Category: general

Last week was a bit of a whirlwind. I spent Sunday through Wednesday in Denver attending Collaborate 13 and then jetted to the Bay Area to speak at a new hire bootcamp on Thursday. As always, Collaborate 13 was a great chance to catch up with people I only see a couple times a year,… Read More

Not that it’s a tradition or anything, but here are some links to brighten your Friday. Or whatever day it happens to be when you see them. Google Glass SXSW video Google released the video of their Glass session at SXSW. Noel (@noelportugal) was in the room, and Anthony (@anthonyslai) has an Explorer set on… Read More

Facebook introduced Facebook Home today, and unlike most Facebook news, I’m actually quite interested in this announcement. Setting aside the features, the shift away from apps to focus on a holistic user experience is one that I’ve been investigating for several months. From the Verge: But from a user experience standpoint, perhaps the most significant… Read More

I’ll be at Collaborate 13 this year. If you read here, you probably know what Collaborate is, but just in case, it’s a mega-conference co-organized by three Oracle users groups, the OAUG (@oaug1), IOUG (@ioug) and Quest (@questusergroup). If you’re not into acronyms, that’s Oracle Applications Users Group and International Oracle Users Group. Oh, and Quest is the international users group for… Read More

I’ve been quiet here lately. After the trip to Mexico, I took some time off to unwind and enjoy the family unit, and I decided to bite the bullet and do a clean install of OS X as the final attempt to resolve the wifi issues that have plagued me for 18 months. Prior to… Read More

I’m drinking coffee in a Starbucks next door to an Applebee’s. Tough to tell that I’m in Guadalajara, Mexico. The AppsLab reunion tour is here looking for new band members. Did you know that Oracle has a 450-person development center here in GDL? Me neither until I joined Applications UX a few months ago. Mexico… Read More

By now, you’ve probably heard the news that Google will shut down Google Reader in July. This is extremely sad for me, since Reader is an essential tool that I use several times a day to keep up with hundreds of items. I’m not joking or exaggerating; I scan hundreds of items on a (mostly)… Read More

News seems to come in inverse proportion to my level of busy, e.g. SXSW is happening now. Noel (@noelportugal) is attending, so here’s to hoping he brings back some content. Anyway, here are some stories that have caught my very limited attention lately. Ultan (@ultan) has a nice overview of Endeca Information Discovery, including its origins.… Read More

I’m happy to welcome Noel (@noelportugal) and Anthony (@anthonyslai) back to the team. This has been in the works for some time now, so it doesn’t really feel like news to me. Since I joined Applications User Experience back in November, I’ve been trying to assemble a crack team to follow emerging technologies and create… Read More

A few months ago, I decided to change my personal policy on spam. For years, I just ignored spam, mostly because it was easier to delete messages than to follow the unsubscribe instructions on each of them. Given the high profile hacks of the last 12-18 months and the nature of spam lists, i.e. lists… Read More

One of the cool things about the last half decade is the influx of people and technology from acquisitions. You’ll recall that this team’s original incarnation included two PeopleSoft people, Paul (@ppedrazzi) and Rich (@rmanalan). I’ve found over the years that one cool byproduct of acquisitions is hidden technology gems. You know, projects or products… Read More

Interest is temporal, so I knew my case of the blahs about content would quickly resolve, and the Mobile World Congress has certainly helped. So, here are some nuggets I found interesting on a Monday. Mobile News from MWC LG buys webOS from HP, or some of it anyway, for smart TVs and maybe phones,… Read More

Google has been in the news a lot this week, releasing the Chromebook Pixel and giving the World a sneak peak at Glass. Couple these with persistent rumors about Google retail stores, and you have an interesting trail of breadcrumbs leading into Google IO. The Pixel is a head-scratcher. The Verge has one of the better… Read More

I haven’t had much to say here recently, combination of work and general boredom with technology news. However, my colleagues in Applications UX have been blogging. Ultan (@ultan) talks about the Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns and Guidelines in his latest post, which includes knitted aliens, always a plus. These design patterns have been tested… Read More

Many years ago, Rich (@rmanalan) and I decided to try out Disqus for comments, and I’ve been using it here happily since then. Disqus aims to aggregate comments across all blogs and web sites by a) providing an easy way for site owners to add the Disqus commenting plugin and b) allowing commenters to create… Read More

Having been at Oracle in Applications development for a really long time, I’ve heard about the Applications User Experience Usability Labs. In the past, the labs have always been a blindspot for me and a bit of a mystery, but now that I’m a member of Apps UX team, I have the opportunity to see… Read More

I found out today that my old pal Noel (@noelportugal) started a blog, focused on Web of Things, erm things, called WOTLabs. One of his first posts is about the Nike+ Fuelband and how to use its API, whose documentation apparently isn’t complete just yet. Semi-related, can we standardize on what to call internet-connected objects?… Read More

I may have finally found a janky fix to the lingering and highly irritating wifi issue that has plagued my Macbook Pro since I bought it 18 months ago, fingers crossed. A brief recap of the issue, basically, the wifi connection dies, despite the toolbar icon showing a full strength connection, which is also a… Read More

I can’t seem to find a topic worthy of more than a paragraph, so here’s another post of curated links. Could be worse. A P2P Wifi Tethering Market What you say? It’s exactly what it sounds like, a community of users allowing others to tether off their connections in exchange for credit to use when… Read More