The AppsLab

Not that you’d want to be graduating or soon to graduate right now, times are terrible for newly minted and recent graduates, but still, if you were in college, what would you study? I suppose you’d have to apply your current experiences (wisdom?) to the decision, so this is a Back to School exercise. Would… Read More

So, don’t worry this is all SFW. Girl Talk (a.k.a. Gregg Gillis) is one of Illegal Art’s artists. Illegal Art is a label that is “pushing the limits of sample-based music”. Girl Talk (@GTInsider) released a fifth album, All Day, earlier this month, and there has been a fair amount of positive noise about it.… Read More

Thanks to my iPad and a rediscovered joy for reading, I’m reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. It’s a great read so far, and I highly recommend it regardless of what you do for work. It’s interesting. Anyway, one excerpt resonated with me today: Once this overlapping of ideas occurs, cortical cells start to… Read More

Distraction is the social peril of the moment, see this weekend’s latest feature about distraction and a typical response. Honestly, I skimmed one and don’t have time to read the other, but I’m guessing they play out thusly: Point: Information overwhelms us, we try and fail to multitask, society crumbles, etc. Counterpoint: We adapt to distractions and… Read More

I didn’t find this story about accusations of mass cheating at the University of Central Florida terribly interesting until I read this on Hacker News. News: Cheating and the Generational Divide – Inside Higher Ed Aside from the generational argument (only politics and religion get people going like generational biases), I’m waiting for the other… Read More

Forgive the mix of movies. Secretly, you know you love mashups of your favorite movies, like peanut butter and chocolate. Anyway, I was chatting over OraTweet with a pal here at work about this unbelievable but true deal from Amazon on the Droid family of phones. She’s in India, making the deal unavailable, but the… Read More

Check out this infographic, which summarizes the results of a survey of 3,000 UK residents about tablets (h/t Device Magazine). The demographic data are interesting, especially the differentiation between “instant access to the web” and “staying in touch with friends via email and social networks”, which underlines the point about the web dying in favor… Read More

I’ve been thinking a lot about design recently, and I know the guys have as well. Anthony (@anthonyslai) came back from An Event Apart in San Diego with some interesting information, and I’m looking forward to hearing what Rich (@rmanalan) learned at Future of Web Design earlier this week. I’m digging into design and psychology books (facilitated… Read More

Earlier in the month, Luc Glasbeek, a colleague of ours here at Oracle, penned an interesting piece called Social Media and Corporate Disobedience: The Third Way? Luc has decided to take his thoughts primetime with his very own blog, Carrots Not Sticks. Why that name? Luc explains: So, I have a lot of affinity with… Read More

In case you haven’t noticed, the smartphone has begun trickling down and replacing, for lack of a better word, dumb phones. Case in point, the Huawei Ascend, which runs Android 2.1 and can be bought without a contract, i.e. unsubsidized, from Cricket for $150. The service costs $55 a month, including, well everything. Not too… Read More

I recently got an iPad, and this survey is a pretty accurate representation, with a few exceptions, of my thoughts so far. Of the three main observations: Safari, the web browser, is the iPad’s most important app. But iPad owners download, pay for, and regularly use many apps, on average. Most people say they are… Read More

By now, you’ve probably heard that the soon-to-be-released Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) will have near field communications (NFC) capabilities. If not, check out Eric Schmidt’s chat yesterday. He’s also rocking a Nexus S, confirming a rumor. Eric Schmidt shows off a Nexus S at the Web 2.0 summit, says Gingerbread coming in ‘next few weeks’ —… Read More

So, this is cool. John’s Phone | The World’s Simplest Cell Phone (h/t Gizmodo) John’s Phone has a modern simplicity (Bauhaus?) to it that shows a swing back to stylistic function, i.e. not form or function, but both in measure. Check out the unboxing video: I wonder if this signals a new wave of design… Read More

This article came out months ago, and until now, I’ve resisted reading it, if only because of the sensationalist headline. The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine (h/t to OpenAppMkt for pushing me) Setting aside the graphic, which is based on potentially false data interpretation, the core arguments made by Chris Anderson… Read More

Great fodder for a Friday, I give you: The Economics of Seinfeld From their about: This site will be part of an ongoing and expanding attempt to make these sorts of popular culture teaching materials widely and conveniently available. We are doing this in the hopes that the materials hosted here, now and in the… Read More

For no real reason, I asked myself a question yesterday: what’s the difference between a website and web app? Failing to come up with a concrete set of differentiators, I took my question to Rich (@rmanalan), and subsequently stumped him. He eventually boiled the differences down to: A web application is an application that’s accessed… Read More

So, Apple is renowned for creating great design, and in this post, Zach compares the Apple remote with the remotes for Google TV designed by Sony and Logitech. The difference between Apple and everyone else – Blog – Zach Waugh Bit of an unfair comparison. The remote for Apple TV trades hardware simplicity for software… Read More

It’s not very often I see any news about elevators, let alone not one, but two interesting nuggets. First, apparently, there is a hack to go directly to any floor without making any stops. According to the poster, it’s in place for police use. Makes you wonder how spreading it through the interwebs will be… Read More

I found out about Long Bets, an ongoing charitable endeavor that provides, “an arena for competitive, accountable predictions” by way of Hacker News and the declaration of a winner in this bet. A profitable video-on-demand service aimed at consumers will offer 10,000 titles to 5 million subscribers by 2010. Netflix fits the bill for this bet… Read More

A few months ago, when I was getting acclimated to my shiny new Droid and Android generally, I penned a note about the annoyance of Android’s notifications. Now, it’s time to admit I failed, or in the words of Happy Gilmore: I’m stupid. You’re smart. I was wrong. You were right. You’re the best. I’m… Read More