Archive for April, 2010:
How Do You Get to Facebook?
This blew me away; Hitwise reported that “facebook” was the top search term across the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) in March 2010. Dig deeper and you’ll find that some variant of “facebook” accounted for eight of the 30 total spots. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since we saw glaring evidence [...]
Tweaking WebCenter
We joined the WebCenter development team back in late September of last year, and since then, one of our major projects has been redesigning the internal WebCenter 11g instance used by employees. I’m happy to report that our first round of changes went live on Monday. More on that in a minute. Coincidentally, the latest [...]
Designing for “Not Us”
The release of the iPad and the subsequent debate around who would use it and why has me on a personal crusade to design simpler software. Technology inspires nervousness and fear among everyday users, and frequently, geeks don’t help the uninitiated, as we saw when ReadWriteWeb was mistaken for Facebook. Prowess with code puts us [...]
When is a Hole not a Hole?
At Chirp last week, there was a lot of talk about filling holes. As background, this is the term Fred Wilson (@fredwilson), an investor in Twitter, used in a post that sent understandable shockwaves through the Twitter developer community, erm, ecosystem. Oh, and the release of a Blackberry app and the acquisition of Atebits (@atebits), [...]
Never Underestimate How Much People Care
Earlier in the month, foursquare announced some changes to their game that would curb cheating. The following day, they posted an update, which said in part: First of all, I can’t tell you how psyched we are to see so many people passionate about foursquare – this is crazy! Second, a few quick updates that didn’t [...]
Do You Really Need Multitasking, Part 2
Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with a guy about Apple’s products and specifically the iPad. This guy isn’t a geek, but he’s computer savvy and has been for a while. He’s also a bit of an Apple fanboi and recently bought an iPad, which was the jumping off point for our conversation. He’s also [...]
More on @Anywhere
So, Rich (@rmanalan), Anthony (@anthonyslai) and I (@jkuramot) are at Chirp (@chirp), the Twitter developer conference in San Francisco. One of the many tidbits from yesterday’s sessions was the general release of the @Anywhere platform Evan Williams (@ev) announced at SXSW in March. If you’re not already familiar, @Anywhere integrates Twitter into any website with [...]
@anywhere @here
Fresh out of @twitter’s oven is @anywhere, one of the big features they announced recently. The service is now live at http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere. @jkuramot and I (@rmanalan) just implemented it on this blog. To see it in action, hover over any of the @twitter names.
Is Anonymity More Interesting?
If you read here, you’ll know I’m generally against online anonymity. Sure, it has its uses, but the rise of Web 2.0 has proven that being yourself on the intertubes isn’t bad, although it can be dangerous. But that’s a different post for a different time. When you’re anonymous, it’s much easier to be a [...]
Do You Really Need Multitasking?
Maybe you noticed Apple announced today a bunch of new features will be coming soon to the iPhone OS, more than 100 by their count. Top of the list for many is multitasking. The iPhone OS has notoriously been without classic multitasking since its inception nearly three years ago. Actually, no one said boo about [...]
We’re Gearing up for Chirp
Next week is Chirp, the inaugural Twitter developer conference, and as I mentioned, Rich, Anthony and I are attending. Safe to say, we’re all pretty excited, although it looks to be a marathon, with the conference running pretty much 9-6 on the 14th, the hack day starting right after and running for 24 hours, and [...]
Surprise, It’s an iPad Review
No, I didn’t buy one, so my review is limited to five minutes of fiddling with a display model at Best Buy. Here’s a protip. If you want to touch/feel an iPad and don’t have any friends who’ll let you mess with theirs, avoid the crowds at your local Best Buy. I swung by in [...]
Twitter Fatigue? Follow More
Let’s talk about Twitter. It’s been a while. I recently decided to stop being lazy and reciprocally follow a bunch of people on Twitter. Probably a year ago, I pruned the list of people I was following from about 400 to about 200. That number didn’t grow much either over the year. However, this week [...]
Beer Geeks Win!
For the second time this week, I’m blogging about Portland, Oregon, where I live. Portland was one of more than 1,100 communities to answer Google’s RFI for their experimental gigabit fiber network. The quest for really-really-ridiculously-fast intertubes has led to its logical conclusion for Portlanders, beer. More precisely, Hopworks Urban Brewery Gigabit IPA, which I’m [...]
