I’ve been drilling OpenSocial for most of the year, talking about why our platforms (Mix and Connect) will be containers, explaining how it’s good for users and even better for developers. Now, I have a couple examples that should stick. Ed commented on my last mockups post: OpenSocial is now officially my new latest favourite… Read More
Category: general
What’s Your GPS Do?
Yesterday, I quipped: Processing “I’m at the Green Dragon” is far easier than processing “I’m at 928 SE 9th Avenue, Portland, OR”. Unless you’re a GPS device. In which case, you and your friends should have no trouble finding each other. And lo, today via Mashable, I read about Garmin and uLocate teaming up to… Read More
3 x Location
A couple news items from last week have me thinking about location-based services again. First, a location-based social networking tool called Shizzow launched a private beta. Similarly to other services (Brightkite, most notably), Shizzow helps you stay in touch with people IRL, but the secret sauce is that you don’t have to know the address… Read More
What Are Your Five Feeds?
Paul asked me a while back which feeds I would keep if I could only have five. Or something like that, the exercise was basically, pick five and only five. If you’re like me, you cull your feeds every so often. Every three to six months, I get overwhelmed with unread items and cut out… Read More
More Connect Mockups
Rich has finished a few more mockups of the changes we’re making to support OpenSocial. Since our last episode, he’s finished the Profile page. Take a look. One thing (other than location data, which will return soon, promise) people have been missing since we upgraded Connect to the Mix JRuby code line is status. More… Read More
More iPhone Nuggets
I’m embracing this blog’s role as a source of iPhone things. So, I figured I’d share some tips and tricks, a.k.a. stuff that might be in the manual you and I didn’t read. If you have an iPhone, bookmark this post immediately. Rather than regurgitate them as my own, I’ll run the headline versions: Tap… Read More
Do You Take Workcations?
So, I took a long weekend with my wife up in Seattle, and as I normally do, I took my personal laptop. Before you laugh, it actually does make sense to take it on vacation. I can watch movies on it, look up local attractions, get directions, etc. Plus, I keep up with news and… Read More
Garfield Minus Garfield = Win
I’ll be stepping away for a few days to reboot my sanity (fingers crossed). I’ll leave you with this sweet nugget. I added Garfield Minus Garfield to my Reader way back in January due to someone’s tweet. If you’re not familiar, here’s the about: Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from… Read More
I Am (Not) Rich
First off, everyone knows I’m not Rich. I wonder if Rich (and people who share his name) get this app for free or at least for a discount. I’ll back up; so by now, you’ve probably heard about the “I Am Rich” iPhone app that popped up briefly a couple days ago in the App… Read More
AppsLab FAQ: How Do I Get People to Adopt?
It’s been a while since I posted an FAQ entry. All the recent activity around iPhone information has reminded me of another one. Adoption. So, this FAQ installment is targeted at enterprise communities. Now that Connect has groups, people are using it more frequently for centralized collaboration, which is exactly what we hoped. Generally, the… Read More
Oracle iPhone Resources
The SEO of blogs is so good. The post I did a year ago about the wiki I started inside the firewall to collect iPhone tips and tricks still comes up in the top few results for the keywords “oracle iphone“. That post is in the top five all time for us, based on traffic… Read More
Measuring the Cost of a Computer
I was all ready to crank out a heavy work post when this item in my Reader caught my eye. Should You Pay Twice as Much for a Mac? I love this type of title because it captures attention by being potentially controversial, and of course, it references Apple. Good tech news writing always drives… Read More
Another Call for OpenSocial App Thoughts
Last week, I asked you what OpenSocial apps you’d like to see in the Connect (and eventually Mix) app directory. Which seeded apps? Any apps you’d like to build or see built? And generally, are you stoked about OpenSocial apps? Not much in the comments, but somehow, I think there’s interest out there. OpenSocial is… Read More
More Connect UI Mockups, Do You Care?
If you’ve been away, welcome back, and by the way, I’ve been blogging our design process for the changes we need to make to support OpenSocial in Connect. Today, Rich posted a few new mockups today of his vision for our Connect (and ultimately, Mix) OpenSocial UI. The first mockup shows Rich’s vision for the… Read More
Good and Bad iPhone News
A few items from last week caught my iPhone-centric eye. I figured you were all jonesing for iPhone stuff, so here they come. Push Notification I think by now, everyone with an iPhone running 2.0 firmware and a few apps understands why apps should run in the background. Seriously, how useful is AIM if you… Read More
Session Didn’t Make the Cut? No Worries
Seems that the dust from suggest a session has settled and the winners are frantically preparing their sessions. Maybe your session didn’t make the cut, but don’t be sad or disheartened. There is another way to present your session topic at OpenWorld. Sign up for the Unconference. Justin announced today that signups for this year’s… Read More
Friday Lulz
I read xkcd and actually get about 75% of the jokes, I think. Anyway, this one popped up in Reader this morning, and it made me laugh, especially in light of our recent discussions about O/S, a.k.a. the “which O/S would win in a fight” thread. Enjoy, and read xkcd if you don’t already, and… Read More
Your First Computer?
Rich’s semi-nostalgic post yesterday has some of our readers reminiscing about their first computers, ones they owned or ones they first used for geeking out, ahem, I mean programming. For example: Sounds like Floyd had a Radio Shack/Tandy TRS-80, but he says he worked with card batches in college. Raimonds used a real classic, the… Read More
Light the App Bar or Not?
So, I promised to blog Rich’s UI mockups for the OpenSocial UI changes we’re planning, and even though posts about what we actually do here at the ‘Lab get way less traffic and comments than fun posts about which O/S would win in a fight, I’m keeping that promise. Rich has made a lot of… Read More
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff… My Perspective
Instead of adding a comment to Jake’s post on his Ubuntu experience to-date, I thought I’d just blog my perspective. Here’s my backstory with Apple, MSFT, Linux, and others: Mid to late 80s: Timex Sinclair 1000… loved writing programs on cassette tapes! How many of you Web 2.0 kiddies can say that? Early to mid… Read More