The AppsLab

This is fascinating stuff, especially given the short length of the video. Great film from David Friedman about a man whose invention has changed the world as we know it today. An interesting nugget is the choice to store 30 pictures on a digital cassette tape, not because of technical limitations, but because 30 fell nicely… Read More

We were chatting about cameras on tablets yesterday, and I reiterated my viewpoint that tablet cameras are cumbersome and dopey. Thinking about this more in depth, the tablet camera doesn’t share many use cases with the camera phone. For example, when you’re taking pictures of an event. Here’s an item from the Failblog to prove my… Read More

We love Dropbox. You should too if you use multiple Interwebs-connected devices and have ever wanted to transfer files. While I was away on baby leave, Dropbox announced some great metrics. Dropbox Rockets To 25M Users, More Daily Files Than Tweets On Twitter | Fast Company This is great news for an awesome service that… Read More

Some very interesting statistical projections about mobile from Tomi Ahonen (@tomiahonen). Communities Dominate Brands: Some Milestones We Will See This Year in Mobile Statistics Highlights that jumped off the page: On cameraphones: . . . the world will have more than 3.5 Billion cameraphones in use at the end of this year – for a… Read More

I know many people, myself included, cringe at the word branding. It’s been overused for commercial purposes, but the idea remains sound. Our old friend Paul (@ppedrazzi) has done a lot of thinking about personal branding, and he recently put his thoughts into a presentation at USC. Here are some of his back links on… Read More

By way of Justin (@oracletechnet), John Brunswick (@johnbrunswick) provides a great list of WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) resources. 25 Excellent Oracle WebCenter Resources | John Brunswick Enjoy.

So, this is interesting. Clorox ditches BlackBerry, 92 percent of employees replace it with iPhone A couple key points first: Employees weren’t offered a BlackBerry option, which presumably some would have accepted. We all know that person, you know the one who will never-ever-ever give up that sweet BlackBerry addiction. It’s not clear which Android… Read More

So, this is useful. TravAlert Wakes You Up Before Your Bus Or Train Reaches Your Stop If you’ve ever commuted to work by public transportation, you’re familiar with the problem. You doze off easily because that’s what we all do in automotive vehicles from the earliest age, and you either sleep past your stop and… Read More

Not terribly surprising, given Amazon’s recent app store launch, and given Google’s laissez faire attitude toward other Android app stores. Barnes & Noble Now Allows Nook App Submissions (But Nothing Dirty, Please) Potentially interesting is the trend toward device-specific app stores, and yeah, I’m assuming Amazon will eventually drop its own branded devices. I see… Read More

An interesting study of the pros and cons of a flat company. Why I Run a Flat Company | Jason Fried of Inc.com Google famously runs a mostly flat organization, and this model seems to work well for software development organizations. Obviously, it’s not for everyone, but I definitely like the idea of promoting horizontally… Read More

I haven’t been in the loop much, what with the arrival of my daughter and all, but I’m starting to catch up on what’s been happening. Here’s a WebCenter (@oraclewebcenter) news item that you’ll like. WebCenter Spaces PS3 VirtualBox Appliance « Peter Moskovits’ Oracle WebCenter Blog I believe this is an update to the VM… Read More

Here’s another fascinating study of the mechanics of Farmville, with a little psychology thrown in for good measure. The Sunk Cost Fallacy « You Are Not So Smart (h/t Lifehacker) Most true line in the post: Every garage sale is a funeral for someone’s sunk costs. Say what you will about Farmville and its ilk,… Read More

Here are a few loosely coupled items that caught my eye today. More App Store Economics: Case Study of 10M download game, monetized through ads. How much money? The answer is $30,000-ish for serving 108 million ads. This is probably why Android developers everywhere are ecstatic to see in-app purchases will launch next week. Speaking… Read More

I’ve been biting my tongue for several hours now, hoping the cynicism with abate. It didn’t. Haters gonna hate. Color Looks To Reinvent Social Interaction With Its Mobile Photo App (And $41 Million In Funding) That $41 million was committed pre-launch. Here’s another in the same vein: Pretty Flipboard Fundraising at an Even Prettier $200 Million… Read More

A while back, I mused about the shortcomings of ratings systems. The short version is that a scaled system trends toward averages or extremes, falls victim to social pressures and provides too few/too many options. Problems exist for an up/down voting system which fails to capture any nuance and restricts the voter. Nothing has changed,… Read More

A few years ago when we were enhancing Connect, we tried to get our hands on all the office maps for all the Oracle offices around the World. The idea was that simply providing a person’s office number on a profile wasn’t good enough, since most office numbers aren’t easily understandable without some context or… Read More

Here’s another bright mind, Seth Priebatsch (@sethpriebatsch) of SCVNGR, talking about gamification. Seth wants to build a game layer on top of the world, and I agree. I’m embedding his TEDxBoston talk from last year here, but definitely check out his SXSWi keynote from a couple weeks ago, which I’m not allowed to embed. Both Rich… Read More

Amazon launched their curated Android Appstore today, and there are several interesting bits. For users: 1. It’s not a free-for-all like the Android Market. It was only a matter of time before someone took advantage of the openness of the Android Market. So now Android users can benefit from a curated (and presumably safe) store… Read More

I read this news with some sadness. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9 to Have Customizations on Top of Honeycomb | Android Phone Fans One promising thing about Android 3.0 was that it might skate by without bloatware. The Motorola Xoom reportedly is stock Android 3.0, no additional layer of carrier or hardware vendor software. I was… Read More

This is an interesting switch. The Google Loophole Has Become The Facebook/Twitter Loophole I hadn’t ever noticed a Google loophole for WSJ articles, but that’s probably because very little published by the WSJ interests me and any blog linking to WSJ content either went through or didn’t, meaning I didn’t spend any additional effort. The… Read More