Profile: Jake

a.k.a.:jkuramot

Blog entries written by Jake

More Fun with Virtualization

I love me some virtualization.
Whether you’re testing a web app in various O/S + browser configurations, running production hardware, testing new a O/S or just geeking out for fun, virtual machines are your friend.

I started out with VirtualBox, because it’s open source, and then went to VMWare (Fusion, specifically) to run the official Oracle Base [...]

Requiem for the Computer Lab

Ever seen PCU?
It came out while I was still in college, and being of that vintage, I relate to it. Remember the scene where Tom runs through the computer lab, where scads of students are cranking away on year-end thesis papers and trips over the main plug that supplies power to all the computers?
Hilarity ensues.
Maybe [...]

What is it about Kudos?

Last week, Paul spoke on a webinar panel hosted by Communitelligence about social networking inside the firewall. Also on the panel were Lee Aase of the Mayo Clinic and Polly Pearson from EMC.
I didn’t attend the webinar, but Paul mentioned that Kudos was well-received. We did a follow-up meeting with some folks from EMC, Jamie [...]

I Am Not a Good Lead

New this week, cold calls from innovation and strategy consultancies.
Maybe it’s a function of a crappy economy, or maybe I happen to be an easy to find contact at Oracle. For whatever reason, I’m now fielding calls from consultancies who want to help Oracle with innovation or Web/Enterprise 2.0 adoption or social media or brand [...]

Feeling Lucky?

I always find it noteworthy when a handful of stories about a single company or service pop up within a day or so.
Usually, none of them alone is all that interesting, but as a collection, they sometimes form a story that I find blogworthy.
This time it’s Google’s Web Search.
Totally weird to see that in print. [...]

Had Enough Twitter Yet?

Twitter is exploding. You’ve probably seen the numbers.
1,382% comparing February 2009 with February 2008. More than 50% from January 2009 to February 2009.
By all measures, that’s an insane growth rate. Mainstream media has taken note, and celebrities (and impostors) are flocking to Twitter in droves. Pun intended. Do you have a favorite celebrity you follow? [...]

Web Mission is Coming

As he did last year, Paul will be speaking during the Oracle portion of this year’s Web Mission, which runs March 28-April 3.
What is Web Mission? Glad you asked, from the about:

Web Mission is organized Bronwyn Kunhardt and James Lawn from the market intelligence company Polecat (www.polecatting.com) and by serial entrepreneur, Oli Barrett.  Each [...]

I Might Pay for JotNot

There are very few times when I read something and think to myself, I must blog this immediately and tell as many people as possible.
This is one of those few times.
JotNot is a web service that converts pictures into documents. Send a picture to them by email or upload one to their website and get [...]

I Want VLI

Back in 2006 while on a trip to HQ, I sat in a meeting with some folks from the User Experience (UX) team. I don’t remember exactly what the purpose of the meeting was, but we wandered off topic and were just bouncing ideas off each other.
I threw out the idea of a zero interface, [...]

TweetDeck Adds Facebook, What’s Next?

As is usual during the weeks before and during South by Southwest, there are a lot of product announcements.
I’m not quite sure how/when it happened, but SXSW Interactive has become a nexus of startup activity and geekery, e.g. Twitter’s first bump came when the service won the SXSW Web Awards in 2007.
So, it’s become a [...]

Anatomy of a Spam Attack

Yesterday, I did some browsing of the web analytics for this blog to get comparison numbers for the browser stats I had for Connect.
Today, I went back to do a little more digging and some navel-gazing
We use Google Analytics, which I prefer to Mint for web metrics. It has loads of metrics beyond [...]

On Browsers

IE6 is like that cold that just won’t go away; you feel well enough to go to work, but it keeps sapping your energy.
To many users, IE6 is the Internet. It came with your computer, and it’s the way you get online. Resisting the urge to put online in quotes. Like many web apps, we’ve [...]

Trying Pivotal Tracker

Last week, Rich proposed that we try Pivotal Tracker for Connect.

Our work on Connect can be loosely described as agile. We generally meet, either in person or on the phone, to hash out major feature releases, and then Rich and Anthony build and deploy. And I test. Every six months or so, we rinse and [...]

APEX in the Cloud

This post about running APEX in the cloud by Jason Straub came across OraNA last week.
I’m surprised Chet didn’t pounce on it, being the APEX devotee that he is. Basically, you can now run APEX on Amazon EC2 for 60 cents.
Oracle has recently been rolling out more offerings with AWS, including database and backup images [...]

Connect Adds Geolocation

Now, we know where you are . . . but only if you tell us.
Yesterday, Rich completed the addition of geolocation tracking to Connect. Now, when you OraTweet your location or update your Connect status with the secret phrase “@location” followed by a place (address or city or country), Connect stores your location.

And that’s pretty [...]

Leave a Comment using Facebook Connect

Just before Christmas, Disqus announced their support for Facebook Connect. At the time I remember being a little disappointed with the decision, due to Facebook’s closed nature and what seemed like a choice for the walled garden of Facebook and against the open web (OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial).
I like Disqus; they’ve been responsive when we’ve had [...]

Batman vs. Superman

Here comes a topic for a Friday.
I try to torture my wife with this nerdy debate, but she consistently rises above the argument.  So, I’m coming to the ‘tubes to get some real discussion.
This class comic book nerd debate is really Batman or Superman, not vs. which suggests they’re fighting. It’s styled as vs. because [...]

Freely Available Utilities

The title comes from a phrase that stood out for me in this post from RWW.
That post highlights some really sweet data pr0n (TwitterThoughts and World Twitter Map) built by Yvo Schaap that uses the Twitter API for data, Yahoo Pipes for parsing and the Google Visualization API for producing the eye candy. All these [...]

Another Facebook User Revolt is Coming

Today, Facebook previewed changes it plans to make to their site next week. There are quite a few:

A redesigned home page with live updates, filters and a universal publishing model (very much like FriendFeed’s).
One minor change that’s part of the universal publishing box is changing the verbiage “What are you doing right now?” to “What’s [...]

New iMac, Still New to Me

Update: Turns out Best Buy, where we bought the iMac, doesn’t have the new models in stock yet, but to make room in their inventory, they’ve lowered the prices on the remaining ones by $400.
They were nice enough to honor the new price and refund the difference. Win-win, since I wasn’t all that excited about [...]