Author: Jake

Thought this was a funny observation about the equally frustrating but different aspects of owning Android phones and iPhones. Via Geekosystem h/t fnordramen Coincidentally, I spent about half a day last week upgrading to CyanogenMod (@cyanogen), which is still the closest thing to running vanilla Android if you’re not rocking a Nexus One or Nexus S. The latest version,… Read More

Reading the title of this post, I immediately thought of software, but it turns out this post is about open the source of deceased gadgets. Make: Online | If You’re Going To Kill It, Open Source It! I suppose the fact that it came from Make should have been a clue. Anyway, given the rise… Read More

John Sim, who recently struck a strategic partnership (press release) with Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowlE20), has some interesting thoughts on how to reimagine WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) Spaces. Re envisioning UIX for WebCenter Spaces. « C4 I love the completely outside the box thinking; stuff like this helps everyone reexamine what an interface is and should be. Nice… Read More

Google IO (@googleio), the annual Google developer shindig, is less than two weeks from now, and we’ll be there again. This will be my second year, Rich’s (@rmanalan) third and Anthony’s (@anthonyslai) fourth. That right, Anthony is a veteran of every Google IO, dating back to before it was cool. That is, assuming you think it’s… Read More

This news is sad. SETI Suspends Its Search For Alien Life I’m not sure if SETI@home will continue to operate. I used that for years before switching away from Windows. It always seemed like a good idea, and the program pioneered the use of distributed, excess computing power for crunching large data sets. Anyway, as NASA… Read More

Thanks to Chet (@oraclenerd) for sending this my way. Amid the escalating fuss about smartphones (and probably all phones, let’s be honest) tracking and reporting your location back to the mothership, comes very interesting research data about location tracking and its potential impact on predicting human behaviors. The Really Smart Phone – WSJ.com I’ve read… Read More

If you read here, you’ll know we love game mechanics, and we tend to talk about that a lot. See what I did there, just gamed search engines. Anyway, for no real reason, I’ve decided to pen a post on questing, which in this case, refers to adding a set of steps that create an incentive… Read More

I’m a sucker for how stuff is made, so this is right up my alley. The precision required to make accurate 10 and 60-minute timers is pretty astounding. These are obviously high-end works of art, and I wonder how the cheapo ones you get in board games are made. Bet that’s an equally interesting process. Anyway, enjoy.… Read More

By way of David Dorf (@dordav), comes the uneasy truth about cellular devices, in this case, the iPhone or 3G iPad you’re toting. Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves – O’Reilly Radar This story is all over the place today, and it’s not like this is unique to iOS devices.… Read More

The Internet of Things fascinates me, but it’s always seemed like a dark art to me. However, thanks to the cool stuff people like Noel (@noelportugal) and John Yopp (@johnyopp) have built, I’m sold on the idea that we’re entering a period of rapid innovation for internet-connected stuff. This benefits consumers and enterprise, and it’s… Read More

This is fascinating stuff, especially given the short length of the video. Great film from David Friedman about a man whose invention has changed the world as we know it today. An interesting nugget is the choice to store 30 pictures on a digital cassette tape, not because of technical limitations, but because 30 fell nicely… Read More

We were chatting about cameras on tablets yesterday, and I reiterated my viewpoint that tablet cameras are cumbersome and dopey. Thinking about this more in depth, the tablet camera doesn’t share many use cases with the camera phone. For example, when you’re taking pictures of an event. Here’s an item from the Failblog to prove my… Read More

We love Dropbox. You should too if you use multiple Interwebs-connected devices and have ever wanted to transfer files. While I was away on baby leave, Dropbox announced some great metrics. Dropbox Rockets To 25M Users, More Daily Files Than Tweets On Twitter | Fast Company This is great news for an awesome service that… Read More

Some very interesting statistical projections about mobile from Tomi Ahonen (@tomiahonen). Communities Dominate Brands: Some Milestones We Will See This Year in Mobile Statistics Highlights that jumped off the page: On cameraphones: . . . the world will have more than 3.5 Billion cameraphones in use at the end of this year – for a… Read More

I know many people, myself included, cringe at the word branding. It’s been overused for commercial purposes, but the idea remains sound. Our old friend Paul (@ppedrazzi) has done a lot of thinking about personal branding, and he recently put his thoughts into a presentation at USC. Here are some of his back links on… Read More

By way of Justin (@oracletechnet), John Brunswick (@johnbrunswick) provides a great list of WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) resources. 25 Excellent Oracle WebCenter Resources | John Brunswick Enjoy.

So, this is interesting. Clorox ditches BlackBerry, 92 percent of employees replace it with iPhone A couple key points first: Employees weren’t offered a BlackBerry option, which presumably some would have accepted. We all know that person, you know the one who will never-ever-ever give up that sweet BlackBerry addiction. It’s not clear which Android… Read More

So, this is useful. TravAlert Wakes You Up Before Your Bus Or Train Reaches Your Stop If you’ve ever commuted to work by public transportation, you’re familiar with the problem. You doze off easily because that’s what we all do in automotive vehicles from the earliest age, and you either sleep past your stop and… Read More

Not terribly surprising, given Amazon’s recent app store launch, and given Google’s laissez faire attitude toward other Android app stores. Barnes & Noble Now Allows Nook App Submissions (But Nothing Dirty, Please) Potentially interesting is the trend toward device-specific app stores, and yeah, I’m assuming Amazon will eventually drop its own branded devices. I see… Read More

An interesting study of the pros and cons of a flat company. Why I Run a Flat Company | Jason Fried of Inc.com Google famously runs a mostly flat organization, and this model seems to work well for software development organizations. Obviously, it’s not for everyone, but I definitely like the idea of promoting horizontally… Read More