Author: Jake

I found this article fascinating, definitely worth a read, even if you don’t have children on the way to college someday. What’s Wrong With the American University System – Culture – The Atlantic From a hiring perspective, I haven’t dealt much with so-called Millenials, and I hear mixed reports about their expectations. I do know… Read More

Christopher Jones has collected several interesting sessions that could be of interest to those of you building web apps on what he calls the OPAL stack (Oracle PHP Apache Linux). He throws in our favorite, Ruby, and Perl for good measure. Check out his list of sessions from OpenWorld, Oracle Develop and JavaOne, all of… Read More

If you read here, you’ll know I’m in love with data visualizations. Have you noticed that visualizations have become more beautiful lately, i.e. over the last decade or so? Good data visualizations are as much art as they are information. Anyway, here are a couple blogs dedicated to beautiful data that I read avidly. FlowingData… Read More

Pretty slow day today, until this video: Watch a Flamethrower and a Fire Extinguisher Battle in Slow Motion Be still my geeky heart. Also interesting today, this brief history of data visualization by Shawn Allen of Stamen Design (h/t FlowingData). This is a class I wish I could take.

Rich (@rmanlan) and Anthony (@anthonyslai) have been heads-down enhancing the WebCenter Chrome extension for quite some time now. Today, Rich let me know it’s nearly done and almost ready for some beta testing. The extension still posts to WebCenter and shows you your activity stream, which is pretty sweet in and of itself, but it also… Read More

Here’s an interesting poster I found on Digg. Scribd recently went HTML5-only, dropping Flash. Unfortunately, they still use Flash for document embedding, as you’ll notice below, but this may soon be history as well. YouTube launched HTML5-embedding via iFrame just last week. Scribd in HTML5: How it Works

Seesmic (@seesmic) released major updates to their Seesmic Web client, including support for more services, HTML5 desktop notifications for Chrome users and lots more speed. Seesmic Blog: Seesmic Web – Now with Facebook and LinkedIn Support, Desktop notifications, and Faster than ever! If you read here, you might recall that I switched to Brizzly nearly… Read More

Gizmodo has one of the better roundups of the impact that today’s Library of Congress statement that assesses what each of the six exemptions to the DMCA means to the average Joe, erm Gizmodo reader. The big ones are: jailbreaking and unlocking your smartphone are both legal and ripping your DVDs for noncommercial use is… Read More

By way of Louis Gray (@louisgray), Supertrackr uses PubSubHubbub to track keywords in real-time, delivering its results via XMPP. Pretty cool stuff and similar to PuSHBot, except it can deliver content from any source using Superfeedr or PuSH. louisgray.com: Supertrackr Tracks “Anything” on the Web, Instantly Dunno about you, but I like IM bots, as… Read More

Yesterday, I promised details on the AppsLab session at OpenWorld. Paul (@ppedrazzi) initially proposed our session, which he would have presented, had he not decided to ride off into the sunset. Good luck dude. It’s too late to change the title and abstract of the session’s name, so it appears in the Schedule Builder as:… Read More

Last month, I blogged a plea to get out the OpenWorld Suggest-a-Session vote for Raimonds Simanovskis’ (@rsim) Ruby sessions. And today, Tim (@planspark) announced the winners over on the OpenWorld blog. Both Raimonds’ sessions, PL/SQL Unit Testing Can Be Fun! (S319104) and Fast Web Applications Development with Ruby on Rails on Oracle (S319119), made the cut.… Read More

John Gruber pointed to this post by Ken Segall, which his readers promptly borked. Daring Fireball Linked List: The Ever-Arrogant Apple Basically, a sarcastic take on Antennagate and Apple’s arrogance, i.e. yeah, they’re arrogant because they know better than we do, similar to a topic I covered years ago apropos of the original iPhone. Looking… Read More

I got word today that the WebCenter iPhone app has been released to iTunes. You can get it here (iTunes link). The app is free and requires 11g Release 1 Patchset 2. Looking at the screen captures, it’s reminiscent of the Oracle People app that Clayton Donley built, with an activity stream, connections, profiles and… Read More

Paul Graham, who would know a thing or two about ideas and raising money, adds his thoughts on the classic temple of inspiration, the shower. The Top Idea in Your Mind (h/t John Gruber a.k.a. Daring Fireball) You’ve probably experienced a shower eureka in the past. I certainly have, and in fact, I pondered waterproof methods… Read More

Facebook officially crossed 500 million users today, although that milestone has been rumored for months. This post from ReadWriteWeb offers up a very interesting theory about a possible biproduct of Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits: The World’s First Global Currency? This makes a ton of sense and is frankly, more than a little frightening. Think about… Read More

Geeks and coffee go together like peas and carrots, so you’ll likely enjoy this fascinating look by Lifehacker Australia at how caffeine really works on your brain. I especially like the tips on how to tune your caffeine intake for maximum effect. What Caffeine Actually Does To Your Brain | Lifehacker Australia Related is this… Read More

Check out this infographic compiled and designed by Online MBA (h/t Gizmodo) depicting the total app marketplace. I’m surprised that BlackBerry offers a better deal for developers and a larger market of addressable customers (I assume) than Apple and Android, and yet their market only has 2,800-ish apps. Is there a caveat here, e.g. development… Read More

Not usually something I’d find interesting, but Waste Management (yes, the garbage company) is launching a Facebook game called Oceanopolis. A Facebook Game With a Mission: Waste Management to Launch Oceanopolis From the TechCrunch post: “In the game, players maintain their own island by recycling trash to build a sustainable community and interacting with friends.… Read More

Wired has an interesting look inside the tenuous relationship between Apple and AT&T. It’s a fun read, and I guess I’m not surprised that Apple takes such a hard-line with its partners. Why wouldn’t they use the same “you’re holding it wrong” approach? For Apple, the uncompromising attitude succeeds more often than it fails, and… Read More

This news has me bummin. Why? Because the Nexus One is a great phone, from what I’ve seen and heard, and it’s the only pure Android device out there, i.e. it runs vanilla Android without any carrier layers. Nexus One | News and Updates (h/t Geekosystem)