Recap of the Apps UX Gamification Design Jam
I’m back from the latest leg on my US tour, the Applications UX Gamification Design Jam. If you were following the #gamifyOracle hashtag, you might have seen some of what went on, but for completeness sake, here’s my recap. This was an internal-only meeting held by the Applications UX team, bringing together the entire organization of [...]
On Doing One Thing Well
I keep meaning to write this post every time I go to the ATM. Depending on your bank, you may have used a modernized ATM, e.g. one that has no envelopes for deposits, but instead, scans your checks and cash to determine the amount you’re depositing. Pretty good idea, right? Cuts back on the manual [...]
Finally, a Good Starting Point for Why Software is Hard
After a hectic month or so, I’m finally getting around to reading. I’ve been meaning to share this thoughtful piece from Scott Porad, CTO of Cheezburger (squee!), that does an excellent job encapsulating some reasons why software is so difficult. His main points, or rather, those made by his friend are: 1. Software is entirely [...]
Next Tour Stop: An Apps UX Design Jam
My US tour continues next week with a stop in the Bay Area to attend a design jam hosted by our Applications User Experience team. The topic is gamification. Insert cringe here. While I loathe the term, the results that game mechanics can produce when applied to non-games are undeniable. Take reputation for example. Everyone [...]
The US Tour Continues
The AppsLab US tour will be making another stop in Seattle this week, as I’m heading to the ICMI-ACCE conference to work the exhibit hall floor. For the uninitiated, like me, ICMI stands for International Customer Management Institute, and ACCE, their annual show, stands for Annual Call Center Exhibition. I’ll be showing Oracle Social Network [...]
A WebCenter Sites Resource
Now that WebCenter Sites 11gR1 is released and available on OTN, you might be to the now-what step. Those familiar with Sites (and FatWire) are probably familiar with the Jump Start Kit (JSK) concept, which is a preconfigured installation of the Content Server, bundled with Apace and Tomcat running on an in-memory db called HyperSQL [...]
A Story from the Vault
Here’s a funny anecdote from the past that was brought back to mind last week. A few of us were chatting over dinner about how much we loved TripIt (@tripit), and I remembered a story from the AppsLab vaults. I remain a true believer that we need more dead-simple email (and IM) interfaces into web services, [...]
Oracle WebCenter Sites 11gR1 Released
I’ve been yammering about WebCenter Sites (formerly FatWire) for a while, and today marked its first release under the Oracle banner. Now, thanks to the power of OTN (@oracletechnet), you can kick the tires yourself. Let’s back up and talk about what Sites is first. Sites is all about web experience management, specifically through your [...]
Collaborate 12: The Week That Was
Collaborate 12 (#C12LV) has wrapped, and overall, I really enjoyed the event. I’ll lead off with a big thanks to all the organizers from OAUG (@oaug1), IOUG (@ioug) and Quest (@questusergroup), with a special mention for the IOUG WebCenter Special Interest Group (SIG) who made sure we found the right sessions and networked with the right folks. This is a definitely a [...]
Behold the History of the User-Agent String
Found this while browsing through user agent strings, it was good. History of the browser user-agent string Rejoice.
Ice Cream Sandwich on My Nexus S
On Friday, my Nexus S finally got its long-awaited Ice Cream Sandwich, i.e. Android 4.0.4, upgrade. One of the reasons I switched to a Nexus phone last year was to get to new versions of Android quickly. Google first showed ICS in October, and they released the upgrade in conjunction with the Galaxy Nexus release [...]
Collaborate 12 is Just around the Corner
Don’t look now, but Collaborate 12 starts less than 10 days from now on April 22 in Las Vegas. Collaborate is the annual user group conference that brings together several of the largest Oracle user group communities, OAUG (@oaug1), IOUG (@ioug) and Quest (@questusergroup). I haven’t been to a Collaborate since 2008 in Denver, and this time, I’ll be pretty busy, a good thing. [...]
How-To: Installing JDeveloper on Your Mac
Although some people don’t agree, I think there’s value in reposting technical tips for a few reasons. First, I post content for my own information and reference. I’m not the only one who does this (e.g. @oraclenerd), and I’m not the only one who finds it useful as a personal history. Second, I find tons [...]
OTN Content on Your Favorite iOS Device
Good news, for me anyway, Southwest (@southwestair) found and returned my lost iPad. Now that I’m back in the iOS fold, I can start yapping about apps again. So, let’s begin. Justin’s (@oracletechnet) post about the OTN content in the Oracle iOS app reminded me to check out the recent updates to the Oracle iOS [...]
Erascan Scans Whiteboards as it Erases
So, this is very cool. Erascan (h/t User Illusions) scans and saves content on a whiteboard as it erases, and it can send the scanned images via email wirelessly. Obviously, the whiteboard is a great tool for collaborating in groups, but inevitably, someone has to transcribe the whiteboard’s contents, onto paper, into notes or email [...]
XKCD Umwelt
I always dread April 1, but there’s usually at least one good prank. This year, Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic provided an awesome example of something cool. The comic’s title, Umwelt, is explained in the alt text. Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem [...]
Finally, A Timeline Picture
For better or worse, we have a Facebook Page. Facebook recently turned on Timeline for Pages, which I enabled, but our page has been naked since then because I couldn’t find a suitably cool picture. So, I reached out to friend of the ‘Lab, Eddie Awad (@eddieawad) for ideas. Eddie is a shutterbug, and he has [...]
Playing with WebCenter Sites
I’ve been on work hiatus lately, i.e. too busy to write, but I’ve found some time to write about my new favorite shiny toy, WebCenter Sites. Sites is the new name for what used to be called FatWire, a company Oracle acquired last year. Sites does what’s now being called web experience management (WEM), but [...]
Twitter Buys Posterous, I Go on an Adventure
So, news broke recently that Twitter was buying an old favorite of mine, Posterous. For the unfamiliar, Posterous made blogging dead simple by allowing you to post via email; just send a message to the email address they gave you and presto, you just blogged. I’ve been using it for a while, and I immediately [...]
A Future-Friendly Web
A List Apart has a great piece called For a Future-Friendly Web by Brad Frost (@brad_frost) that I highly recommend reading. Some highlights: Over the years, we’ve become the virtual equivalent of hoarders, tacking on content and features without stopping to clean house. As a result, sites and services have become obese and sluggish to adapt [...]
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