Archive for December, 2008:
Time for 2009 Predictions
Now that the 2008 recap is in the can, it’s time for 2009 predictions.
Everybody loves predictions because it’s either a chance to crow about how prescient you are or make excuses about how you were partially right and would have been totally right if it weren’t for those darn kids and their dog.
Predictions are fun [...]
Show off Your Powers of Prognostication
I got midway through my predictions post, when I decided that I might like some help.
So, taking a page out of Rick’s book, let’s see how smart you are. Sound off in the comments with your predictions for 2009.
I don’t think there needs to be a focus on any particular area for your predictions, but [...]
It’s That Time of Year, Again
I hope everyone had an enjoyable week of holiday fun. As promised, here’s the first of those obligatory year-end posts, and as is customary, let’s look back at 2008 before we peer ahead into 2009.
I would have done this anyway, but friend of the ‘Lab Jim dropped a note asking to see the top ten [...]
Happy Holidays
It’s Christmas. So, if you celebrate that one, Merry Christmas. If not, Happy Holidays, and either way, have a restful and happy time.
I’m not much of holiday card sender, but for some reason, people still send cards to me. I know; it’s rude of me, but every few years I actually do remember in time [...]
Show Me Yours . . .
And I’ll show you mine, workspace that is.
Because that won’t work, I’ll just show you mine, and we can go from there.
Many of us work from home almost exclusively, including both Rich and me, and it seems ever more common for people to have a home office, even if they also go into an office [...]
IPhone Apps for Units of Work
I found myself reading Floyd’s story about the Call a Cab iPhone app and nodding my head.
That was embarrassing, like when you find yourself silently agreeing with a presenter like a bobblehead, except there was no one around to agree with my agreement with Floyd.
Like I said, a bit embarrassing.
Anyway, Floyd’s experience reminded me of [...]
Happy Festivus
What? You’ve never heard of Festivus? It’s the holiday for the rest of us.
As a pop culture nut and an old school fan of Seinfeld, I couldn’t let December 23 slip by without wishing you all a Happy Festivus. I suppose while we’re here, I might as well wish you a happy holiday, whichever it [...]
Mix Listed on Ruby on Rails.org
Over the weekend, David Heinemeier Hansson, affectionately know as DHH, creator of Rails, made updates to rubyonrails.org.
One change was the addition of Oracle Mix to the list of production apps running Rails. Check out the list; you’ll probably recognize several of the apps there, and about the middle of the page, below the fold, you’ll [...]
RTFM, Winter Edition
As Eddie mentioned, Portland, and most of the Pacific Northwest, is in the grasp of an epic chain of winter storms.
It started a week ago with a storm that dumped about 4 inches here in Portland, pretty heavy snowfall, at least for this area. Snow can be a hoot, especially if it comes: a) on [...]
Ads Make Me Laugh
While we wait for the semantic web to serve up really targeted and useful ads, I, for one, continue to ignore 99% of the ads presented to me.
But sometimes, they slip through, twice today in fact.
Although they work pretty much all the time, Google Ads have turned up many failures in the past. For example, [...]
Oracle People and Alumni: Share Your Memories
Scotty gave me an idea with his comment on my nostalgic post on Oracle PowerBrowser.
So many people in tech have come through Oracle in the past 30+ years, and there are more than 70,000 here now. That makes for a lot of nostalgia and memories that we can share among ourselves and with anyone who [...]
Nostalgia Break: Oracle PowerBrowser
I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while, and yesterday, while geeking out with VMWare Fusion, I decided to get it done.
I’ll back up a bit. I’ve been working to install VMWare to get an Oracle image up and running; I’ve used Virtual Box predominantly in the past because it’s free and [...]
Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together
I haven’t had much to say about work lately, but Rich provided a nice nugget today.
He integrated OraTweet, Noel’s internal, micro-blogging app with Connect’s Activity Log.
So, now in addition to all the social activity and HR information we surface in the Log, you can also see the (Ora)tweets of your network, your groups and everyone, [...]
What We’re Reading
Based on the response to my poll question last week about more content, no one seems very psyched about interspersing our Reader Shared Items into posts.
That’s fine, and like I said in the comments, I get bored with blogs that post more links/links posts than original content, even I think the content rules.
I do, however, [...]
Who Does Your Support?
So, I had an eventful morning.
Automatic updates on my Macbook kindly let me know that there was a security update available for Tiger (yes, I’m still on Tiger). As I’ve done many times in the past, I agreed to take the update, entered my credentials and went about my morning email checking.
The update finished downloading [...]
Google Friend Connect Adds Twitter
Hard to believe, but not everyone seems excited about Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect or MySpaceID for that matter.
Must be the time of year.
Anyway, I remain excited about GFC because if nothing else, it adds social to any web site, which is something I think appeals to the vast majority of users. I’d love [...]
GMail is a Platform, Have You Noticed?
I can remember back in 2004 how geeked I was when I got my invite to Google’s brand-spanking new web mail, GMail.
As promised, it was a) different (email threads), b) fast (AJAX-fu) and c) big (unlimited quota). You’re all familiar with GMail, right? If not, why not?
Anyway, GMail has been my primary personal inbox for [...]
Running Linux on Everything
This absolute gem from Thomas Roach, who apparently lives in Tampa, Oraclenerd territory, popped up in my OraNA feed today.
Is it for reals?
A funny little bit of coincidence is I was planning to blog about another post I saw earlier in the week: Five Reasons Apple Should Open Source the iPhone. Hot on the heals [...]
Semantic Series of Tubes
The semantic web as a concept has been around for quite some time. It pre-dates, Web 2.0 in fact, even though people sometimes refer to it as Web 3.0 or some other term that denotes its place as the next-next evolution of “teh Intertubes”.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Internet (I know it’s funnier to say [...]
Contact Fail
Today, Rich alerted me to the fact that the Contact form (linked up there to the right) has been forwarding to the distribution list we use internally.
This would be fine, except that list isn’t accessible from external addresses, meaning we never got your mail. Sorry about that; we weren’t really ignoring you. We really didn’t [...]
