Author: Jake

Louis Gray (@louisgray) mentions an interesting point about the new Apple TV, i.e. it increases the fragmentation between Apple devices and not just the inherent differences between Apple’s two OS families, iOS and OS X. louisgray.com: New Apple TV Extends Fragmentation, Cupertino Style I’m a bit shocked actually. Louis speaks from experience with several devices,… Read More

I’ve always thought time capsules, the supposedly (see below link) sealed canisters of sundries that are meant to provoke revery and wonderment for future generations, not the questionable Apple backup devices, are a strange exercise. I suppose for kids it’s a fun time, thinking about the future and the doe-eyed children who inhabit it and whatnot. Although… Read More

This is pretty neat. Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website When Google announced its link shortening service in December, it was only available for Google Toolbar and Feedburner users. If you follow us on Twitter (@theappslab), you’ll know we’ve been using the Feedburner implementation of goo.gl since then. Now goo.gl is available to… Read More

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

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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

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… Read More

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… Read More

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.

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More