The AppsLab

Lots of people are predicting and betting on the rise of the tablet in 2011. Here’s the most recent analyst version of that song. Interestingly, I got a chance to try living without my laptop this week when I briefly hit the road, forgetting my Macbook power cord. The battery on my old Macbook only… Read More

If you had asked me what I thought of multi-screen portable devices a week ago, I’d have been highly skeptical. Now, twice in the last week, I’ve been impressed (maybe even wowed) by a couple of these devices, one concept, one production. First, check out this concept phone, called the Flip, from Kristian Ulrich Larsen.… Read More

Maybe you saw that amateurs, i.e. those not paid for their financial acumen, outperformed professionals when challenged to predict Apple’s quarterly results. When it comes to forecasting Apples earnings, amateurs are better than the pros — Engadget The amateurs did uniformly much better than the professionals. Coincidentally, I’m reading Clay Shirky’s (@cshirky) Cognitive Surplus, specifically the chapter… Read More

Formulists (@formulists) isn’t new. I’ve just been meaning to try it out for many months, and I finally did. Basically, Formulists creates and maintains Twitter lists for you. It’s simple and quite powerful. Automatically Update Your Twitter Lists With Formulists This is exactly what I’ve wanted for a long time because of my organization fatigue,… Read More

This post has a very broad compendium of vintage (not old) magazine advertisements for computers. Oldest computer ads | Top Design Magazine – Web Design and Digital Content Aside from the trip down memory lane, for many of us, a few interesting nuggets pop: Multi-column layout, especially three columns, looks jarring. I’ve become so accustomed… Read More

Anyway, even though I don’t really use Facebook much anymore, I still read coverage about it, and this piece today about Amazon-owned Quidsi launching eCommerce for Amazon properties Diapers.com and Soap.com on Facebook struck me. I remember back in Facebook’s infancy, Mark Zuckerberg boldly declared that he wanted Facebook to be the new internet, all… Read More

Editorial note: Here’s another post from Ultan O’Broin (@ultan) from the Oracle Applications User Experience Team in Dublin. Enjoy. Wow! A new year and already another cool translation feature in the mobile space announced. Following last month’s Word Lens launch, this time it’s Conversation Mode for Google Translate on Android.  Here’s how it works: In… Read More

In the wake of the sort-of confirmed rumor that Delicious was on shaky ground at Yahoo, Flickr users are understandably concerned about the future of their beloved service. Thomas Hawk’s (@thomashawk) speculation about Flickr’s value to Yahoo sparked a round of conversation, even if his methodology wasn’t terribly accurate. The obvious fear among heavy Flickr… Read More

This made me lulz. Literally. Long and loud lulzing. From the mind of Guy Collins h/t Geekosystem. The older I get and the more I work with real users, the more I hate myself for being such a turd. Computers are hard, but they don’t need to be. My personal mission is to make them… Read More

If you’re interested in mobile markets and patterns, I highly recommend reading Tomi Ahonen’s (@tomiahonen) blog Communities Dominate Brands. Tomi’s detailed analysis of the Verizon iPhone announcement from yesterday is well worth a read. Communities Dominate Brands: The iPhone for Verizon in USA, means some more CDMA sales in Asia too His thoughts mirror my own,… Read More

This is a fascinating look at gadgets, specifically their average prices and sales plotted over time. A gadget’s life: From gee-whiz to junk| The Washington Post (h/t FlowingData) Most interesting to me, given today’s news, is the path of smartphones, whose average price has fallen from $477 to $295 in seven years. I didn’t do… Read More

Now that the iPhone has finally come to Verizon (yes, I realize my prediction was wrong), a lot of the heavy rhetoric thrown around by bloggers/tweeters will be tested. It’s time to back up all the complaining about AT&T and begging for a Verizon iPhone, and it won’t be cheap. Buying your way out of… Read More

Rich (@rmanlan) told me last week that JSConf 2011 will be held May 2 and 3 here in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. Apparently, this is one of the awesome JavaScript developer conferences out there, and so, Rich and Anthony (@anthonyslai) will be attending because they love JS. And so should you. JSConf is currently accepting… Read More

This was an interesting nugget that didn’t get a lot of hoopla, or maybe I just missed it or read the wrong blogs or something. Internet Identity System Said Readied by Obama | OpenID Thoughts on a government-issued, privately-managed/maintained internet ID system? Is it more convenience than necessity? People are the weak link in security, and… Read More

Looking at Google Analytics for this blog today, I noticed a trend I’ve seen before but continues to surprise me. Android how-to posts have driven about a third of the traffic here over the last month. I shouldn’t be surprised, since the same thing happened with iPhone posts years ago. I guess it’s striking to… Read More

Run Chromium 10 (the dev build) and enable Google Instant in the Omnibox. That sounds like gibberish, but if you get what it means, you’ll want to try it. This should work for the Chrome 10 dev build as well, but I haven’t tested it. So why is it trippy? Google Instant searches as you… Read More

Memolane puts all your checkins and activity on a timeline, foursquare checkins, tweets and Facebook updates, YouTube videos, flickr and Picasa photos, TripIt trips and music from last.fm. Tell a story with your checkins, tweets and photos on Memolane [INVITES] According to the post, they’re taking requests for other services too, including Untappd, the network… Read More

I have a self-diagnosed, self-proclaimed disability that doesn’t exist in any clinical textbooks (I think… not that I’m an expert). I call this disability Attention Overload Disorder (AOD). Don’t bother looking it up — it doesn’t exist outside of my head. Although, I think there are a lot of people like me (probably including Jake… Read More

I covered this very topic a few months ago, although I didn’t have the historical references and term “lifelogging” as background. Everything the Internet Knows About Me (Because I Asked It To) – Digits – WSJ (h/t FlowingData) Modern services make it dead simple to track pretty much everything about you. I’m beginning to feel… Read More

Mobile is super hot now and has been for a while. I know, duh. If you’re in development, you’ve been thinking about mobile, or at least, your users have been pushing you to do that. We’ve dabbled with mobile a bit, e.g. Anthony’s (@anthonyslai) Android app for WebCenter, but being Android guys, we tend to build… Read More