Ads Make Me Laugh

While we wait for the semantic web to serve up really targeted and useful ads, I, for one, continue to ignore 99% of the ads presented to me. But sometimes, they slip through, twice today in fact. Although they work pretty much all the time, Google Ads have turned up many failures in the past.… Read More

Semantic Series of Tubes

The semantic web as a concept has been around for quite some time. It pre-dates, Web 2.0 in fact, even though people sometimes refer to it as Web 3.0 or some other term that denotes its place as the next-next evolution of “teh Intertubes”. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the Internet (I know it’s funnier to… Read More

I Got ID

Ever since the WWW came online, the consumer web has pwned the enterprise web. The consumer web is the ‘tubes at large, with all its content, bells and whistles, networking, gradients, rounded corners and flashing lights. The enterprise web is the intratubes, erm intranet, inside the corporate firewall, hidden from outsiders and often from insiders.… Read More

De-Friend Sounds Better than Remove

Mashable had a highly entertaining post earlier in the week called “12 Great Tales of De-Friending“. As social networking eases into the mainstream consciousness, awkward situations will arise, and since there’s no playbook, conventional wisdom or Miss Manners for social network interactions, stories of de-friending will continue to entertain us. Or not, depending on your… Read More

All a Twitter

Hot on the heals of news that Facebook and Twitter couldn’t agree on an acquisition deal, news broke yesterday that Twitter had purchased Values of n. So what? Values of n produces Stikkit and Sandy, two very useful and artfully designed products. According to Rael Dornfest, these services will become Twitter’s IP and will go… Read More

Is Simple the New Black?

Thanks to Matt for covering Geode. I have to agree with his assessment of location as awesomesauce when mixed with Intertubes. Continuing my mission to slog through all the unread feeds I have left over from the week of OpenWorld, I noticed an item from Mashable about the simple and elegant Umbrella Today? The concept… Read More

Facebook Hits the Mainstream

If you read here, you’re probably on the leading, if not bleeding, edge of the early adoption curve. Bit of a mixed metaphor, so let’s say early adopter scythe. Anyway, Facebook is old news. For about the last year or so, I’ve rarely logged into Facebook; I guess the sheep-throwing and incessant poking and super-poking… Read More

Back to Work

So, I’ve returned from my staycation officially, and thanks to scheduled posts, it was almost like I never left. Everyone wins. I’ve made it through several hundred emails; incidentally, would you take a job that had in its description of responsibilities: To send and receive thousands of emails each month. Just wondering, since we all… Read More

More Connect Mockups

Rich has finished a few more mockups of the changes we’re making to support OpenSocial. Since our last episode, he’s finished the Profile page. Take a look. One thing (other than location data, which will return soon, promise) people have been missing since we upgraded Connect to the Mix JRuby code line is status. More… Read More

Facebook is for Quitters

Digg pointed me to this gem today, Lack of Facebook Access Makes You Want to Quit? Grow up, Punks, penned by Ann All last week. I love the generation gap. It makes for the best (and worst) kinds of “teamism”, reminding me of a bit George Carlin does about nationalism. The crux is why do… Read More

What’s Next?

Lately, our plans have started coming into focus. If you read here, you probably know we built Mix with ThoughtWorks back in November. Since January, Marketing has been making plans to use Mix a lot more heavily, starting with this year’s Openworld. Yesterday, I told you about the project and the new direct messaging feature… 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