AppsLab

I’ve noticed a trend lately in my posts. I’m asking more questions. This wasn’t intentional before, but from here on out, it will be.

Aside from creating more content and engaging you all as much as possible, I’m hoping to get real information, similar to the way I frequently use Twitter, i.e. I poll for answers to questions, to get recommendations, to vet opinions, and to share experiences.

It’s sometimes a bit tough to do this (and answer) in 140 characters though. Anyway, in case you missed them, here are a few of the polls I’ve run in the past, if you care to add your two (or more) cents:

• Did Someone You Know Get Facebook for Christmas?
• Show off Your Powers of Prognostication
• Show Me Yours . . .
• Oracle People and Alumni: Share Your Memories
• Poll: Do You Lock Your Smart Phones?
• Best Invention of the Last 20 Years?
• Geolocation: Cool or Creepy?
• Thoughts on the OpenWorld Blogger Program
• Does Blogging Matter Anymore?
• Your First Computer?

So, the question I have today is what gadget/s did you get over the holidays? Or maybe even, what gadget/s did you hope to, but did not, get? As with last year, I’ve noticed a surge in iPhone related chatter on the various channels, signaling that it was a common holiday gift. Read More »

In case you’re wondering, our domain expired over the weekend, which is why this blog was wiped from the ‘tubes for the last couple days.

At least it was if you use theappslab.com. Oracleappslab.com was working, but it had no CSS applied.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Photo by dee gee on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Now that the 2008 recap is in the can, it’s time for 2009 predictions.

Everybody loves predictions because it’s either a chance to crow about how prescient you are or make excuses about how you were partially right and would have been totally right if it weren’t for those darn kids and their dog.

Predictions are fun because they add a time element to your opinions. I made a few last year, so let’s review:

1. Twitter will take off, then crash and burn
2. Videoblogging will make me care less
3. TV on the Interwebs will create awesomeness

This is a mixed bag of fail and win. Read More »

I hope everyone had an enjoyable week of holiday fun. As promised, here’s the first of those obligatory year-end posts, and as is customary, let’s look back at 2008 before we peer ahead into 2009.

Photo by duplamox on Flickr used under Creative Commons

I would have done this anyway, but friend of the ‘Lab Jim dropped a note asking to see the top ten posts by traffic and the top ten by comments, a la Google Zeitgeist. Always happy to oblige a friend, I’ve added those to the list.

A bonus for this year is that we have last year’s recap for comparison.

Fun with Numbers

In 2008, this blog had 131,000 pageviews and just over 83,000 visits, and our Feedburner subscriptions went from 500 in January to nearly 900 in December.

The top 10 posts, measured by pageviews were:

1. “For Your iPhone Only”: 3,668 pageviews, posted August 22, 2007
2. Orablog Tag or Eight Things: 2,816 pageviews, posted January 7, 2008
3. The iPhone Still Rules: 1,715 pageviews, posted January 3, 2008
4. Mix, JRuby on Rails, Small Teams, Agile, and it’s Effects on the World: 1,680 pageviews, posted November 21, 2007
5. New Home for iPhone Stuff: 1,337 pageviews, posted July 13, 2008
6. Oracle Gets Social: 1,251 pageviews, posted August 7, 2007
7. No iPhone, No Service: 1,050 pageviews, posted August 16, 2007
8. MetaLink (and More) in Your Browser Search Bar: 1,045 pageviews, posted July 10, 2007
9. Air Sharing Gives You iPhone File Sharing Goodness: 1,020 pageviews, posted September 16, 2008
10. Eight Cell Phones in Ten Years Part 1: 967 pageviews, posted October 29, 2007

Read More »

And I’ll show you mine, workspace that is.

Because that won’t work, I’ll just show you mine, and we can go from there.

Many of us work from home almost exclusively, including both Rich and me, and it seems ever more common for people to have a home office, even if they also go into an office periodically. As budgets tighten, telecommuting will become more commonplace, as employers realize they get two-for-one by allowing telecommuting: lower real estate costs by outsourcing space to employees and improved morale by offering a benefit.

I first worked from home back in 1999, and at the time, it wasn’t very common. Plus, it was pretty painful over that blazing 36.6 kbps modem. Somehow I managed though.

I returned to working from home in 2003, over broadband this time (thankfully), and as Oracle acquired more companies, the company has become more distributed with a lot more of us telecommuting.

Telecommuting isn’t for everyone, but if it is for you, then you’ll know that having the right home office is key to successful work from home. You need to have your own space, sanctum if you will, and you’ll want to have a comfortable chair. Beyond that, there are lots of ways to go. Read More »

What? You’ve never heard of Festivus? It’s the holiday for the rest of us.

As a pop culture nut and an old school fan of Seinfeld, I couldn’t let December 23 slip by without wishing you all a Happy Festivus. I suppose while we’re here, I might as well wish you a happy holiday, whichever it is that you celebrate.

Festivus is a long-standing meme, with lots of content all over the ‘tubes. The Wikipedia entry is pretty good, and the Urban Dictionary has a funny collection of “definitions” also.

I’ll be posting sporadically, in case you’re wondering. Although, I’m sure you’ll be reading sporadically, so no worries.

Anyway, have a safe, restful and enjoyable holiday season.

Now for the airing of grievances.

As Eddie mentioned, Portland, and most of the Pacific Northwest, is in the grasp of an epic chain of winter storms.

It started a week ago with a storm that dumped about 4 inches here in Portland, pretty heavy snowfall, at least for this area. Snow can be a hoot, especially if it comes: a) on a weekend, b) during the holidays and c) to a place where snow is uncommon.

As a person who grew up in a snowy place, I remember snow and all its glory. It was fun to see Portland under a white blanket and watch people slide around the roads. One unique thing here is that people can put chains on their tires to get around in the snow; this is illegal in most snowy places because chains eat up the roads. Plus they’re not needed since the snow removal is very good.

It’s not so good here. This isn’t a criticism by any means, since spending money on snow removal makes very little sense in a place that averages about 6.5 inches of snow each year. I looked it up, surprising but true.

Anyway, most of last week’s snow melted away over last week, which was good because people had to work and shop for the holidays, etc. Turns out it was good for another reason; another huge storm was about to dump more snow.

So between last Friday and this morning, we’ve probably had about 14 inches of snow fall here in Portland, with drifts as high as two feet. People who’ve lived here longer than I are saying this is the biggest storm they can remember. The city is likely to be paralyzed for at least a few more days.

Read More »

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. For example, I know a woman who quit using GMail because it served her an ad about hunting; the algorithm saw her emails about traps, which were being used to trap stray cats to spay/neuter them. As an animal lover, she was outraged and stopped using her account.

If you read the FAIL blog, you’ve probably seen some other Google Ad fails as well.  Coincidentally, I saw the item pictured here in another blog operated by the folks at The Cheezburger Network, I Can Has Cheezburger, which if you read here, you know I adore. Surprised there’s a company around funny pictures with captions? You shouldn’t be.

Advertising dollars are still driven by traffic, and the various blogs of The Cheezburger Network garner many millions of pageviews each month. So, you’re bound to get a hiccup every once in a while.

Social network advertising is the promised land for online advertisers because they hope to mine all the personal data you provide a site like Facebook to show you the most targeted ads. Alas, clickthroughs on social networks ad are woefully low, and as with Google ads, there are well-documented hiccups.

Today, Facebook made me laugh. It doesn’t think I’m fat per se, but it does want me to know about how I can get six-pack abs. And the best one for today was the ad that asked me if I wanted to know more about my wife. That one slipped past before I could click it for me details, but its presence alone made me laugh.

Then suspicious.

Everyone has these stories. Share them in the comments.

I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while, and yesterday, while geeking out with VMWare Fusion, I decided to get it done.

I’ll back up a bit. I’ve been working to install VMWare to get an Oracle image up and running; I’ve used Virtual Box predominantly in the past because it’s free and really easy. However, this image is VMWare, leaving me no choice.

No problem, I love geeking out with software, especially when it can’t hose up my primary O/S. Once I finally get this Oracle image squared away, I’m off to find a Windows 7 beta image for giggles. I first tried VMWare Player (free) on my Dell, but it just didn’t have the muscles to run it effectively.

Oddly, increasing the memory allocation beyond the “recommended” amount of 256 MB made the image run more slowly. That’s not very intuitive to me.

Anyway, Rich recommended VMWare Fusion for the Mac, and I decided to go that route instead. Not free, but it’s performing way better. Now, if only I had a bigger hard drive. I have a problem with storage; I never think ahead and inevitably, I don’t buy enough. It’s a chronic problem. So, sometime in January, I’ll probably have to buy and install the 250 GB drive for my Macbook.

It’s early for New Year’s resolutions, but there you go. I resolve to buy the maximum storage offered for devices in 2009 and beyond. Read More »

Based on the response to my poll question last week about more content, no one seems very psyched about interspersing our Reader Shared Items into posts.

That’s fine, and like I said in the comments, I get bored with blogs that post more links/links posts than original content, even I think the content rules.

I do, however, think that following the shared items of people you know gives a useful window into a) the Intertubes and b) that particular person. Social+everything has made it obvious that people make a great filter for all the content out there; Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed have all demonstrated that this model works.

So, I compromised.

Using Yahoo Pipes, an underrated app, and following this old tutorial from Lifehacker (found by way of How-To Technology Tips), I combined our Google Reader Shared items feeds into a single AppsLab feed and created a widget down below the fold called “What We’re Reading”.

You can read it there, at least the newest 20 items, or subscribe to the feed if you prefer. One minor bummer is that there’s no way to tell who shared which item, but I suppose if that’s really important, you could subscribe to each of our feeds.

I didn’t test it too much, but how hard can it be? If it doesn’t update as I share stuff, I’ll go back to the drawing board and fix it.

An aside about Pipes, it’s one of those mashup tools (like Popfly) that seems to target that mythical unicorn, i.e. the business user who wants custom content, but doesn’t want to code. I’ve not met many of them.

Pipes is useful though, and if you’re interested, Dawn Foster has done a lot of work in Pipes. She has the videos to prove it; check out her series of demos to get started.