Last week, FriendFeed added an IM feature, allowing you bring the information firehose into your favorite IM client. I’m a fan of FriendFeed, but it’s very hard to control the noise level. Typically, each person you subscribe to has several streams of information, e.g. a blog, Twitter, Google Reader, etc., making the amount of noise… Read More
Author: Jake
a.k.a.:jkuramot
Defrag Debrief: Tuesday
I had planned to do the Defrag recap in a single post, but it got really long. I guess my memory isn’t totally shot yet. So, this is part two of my Defrag recap. Part one is here, if you’re a glutton. Tuesday Tuesday was shorter for both Paul and me, as we had planes… Read More
Defrag Debrief: Monday
Looks like I got out of Denver right before a cold front came through, dropping the temperature significantly. Not that the weather is all that great here in Portland. So, Paul and I were at Defrag Monday and Tuesday, as was Bob, who has done a good job of recapping in near real time. Overall,… Read More
An Interesting Week Ahead
No, I’m not talking about the US election, which I will be so happy to see in the rear view mirror. I’m talking about conferences. Paul and I are at Defrag in Denver Monday and Tuesday. Paul is giving a session this afternoon, and though I haven’t seen the slides yet, it’s going to be… Read More
Celebrating Carl’s Life
As Joel announced yesterday, Carl’s family will be holding a memorial service to celebrate his life Thursday, November 6 in Riverside, California. In lieu of flowers the family has set up a Memorial Fund in behalf of Carl’s daughter, Destany. Donations to Carl’s Memorial Fund can be by domestic or international wire transfer or by… Read More
I Am Now Intrepid
I dumped Windows for good back in July and have been running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on my Dell since then. I love Open Source, and for the most part, I’ve enjoyed running Ubuntu. I’ve found it to be on par with XP for stability and superior in usability. Before you quibble with the stability… Read More
A Posse, I Has One
The sadly unfortunate and untimely death of one of our own has me waxing philosophically about our “community”. Those of us who blog about Oracle (or even just blog in general) form a loosely-coupled community of like-minded individuals, i.e. we don’t agree on everything, but we can all agree that blogging is important. I’m impressed… Read More
Google Web Search RSS, Finally
Previously, I’ve listed the methods I use to keep track of all the information floating out in the ‘tubes. One method I didn’t cover is using search, duh. I didn’t cover it because one glaring omission from Google’s web search has been RSS feeds for keywords. If you’ve ever tried to monitor a keyword search… Read More
LinkedIn Launches OpenSocial Apps
Did you notice that LinkedIn debuted their applications platform and some very serious business apps yesterday? LinkedIn continues to chug along as the business social network, and their launch on OpenSocial is of interest to us because of our own work to do this on Connect and their business focus. So, I did a pretty… Read More
No, We’re AppsLab, You Have the Wrong Number
Yesterday, Google announced Labs for Google Apps: Google is making it easier for business customers and schools using Google Apps to also take advantage of our innovations and ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time. We encourage your organization to experiment with the Google Labs features listed below to improve how you communicate and… Read More
Remember Music Videos?
My latest Intertubes distraction comes courteousy of MTV. Hard to believe, considering how far out of their core demographic I am, and yet here we are. Anyway, the network rolled out MTV Music earlier this week. It’s an archive of music videos, remember those? MTV infamously strayed away from playing videos in favor of reality… Read More
Geolocation: Cool or Creepy?
Location aware services and apps are white hot right now. Cases in point, two new iPhone apps: Google Earth and Brightkite. I can’t seem to find any use for Google Earth beyond the obvious eye-candy, cool factor. This has always been my complaint with Google Earth. It’s nice to look at, but not very useful.… Read More
We Miss You Carl
Carl Backstrom died in a single car accident early Sunday morning. He was 35. Earlier today, the news trickled through several of our Twitter feeds, as a nurse involved attempted to find and notify Carl’s friends. Carl was an avid APEX evangelist and blogger, snowboarder and generally well-liked, nice guy. Carl read this blog and… Read More
AppsLab FAQ: What if Someone Says Something Negative?
It’s been a few months since I did an FAQ post. This one has been on my list of to dos for months, and since I’m not doing as much community management as I did in the past, I wanted to crank out a post before I forgot all the content. The focus of this… Read More
As Goes the Economy, So Goes Open Source?
I’ve heard the future of Open Source during a recession debated quite a few times recently. It’s a pretty hot topic now, what with the downturn in full effect. Andrew Keen, the author of “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture”, blogged (irony noted) his thoughts earlier in the week.… Read More
Qwitter Points out How Boring You Are
If you don’t use Twitter, proceed at your own risk of boredom. If you’ve used Twitter for a while, specifically the web interface, you may have noticed you followers count fluctuates without any rhyme or reason. Well wonder no more. I read about Qwitter in Mashable last week; it’s a very simple service that notifies… Read More
Firefox Still Pwns the Field
Generally, I prefer choice in software. Intertubes browser is no different. However, in this particular category, I am an unabashed Firefox fanboy. I’ve been using it since 0.8, and it hasn’t let me down yet. I’ve tried the field, both for personal and professional purposes: Chrome, Opera, Flock, Safari, IE (all versions, 3-8), Netscape/Mosaic, even… Read More
Macs in the Enterprise
I noticed that the Cult of Mac converted another member this weekend. Floyd bought an iMac. He’d been pondering the jump for a while, and now, his love for Mac has leeched over into his work. Full disclosure here, I’m a convert too. So is Dan. So are Paul, Rich and I assume Anthony, too.… Read More
Does Blogging Matter Anymore?
Or is it just a matter of perspective? This piece in Wired today seems like flamebait, and several bloggers have gladly obliged. The title alone begs you to clickthrough, i.e. “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004”. It reminded me of a conversation Paul and I had months ago; the short version was “does… Read More
WhereCamp PDX Roundup
This weekend was WhereCamp PDX here in Portland. WhereCamp is another Bay Area-born unconference imported here by the great folks at Legion of Tech As you can probably guess, WhereCamp focuses on geo-geeking. It began in 2007 as a way to extend and build on conversations and topics presented at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference. There’s… Read More