Results of the blog survey

Since how long do you use smart cards?

I am surprised to have so many users of smart cards for such a long time.

Maybe I should have been more explicit in my question. I have been using smart cards myself since around 1990 with French public phone cards and bank cards as a normal user. My question was more, since when do you use smart cards as a professional?.

It is interesting to see very experienced smart card users and also all the possible groups of experiences.

Since how long do you read my blog?

This question has a trap. My blog started in 2000, so the oldest article is 15 years old. It is not possible to read it since more than 16 years.

The distribution of results is fairly even.

What is your activity?

With no real surprise, the vast majority of my readers are developers. This is not surprising since the majority of the blog content is about programs and programming interfaces.

In the "other" category, we have:

• sysadmin

• manufacturer

• functional and technical expert

• driver packager

How do you read/find my blog?

Many readers find the articles using a search engine. I guess it's the normal way to find a solution to a problem or some documentation.

I will continue to include references to my blog articles in the emails I send. I find that writing a blog article is a good way to not write again and again the same thing.

Few readers are using the RSS feed (but see RSS feed for my blog).

In the "other" category, we have:

• bookmark

• redirected by a colleague

• Firefox Update Scanner (maybe the RSS feed could be used instead?)

What content do you like?

No surprise, with a large part of developers, the main interest is in technical explanations and new software announcements.

I am happy to see that few people are looking for content about Windows issues.

Some people are looking for news about my holidays. That is nice, but I do not plan to share many photos here. Great game contest: Where was the picture below taken?

Free form

Thanks for your answers in the free forms.

What content would you like to find on my blog?

In no specific order:

• news about pcsc-lite

• more details about PC/SC and Smartcard

• sample code and technical explanations

  Yes, of course.

• more card specific stuff like reading passport information or discussing a bit about EMV processing

  My expertise lies more in PKI cards. I agree that it's interesting to have more details on common cards like EMV, passport or ID cards.

• chart of specifics/features/bugs between smartcard readers, cards and OS/driver versions

  You can find a list of readers you can't use at Disabled CCID readers and readers you should not use at Unsupported or partly supported CCID readers.

  I have never seen a really bogus smart card.

• your history with smart cards

  I started in the smart card industry in 1997. At first, it was difficult to use a smart card on a GNU/Linux system. I started by writing a driver for a serial smart card reader, then submitted patches to pcsc-lite and continued developing different smart card related software.

Conclusion

Do not expect posts about my holidays or my life.

I will continue to publish technical articles. If you know about a subject and want to share your knowledge, I am open to co-author articles. If you wrote a Free Software program or library that uses a smart card, I can take a look and write about it.

In any case you can contact me. My e-mail address is available from About me.