I blogged about the Yahoo-Microsoft soap opera when it first began. I expected it to end pretty quickly, with Yahoo realizing they couldn’t go it alone anymore. Since then, rumors have swirled and now the plot is as thick as mud. News Corp has gone from savior to Microsoft conspirator, and Google is still lurking,… Read More
AppsLab: Year One
A year ago was my first day at AppsLab. Paul and I huddled (virtually) to talk about plans for the team. It was exciting stuff. We had a unique opportunity to operate like a startup within the bowels of a huge corporation. We had simple plans that I used a mnemonic device to remember, the… Read More
Facebook Launches Chat
Over the weekend, I noticed Facebook had enabled chat for my account. Apparently, they’re rolling it out slowly to specific networks, so finding someone online to chat with is a bit challenging. I did manage to have a quick coversation with my college buddy Paul who also works at Oracle in the WebCenter development team.… Read More
Running Water or Cell Service?
Puneet has a great post called “Cell Phones Leapfrog Drinking Water” over on his personal blog. The juxaposition in this picture sums it up nicely. Great stuff. Check out his blog. I enjoy what he has to say and would like to keep him blogging.
Back to the Desktop
Taking the web out of the browser has been a common theme lately. As web apps become more a part of everyday productivity, accessing them outside the typical browser is more attractive. The iPhone has a great example of this in its Maps app. The beauty of taking apps out of the browser is you… Read More
What Superhero Are You?
If you don’t use Twitter or find it trivial and annoying, stop reading. This post will only cement what you already think. I can’t be sure, since Twitter happens to be down for scheduled maintenance right now, but I first heard from Dennis Howlett that this week was superhero week on Twitter. Later in the… Read More
The Emotional Nature of Software
We’ve all felt the extreme frustration that using a computer can cause. Maybe you spent several hours updating a Word document, assuming it was autosaving, only to have Word collapse in a heap, erasing all your changes. Maybe your IT department has an antivirus scan scheduled to run weekly that mysteriously starts in the morning.… Read More
April Fools’ on Mix?
The Mix traffic stats from today show more than double the pageviews (8,200) and visits (1,000) we normally get. These numbers are as of an hour ago, so they will continue to climb slightly as the day comes to a close. They are the highest that I can recall since we launched at OpenWorld in… Read More
Virtual Adventures
As I teased yesterday, I’ve been mucking around with virtual machines to extend my ability to test Mix. Due to the varied nature of our users’ environments, I need to find ways to install more browsers, more versions on more operating systems. Everyone knows reproducing an issue is really the best way to begin fixing… Read More
Save the Developers from the Users
TechCrunch posted a plea to Save the Developers last week imploring users to upgrade their Internet Explorer 6 browsers to Internet Explorer 7. According to W3 Schools, more than 30% of people browsing the Interwebs use IE6, even though it is more than 6 years old. The gist of the plea is that IE6 is… Read More
Had Good Search Lately?
I’m a neat person, but I’ve always had a cluttered desk. Growing up, my mother would frequently remind me to make it neat and tidy. Not much has changed, except now my desk has less room for paper clutter as much of it is taken up by dual monitors and various gadgets. My clutter has… Read More
The Future is iPhone-tastic
Lately, I’ve been bummed that the SDK announcement underwhelmed, handcuffing would-be developers with restrictions that make apps significantly less functional than expected. As a user, I want more apps that do more. And then a couple nights ago, I got a reminder of how sweet the iPhone really is. I was at Nicholas Restaurant, a… Read More
Customer Service that Works
I’ve covered this topic twice before, but it really deserves more airtime. Paul’s summary of Under the Radar on Monday received comments from two of the companies he mentioned, from the CEOs of those companies. You read that right. Similarly, my most recent post on FriendFeed got a comment from one of the founders. This… Read More
The Greatest Idea Moves Closer to Fruition
I haven’t done post on the most popular ideas on Mix since November. Back then, they were: 1. We need the Oracle clients (OCI, JDBC) for the Apple Intel OSX platform 2. Compile Oracle XE for Intel OS X Well, guess what? Since November, the same two ideas have stayed at 1 and 2. If… Read More
Musings on UTR 2008
Every year I attend the Under The Radar conference held at the Microsoft Silicon Valley location. The organization is flawless, the companies interesting, and the facilities are wonderful. If you don’t know, UTR is a showcase for start-ups that are not (yet) in the limelight. In fact, this is where many launch to the world.… Read More
Spring Conferences
We’ve been pretty busy with conferences lately, and that looks to continue into the Summer. Paul attended Under the Radar The Business of Web Apps: Where the Web Goes to Work last week, and I think he’s working on a post summarizing his thoughts. Rich spoke at the JRuby Meetup a few weeks ago, and… Read More
Does Spam Irritate You?
Mix is reaching more people now, especially through groups. This is great because we always thought groups would be the best way to draw people into the network and conversation. Implied levels of trust within a group make it easier to engage and provide value to people who ordinarily have no use for social networks… Read More
We Are Expensive and Expendable
Rich and I were bemoaning the current state of the economy yesterday, and eventually, the conversation turned to outsourcing, not jobs, but storage, computing power, databases, applications, etc. You know, cloud computing. Remember after the Bubble burst in 2001 how people were in a tizzy, some rightfully so, about the exodus of tech jobs overseas?… Read More
FriendFeed is for Lurkers too
If you missed it, over the weekend, there was quite a testy blog war between Louis Gray and Duncan Riley, ostensibly started by FriendFeed or rather differing opinions of it. Short version: Duncan doesn’t find value, Louis disagrees, obscenities ensue. Makes for a good read. FriendFeed has been all the rage lately among the usual… Read More
More Fun with Numbers
Rich and Anthony deployed a few key fixes last week, nothing too bloggable. They were focused on securing private group activity and caching, which was causing some weird behavior. So, rather than blog those, my periodic Mix post this week is more metrics. As a follow up to my first Fun with Numbers post, I… Read More