Archive for September, 2010:

The Lies of Volume and Battery Indicators

Published on September 30th, 2010 Leave a Comment

Found this humorous and very true data visualization of volume and battery indicators via Geekosystem and Gizmodo.

Why I Love Building Software

Published on September 29th, 2010 Leave a Comment

Reliving my Cyanaogen adventure from last week, I’m reminded of why I love software and why I enjoy designing and building it. Whenever I upgrade software, it feels a little like Christmas. Yeah, sometimes everything goes sideways, but even so, a software upgrade is like a present for me. Like a present, I get that [...]

Online Passwords Could Be a Map

Published on September 29th, 2010 5 Comments

Online Passwords Could Be a Map : Discovery News (h/t Slashdot) Interesting idea. I’ve been using 1Password for a while now, thanks to nudges from Paul (@ppedrazzi) and Rich (@rmanalan), but one danger is using that strong, random, automatically-generated passwords means I’ve no idea what my Facebook or Google password is. Therefore, I’m at the [...]

Cyanogen: The Closest Thing to Vanilla Android

Published on September 28th, 2010 7 Comments

Rich (@rmanalan) has been bragging about CyanogenMod (@cyanogen) for nearly a month because it provides the closest experience to a vanilla Android install, if you don’t have a Nexus One. For the unfamiliar, the basic Android distro is modified by hardware manufacturers (e.g. HTC, Motorola, Samsung) and carriers (e.g. Sprint, Verizon, AT&T) and installed on [...]

Socializing Error Message Pages

Published on September 27th, 2010 6 Comments

Error Messages: Help Users to Understand What Went Wrong While reading this post from ReadWriteWeb (@rww), I had a thought. Error message pages should be wikis. Applying crowdsourcing to error message pages creates a dynamic forum that could benefit both users and developers. Instead of request-response support through email or trouble tickets, i.e. asking for [...]

Bad Design on Purpose?

Published on September 27th, 2010 9 Comments

Last week at OpenWorld, I ran into a web app with some, erm, interesting design. I flew into SFO, which I rarely do anymore, and checked into my flight online via the airline’s website. I’ve used the site in the past, but the checkin process has become much more involved now that everything is a [...]

Looxcie, a Camera Recording Everything You See

Published on September 24th, 2010 2 Comments

I long ago resigned myself to the fact that the day would come when everything was recorded, but I’ll admit this is both cool and frightening all at once. Looxcie, a Camera Recording Everything You See

Blast from the Past: Enterprise Clouds

Published on September 24th, 2010 1 Comment

So, yeah I’m about to toot my own horn a bit. Obviously, one major story coming out of OpenWorld last week is Exalogic, the integrated middleware machine. I riffed on the need for enterprise clouds more than a year ago, so I’m stoked that we’re going in that direction. As a workforce, we could benefit [...]

Thoughts on #newtwitter

Published on September 24th, 2010 7 Comments

After fixing last week’s XSS bug, Twitter rolled out its new twitter.com interface, a.k.a. #newtwitter, to more accounts, including mine @jkuramot. I’ve played around with it for a bit, using it as my client for several hours, and what follows are a few impressions, not necessarily a review. I don’t expect to switch from the [...]

Our Prezi from OpenWorld

Published on September 22nd, 2010 1 Comment

I planned to get this out yesterday before our session started, but sadly, I just forgot. Anyway, check out the Prezi, incidentally a pretty sweet and engaging way to create a presentation outside the PowerPoint mold. WebCenter: A Web Developer’s Playground on Prezi Questions? Find the comments and speak up for the audio recording.

On OpenWorld and Adoption Cycles

Published on September 21st, 2010 5 Comments

I always have trouble keeping up with blogging and reading during OpenWorld, and this year is no different. Aside from our yearly session, my main goals at the conference are to reconnect with people I see infrequently and meet new people. Again, this year has been no different. So far, I’ve had the pleasure to [...]

A Baby Photo Becomes an Internet Meme

Published on September 20th, 2010 1 Comment

Chatting with Bex (@bex) and John (@jpiwowar) about the LOLcat-Double Rainbow meme collision last night, I was reminded of this gem. A Baby Photo Becomes an Internet Meme – NYTimes.com How weird (and awesome) would it be to find you’ve become a meme in Japan, complete with Photoshopped pictures and even a doll? Gives a [...]

Last Minute OpenWorld Stuff

Published on September 17th, 2010 2 Comments

Getting down to the wire for OpenWorld now, and the hits just keep on coming. I found out today from Friend of the ‘Lab Marius Ciortea (@radu43) that the oracle.com team’s iPhone app, Oracle Now, is available in the App Store. One question: where’s the Android love? Anyway, with the app, you can follow all [...]

Prepare for OpenWorld with Mobile Apps

Published on September 16th, 2010 8 Comments

Google Reader just provided an interesting confluence of posts about mobile apps that are perfectly timed for OpenWorld. OK, fine. One is actually for OpenWorld. First off, via Chet (@oraclenerd) with h/ts to John Piwowar (@jpiwowar), @alanwill and @carymillsap comes the Oracle OpenWorld conference app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. You can find the right [...]

The Most Powerful Colors of the Web

Published on September 16th, 2010 15 Comments

At the sublime intersection of infographic and design, you’ll find this fascinating study of color mapped to relative intertubes power. Business Blog / The Most Powerful Colors in the World by COLOURlovers :: COLOURlovers (h/t Geekosystem) Not surprising to see blue and red in the 1 and 2 spots, but I didn’t realize how rare [...]

WebCenter Chrome Extension Almost Ready for Primetime

Published on September 14th, 2010 5 Comments

Rich (@rmanalan) continues to add features to the WebCenter Chrome extension, and it’s looking like we may eventually get it released outside the firewall. After adding a few new features last week, the latest version (1.0.9) added a few tweaks, including improved sizing of inlined media (e.g. the viewers for YouTube and Vimeo clips) and [...]

Will the Carriers Destroy Android?

Published on September 14th, 2010 5 Comments

Found this interesting piece via my pal Brian Walsh (@bpwalsh), who worked with Clearwire on the 4G WiMax drivers used in the HTC EVO. Entelligence: Will carriers destroy the Android vision? — Engadget Interesting quote: Google must take a stand for the end user and insist that all carrier installed apps and services are easily [...]

Quick OpenWorld Notes

Published on September 14th, 2010 1 Comment

We just found out today that our OpenWorld session has been moved to Marriott Marquis Golden Gate C1. So, same venue, different room. If you plan to attend, make a note. Actually, they’ve moved us to a much smaller room, about a quarter of the original room’s size. I guess our session isn’t very popular [...]

The Difference Between “Could” and “Do” Use Cases

Published on September 13th, 2010 6 Comments

Amazon’s Kindle vs. iPad for reading in direct sunlight ad is buzzing around the internets today. It’s a very clever spot that calls out a specific use case that I’m sure many people have. Over the weekend, the NFL season began in earnest here in the States, and I got to see the ads I’ll [...]

Interesting Slides on Rethinking the Mobile Web

Published on September 12th, 2010 3 Comments

On Friday, Rich (@rmanalan) shared this interesting slide deck by Bryan Rieger (@bryanrieger) to our internal instance of WebCenter. Rethinking the Mobile Web by Yiibu View more presentations from Bryan Rieger. The slides give a good dose of perspective about who exactly is consuming the mobile web and how we should develop to support them. [...]

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