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… Read More
Author: Jake
a.k.a.:jkuramot
Twitter Break: Unexpected Use Cases, Search
I read a couple Twitter news items today that interested me. First was an interesting TED talk from Twitter co-founder and CEO, Evan Williams. It’s embedded below, if you’re reading on theappslab. If you’re not, click through and have a look. It’s only eight minutes, so not a major time spend. The title caught my… Read More
Images in Feeds
Thanks to friend of the ‘Lab Patrick Wolf for pointing out that the feed versions of our posts do not reflect the same alignment of images that you see here. I’ve noticed this in the past, via OraNA, but figured it was a rathole to try to fix them. Bonus points to Patrick for providing… Read More
Why Do Feeds Fail?
Yesterday, we were meeting as a team to chat about how Connect enhancements, when Paul says he would use Connect more if he could have the activity running in Firefox via an add-on. Sounds like a good idea to me, and I’m already thinking of people who might want to tinker with an add-on, which… Read More
Bummer 2.0
I have a few friends that were avid users of Ma.gnolia, which was a social bookmarking tool, similar to Delicious. I had an account there, but never really used the service much. I say similar to Delicious and use the past tense because Ma.gnolia’s database crashed on January 30. They recently announced that all user… Read More
Oracle People iPhone App Metrics
Yesterday, I promised to share the Pinch Media metrics Clayton has collected for the Oracle People iPhone app. Here’s a snapshot. There are 30 new users since yesterday, which seems like a nice growth rate to me. Clayton mentioned over OraTweet yesterday that adoption was slower than he anticipated. Based on the comments left here… Read More
Pinch Media Releases iPhone App Stats
Pinch Media collects stats for iPhone apps, e.g. Clayton uses them to track usage statistics for the Oracle People Search app. Last week, they released an analysis of apps that has some pretty interesting metrics. The one that caught my eye was that for free apps, only about 20% of users return to the app… Read More
Carl Backstrom, Oracle ACE
Friend of the ‘Lab Carl Backstrom posthumously achieved one of his career goals recently when he was awarded the Oracle ACE designation. You can view his profile on the OTN forums here (login required). I couldn’t find him on the public ACE listing yet, but I assume he will also have a profile there.
What is Blogging to You?
This post on Mashable today about another WordPress plugin that can integrate and surface your FriendFeed and Twitter activity on your blog got me thinking about what a blog means anymore. Blogging used to be the ultimate form of self-expression (or navel-gazing, depending on your perspective) on the ‘tubes, but now, Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook… Read More
Flickit: A Flickr iPhone App
Finally. Flickit brings an easy to use Flickr uploader to my iPhone. This has been a long time coming, and thanks to Rick for the 411. People complain about the iPhone’s camera. It’s only 2 megapixels, it doesn’t take video without a jailbreak, etc. In spite of all its failings, did you know it’s easily… Read More
More on Social Search
So, yesterday I started making the case for social search as an excellent way to find information locked away within an enterprise, and the ability to get good information from social search pays for investments in social networks. I didn’t cover much detail though. So, that’s the focus of today’s post. Social search in my… Read More
Social Search Wins
When you start talking to an enterprise crowd about social networking, inevitably someone asks for real business benefits, a.k.a. ROI. I know, hard to believe. When we first started the ‘Lab, Paul used to ask how many people have a Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn account. Usually less than half the room would raise hands, and that number went… Read More
Toy Blocks that Think?
I shared this in my reader feed as well, but it’s so damn cool, I thought it would be worth sharing the video too. In this TED talk, MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables, blocks that think. You read that right. They think. I really loved Legos, Lincoln Logs, and all manner of construction… Read More
We’re in a Book
I just found out this morning from a new friend of the ‘Lab, Emanuele, that our work has been mentioned in print. W00t! Specifically, Niall Cook mentions the IdeaFactory and Mix, in his book, Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work. Rich is mentioned by name, and his post on building… Read More
Like the Social Bar?
Back in December, we added the Google Friend Connect widgets. Since then, our little blog social network has grown to over 100 members. It’s still not entirely clear to me what you’d want to do with Google Friend Connect, other than affiliate yourself with a blog or website. I guess it’s also a way to… Read More
Who Benefits from Blog Comment Spam?
Over the last month or so, blog comment spam has surged here. You may have noticed, or not. I try to mark the ones that Disqus doesn’t trap, but some inevitably leak through into the wild. Not a big deal to me really because they’re more annoying than offensive. Initially, I thought that spammers had… Read More
Data Visualization Shows Patterns IRL
This post from O’Reilly Radar fascinates me. It’s about network operations data pr0n. If you know someone who works in network operations, you’re probably familiar with the usage and traffic graphs, the alerting and monitoring and the abrupt nature of the job. One minute you’re having a conversation, then the phone goes off, the laptop… Read More
Weekend Project: Macbook Surgery
Back in 2006, I bought my wife and me identical Macbooks, the white ones. When I buy computers, I always factor in the aftermarket enhancements I can make. This is one case where I’m not worried about maxing out memory or storage later down the road because I’m comfortable cracking open a laptop or desktop… Read More
On Avatars
I found this interesting post from Hivelogic about avatars in Rich’s shared items this week. Turns out it’s both timely and exactly in-line with my own experiences and thoughts about avatars. Dan’s post is definitely worth a read, and to encourage a click-through on your part, I’ll only cite him when we happen to agree.… Read More
The Oracle People iPhone App is Here
Update: There is a new version of this app, Oracle People2. It supports iOS 4 and 3.x. See the details here. As before, drop a comment here or on the newer post to get the details from me. With many thanks to Clayton Donley who built the app with help from Rich, Anthony and Noel,… Read More