The AppsLab

David McCandless’ TED Talk has me pondering data visualization and its easy intuitiveness. Think about this: in a decade, will reading have become a difficult skill? There’s some logic here. Not that long ago, I used to write all the time. In high school and college, I took written notes. I wrote letters, I wrote… Read More

Submitted for your entertainment, a TED talk by David McCandless, (@infobeautiful) who pens one of my favorite data visualization blogs, Information is Beautiful. David does a great job explaining succinctly why we love data visualizations; they solve the information overload problem everyone has by exposing patterns and connections immediately. Obviously, visualizing data is not a… Read More

This post was shared on Hacker News with a much more tantalizing title, “Would you let a stranger read your DMs? You probably already do.” Richard Henry: Improving Twitter OAuth, With Mockups Read it if you use a Twitter client. My own inventory of OAuth authorizations includes precisely 0 that are read only. Richard’s point is one… Read More

Interesting piece from the Register. Shhh… Opera holds the web’s most valuable secret • The Register I’ve been dimly aware of Opera Mini for a while, but only recently, have I become aware how popular and critical it is outside the US. The proxy browser idea is a smart one, and it never occurred to me that… Read More

Yes, it’s come to this. As much as I avoid using Facebook, now that it’s populated with in-laws, relatives and people I barely remember from when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and has become a sore spot of social obligation, it has become an indispensable tool for marketing and engagment. Blech. I know, this is the same guy… Read More

I’ve touched on copyright issues in the past wrt to the use of photographs, and over the past couple days, an ugly episode has come to light. The Cooks Source Scandal: How a Magazine Profits on Theft (h/t Geekosystem) To support the accusatory headline, Edward Champion (@drmabuse) documents several cases of verified and possible copyright… Read More

I know, sounds like a misnomer. This is, of course, what everyone in advertising aims to create. I’m not a fan of advertising, and who really is anymore, excepting those who get paid to do it. Still, given the inundation of ads in life, the clever ones stand out, and in the past day, I’ve… Read More

This is gonna replace CD’s soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again. One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies, Men in Black. I was reminded of this quote while Rich (@rmanalan) and I pondered whether we would win free Google TVs and if you could play Angry Birds on… Read More

Very interesting analysis from Phandroid evaluating Facebook’s announcements yesterday and their potentially far-reaching impact. Well worth the read. How Facebook is Pulling an Android… and Why | Android Phone Fans There are some key differences. Google hoped the carriers would use their existing relationships to lure in new customers. They did. Right-wrong-indifferent, there is a level of… Read More

HTML5 is changing web development in awesome ways. HTML5 input types | 456 Berea Street If you’re looking to build a mobile app, why not try a cross-platform standard before investing in one platform over another?

Interesting study in user experience with a nice ROI bow on top. Expedia Saved $12 Million a Year by Deleting One Input Field on Their Website | Geekosystem Let’s not be so quick to condemn the users. Obvious is a state of mind.

Check out this infographic from VisionMobile (h/t ReadWriteWeb). The infographic is a part of VisionMobile’s Developer Economics 2010, a research report evaluating mobile application development on eight main platforms. The report is free, if you provide an email. I’ve been thinking a lot about mobile lately, and hardly a day passes without some key piece of… Read More

The 37signals team just released an interesting iPad app that spurred some ideas in Rich’s (@rmanalan) head. More on that in the future. Introducing Chalk: A fun little browser-based app for iPad inspired by our new office – (37signals) What I want to know is which wins in a fight, chalk or whiteboard? Tale of… Read More

Chet (@oraclenerd) noted a short outage here earlier. Maybe you saw it too. If so, apologies. All for a good cause though, as Rich (@rmanalan) was implementing mod_pagespeed, which is new from Google today as part of their initiative to make the web faster. So today, we’re introducing a module for the Apache HTTP Server… Read More

Editorial note: From time to time, we do guest posts here to mix up the content and the perspectives. This post was penned by Luc Glasbeek, a colleague of ours here at Oracle. Luc has maintained one of the most active internal blogs at Oracle for several years and is now taking a little break from… Read More

Technology as a hobby, a passion, is all-consuming. Maybe you have it, or you know someone who does. If so, you know the symptoms. Inability to eat, sleep or evacuate until a problem is solved. Excessive irritability. Talking to oneself. Yelling, fist-shaking at computer monitor. Giddiness upon problem solution. Annoying self-satisfaction after problem solution. Chet (@oraclenerd)… Read More

Noel (@noelportugal) is modding the holidays again. Check out his Halloween project. Automatic Halloween Candy Dispenser The video isn’t working right now, YouTube issue. Looks like he also has a spider that drops to deliver candy. Very cool hacking. I wonder what he has in store for Christmas. Remember last year’s epic hack? Update: Big ups… Read More

The recent flap over Firesheep (intentionally unlinked) and its ability to intercept unencrypted cookies has renewed several issues worth discussing. Proof-of-concept hacking I’m highly uncomfortable with the tacit used by Firesheep’s creator, i.e. releasing malicious code under the pretenses of creating public awareness. Yeah, I understand that Twitter, Facebook, and all the others would have… Read More

Man Dies from Caffeine Overdose You read that right. Poor guy was seen “profusely sweating and throwing up blood” shortly before he died of the overdose of pure caffeine. Apparently, the pack of caffeine suggested taking no more than 1/16 of a teaspoon, but Bedford reportedly took spoonfuls of the stuff . . . .… Read More

Yes, Paul (@ppedrazzi) has a blog of sorts at paulpedrazzi.com, and yes, it’s worth following. Paul Pedrazzi — Caring Shows This post about Ligature, Loop & Stem‘s (@ligloopstem) sweet typography poster led me to their site to check out the fuss. I learned a few things. First, the poster is very cool. Second, as I… Read More