Ask Google?

Remember when Ask Jeeves launched? The premise was simple. Instead of munging your search into keywords and hoping for the right result set, all you had to do was ask Jeeves a real question. If you remember that, you’ll also remember that it didn’t work very well. Google just announced they have indexed public data… Read More

Google Does Geolocation

I like geolocation. At first, it seemed pretty creepy, but now, there’s a lot of potential for geo-based features that are both and good for you. I write about geo-services quite a bit, and I’m a fan of services like Fire Eagle and Shizzow and BrightKite and all the others. They all have one problem… Read More

Google SearchWiki

Shortly after I finished a post about a couple cool things Google has done recently, they announced that Google SearchWiki would be going public. Back in the Summer, Google teased the addition of Digg-style social features into search, and it looks like these became SearchWiki. So, what does it give you? When you’re logged into… Read More

Thoughts on Microsoft-Yahoo

I’ve been thinking about the proposed Yahoo-Microsoft merger since the news broke on Friday. As a closeted economist and enterprise apologist, the offer’s value really jumped off the page. Microsoft is offering $44.5 billion in cash and stock for a business that generated just under $7 billion in revenue in its fiscal 2007. Microsoft’s Office… Read More

All Your (Oracle) Blogs are Belong to Us

So, about a month ago when I released the Oracle Blogs search engine plugins, Carl asked a very valid question. Why can’t I search all the blogs listed at blogs.oracle.com, regardless of whether they are hosted by Oracle or not? I thought about this, contemplating creating a Custom Google Search Engine and a plugin against… Read More

11g Doc Gets a New Web Makeover

Yesterday, I blogged about 11g updates to documentation tools that Eddie and I have written. I just noticed that Justin has a post about the 11g documentation as well. Apparently, each page now features comments at the bottom. I had to check this out for myself, and sure enough, here it is. Don’t believe it?… Read More

Check out Oracle Events

As Justin pointed out yesterday, Oracle.com unveiled a very cool 2.0 (or dare I say, 2.0+) application called Oracle Events. This is a very useful mashup of the Oracle events calendar, Google Maps (surprise!) and a combination of Siderean Seamark and Oracle’s own Secure Enterprise Search. Many of you will recognize the semantic features that… Read More

Google Apps Suite Plows Ahead

Business Week has an article today about Google Apps. The suite looks more complete every day. Witness the Postini acquisition, the anticipated release of presentations (a combination of Zenter, Tonic Systems and probably some homegrown mojo too) this summer, the integration of JotSpot features and now, enterprise YouTube. This one jumped off the page for… Read More

Plugins for Employees

The reaction to the MetaLink plugin has been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to all who have linked, commented or downloaded. It seems we’ve tapped a reservoir of productivity tools that have existed for a while, but haven’t been shared. I’m interested to know if you have browser plugins or add-ons that make you more productive. Let… Read More