Author: Noel Portugal

From the first day I got the Amazon Echo in December 2014 I looked for more interesting ways to interact with it. Before the Alexa team released an official API, I came up with a rather creative way to control things . It was not perfect since I had to add things to the “todo” list… Read More

Kscope17 is just around the corner and it is not a secret that we love ODTUG‘s Kscope since it is a conference geared towards Oracle Developers. This year as we have done in previous years, we worked closely with the conference organizers to bring a unique fun experience. We developed an Augmented Reality game called Kscope GO.… Read More

Working in an emerging technologies team has a lot of perks. One of them is to kick the tires of technologies that are about to become mainstream. It also has the somewhat fun privilege to gain interwebz bragging rights or the equivalent of the emblematic/annoying “first” comment that plagued the web forums just a few years… Read More

A few weeks before the first ever Oracle sponsored Maker Faire, I was experimenting with some of the cognitive (vision) recognition APIs available. Google Vision API, Watson Visual Recognition and Microsoft Computer Vision API are some of the biggest players in this field right now. After testing all of them I found the idea of Microsoft’s CaptionBot really compelling:… Read More

We have been quietly observing and evaluating our options before we finally decided to get a telepresence robot. Telepresence technology dates back to 1993 (Human Productivity Lab) and telepresence robots are not completely new. There is a growing array of telepresence robot options (see comparison) and the list is bound to get cheaper and better. Before we… Read More

Want to learn more about the Internet of Things? Are you attending Oracle OpenWorld 2016 or JavaOne 2016? Then you are in luck! Once again we have partnered with the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) team to give OOW16 and JavaOne attendees an IoT hands-on workshop. We will provide a free* IoT Cloud Kit so you can get your feet wet on… Read More

Are you attending Kscope16? If so, you are in luck, @theappslab team will be back this year (by popular demand) to do a Scavenger Hunt. This year there are even more chances to win, plus check out these prizes: First place: DJI Phantom Drone Second place: Amazon Echo Third place: Raspberry Pi Our first scavenger hunt took place last… Read More

Editor’s note: We just returned from Holland last week where we attended AMIS 25, which was a wonderful show. One of the demos we showed was the Smart Office; Noel (@noelportugal) also gave a presentation on it. We’ve been showing the Smart Office since OOW last year, and it remains one of our most popular demos… Read More

If you happen to be in Austin this weekend for SXSWi, look for Osvaldo (@vaini11a), me (@noelportugal) and friend of the ‘Lab Rafa (@rafabelloni). We will be following closely all things UX, IoT, VR, AI. Our schedules are getting full with some great sessions and workshops. Check back in a week or so to read some… Read More

Before IoT became ‘The’ buzzword, there was M2M (machine to machine). Some industries still refer to IoT as M2M, but overall the term Internet of Things has become the norm. I like the term M2M because it describes better what IoT is meant to do: Machines talking to other machines. This year our team once… Read More

Are you attending UKOUG Apps15 (#ukoug_apps15) or Tech15 (#ukoug_tech15)? If so, you are in luck! Once again we will run our ever popular scavenger hunt with a twist. From December 7-9 we will be at the ICC in Birmingham, UK working with the UKOUG team to give you a fun way to explore the conference and win prizes along… Read More

After a very successful Scavenger Hunt at Kscope15, we are back with an Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne edition. This time we partnered with the Oracle Technology Network (@oracleotn) folks to give Oracle OpenWorld (@oracleopenworld) and JavaOne (@javaoneconf) attendees a fun experience, and with even more chances of winning. The OTN Community Quest was designed to be a win-win experience. We… Read More

A few nights ago a Domino’s Pizza commercial got my attention. It is called “Sarah Loves Emoji.” At the end, the fictional character Sarah finishes by simply saying “only Domino’s gets me.” The idea of texting an emoji, tweeting, using a Smart TV, or a smartwatch to automagically order pizza fascinates me. What Domino’s is attempting to… Read More

A couple months a go IFTTT added a much needed feature: A custom channel for generic urls. They called it the Maker Channel. If you noticed my previous post, I used it to power an IoT Staples Easy Button. At a closer look this is a very powerful feature. Now you can basically make and receive web requests… Read More

The Amazon Dash button, it’s all the buzz lately. Regardless whether you think it is the greatest invention or just a passing fad, it is a nice little IoT device. There is already work underway to try and make it work with custom code. There are a couple crowdfunding projects (flic and btn) that are… Read More

This year we organized a scavenger hunt for Kscope15 in collaboration with the ODTUG board and YCC. As we found out, scavenger hunts are a great way to get people to see your content, create buzz and have fun along the way.  We also used the scavenger hunt as a platform to try some of the… Read More

Are you attending Kscope15 (#kscope15)? If yes, then you should join the Kscope15 Scavenger Hunt. We have partnered with the Oracle Development Tools User Group (aka @odtug) and created a fun way to get points and win prizes! Why? The Oracle AppsLab (@theappslab) team wanted to find a user-friendly way to start a conversation with the ODTUG membership… Read More

Back in February I was invited to participate in an pre-beta release of the Amazon Echo SDK. I was under NDA so I couldn’t share any of my finding here. But now that NDA has expired and I can share some of the integrations I did with this interesting device. First of all I want to comment… Read More

  So as you might already know, it has been all about THE Watch these past days. So having this new toy in my wrist made me want to explore the possibilities. So I set myself to push my skill boundaries and dove right into WatchKit development. To kick off the wheels I spent this… Read More