The AppsLab

As with last week, the geo news has been hot and heavy again this week, but before I get to the tidbits I’ve found interesting, let’s talk about why geo matters or doesn’t. Unlike social, you shouldn’t be guilted into geo. Not that you were guilted into joining Twitter or Facebook, but the riskiness of… Read More

If you read here, you know I love data and data visualizations. So, you won’t be surprised to hear this post from Hot Hardware immediately intrigued me: “TomTom’s IQ Routes Prove Americans Aren’t Speed Demons”. Aside from the blatant advertising, the conclusions, initially published by Tele Atlas, TomTom’s map business unit, were great data points for me,… Read More

Yesterday, Vince posted the third installment in his “What is WebCenter” series, and as promised, he dives into the design points with more detail. After reading all three parts, it should be clearer that WebCenter is a lot of things and is therefore, difficult to describe in a terse manner. To date, we’ve been working… Read More

Word leaked yesterday that the EU was set to approve the Oracle-Sun acquisition, and today, it’s official. Justin announced that Larry Ellison will hold a live webcast on January 27 to unveil the corporate strategy for the combined companies. Here’s the official description: Transforming the Way You Buy, Run, and Manage Your Business Systems Find… Read More

Earlier in the week, I posted about Next Jump and their use of data and algorithms to target offers at consumers who are most likely to buy. Their results are impressive, 60% click-through on offers with a phenomenal 11% rate converting browsers to buyers. Apparently, 5% click-through with 2% conversion are consider very good rates.… Read More

Wow, geo is a hot topic lately, with coverage, announcements and features dropping every day. Here’s a summary of what I’ve seen lately that caught my interest: Gowalla appears to be preparing an API. MyTown has 500,000 users, even though no one talks about it. Yelp is adding location checkins to the next version of… Read More

As a lover of data visualization, I couldn’t resist sharing this one from Stephen Von Worley depicting the evolution of beloved Crayola crayons from their humble roots as an eight-pack of fun in 1903 to today’s 120-pack. I’m a total data geek, which is why I love data visualizations. I couldn’t help looking for patterns… Read More

Ever heard of a company called Next Jump? Me neither until I read this piece in the New York Times (h/t TechCrunch) last week. Next Jump had stayed stealth for 15 years, raising $45 million in venture money and hiring 225 people, all the while signing 60% of the Fortune 500 as customers. Not too… Read More

In case you’re following along at home, Vince has posted the second installment in his “What is WebCenter” series. You can find the first part here. So far, he’s kept it pretty high level, which makes sense. I expect that in future parts he’ll dive into the nitty gritty details a bit more, e.g. he… Read More

If you follow me on Twitter (@jkuramot), you might already know that my iPhone, the OG version, is failing. I noticed last week it wasn’t charging or syncing over USB. I performed all the usual tests to trap the problem–swapped cables, swapped ports on the Mac and on my USB hubs, swapped ports on my… Read More

A little while back, Chet (@oraclenerd) asked the Oracle WebCenter account (@oraclewebcenter) over Twitter, “What is WebCenter?” Makes sense since Chet, and many others out there, are general Oracle practitioners, meaning they may specialize in a specific product, but are always curious and eager to expand their knowledge to other Oracle products, which is very… Read More

Thanks to Reader, today I found this piece (h/t Slashdot and Lifehacker) by a freelance writer asking whether her aol.com email address was hopelessly square and dated. I noticed this post initially because I can’t think of a single contact of mine with an aol.com address. I used to help a friend with AOL about five… Read More

Cue the jokes. So, Chet (@oraclenerd) floated this notion, originally proposed in the NYT, and it’s completely true. Check the evidence: $25 million from Google and Microsoft to pump the firehose of tweets into search results, a full ecosystem built around the Twitter API, even an apps marketplace, Oneforty, built around the ecosystem. Incidentally, Oneforty, the… Read More

I know I predicted that geo would be left at the altar 2010, but I think there’s huge potential in geo services. Dissecting my prediction, I’m forecasting gang-busting growth for the “where-am-I” use case. Along those lines, I give you Photocheck.in (h/t TechCrunch), which hits two of my favorite things: geo and APIs. In very… Read More

I noticed a comment came on Connect this week from a skeptic. Someone had posted this video of Seth Godin, and among the positive comments was one skeptic. The skeptic correctly identified Seth’s bent toward consumer use cases and the general lack of enterprise use cases when talking about Enterprise 2.0 or Social Media or… Read More

Tired of social media? Maybe you’re like Rich, and you want to delete your Facebook account. Well, there’s an app for that, the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine (h/t TechCrunch). Yeah, it’s a web app, but work with me here. Somehow I doubt this one would make it past Apple’s censors. The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine… Read More

Channeling Seinfeld a bit, what’s up with stop lights lately? I don’t know much about stop lights, aside from using them, and I wouldn’t immediately think of them as a hotbed for innovation. Well, it’s a good thing that’s not my business because I’ve seen two separate innovations related to stop lights in the last… Read More

About a month ago, I mentioned John P’s install EBS posts over at ORACLENERD. A few other people have decided to follow along for giggles, prompting Chet (@oraclenerd) to declare a formal “EBS Challenge“. So far, here’s who’s participating: Chet Ted Simpson [blog|twitter] Marcin Przepiorowski [blog|twitter] Floyd Teter [blog|twitter] Interested in joining? Feel free, and… Read More

I’m stuck in this yearly cycle of wrap-up, prediction review and new predictions. John B. made an interesting point about predictions yesterday: Regarding tech predictions, the fascinating part isn’t WHETHER the predictions were right or wrong, but WHY they were right or wrong. I agree, especially since my track record is spotty. I guess the whys keep… Read More