On OraTweet and OpenSocial
So, Noel Portugal is at it again. He has expanded his pet project, OraTweet, to include OraTweetBot, which he says is: . . . an XMPP/Jabber bot built with Java that will listen for tweets and post them to Twitter or to a database. I never use the XMPP/IM Twitter integration, but I know it’s [...]
AppsLab FAQ: How Do You Keep Track of All This Stuff?
This is meant to be an open thread, even though I’m adding it to the FAQ series. We’re all learning this Intertubes thing as we go along, so how do you keep track of it all? More accurately, how can you possibly listen in on all the relevant conversations and filter out noise? Conversation topics [...]
We Heart Hackers
I love this type of story. About a week ago, I get an email from Noel Portugal, a guy who works at Oracle and likes to hack around with APEX, Web 2.0 stuff, technology in general. In one line that stuck out, Noel mentioned that he was recently “bitten” by the Web 2.0 bug and [...]
Twitter is Your Friend
Insert Twitter post disclaimer here. I’ve noticed a humorous trend that you can use for a laugh. People like to rant at Twitter, just check out twistori’s hate feed for samples. The beauty part of Twitter and its many clients is that it provides easy outlet for your frustration. Can’t get a piece of software [...]
Discussing Disqus
If you’ve read and commented here in the past, you’ll have noticed we switched to Disqus to handle comments about two months ago. Rich made the change, and I was initially skeptical because frankly I had no real idea of what switching would get us. Disqus has a few distinct advantages over the built-in WordPress [...]
Respect My Authority!
Apparently, someone thinks this blog is an authorative source for Twitter information. While browsing through our referrers for the past month, I noticed the Wikipedia listed, which struck me as odd, to say the least. At first I thought someone had created an entry for AppsLab, which weirded me out, but it turns out that [...]
Twitter is Like the Weather
Warning: This post is about Twitter, so if you don’t care about Twitter, stop reading here. Proceed at your own risk of boredom. Last week, friends of the ‘Lab David Haimes and Michael Krigsman were exchanging some jabs over Twitter, about Twitter. Michael argues that Twitter’s frequent outages make it appear suspect if/when a business [...]
Stuff That Just Works
I’ve been so very busy lately, but not with bloggable activity. This week has been slow on Mix news; ENTP is putting the finishing touches on a big feature, and we did deploy a few bug fixes. I did finally catch up on feed reading from a month ago, and a post from friend of [...]
Random Twitter Effects
Hard to believe I haven’t blogged about Twitter in a while. Like New Web in general, Twitter has reached that cusp where early adopters are calling it “established” and new people are kicking the tires. Lots of them. The recent departure of Blaine Cook, Twitter’s former chief architect, could mean any number of things. Many [...]
Pour Some Gas on the Fire (Eagle)
I blogged about Fire Eagle last week. Remember? The service that stores and brokers your location and provides a host of APIs for anyone wanting to integrate location data into their web apps. That post got 0 comments, which was a bit surprising. I thought Eddie or Dan or Matt would be geeked to check [...]
En Fuego: Location Aware Services
I blogged about TripIt and Dopplr a while back; both services collect your travel plans, allow you to share them with people, and alert you when people in your network are nearby your stated location. Until recently, you had to tell them both where you were. Then Yahoo released Fire Eagle into private beta in [...]
Data Visualizations
After a slow Twitter weekend, I stumbled across a new Twitter tool, TwittEarth, via Mashable. This is a beautiful representation of Twitter’s public timeline, similar to twittervision, but with goofy avatars in 3D. It reminds me a lot of the work stamen design has done with Digg, e.g. arc. The visualization shows how many people [...]
What Superhero Are You?
If you don’t use Twitter or find it trivial and annoying, stop reading. This post will only cement what you already think. I can’t be sure, since Twitter happens to be down for scheduled maintenance right now, but I first heard from Dennis Howlett that this week was superhero week on Twitter. Later in the [...]
FriendFeed is for Lurkers too
If you missed it, over the weekend, there was quite a testy blog war between Louis Gray and Duncan Riley, ostensibly started by FriendFeed or rather differing opinions of it. Short version: Duncan doesn’t find value, Louis disagrees, obscenities ensue. Makes for a good read. FriendFeed has been all the rage lately among the usual [...]
Twitter as Customer Support
I’ve blogged in the past about the good new web marketing, i.e. how many startups follow mentions of their companies on blogs, respond in those blogs and engage the bloggers. I really like the personal touch, even if I don’t care much for the application or don’t even use it. Twitter has added a new [...]
Perspective, FriendFried and the Scoble Effect
I’m having trouble getting back into the swing of blogging after taking a nice relaxing vacation. When you spend all day eating and breathing technology, it’s always good to step back and realize what else is out there. Here at the ‘Lab, we consume New Web all day long, and spend a whole lot of [...]
Oracle-Related Facebook Apps and Twitter Updates
Yesterday, Aaron from Profit told me about his new Facebook application which provides in his words “a daily feed of non-technical content related to Oracle applications”; incidentally, Paul was in Profit a few months ago here and here. I had forgotten, since at the time these were published, we were up to our necks getting [...]
MacWorld Brings Twitter to its Knees
So much for scaling. Steve Jobs’ keynote at MacWorld today brought Twitter to its virtual knees. The little guy’s web app is only just beginning to recover, while Twitter clients seem to be confused still about the number of requests I’ve made, meaning the Twitter API is borked too. For those who care about Twitter, [...]
Oracle Tweeters
Inspired by a post from Rick Turoczy, the Silicon Florist, in which he spread Twitter goodness across the Portland area and beyond, I’ve decided to attempt something similar for Oracle Tweeters. Rick’s post yesterday accounted for about 25 new Twitter friends in the Portland/Washington area. We were sharing storm news last night as the wind [...]
2008 in the Crosshairs
Now that I’ve sang “Auld Lang Syne“, waxed sentimentally on 2007 and wiped a tear, here comes the companion piece, 2008 predictions. I’m not a huge fan of predictions, unless I happen to be right. I still think Google will acquire Salesforce.com; that’s my story, and I sticking to it. But, in the spirit of [...]
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