The AppsLab

Here’s an interesting story Chris (@cbales) sent me about why tablets can’t be treated as small desktops. What Enterprise Software Firms Can Learn From Angry Birds – CIO Central – CIO Network – Forbes Seems obvious, but when you’re in the development weeds, it’s an easy assumption to make. Save time, get something out to… Read More

Interesting follow-on to the discussion from last week about the impending demise of feeds. Stay N Alive: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS, Completely I briefly tried the feeds on both Facebook and Twitter years ago, but neither really worked for me, too noisy and too many. There’s an interesting nugget in this post… Read More

Another interesting item came from Ultan (@ultan), our sometime contributing author and UX dude. This TEDxCMU talk by Luis von Ahn explains reCAPTCHA. Before you pass because you (and everyone else) hate captchas, reCAPTCHA is different. When you complete a reCAPTHCA, you’re helping Google (who acquired them in September 2009) to digitize the World’s printed… Read More

Found a few things over the weekend that I wanted to share before Google IO (@googleio) starts. “Grey’s Anatomy” Fans To Get an Interactive Viewing Experience on iPad I found out about this from using the ABC Player for iPad, which is exactly what TV studios should be producing. The iPad’s use cases are still evolving,… Read More

Kind of a big deal that I somehow missed. BlackBerry is a blindspot for me for a number of reasons. RIM to Extend BlackBerry Enterprise Server to Android, iOS | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD RIM extends device management to iOS, Android h/t ppk (@ppk) Many of you are IT pros, so is… Read More

Great observation from Doghouse Diaries (@willrayraf) h/t Geekosystem. Oddly, I found out that Osama bin Laden had been killed by accident on the TV of all places. Mostly because the news had preempted a show I wanted to watch. I felt a wave of nostalgia. I’ve used Twitter as my go-to for news for years now, e.g.… Read More

Not much going on lately, so I though why not bring a thread Chet (@oraclenerd) and I had going over email to light. Last week, Google Reader was acting up, and I mused that it might not matter since no one used it anyway. That led to a declaration that RSS was dead, although I… Read More

Funny take on how work has evolved. CoreToon: Things To Hang On Your Wall – Core77 Thinking about this, how many reality shows profile jobs like those in the cartoon? I can think of a dozen offhand. We’re oddly drawn to watching Alaskan crabbers, truckers, coal miners, loggers, restaurant workers, etc. The only cubicle dweller… Read More

Terms of service have been front and center for a few weeks now. First there was the location tracking fiasco affecting both iOS and Android users. Lawsuits have already been filed against both Apple and Google. Now today, I found this item warning against migrating Delicious bookmarks to AVOS, who purchased the service from Yahoo… Read More

Thought this was a funny observation about the equally frustrating but different aspects of owning Android phones and iPhones. Via Geekosystem h/t fnordramen Coincidentally, I spent about half a day last week upgrading to CyanogenMod (@cyanogen), which is still the closest thing to running vanilla Android if you’re not rocking a Nexus One or Nexus S. The latest version,… Read More

Reading the title of this post, I immediately thought of software, but it turns out this post is about open the source of deceased gadgets. Make: Online | If You’re Going To Kill It, Open Source It! I suppose the fact that it came from Make should have been a clue. Anyway, given the rise… Read More

John Sim, who recently struck a strategic partnership (press release) with Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowlE20), has some interesting thoughts on how to reimagine WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) Spaces. Re envisioning UIX for WebCenter Spaces. « C4 I love the completely outside the box thinking; stuff like this helps everyone reexamine what an interface is and should be. Nice… Read More

Google IO (@googleio), the annual Google developer shindig, is less than two weeks from now, and we’ll be there again. This will be my second year, Rich’s (@rmanalan) third and Anthony’s (@anthonyslai) fourth. That right, Anthony is a veteran of every Google IO, dating back to before it was cool. That is, assuming you think it’s… Read More

This news is sad. SETI Suspends Its Search For Alien Life I’m not sure if SETI@home will continue to operate. I used that for years before switching away from Windows. It always seemed like a good idea, and the program pioneered the use of distributed, excess computing power for crunching large data sets. Anyway, as NASA… Read More

Editorial note: The following guest post is by John Yopp (@johnyopp) of Oracle’s Retail Applied Research team. John and his team have been doing cool work internally, including experimenting in areas like the internet of things, which is a new favorite topic of mine. You can read more about Oracle Retail and some of the… Read More

Thanks to Chet (@oraclenerd) for sending this my way. Amid the escalating fuss about smartphones (and probably all phones, let’s be honest) tracking and reporting your location back to the mothership, comes very interesting research data about location tracking and its potential impact on predicting human behaviors. The Really Smart Phone – WSJ.com I’ve read… Read More

If you read here, you’ll know we love game mechanics, and we tend to talk about that a lot. See what I did there, just gamed search engines. Anyway, for no real reason, I’ve decided to pen a post on questing, which in this case, refers to adding a set of steps that create an incentive… Read More

I’m a sucker for how stuff is made, so this is right up my alley. The precision required to make accurate 10 and 60-minute timers is pretty astounding. These are obviously high-end works of art, and I wonder how the cheapo ones you get in board games are made. Bet that’s an equally interesting process. Anyway, enjoy.… Read More

By way of David Dorf (@dordav), comes the uneasy truth about cellular devices, in this case, the iPhone or 3G iPad you’re toting. Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves – O’Reilly Radar This story is all over the place today, and it’s not like this is unique to iOS devices.… Read More

The Internet of Things fascinates me, but it’s always seemed like a dark art to me. However, thanks to the cool stuff people like Noel (@noelportugal) and John Yopp (@johnyopp) have built, I’m sold on the idea that we’re entering a period of rapid innovation for internet-connected stuff. This benefits consumers and enterprise, and it’s… Read More