The AppsLab

There’s a post over on VoX about a OAUX new lab at Oracle HQ, the Cloud UX Lab. Finished just before OOW in September, this lab is a showcase for OAUX projects, including a few of ours. The lab reminds me of a spacecraft from the distant future, the medical bay or the flight deck. It’s… Read More

Jawbone announced the Up3 today, reportedly its most advanced fitness tracker to date. As with all fitness trackers, the Up3 has an accelerometer, but it also has sensors for measuring skin and ambient temperature, as well as something called bioimpedence. As these data collected by the Up3 are used by a new feature called Smart Coach. You… Read More

I have both the Google Glass and Android Wear (Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360), and often times I wear them together.  People always come up with a question:  “How do you compare Google Glass and Android watches?”  Let me address couple of the view points here.  I would like to talk about Apple Watch, but… Read More

If you’ve read here for more than a hot minute, you’ll know that I love me some data visualization. This love affair dates back to when Paul (@ppedrazzi) pointed me to Hans Rosling’s (@hansrosling) first TED talk. I’m sure Hans has inspired an enormous city of people by now, judging by the 8 million plus… Read More

Editor’s note: Hey look, a new author. Here’s the first post from Raymond Xie, who joined us nearly a year ago. You may remember him from such concept demos as geo-fencing or Pebble watchface. Raymond has been busy at work and wants to share the work he did with telekinesis. Or something, you decide. Enjoy.… Read More

Cheesy title aside, the AppsLab (@theappslab) is growing again, and this time, we’re branching out into new territory. As part of the Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps) team, we regularly work with interaction designers, information architects and researchers, all of whom are pivotal to ensuring that what we build is what users want. Makes sense, right?… Read More

Last week at OpenWorld, a few of our projects were featured in Steve Miranda’s (@stevenrmiranda) keynote session. Jeremy (@jrwashley) tweeted the evidence. Debra (@debralilley) noticed too. I wasn’t able to attend the keynote, so I found out thanks to the Usable Apps (@usableapps) Storify, which chronicled “Our OpenWorld 2014 Journey.” And today, I finally got… Read More

This time next week, we’ll be in the thick of the Oracle super-conference, the combination of Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne. This year, our team and our larger organization, Oracle Applications User Experience, will have precisely a metric ton of activities during the week. For the first time, our team will be doing stuff at JavaOne too. Anthony (@anthonyslai)… Read More

Noel (@noelportugal) and Raymond have been hard at work building a custom wearable, a.k.a. the secret OpenWorld project. The finished product is ready for a closeup. The components are: AppsLab Slapbands from Amazing Wristbands (@AMZG_Wristbands) LightBlue Beans from Punch Through Design (@punchthrough) 3D-printed cases, designed by Friend of the ‘Lab Rob, printed by Sculpteo (@sculpteo) LED lights An… Read More

Tony went to a talk by Salim Ismail (@salimismail), the Founding Executive Director of Singularity University recently. He may/may not post his thoughts on the talk, which sounds fascinating, but this video is worth sharing either way, and not just because we have quadcopter fever. Yeah, that’s autonomous flight, So refer to the list of horrifying things… Read More

I consider these types of posts to be filler, but I suppose you could look at it as curated content or something highbrow like that. Take your pick. 10 Horrifying Technologies That Should Never Be Allowed I scanned this post first, thought it would be interesting and left it to read later. Then I read it,… Read More

To no one’s surprise, Apple announced the Apple Watch today. Very apropos because I just read Sandra Lee’s (@SandraLee0415) post over on Usable Apps about fashionable tech, one of Ultan’s (@ultan) main talking points about wearables. Ultan, our wearables whisperer, has style and flair; if you’ve ever met him, you know this. His (and Sandra’s)… Read More

As the parent of a toddler, I have no choice but to pay attention to Disney and its myriad of products and services. Case in point, this Summer we took our daughter to Disneyland for the first time, which was a whole thing. Pause to h/t Disneyland expert, Friend of the ‘Lab and colleague Kathy for… Read More

Editor’s note: The recent release of the Oracle Applications Cloud Simplified User Interface Rapid Development Kit represents the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of people. The kit was built, in large part, by Friend of the ‘Lab, Rafa Belloni (@rafabelloni), and although I tried to get him to write up some firsthand… Read More

Our location is relentlessly tracked by our mobile devices. Our online transactions – both business and social – are recorded and stored in the cloud. And reams of biometric data will soon be collected by wearables.  Mining this contextual data offers a significant opportunity to enhance the state of human computer interaction. But this begs… Read More

I just got back to my hotel room after attending the first of a two day Cognitive Computing Forum, a conference running in parallel to the Semantic Technology (SemTech) Business Conference and the NoSQL Conference here in San Jose. Although the forum attracts less attendees and has only a single track, I cannot remember attending… Read More

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, which is bad. I’ve been consuming a lot of in-flight wifi, which is good, because there really should be no place on Earth where I’m unable to work. Plus, it’s internets at 35,000 feet. How cool is that? Today, I found myself in the throes of a decidedly first world… Read More