The AppsLab

Apps really don’t matter, but those who insist they do like to point to the dearth of so-called tablet apps designed to run on Honeycomb. One of the first things I noticed about Honeycomb on the Motorola Xoom was that unlike iPhone apps running on the iPad, Android apps look just fine in large screen format,… Read More

Ostensibly, technology is supposed to improve our lives by making them easier. More frequently though, that’s just not the case anymore. Here’s a quick story. My wife’s old Canon point-and-shoot died last weekend. The button toggling between still and video shots wasn’t working, so we took this as an opportunity to buy a wifi camera,… Read More

After more than a year away, I may have to go back to iOS. After upgrading my EVO to Cyanogenmod 7 (@cyanogen), the Gingerbread release, I’ve been having numerous issues, the biggest of which is that I’m not receiving all my calls, which kinda defeats the phone’s purpose. I know, shades of AT&T iPhone complaints.… Read More

When I had lunch with Jason Grigsby (@grigs) a month or so ago, he mentioned an interesting point about Google’s competing browser problem, i.e. Chrome vs. Android. I’m glad he finally had time to post his thoughts because this is an interesting side plot to the more high profile company vs. company matchups. We Need… Read More

Wow, what a slow news week (month?), or maybe I’m just jaded beyond belief at what qualifies as interesting anymore. Might be the latter. I skim hundreds of posts most days, some days thousands, e.g. if I’ve been away or after a busy few days of development work, and lately, 99% of what I see… Read More

Ars has a long, but definitely worthwhile read addressing the recent kerfuffle about Mozilla’s new Firefox product lifecycle and enterprise readiness. Firefox update policy: the enterprise is wrong, not Mozilla For its part, Mozilla seems committed to matching the pace of innovation set by Google Chrome, even at the risk of angering its enterprise deployments.… Read More

Rich (@rmanalan) pointed me to this interesting walk through of the Mix (@oraclemix) Suggest-a-Session voting for this year’s OpenWorld. Data Science Fun with the OOW Mix Session Voting Data | Structured Data Greg Rahn (@gregrahn) does a nice job visualizing the data and pointing out some anomalies and the importance of having a social network to mobilize… Read More

This bit of observation put me in mind of the toughest challenge we face as software developers, i.e. how to convey failure. Toddlers get difference between faulty hardware, operator error Development focuses on how software works, not on how it doesn’t work. Therefore, error handling and messaging never get the attention they require. Add to… Read More

Today, Robert Scoble (@scobleizer), one of the big proponents for apps mattering, responded to DHH’s (@DHH) assertion that core experience, not ancillary apps, matters most. Scoble’s main point is that people don’t want to look stupid so they buy the phone with the most “app potential” even if they don’t use these apps themselves. This… Read More

Jason Grigsby (@grigs) put this seed in my head a couple weeks ago, and this post by DHH (@DHH) sums up the same essential point quite nicely, i.e. apps don’t matter. Ten apps is all I need – (37signals) Many pundits and bloggers like to point to apps as the main difference between iOS and… Read More

Sometimes things collide interestingly. I had just finished watching the latest installment of Kirby Ferguson’s awesome Everything is a Remix series when I ran into Ultan’s (@ultan) post about the iOS 5 Notification Center. The short version is that iOS 5 finally cleans up notifications, which have sucked from the get-go, by implementing a system… Read More

Check out this dude and his epic pinstriping. I’ve seen pinstriping done by hand on stationary objects, which prevents this technique, i.e. moving the object, not the hand, and it’s equally epic. The hand and pressure control required to do good pinstriping is insane. Peep the Technique: Pinstriping Done by Hand – Core77

Check out this MIT research project that transfers information between phone and laptop via the phone’s camera. MIT, Google Researchers Tap Cellphone Cameras To Grab Data From a PC – Ina Fried – Mobile – AllThingsD Similar in theory to the Chrome extension Chrome to Phone, this class of interactivity between devices is super useful… Read More

This is pretty fascinating. Back in the late 90s, I worked on a project at a metals reclamation plant in urban Detroit. They bought truckloads of shredded cars, sorted out the recyclable materials (aluminum, copper, etc.), and resold them to the automakers. The machine in this video must be the guts of that glorious machine that eats cars… Read More

Since its debut last year, I’ve watched Windows Phone 7 with some interest. Similar to IE 9, IE 10 and the preview of Windows 8, WP7 surprisingly doesn’t suck, and as a long Microsoft-hater, I’ve been curious to see how they evolve. After the Nokia news, WP7 seemed poised to make a serious dent in… Read More

At different points in my post-college life, I’ve carved out time to learn new technical skills, with mixed results. In addition to a general thirst to expand my skillset, ever since the dot-com Bubble burst, the importance of both breadth and depth of skills has driven me to scrape a few hours out of my… Read More

Another interesting bit of news coming out of WWDC was iTunes Match, the famous “one last thing” Steve Jobs dropped at the end of his keynote. Most of the coverage centers around creating amnesty for pirated music or monetizing it, depending on the perspective, all for $24.99 a year. Why Copyright Holders Love iTunes Match… Read More

I paid precisely zero attention to yesterday’s WWDC coverage, what with work and all, but today, catching up, I was pretty unimpressed with the announcements. A lot of the noteworthy iOS stuff reminded me of the South Park Simpsons Already Did It episode. I am more excited about OS X Lion, where iCloud will have a… Read More

Looks like our friends over in Marketing, Marius (@radu43) and Tim (@planspark) are running Suggest-a-Session for OpenWorld (@oracleopenworld) again on Oracle Mix (@oraclemix) this year. On Friday, I found out Rich’s (@rmanalan) session proposal, “Building Mobile Apps with Oracle” was not accepted. Rich immediately added its abstract to Suggest-a-Session, and I tweeted a call to… Read More