Archive for October, 2009:

PuSH Bot Marries PubSubHubbub with XMPP

Published on October 29th, 2009 View Comments

Rich provided a sweet tip this evening that I wanted to share.
PuSH Bot, the weekend project of Mihai Parparita, combines the PubSubHubbub protocol with XMPP to create an easy way to subscribe to any feed served by PuSH via IM, meaning you’ll receive updates in your favorite IM client.
Sweet!

Oh, and there are a lot of [...]

Twitters Lists Land, for Some Anyway

Published on October 29th, 2009 View Comments

So, finally, Twitter has finally dropped a grouping feature, called Lists, at least to some users, including @oraclemix and @theappslab.
Rich (@rmanlan) had them earlier in the week, too. Guess who’s out in the cold? Yours truly (@jkuramot), or at least I was when I started this post. Now, I’m in the club too.

I, among many [...]

It’s Happens to Everyone Eventually

Published on October 28th, 2009 View Comments

No one likes to admit failure, especially when duplicity is involved. The intertubes is rife with scams and hoaxes, and I’m pretty sure everyone reading has fallen for at least one at some point.
Case in point, today, I tried to download the bogus beta version of Chrome OS. Yes, it’s a hoax, so don’t get [...]

Miscellaneous Debris

Published on October 27th, 2009 View Comments

So, we’ve got a lot going on lately, what with the move and all. We’ll try to keep the content rolling despite real work.
Rich attended Startup School 2009 over the weekend, and although he didn’t find much to blog about, you could try to rally him into a post by commenting or pestering him on [...]

You Got Your AppsLab in My WebCenter

Published on October 22nd, 2009 View Comments

A few weeks ago, I announced that our team was moving to WebCenter development.
Since then, several people have asked what our role would be specifically, many of you in person at OpenWorld. Now, I can tell you, since I finally know for sure.

We’ve been charged with the internal rollout of WebCenter 11g, which, we’re hoping, [...]

Auto-Tuning the Spoken Word

Published on October 21st, 2009 View Comments

The good thing about having a blog without a narrow focus is that I can blog about pretty much anything.
And I do.
Case in point, auto-tuning. Until a few months ago, I wasn’t familiar with the practice of auto-tuning, which applies effects to people’s voices. I guess it’s usually applied to singer’s voices to give them [...]

I Don’t Care What You Say, Foursquare Rules

Published on October 21st, 2009 View Comments

I’ve been playing foursquare regularly for about a month now, and even though I was teased by several people (you know who you are) at OpenWorld last week, I’ll continue to play.
/me thumbs nose
If you’re not familiar, foursquare debuted at SXSW this Spring, and it’s currently the latest shiny object of the early adopter crowd. If [...]

The Obligatory Post #oow Post

Published on October 20th, 2009 View Comments

I need to watch what I say when I’m with Jake, else I’ll be asked to blog… what a chore
Anyway, just a few thoughts from last week’s craziness known as #oow…

Congrats to Raimonds Simanovskis for winning the coveted Oracle Developer of the Year award.  Raimonds’ is known in the Ruby and Rails world [...]

OpenWorld Manifest: Days 3 and 4

Published on October 16th, 2009 View Comments

The big show is over for another year, and San Franciscans are happy for the return of that critical block of Howard between 3rd and 4th.
As with every year, my show was pretty much over after Tuesday, leaving me with a couple sessions and lots of work to get done. Oh, and our annual team [...]

OpenWorld Manifest: Day 2

Published on October 13th, 2009 View Comments

Wow, so it rained a bunch today, and it was windy. Like a tropical storm or something. Not the best weather for me, being umbrella-phobic and all. I nearly had my eye poked out a dozen times, not a good day to be anti-umbrella.
Anyway, here we go.
Tuesday, Day 2:

Woke up to rain and wind.
Looked out [...]

OpenWorld Manifest: Days 0 and 1

Published on October 13th, 2009 View Comments

Even though many of you are either here in rainy San Francisco or are following OpenWorld via its many virtual channels (#oow09 on Twitter, OpenWorld Live, OraNA (and @orana), etc.), I figured I’d give you a list of what I’ve been doing.
Sunday, Day 0:

Landed around 11:30 in Oakland.
Spent 35 minutes in the Bay Bridge maze.
Saw [...]

OpenWorld Cometh

Published on October 8th, 2009 View Comments

So, we’ll all be making the trip to OpenWorld in a few days.
I’m the only one on the team actually flying, but if you’re familiar with Bay Area traffic, you could argue that we’re all traveling (vs. commuting).
Anyway, I’m not sure of my exact itinerary, assuming you care, but due to our recent move to [...]

More Wave Reactions

Published on October 8th, 2009 View Comments

Following Rich again with Google Wave coverage, I figured I should add some of my own impressions of Wave after using it for a bit.
First and foremost, Wave is a work in progress, and it may eventually live up to the potential we all saw in it after the demo at Google I/O in June. However, [...]

PhotoSketch Looks Awesome

Published on October 6th, 2009 View Comments

After several days under the weather, I emerged today to several thousand unread feed items.
Normally to get through a lot of content, I scan the titles of the items for interesting stuff before reading further. Today, I think I passed up PhotoSketch (h/t Techmeme, Gizmodo) at least four times before it stuck, but when it did, [...]

Google Wave, the Aftermath

Published on October 5th, 2009 View Comments

When I first saw Google Wave, it was like experiencing a messiah. For a web/tech geek, @larsras‘ and @twephanie’s 80+ min demo was a spiritual affair that I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life [in software].  I even spread the love on this blog.

After Google I/O (where Google Wave had it’s coming [...]

Sudoku anyone?

Published on October 1st, 2009 View Comments

Just testing out a collaborative sudoku gadget from Google Wave. Update: you’ll only see this if you have a Google Wave account. 7 invites left. First 7 to comment gets an invite!
Update: All my (Jake’s) invitations are gone, not sure where Rich is with his batch. Also, the Wave script seems to [...]

Gazing into the Future of Tech

Published on October 1st, 2009 View Comments

There are few things like predictions to spark some discussion, and I found a set of predictions about what everyday technology we won’t be using in a decade on TechRadar (h/t Digg) that I’m sure will produce some discussion.
If nothing else, it’ll get you thinking about the future and you’ll interact with your tech, which [...]