Too Busy to Innovate

I had a conversation with a product manager over IM today that got thinking big thoughts about stuff, you know, like Paul does. I’ve known this PM dude for years and worked with him while I was in development. Great guy, with massive doses of cynicism and negativity, at least when it comes to work.… Read More

Time for Questions

So, I noticed tonight that Google Reader was displaying a more accurate number of unread items for each feed and folder. To be exact, it was a factor of ten more accurate, showing 1000+ and true counts for everything less than 1000. Then, while writing this entry, it went back to the old style, 100+… Read More

Yahoo! The Sleeping Giant

Last week, screenshots of Kickstart, Yahoo’s lastest foray into social networks surfaced. Not surprisingly, Kickstart is targeted at recruiting, helping college student find an “in” at companies where they want to work and helping companies recruit students. I like this approach, as long as they can keep it clean by ensuring the students are really… Read More

Why Bans Don’t Work

Effectively immediately, nothing will be banned. The Summer of Facebook has brought a new list of social network (sorry Mark, social utility) bans, as well as some fuzzy research on the cost of social networking. Some interesting points: Does anyone really believe that Facebook alone costs the Australian economy $5 billion? The Sophos study says… Read More

Driving Innovation, Get It?

Recently, Paul was telling me about a conversation he had with an internal product team about Connect. The conversation went something like this: Product Manager: We love what you’re doing with Connect, and we want to learn more about it. Are your design documents online? Paul: We don’t have any design documents. PM: How did… 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

Mmm, bacn

We all know what spam is by now, the digital variety, not the gelatin-coated mystery meat in a tin. The attendees of PodCamp2 in Pittsburgh have coined the term bacn to describe “email you want, but not right now”. Examples of bacn: Social network alerts Electronic bill pay alerts Basically anything you solicited by providing… Read More

Cage Match: Google vs. Facebook

While Yahoo has spent time and energy over the past year and a half trying several times to talk Facebook into a merger, Google has been curiously silent. Until, they recently snagged Brad Fitzpatrick from Six Apart. Fitzpatrick, known for founding LiveJournal and selling it to Six Apart, wasted no time laying down the gauntlet… Read More

We Were Connect First!

I was excited to see that Dow Chemical launched a social network today. It sounds like a great project, joining Dow’s current and former employees, targeted at different demographics. I especially like targeting alumnae who left for family-related reasons. Great stuff all around, excellent case study of a brick/mortar company embracing new web. What’s the… 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

Search Tools Updated for 11g

Eddie Awad has a post today that some of you will find useful. His Oracle Bookmarklets and search plugins now support the brand new 11g R1 documentation. The Oracle Documentation search plugin I posted also includes 11g R1 now, too. For those uninitiated, bookmarklets allow you to do some pretty sweet productivity tweaks using Javascript… Read More

A New Day

I woke today to a wave of coverage on our little Connect project from ZDNet, namely Dennis Howlett, Michael Krigsman and Larry Dignan. I will spend today riding this wave, hoping not to eat it. Interlude After we went alpha, we needed a name for our little project. In true new web fashion, we offered… Read More