some legacy, some active, some dormant, some used for friends and family, some used for buying things online, some used for subscribing to newsgroups, some totally forgotten. So, yes, it’s not really a 1:1 ratio; it’s 1:many, but here “many” means many addresses, not many people.

For techies, you can safely assume that a personal email address is like a personal cellular phone number. All my personal email addresses are for me. My wife has her own personal email addresses. There are no shared addresses.

I would venture that most of you receiving this blog also view email addresses and email messages as personal, not shared. Yet I’m continually astonished at how many families share one personal email address, just like they share one home phone number. Jack and Jill Smith might use the shared address email hidden; JavaScript is required or email hidden; JavaScript is required or email hidden; JavaScript is required, and that’s the sole non-business address they have.

This seems to be a generational divide. My parents share one email address. I see a lot of shared personal email addresses in the directories of several non-profit organizations and even in my son’s school parents directory. The divide seems to be somewhere north of 50 years old:

• Over 70 years old, the spouses most likely share one address. It’s probably from AOL or their Internet service provider.

• Under 50 years old, it’s almost certainly not a shared address, and it’s probably not from AOL or the ISP. But I know many exceptions.

• Between 50 and 70 years old, it could go either way, but it’s more likely to be personal than shared, and is more likely to be from the ISP.

Why is this relevant? Many of us assume that a non-business address is a one-person email address, and therefore is suitable for receiving confidential information. That can be a false assumption — even with couples under 50 years old.

Also, what happens if both spouses try to create accounts on a website that uses an email address as the registration key? Registration systems increasingly rely upon the email address as an unique identifier associated with one, and only one, person.