The AppsLab

Thank you Noodlor for putting together this great infographic on typography. If you’ve ever been annoyed or attracted by fonts or typefaces, this is for you. h/t Paul (@ppedrazzi), Fast Company’s Co.Design

This one’s weird. Life beyond HTTP 1.1: Google’s SPDY – igvita.com A while back, Google Chrome dropped the http from its location bar. This seemed like a decision based on cosmetic and usability concerns. Maybe not, since now Ilya Grigorik (@igrigorik) who joined Google from the PostRank acquisition in June is saying that Google’s web… Read More

So, I’ve been carrying my new Nexus S for several days, and it has really impressed me. It’s a beautiful device, just the right size, and I love running stock Android, one reason why I flashed my EVO with CyanogenMod (@cyanogen). Why? Because it’s very difficult to compare iOS to Android if you’re running the… Read More

I recently discovered that in iOS, you can delete a table row by making a slash (i.e. /) gesture over the row. I didn’t figure this out on my own; I read about it while studying the iOS SDK. This gesture only works with Cocoa Touch tables of a certain type, so not every row in… Read More

My move from the HTC EVO 4G that has served me well since Google IO 2010 to a brand new Nexus S 4G is nearly complete. Frankly, the biggest issue so far has been dealing with the carrier, i.e. Sprint. I’ve spent more than three hours on the phone with Sprint and in Best Buy stores trying… Read More

Today only, the Nexus S is free from Best Buy with a two-year contract agreement on any of the carriers who support it, i.e. Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T. I’ve been pondering the jump to a new phone for a while, since my EVO running CyanogenMod 7 (@cyanogen) starting having weird issues with calls and GPS.… Read More

Back in March, I wrote about Meridian (@meridianapps), an app that maps indoor spaces, helping you find your way around places like Powell’s. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a pal of mine, Jeff Hardison (@jshardison) had gone to work there with, among others, Nick Farina (@nfarina), he of this week’s iOS to Android porting fame. Anyway,… Read More

Hot on the heels of last week’s TED video on scary algorithms comes this piece from ReadWriteWeb (@rww) on Google Place’s new recommendations algorithm. Google’s New Traveler Recommendations Point Towards an Age of Algorithms As Marshall (@marshallk) notes, recommending places you might like based on what people similar to you like sounds pretty simplistic, but… Read More

So, this is a bit scary. Interestingly, he mentions the no-button elevators I encountered at the Oracle office in Portland, which apparently use a bin-packing algorithm to determine how to distribute elevator cars to floors. How algorithms shape our world

Earlier this week, I received a Chromebook, specifically the Samsung Series 5 3G Chromebook, courtesy of Google for attending their IO developer conference in May. Of the goodies Google passed out this year, a Galaxy Tab 10.1, a Verizon MiFi and a Chromebook, I was least excited about the Chromebook, but after using it pretty… Read More

This post on TechCrunch caught my attention initially because of the obvious factor. Big Surprise! The iPad Trumps Android Tablets At The Office Further down, there’s an interesting passage: At the same time, my gut tells me this iPad craze has a lot to do with status. Back before the iPhone, business men carried around… Read More

While lulzing at Matthew Inman’s, a.k.a. the Oatmeal (@oatmeal), latest state of the web comic, I tripped over a statistic: Over 60% of Facebook’s traffic comes from people playing games and the average social gamer is a 43 year old woman. I don’t know exactly where this statistic originated, but it’s on the intertubes so… Read More

Doghouse Diaries (@willrayraf) is quite funny. I highly recommend you subscribe.

3D printing is one of those topics that has been floating around for a while, not quite grabbing my attention. It sounds fine, but the name makes it seems like paper models with no real value. Well Chet (@oraclenerd) got my attention with this excerpt from a National Geographic Channel program. Now this is cool stuff.… Read More

Thinking back to my college days, I fondly recall late nights spent at Tower Records, scouting new music, movies or comics, trips to Blockbuster to rent movies and games for marathon lost weekends, trips to Borders to get deals on books, read magazines and drink coffee, and epic browsing sessions at Circuit City, ogling gear and software… Read More

As a newish parent, I’ve come up against something that has baffled other parents forever: children don’t sleep. It doesn’t make logical sense, especially that my daughter cries more when she’s tired, rather than, you know, going to sleep. I hear it gets worse later, as children refuse to settle down for sleep when their… Read More

I love the internet of things because it opens up a crazy, Jetsons-esque world where technology helps you every day and actually makes life easier, rather than harder. Although, I’m really kidding myself on that latter point, but a guy can dream, right? So, check out this infographic from Cisco on the internet of things… Read More

While trying to get a Spotify invite today, I revisited Klout (@klout), which calculates a reputation score based on your social networks. If you read here, you might remember I’ve been waiting for someone to reputation and influence scoring for a few years. In fact, back in 2009 before we joined WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) development, I wrote… Read More

While many of us tend to get caught up with Android and iOS device discussions, it’s very easy to forget that smartphones aren’t ubiquitous. In fact, the Pew Research Center just reported this week that 35% of American adults owns a smartphone, definitely a rapidly rising statistic, but still probably not as high as you… Read More

So, this is pretty neat. Loud Crow Interactive (@loudcrowinc) creates interactive versions of children’s books for tablets. This is like the pop-up book of the future. The video shows an iPad, but they just released an Android version. As a developer, I wonder if they’re doing native development or HTML5. We’ve seen HTML5 do realistic… Read More