Last week, Ben (@goldenmean1618) and I were in Las Vegas for COLLABORATE. We ran two studies which focuses on two trending topics in tech: bots and virtual reality! Bot Focus Group https://twitter.com/theappslab/status/719960373080641536 Our timing for the bot study was perfect! The morning we were to run our focus group on bots in the workplace, Facebook… Read More
Category: general
SXSWi Recap
Austin, beautiful city with a river crossing downtown, music niche, young population, cycling, brisket and the home of SXSW, a big multicultural conference for all tastes; Film, Interactive and Music. This was my first time attending the conference but Noel (@noelportugal), is a year-to-year attendee. It’s well known that this conference is not only a… Read More
Visit Our Gadget Lab Virtually over the Web
This is 2016, and seems this is the year for VR. Of course, we at the AppsLab can’t miss the beat! While Osvaldo (@vaini11a) started to look into Unity based VR capability and prototype, I wanted to take a look into the WebVR based approach. The prospect of delivering VR experience in a browser, and over… Read More
Have Fun out There
Yesterday, I talked, in part, about how we can, if we choose, work all the time, from the moment we open our eyes, until we close them for sleep. So today’s as good a Friday as any to remind you to balance all that work with some fun. We here at the AppsLab are big… Read More
How We Go Through Our Day
Earlier this month, our strategy and roadmap eBook was released. In it, you’ll find all the whys, wherefores, whats and hows that drive the Simplicity-Mobility-Extensibility design philosophy we follow for Oracle Cloud Applications. The eBook is free, as in beer, and it’s a great resource if you find yourself wondering why we do what we… Read More
GDC 2016 – Part 2: The State of VR
VR is big and is going to be really big for the game industry, and you could feel it in the air at the GDC 2016. For the first time, GDC added two days of VR development-focused events and sessions, and most of VR sessions were packed – the lines to the VR sessions were long, even 30 minutes… Read More
We are still in the early days of virtual reality. Just as in the early days of manned flight, this is a time of experimentation. What do we wear on our heads? Helmets? Goggles? Contact lenses? Or do we simply walk into a cave or dome or tank? What do we wear or hold in… Read More
GDC 2016 – Part 1: Event and Impression
Tawny (@iheartthannie) and I attended the 30th Edition of GDC – Game Developers Conference. As shown in the Tawny’s daily posts, there were lots of fun events, engaging demos, and interesting sessions, that we simply could not cover them all. With 10 to 30 sessions going on at any time slots, I wished to have… Read More
New Content on Our Oracle.com Page
Back in September, our little team got a big boost when we launched official content under the official Oracle.com banner. I’ve been doing this job for various different organizations at Oracle for nine years now, and we’ve always existed on the fringe. So, having our own home for content within the Oracle.com world is a major… Read More
GDC16 Day 5: The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Last Day)
When I first came to GDC, I didn’t know what to expect. I was delightfully surprised to use my first gender neutral restroom. The restroom had urinals and toilet seats. There was no fuss other than others who were standing to take a picture of the sign above. It felt surreal using the restroom next… Read More
GDC16 Day 4: Demos & Player Motivations
It’s official. All demos are booked for the week. Anyone not on the list is subjected to the standby line. I was lucky enough to score a 5:30pm demo for Bullet Train at the NVIDIA booth early this morning. When I walked by the line late in the evening, I found out that a lady… Read More
GDC16 Day 3: Another Day of Fun & Data!
The Expo opened today and will be open until the end of Friday! There was a lot to see and do! I managed to explore 1/3 of the space. Walking in, we have the GDC Store to the left and the main floor below the stairs. Upon entering the main floor, Unity was smack dab… Read More
GDC16 Day 2: Highlights & Trends
Just like yesterday, the VR sessions were very popular. Even with the change to bigger rooms, lines for popular VR talks would start at least 20 minutes before the session started. The longest line I was in snaked up and down the hallway at least 4 times. The wait was well worth it though! Today… Read More
GDC16 Day 1: Daily Round Up
Hello everyone! I wrapped up the first day at the Games Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco! It’s the first Monday after daylight savings so a morning cup of joe in Moscone West was a welcomed sight! First Thoughts Wow! All of the VR sessions were very popular and crowded. In the morning, I was… 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
The Anki Overdrive Car Project
At the end of 2015, our team was wrapping up projects that would be shown at the main Oracle conference, Oracle OpenWorld. As with every OOW, we like to come up with a fun project that shows attendees our spirit of innovation by building cool projects within Oracle. The team was thinking about building something cool with kids’ racetracks. We all were collectively in charge of… Read More
Is the Mi Band the Harbinger of Affordable #fashtech?
So, here’s a new thing I’ve noticed lately, customizable wearables, specifically the Xiaomi Mi Band (#MiBand), which is cheap and completely extensible. This happens to be Ultan’s (@ultan) new fitness band of choice, and coincidentally, Christina’s (@ChrisKolOrcl) as well. Although both are members of Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps), neither knew the other was wearing… Read More
IoT Hackathon: Team Waterlytics’ Entry – Part 2/2
Editor’s note: Our team participated in many of the Summer of Innovation events held by Laurie (@lsptahoe) and her team. Here’s Part 2 of Mark’s (@mvilrokx) project from the IoT Hackathon held at Oracle HQ, July 30-31. Enjoy. After all the prep work for the IoT hackaton where we agreed on our use case and settled on the hardware we would be… Read More
A Wonderful Week in Australia
2016 has been a whirlwind so far, and February kept up the pace. Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve been doing. As we did last year, OAUX made a trip to APAC again this year to meet partners, customers and Oracle people, show our Expo of goodies and talk simplicity-mobility-extensibility, Glance, Scan, Commit and our… Read More
Put Glance on It
Because I live in Portland, I’m often asked if “Portlandia” is accurate. It is, mostly, and so it seems appropriate to channel an early episode to talk about Glance, our wearables framework. Actually, Glance has grown beyond wearables to support cars and other devices, the latest of which is Noel’s (@noelportugal) gadget du jour, the LaMetric Time (@smartatoms).… Read More