Rich’s semi-nostalgic post yesterday has some of our readers reminiscing about their first computers, ones they owned or ones they first used for geeking out, ahem, I mean programming. For example: Sounds like Floyd had a Radio Shack/Tandy TRS-80, but he says he worked with card batches in college. Raimonds used a real classic, the… Read More
Light the App Bar or Not?
So, I promised to blog Rich’s UI mockups for the OpenSocial UI changes we’re planning, and even though posts about what we actually do here at the ‘Lab get way less traffic and comments than fun posts about which O/S would win in a fight, I’m keeping that promise. Rich has made a lot of… Read More
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff… My Perspective
Instead of adding a comment to Jake’s post on his Ubuntu experience to-date, I thought I’d just blog my perspective. Here’s my backstory with Apple, MSFT, Linux, and others: Mid to late 80s: Timex Sinclair 1000… loved writing programs on cassette tapes! How many of you Web 2.0 kiddies can say that? Early to mid… Read More
!$title$! É um bug
Or at least that’s what Google Translate says “it’s a bug” means in Portuguese. So, maybe you noticed recently that this blog and others produced a feed item or a couple called “!$title$!”. I believe this is a bug associated with WordPress 2.6 because the timing coincided with our upgrade to 2.6. Plus, several blogs… Read More
OS X, Ubuntu and Other Fun Stuff
Comments have been awfully quiet lately. I’m guilty of talking too much about work-related stuff and not enough about iPhones and Twitter. My bad. Let’s remedy that. Rich asked me recently how my move to Ubuntu was going. It’s been almost a month, and he says he has a vested interest in keeping me happy… Read More
Brick Walls Are There For A Reason
There is a common thread in driving change. No matter what you are working towards, or where you are doing it – change is hard. You’ll run into challenges on time, budget, resources, personalities, vision, objectives, and more. Sometimes you’ll want to throw in the towel. We have all had those days. I recently watched… Read More
What OpenSocial Apps Do You Want?
So, as I mentioned last week, we’re putting the finishing touches on the OpenSocial work for Connect. The OpenSocial container is finished and ready for app development right now. We just need to add an app directory and tweak the profile and home pages to accept OpenSocial apps. One line item on our development plan… Read More
Transparent Development? We Has It.
You may have noticed more talk about what we’re doing and why lately. Comments are down, so either this is exceedingly dull to you, or you completely agree and have nothing to add. Either way, as we move forward with our plan to deploy Connect as an OpenSocial container and update the UI to support… Read More
Mix Updates and New Features
Recently, even though we’ve been focusing on Connect and OpenSocial, but Mix hasn’t been standing still. ENTP has been working to fix bugs and build features for Marketing that will be showcased heading into OpenWorld. Last night, a slew of bug fixes and a new feature or two were deployed to Mix. If you’re a… Read More
On OraTweet and OpenSocial
So, Noel Portugal is at it again. He has expanded his pet project, OraTweet, to include OraTweetBot, which he says is: . . . an XMPP/Jabber bot built with Java that will listen for tweets and post them to Twitter or to a database. I never use the XMPP/IM Twitter integration, but I know it’s… Read More
Voting Lessons Learned
Now that the suggest a session for OpenWorld campaign has ended, it’s time to reflect on what we learned. First off, thanks to everyone who submitted a session idea. There were 281 submitted before the deadline, and someone even figured out how to create a session after we closed the nomination form. Bonus points for… Read More
Big Changes are Afoot
I spent the day today with my AppsLab brethren sequestered like a jury in the Thunderball conference room in sunny Pleasanton, CA. Or maybe it’s Dublin. Anyway, Paul called us all together to hunker down on some design work. Well, some new design and some redesign. If you’re interested in the future of the Connect… Read More
Congratulations to the OpenWorld Session Winners
It’s finally official. The winning sessions have been announced over at the OpenWorld blog. Congrats to the winners. The Events team selected the top 25 vote-getters, and Lisa Stuart has already begun notifying the submitters via Mix. Here are the winners ordered by number of votes. I’ve included links to the bloggers I know.
Word of the Day
I learned a new word today, nerdcore. Here’s how the Urban Dictionary defines it: Any form of music that is made by nerds, for nerds, or about nerdly things. Nerdcore can be made in any style of music, but most people identify it in either its pop-punk or hip-hop forms. With the important caveat: Nerdcore… Read More
More iPwnage
Disclaimer: Honestly, I love my iPhone. It still rules, and I wouldn’t own another smartphone. However, the cynical misanthrope in me loves to deconstruct the hype that surrounds the “God phone”. On today’s agenda, two items: 1) the “Best phone for business. Ever.” claim and 2) more 3G nonsense. For Business? Not yet. Maybe, Updates… Read More
Some Thoughts on iPhone Apps
Maybe you missed it, but Apple released a bunch of new iPhone stuff last week. Who knew? The 7.7 release of iTunes added the App Store, and the 2.0 firmware now allows me to run the first apps on my iPhone, w00t! Reviews have begun to arrive, and apparently, the most popular price point has… Read More
Connect as a Blogging Tool
Since we started down this road last year launching Connect to go with the IdeaFactory, one common ask has been blogs. Blogs are a cornerstone of Web 2.0, allowing anyone to publish content and anyone to participate. We discussed very early on whether we should provide a blogging platform, like multi-user WordPress or MoveableType, for… Read More
AppsLab FAQ: Have You Spoken to HR, Legal and Security?
Here comes another installment in my FAQ series. This one isn’t a question I get asked, but rather one I ask. Inevitably, when you start a community or release an application to customers, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got the blessing of three groups within your company. Human Resources Legal Security In any size… Read More
AppsLab Session at OpenWorld
The OpenWorld content catalog has been released, and even though the session schedule hasn’t been finalized yet, you can search and browse for sessions to begin planning your time. Even though it looks like none of our suggested sessions will make the cut, you can still find AppsLab at OpenWorld. Just to clarify, this session… Read More
New Home for Oracle iPhone Stuff
About a year ago, I bought my wife an iPhone and then soon broke down and bought myself one. Since then, I’ve blogged several times about the little gadget, including a few posts on how it works for me as a work tool. A large percentage of the traffic on this blog is due to… Read More