Oracle 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.

The gadget I found to be common this holiday was the LCD picture frame. My wife actually got two, one from me and one from her mother.  I’m sure they’ve been around for a while, but I had never actually noticed these before I went shopping this December. Anyway, I bought this one from Philips, and it’s pretty slick, although I’m wishing now I had done a bit more research and bought a wireless capable one.

Seems like a no-brainer gadget, since pretty much everyone has scads of digital images. No one wants to print out all the good ones on photo paper and buy frames for all of them. Still, it is a bit of work moving pictures from the computer to the photo frame. The interface on the photo frame isn’t great; there are way too many nested menus.

After using it for a few minutes, I hope they go to a touchscreen interface soon. It would allow for much more intuitive usability, and you can always wipe off fingerprint smudges.

So, now it’s your turn. What sexy gadget did you get? Did it deliver the gadgety goodness you expected?

Find the comments.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2009%2F01%2F06%2Fwhat-gadgets-did-you-get-over-the-holidays%2F'; addthis_title = 'What+Gadgets+Did+You+Get+over+the+Holidays%3F'; addthis_pub = '';

Or maybe you did?

I polled Twitter to see if anyone else noticed an influx of activity and friend requests from Facebook over the holidays, loosely interpreted as the end of December. Meg agreed, and everyone else wisely continued enjoying their seasonal free time.

According to Hitwise, Facebook saw its highest ever daily traffic number on December 24, 2008. This trend mirrors December 2007, when on December 24, Facebook hit its (at the time) high water mark, which it didn’t reach again until July 2008.

But why?

Hitwise offers up three logical explanations: weather, boredom and holiday greetings. All of these seem very smart, and probably contribute to the scads of new people joining Facebook over the holidays. I can see free time as a big contributor, since: a) current members have more time to search for and invite their friends and b) invitees have more time to investigate this Facebook thing they’ve heard so much about.

Even though most of us consider Facebook self-explanatory, it’s not. Mainly because computers, not just Facebook, are not to many people. Over the holidays, family members gather. Have you ever been asked by a family member to troubleshoot a home computer over the holidays? Be honest.

My guess is a lot of family gatherings this year (and last) included conversations about how they could easily stay in touch throughout the year with Facebook, complete with a demo from the resident super user.

I spent some time doing that myself this year. Did you? Did you notice a bunch of new-old friends out there on FB around the holidays?

And just in time for all its new holiday users, Twitter has been hit by its first phishing scam and its first account hijacking. I wonder if those were motivated by weather, boredom or holiday greetings? Anyway, typically, this type of activity signals the passage into mainstream, i.e. more users (and n00bs), makes the network more valuable to scammers.

What did you notice, if anything, about Facebook and Twitter usage over the holiday?

Find the comments.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2009%2F01%2F05%2Fdid-someone-you-know-get-facebook-for-christmas%2F'; addthis_title = 'Did+Someone+You+Know+Get+Facebook+for+Christmas%3F'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2009%2F01%2F05%2Fand-were-back%2F'; addthis_title = 'And+We%26%238217%3Bre+Back'; addthis_pub = '';

So, a couple days ago, Tim started The Oracle Mix Blog, which will be the official home for all things related to Mix.

That’s not to say we won’t talk about Mix here, but if you want to hear news from the source or want to get the attention of those guys, that will be the place.

In case you’ve been busy doing other things, here’s what you’ve missed:

• We launched Mix November 11, 2007 at OpenWorld 2007. Nostalgic? Here’s how it used to look.
• It was the first, and I think still is the largest JRuby on Rails app in production.
• Marketing saw value in Mix for OpenWorld 2008 and ran several campaigns for OOW using Mix, including Suggest a Session and Participate and used Mix as the social network for the conference.
• Mix turned a year old.
• Mix is listed by DHH on RubyonRails.org.
• Marketing decided to acquire Mix and oversee its future use and growth.

So, if you’re interested in following Mix, subscribe to its official blog, or if you read OraNA.info, you’ll see it’s already aggregated there. If you use Twitter, you can follow @oraclemix there; you probably already follow the guys who’ll be pulling the strings now, Tim and Marius (and possibly Karri). I’m interested to read their thoughts and have high hopes for their blogging exploits.

I don’t think you’ve seen that last of our influence on Mix, though. Since Connect has a very similar codebase, you’ll probably see features commingle between the two as we work on different paths.

Anyway, sound off with your thoughts on all this in the comments here or over at the Mix blog.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2009%2F01%2F03%2Fthe-oracle-mix-blog%2F'; addthis_title = 'The+Oracle+Mix+Blog'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

The first one was pretty much wrong. Twitter did take off and did crash (a few times), but didn’t burn. It’s actually been pretty reliable in the second half of 2008. The demise of Pownce, the lackluster performance of Twitter clones (Jaiku, Plurk, Identi.ca), the rise of enterprise micro-blogging (Yammer, OraTweet) and Facebook’s failed attempt to buy Twitter have further secured Twitter’s place.

The second one is wordsmithed such that I can’t be wrong, since it’s my opinion. It’s safe to say that videoblogging didn’t take off in 2008, remaining on the margins. I include video commenting, from companies like Seesmic, in that whole underwhelming bin.

The final one again has wording to keep me from being wrong, since awesome is the eye of the beholder. However, as sites like Hulu become more popular, watching TV on your computer will become the mainstream thing to do for a number of reasons:

• There are fewer ads, e.g. an hour-long program only has about 40 minutes of actual show. The other 20 minutes are commercials when you watch on TV. Watch the same show on Hulu or the network’s web site, and you’ll only see a minute or so of ads. Major win.
• As with DVRs, you can pause online TV, but unlike DVRs, you’re not constrained by your TV’s resolution. Unless you have a superior TV, HD on your computer monitor will look just as good, if not better, than it does on your TV.
• Unlike your TV, your computer does other stuff. So, if you have multiple monitors, you can watch TV and multi-task in Twitter or email. Not convinced? How many times have you sat in front of the TV with your laptop?

Anyway, I didn’t do too well last year. So, this year, I’ve tried to make real predictions that are as specific as possible. That way it’ll be easy to judge correct vs. incorrect this time next year.

Twitter will finally announce its business model.
I’m seeing the revenue come from a combination of ads placed on Twitter account pages and API pay-per-use. Twitter drives the vast majority of its traffic through “web”, and each account page has a significant amount of real estate that could be used for Google ads or banners.

Selling ads is the only tried-and-true Intertubes business model, and it seems relatively easy to implement. The beauty part of this model is that you get a cut too; I see a model that ranks each user with a score (this is already done by third parties) that can be used to price the ads on the profile.

Twitter could produce a black box algorithm that prices ads, and then broker the sales of the ads, taking a cut. Everybody wins. Of course, they’ll need to monitor bogus clicks and clean up the bots, but they’re already doing some of that.

I’m not in the camp that thinks ads will ruin Twitter because I rarely look at pages on twitter.com. So, to monetize the traffic coming from their API, Twitter will implement a pay-per-use scale for API calls. The structure will be aimed at heavy usage, which in turn will help tweak the ad algorithm, and I expect API clients like Twhirl to pass on the cost to their heaviest users by way of a subscription fee.

This is a win-win too, since the myriad of Twitter clients can now monetize their users. Users will revolt and tweet less using the clients, which in turn, will shrink the number of clients, leaving only a handful. These will be very functional clients though, and I expect Twitter to buy one, likely an AIR client, and flip it for pro users using the freemium model.

Microsoft will acquire Facebook.
Microsoft has enough cash on hand to buy just about anything, including small countries. Couple that with Facebook’s sliding valuation, thanks to adverse economic conditions, and inability to monetize, and you get a shotgun wedding.

The mainstream adoption of Facebook continues, and I’m sure you noticed that a lot of people “got Facebook for Christmas”. This has to be due to holiday gatherings where the one geek in the family demonstrates how to use Facebook. Even with a burgeoning community, Facebook struggles to show value to its advertisers.

Ad spending for 2009 is circling the bowl already, so Facebook’s tenuous revenue stream will shrink to a dry creek bed next year. This won’t have any effect on usage, which will continue to soar.

So, what happens? Usage will force Facebook to throw more infrastructure at the problem, but there won’t be any more venture funding to be had. Yes, even Facebook will find the VC well has run dry in 2009.

Microsoft will step in and buy up a controlling interest, not the whole thing. Acquiring a controlling interest in Facebook will be one of many steps Microsoft takes in 2009 to polish its image vs. the Apple PR machine. Windows 7 will be launched with Facebook “installed”, i.e. an icon on the desktop that opens Facebook in IE 8, a la Mozilla Prism.

Yahoo will open source itself.
This hardly seems like a prediction anymore. Failing to find a white (or black) knight to bail it out, Yahoo will go full monty and open source all of its assets, creating the largest Open Source project yet.

Yahoo will take a page from Amazon’s book and rent out its extra capacity to support falling ad sales. Leveraging a much larger development community, Yahoo’s offerings will suck less and rule more, and the company will find unexpected revenue in business consulting services (think Zappos Insights), as it advises other companies on how opening up is a good move.

Businesses will get open. Consumers will not.
Open Source will win big in 2009 as businesses cut costs and turn to free (as in freedom) software. This will create opportunities for consulting, as these companies decide to outsource rather than take on the cost of additional employees. The increasing demand for “open” skills (e.g. Rails, PHP, Linux) will open a windfall market in training.

Consumers will not get the open message, as OpenID, OAuth and other other open web technologies lose ground to the Facebook juggernaut. Open Source software will still be perceived as freeware, written by geeks living in their parents’ basement.

Random thoughts
Finally, here are a few thoughts that don’t warrant a lot of detail:

• IE 6 will still be the top Microsoft browser by percentage in 2009, even after Windows 7 launches with IE 8 installed.
• All flavors of IE will lose market share primarily to Google Chrome, not Firefox.
• Chrome will top 10% as it becomes Dell’s de facto browser.
• Linux will take more of the the O/S market from Windows than Mac will.
• Windows 7 will be better and more expensive than expected.

What do you think? Find the comments to sound off about my predictions, or add your own to yesterday’s post.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F31%2Ftime-for-2009-predictions%2F'; addthis_title = 'Time+for+2009+Predictions'; addthis_pub = '';

Photo by David Reece on Flickr used under Creative Commons

I got midway through my predictions post, when I decided that I might like some help.

So, taking a page out of Rick’s book, let’s see how smart you are. Sound off in the comments with your predictions for 2009.

I don’t think there needs to be a focus on any particular area for your predictions, but I doubt you’ll get much interest or discussion if you predict the European Parliament elections for 2009 or the American Idol winner for the upcoming season.

Based on the content we usually produce here, you could target your visions at the ‘Lab, Oracle (unless you’re an employee, natch), technology in general, Open Source, development, startups, Twitter, Facebook, social networks, micro-blogging, etc.

Everyone has an opinion, so this is your chance to put a stake in the ground now, rather than tell us later you knew X would acquire Facebook in 2009.

What’s the harm anyway? No one really remembers all the wrong predictions you made, just the right ones.

I’ll assume your wisdom is provided under Creative Commons, so don’t worry, I won’t copy your thoughts without attribution. Expect my predictions by tomorrow; I just need another day to mull over my many opinions.

Have fun with this. I doubt any of us really care about being right or wrong, just sharing opinions.

Maybe Anthony, Rich and Paul will chime in with their thoughts too.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F30%2Fshow-off-your-powers-of-prognostication%2F'; addthis_title = 'Show+off+Your+Powers+of+Prognostication'; addthis_pub = '';

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

Maybe we should change this to an iPhone blog, or if we were ad-supported, that would make sense.

I guess my pithy musings on technology and our work on OpenSocial just aren’t that interesting beyond the small circle of ‘Lab friends who like to share their thoughts.

Using 2007 for comparison, between June 2007 and December 2007, we had about 61,000 visits and 110,000 pageviews. The top five posts based on pageviews for that span were:

1. MetaLink (and More) in Your Browser Search Bar: 4,769 pageviews, posted July 10, 2007
2. Mix, JRuby on Rails, Small Teams, Agile, and it’s Effects on the World: 3,810 pageviews, posted November 21, 2007
3. Why Ruby on Rails is the perfect framework for building next generation Enterprise Apps: 2,393 pageviews, posted June 4, 2007
4. Oracle Gets Social: 2,206 pageviews, posted August 7, 2007
5. Let’s Mix: 2,110 pageviews, posted November 12, 2007

Surprisingly, 60% of the posts on the 2008 list were written in 2007, proof of the value of SEO for driving traffic you to your blog from search engines. Also, three posts made the list in both both 2007 and 2008. I guess these are the things we’re most known for, at least here on this blog. Not a bad collection, I guess.

The posts that garnered the most traffic suggest to me that we have a lot of lurkers and hit/run visitors who just want iPhone information, but what about the stuff we like to discuss?

As Jim suggested, here are the top ten posts, ranked by number of comments:

1. OS X, Ubuntu and Other Stuff: 32 comments, posted July 29, 2008
2. How to do a Set-Top Box: 30 comments, posted November 17, 2008
3. So Very Tired: 30 comments, posted January 11, 2008
4. FriendFeed is for Lurkers Too: 26 comments, posted March 18, 2008
5. Orablog Tag or Eight Things: 25 comments, posted January 7, 2008
6. Pour Some Gas on the Fire (Eagle): 25 comments, posted May 8, 2008
7. Why Stickers are My New Business Card: 23 comments, posted September 29, 2008
8. Your First Computer: 23 comments, posted July 31, 2008
9. Macs in the Enterprise: 22 comments, posted October 22, 2008
10. On Disqus: 22 comments, posted June 12, 2008

I had to do that manually, which is a bummer. We switched to Disqus back in the June, and I’m wondering now how hard it would be to go back to regular comments, since the latest version of WP supports threading. Don’t get me wrong, I like Disqus; I’m just tired of having so many logins and less control over my comments.

The last data point I’ll leave you with is the number of posts by each author.

1. Me: 292
2. Rich: 20
3. Paul: 12
4. Anthony: 3
5. Matt: 2

Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting.

Newsworthy
In the 2007 recap, I listed a bunch of major things we’d accomplished. Looking back at 2008, I have a shorter list of major accomplishments. We spent most of the year of improving upon what we’d established in 2007. So, rather than a laundry list of stuff we did, I’ll just hit some of the newsworthy stuff from 2008.

Mix left the nest.
We spent much of the first part of 2008 building new features for Mix with the help of ENTP. Marketing saw potential in Mix and made it a centerpiece of their OpenWorld 2008 efforts, including the highly popular Suggest a Session campaign.

Mix has since graduated out of the ‘Lab and into the capable hands of Marketing. This is perfect for everyone involved. One of our original goals as a lab was to keep the innovation flowing, both in and out of the team. So, when Mix was ready for primetime, it naturally went to an organization that could support its user base appropriately.

Connect continued to evolve as our sandbox.
Connect continued to be our place for experimentation. Although we didn’t get to do as much as we’d hoped, we did release a V2 that upgraded the original Connect code to the JRuby codebase from Mix. Rich has been quietly adding new features, like unified search, Connect People Search for iPhone, OraTweet integration and APIs.

We’re hoping to release major UI changes and OpenSocial in the next month or so. These have been in the works off and on for months. Clayton Donley is working on a sweet iPhone app that will include features of Connect as well. So, we should have Connect news to discuss in January.

The 8 things meme circled the ‘tubes all year.
The controversial round of blog tagging I lobbed into the Oracle blogosphere back in January just resurfaced again, like a bad penny. Initially, I planned to track its progress, but after the blowback, I figured it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. Still, the experiment worked as planned, exposing several parts of the blogsphere, and forcing the Ontario Emperor to divulge 14 things about himself.

Paul needs an agent.
Looking back on 2008, I’m surprised at how many speaking engagements Paul did. It was so many we had to build several new slide decks, as the one we used in 2007 got a little stale. This is a reflection of the full speed ahead adoption of 2.0; in 2007, Paul’s slides did a lot of education; in 2008, his slides reviewed and analyzed our experiences.

I’m looking forward to the extension of his Defrag talk; as we collect more data from our networks, more interesting network effects will come to light.

One last funny bit was a Wikipedia citation (reference 31) of this post about Twitter, kind of funny to be cited there about Twitter, no less. Also, semi-ironic, considering that Twitter is far less likely to get pummeled by Macworld, since Steve Jobs won’t be speaking there (ever?) again.

Maybe this time next year, I’ll be reviewing our very own Wikipedia entry, and the year after that defending my edits to it.

Anyway, it’s been fun, and now the nostalgia is over; still, let’s agree to this again next year, assuming I still have this job. Did I miss anything? If so, you know what to do.

Happy New Year!

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F29%2Fits-that-time-of-year-again%2F'; addthis_title = 'It%26%238217%3Bs+That+Time+of+Year%2C+Again'; addthis_pub = '';

It’s Christmas. So, if you celebrate that one, Merry Christmas. If not, Happy Holidays, and either way, have a restful and happy time.

I’m not much of holiday card sender, but for some reason, people still send cards to me. I know; it’s rude of me, but every few years I actually do remember in time and send a batch. This was not one of those years.

Anyway, this pop-up card came from an college buddy and his family was the cream of the crop this year, very fancy and ingenious.

See you all back here next week for the obligatory year-end posts.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F25%2Fhappy-holidays%2F'; addthis_title = 'Happy+Holidays'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

I, for one, am a wholehearted advocate of multiple monitors to increase productivity. If you have the desk space, you should check out adding a monitor, more on how to do that cheaply later. Windows XP and Mac OS X both handle multiple monitors seamlessly; Intrepid supposedly included enhancements to how Ubuntu handles multiple monitors. One of my chief complaints with Heron was its poor, undocumented support for multiple monitors.

Not a major concern in the grand scheme, since I just moved the additional monitor to my Mac. Even if Intrepid is better at multiple monitors, I may not add one to it because the Mac graphics chip is beefier than my Dell’s.

You may not think it’s a big deal, but there are loads of studies that will tell you having between two and four monitors improves productivity. Beyond four is a stretch. Trust me on this.

I’m also a big advocate of maximizing screen resolution to give me the most real estate. I run 1600 x 1200, the highest possible on my CRT; 1280 x 1024 on my LCD and 1280 x 800 on my Macbook. I always go as big a screen as possible with the highest refresh rate; this takes some adjustment, but when your eyes get used to everything in miniature, you’ll never go back to clunky 1024 x 768.

I actually feel like my vision has improved, or at least, the atrophy of age has slowed because I exercise my eyes by looking at smaller icons and text all day long. Maybe it’s just me.

With some applications, you’ll see why more real estate is better right away, e.g. image editing packages like Photoshop. I use multiple monitors and maximum screen resolution to show me the most information possible at any given moment, a la the Matrix. Thankfully, I haven’t yet hit that threshold of information overload.

Anyway, we recently redid my office to give me a much larger desk, and my wife says my desk looks like mission control at NASA. So, I decided to show images of space as my screensaver.

But I still yearn for more displays so, one of my projects for the new year is to put a VGA splitter on my Mac and add another high resolution CRT or a large LCD. Again, the Mac has the stronger video chip, and OS X is dead simple for managing multiple monitors.

I plan to comb Craigslist for free CRTs and cheap LCDs after Christmas. Check it out; I’m sure you’ll be surprised how many people would happily give you an old, fully-functional monitor for free, just because they got a shiny new LCD for Christmas.

This is a pro tip people. You can easily and cheaply expand your home office using Craigslist. Example: I recently saw a 19″ LCD for $80, which I would have snapped up, if I hadn’t been housebound by snow for the last few days.

I’m not sure why, but there are always free, good condition CRTs available on Craigslist. I guess people don’t know they can benefit from multiple monitors, they don’t need the additional productivity, or they don’t want to devote the space to accommodating them.

But if you work from home, you know better, or at least you do now.

Another pro tip is the value of a KVM switch, which allows you to use one keyboard and one mouse on multiple computers. Yeah, I know the V is for video, but in this case doesn’t apply. My advice: if you run multiple machines, you’ll want a KVM, even if you don’t want to run multiple monitors.

Or maybe I have an uncommon configuration.

Another interesting piece of my home office is the lack of a chair. I use one of those large exercise balls as my sitting device. I switched from a chair about 18 months ago, and I’ve never looked back, pun intended. Although it’s sometimes tiring, sitting on the ball has helped me avoid back pain, which is a huge plus.

The ball forces your core to engage when you sit upright, which also builds your posture. The end result is stronger ab and back muscles which is never a bad thing in my experience. One downside is that my wife will sometimes bounce me up and down by pushing on my shoulders, which is not conducive to work, surprise!

Anyway, it’s not for everyone, but I highly recommend it over a chair.

So, that’s my workspace. Now show me yours in the comments or at least describe it. Come on, it’s not that bad.

Oh, and it’s Christmas Eve, so if you celebrate that whole thing, Merry Christmas.

Update: I started a Flickr group to aggregate all your workspace photos. No reason not share now.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F24%2Fshow-me-yours%2F'; addthis_title = 'Show+Me+Yours+.+.+.'; addthis_pub = '';

I found myself reading Floyd’s story about the Call a Cab iPhone app and nodding my head.

That was embarrassing, like when you find yourself silently agreeing with a presenter like a bobblehead, except there was no one around to agree with my agreement with Floyd.

Like I said, a bit embarrassing.

Anyway, Floyd’s experience reminded me of what I’ve found to be most useful with apps lately, not just iPhone apps, but web apps too. Whatever you call them, gadgets, widgets, apps, they all follow a simple paradigm: accomplish a small and targeted unit of work.

Simplicity usually happens by accident, if not by design, since the goal of the app is targeted.

Over the last several years, I’ve tried a lot of desktop-based gad/widgets; I like the idea, but with a fully functional computer, I don’t find myself using much more than calendar and weather gad/widgets. On the iPhone however, I have loads of apps that are “just in case” apps, much like Floyd’s use case for Call a Cab.

I’ll bet you have these too; you install them because they fit a certain use case that you might need at some point, and if that time ever comes, you’ll be really glad you don’t have to pull up Safari (or another mobile web browser) and wade through the ‘tubes to call a cab or find a movie showtime.

Even if the mobile browser experience doesn’t bum you out, what with the tiny keyboard and small, (ahem) optimized version of web pages, the location-based features on smart phones will save you loads of effort. Most iPhone apps will use your location to target their content, making them even more useful.

This is why I have apps like Flickster, OpenTable, Urbanspoon, Yelp, and TWC on my iPhone. I don’t use them much, but I may need them at some point. And when that time comes, I’ll be so happy. Trust me, it’s happened.

So, successful apps on the iPhone for me are the ones that do a single unit of work really well, that one use case you think you might need. For example, I would be ecstatic to get apps from my favorite stores that only did store location based on where I am.

How many times have you been out and about and wondered where the nearest <blank> store is?

Google Mobile+Maps on the iPhone does a pretty good job of this, but again, it’s not targeted enough for me.

Attention developers: Please build the uber-store locator that uses my location to help me find any store I need. That would rule.

So, do you have these type of apps on your iPhone? Do you like gad/widgets on your desktop? What do you most commonly ask your app, gad/widgets to do?

Let us know in the comments. I’m off to download Call a Cab.

Update: I forgot to mention my favorite off-the-wall app, Flashlight. Not location aware, natch, but way more useful than you’d think at first blush. Unless you carry a mini flashlight everywhere you go.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F23%2Fiphone-apps-for-units-of-work%2F'; addthis_title = 'IPhone+Apps+for+Units+of+Work'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F23%2Fhappy-festivus%2F'; addthis_title = 'Happy+Festivus'; addthis_pub = '';

Over the weekend, David Heinemeier Hansson, affectionately know as DHH, creator of Rails, made updates to rubyonrails.org.

One change was the addition of Oracle Mix to the list of production apps running Rails. Check out the list; you’ll probably recognize several of the apps there, and about the middle of the page, below the fold, you’ll find Mix.

If you read here, you’ll recall that Mix is written in JRuby on Rails. It was one of the first, if not the first, production JRuby apps.

This is kind of a big deal for Mix. We’ve pretty much completed the transition of Mix over to Marketing, and they are working to priotize and resource the next batch of enhancements to Mix. However, even though Mix has left the AppsLab nest, we still think of it fondly and wish it would call more often.

I’m also told that Mix will soon have its own blog, which makes sense, for all things Mix.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F22%2Fmix-listed-on-ruby-on-railsorg%2F'; addthis_title = 'Mix+Listed+on+Ruby+on+Rails.org'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

So, I’ve learned a few valuable lessons from the storm of 2008.

1. You should raise your windshield wipers if there’s a possibility of freezing rain. Otherwise, they will freeze to your windshield.
2. Freezing rain on top of snow makes for an interesting experience. Yesterday, there was a quarter inch of ice on top of eight inches of snow. That was fun to walk through, and especially fun to shovel.
3. Postponing your holiday shopping will eventually bite you, e.g. if there’s a massive snow storm, leaving you home bound. Even if you order online, delivery estimates become highly irregular when your stuff is in transit to-and-from snowy areas.
4. Read your owners manual before installing chains on your car. I did not, and as a result, I managed to throw off both chains and buy a new set that cannot be returned. All sales on chains are final, natch.
5. Snow is heavy, and snow and ice are really heavy. So, if you have a canopy in your backyard, you should either bring it in for the Winter (like it says in the manual) or make sure you keep the snow from accumulating. Not doing so results in canopy death (see image).

I’m sure I’ll be learning more lessons, since the snow isn’t likely to melt anytime soon. Later this week, we have people flying in to town to visit, and assuming they can get to PDX, I may be learning more lessons.

Oh, and it’s snowing again.

Anyway, so far, we’ve kept power, which is great, and the snow really is pretty, especially if you don’t have to go out of the house.

It’s that time of year, so Happy Holidays.

Update: Tonight, I made a snow angel.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F22%2Frtfm-winter-edition%2F'; addthis_title = 'RTFM%2C+Winter+Edition'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F19%2Fads-make-me-laugh%2F'; addthis_title = 'Ads+Make+Me+Laugh'; addthis_pub = '';

Scotty gave me an idea with his comment on my nostalgic post on Oracle PowerBrowser.

So many people in tech have come through Oracle in the past 30+ years, and there are more than 70,000 here now. That makes for a lot of nostalgia and memories that we can share among ourselves and with anyone who cares.

Photo by (nz)dave on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Outsiders are usually astounded by a) how many products Oracle sells and b) the number of areas in which Oracle has product.

Oracle PowerBrowser is a great example. Did you know it also can function as a personal web server?

Scotty mentioned two other oldies, Office (16-bit)  and InterOffice (32-bit), the mail clients we used before IMAP was implemented.

After spending 10+ years at Oracle in several different areas of the business, I have a pretty long memory for all things Oracle, dating back to 1996 when IT first opened the firewall. Before that, access was controlled by SNK; remember those little random number generating credit card size fobs? Or the infamous billboard?

I’ve met people at Oracle with 15+ years of service, and I know they have stories to tell. I’m sure this will be fun for those of us who’ve been here a while, as well as all the people who came by acquisition (2/3 according to what I remember from OpenWorld 2008),  those people who have left and all the outsiders.

After all, David’s little post on the America’s Cup yacht beached at corporate HQ is still his most highly viewed post. I remember seeing it cross Digg at one point too. This stuff is interesting. Plus, it’s the time of year when nostalgia is 83% more common than any other time of year.

Totally fabricated that, but statistics make people 67% more likely to believe what you say.

There are a couple obvious ground rules. First, nothing confidential, natch because this is the ‘tubes. Second, if this spawns an Oracle meme, a la eight things, don’t waste your breath flaming me.

Third and most importantly, have fun with this.

So, find the comments and share your nostalgic memories of all things Oracle.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F18%2Foracle-people-and-alumni-share-your-memories%2F'; addthis_title = 'Oracle+People+and+Alumni%3A+Share+Your+Memories'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

So, while I was checking my Virtual Box images for stuff I need before deleting them to make space for the VMWare image, I decided to find the install package for Oracle PowerBrowser and install it for fun.

Yes, Oracle made a browser back in 1996, and yes, we used it internally alongside Netscape. I’ve often wondered if this brief foray into browsers was related to this gem of a story (by way of Savio Rodrigues) told in Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle, recounting the reasons why Oracle did not buy Netscape in the mid-90s.

I found the install package here by way of an old post from 2004 by Mark Rittman. Like any 32-bit application it installs easily on XP. Some sites won’t open (e.g. Twitter), some sites throw errors, but most sites load, minus images and CSS stylings.

Here’s this blog as an example.

Anyway, it’s a fun little trip down memory lane for those of us who have spent time with Oracle over the last decade and change. I think I had a PowerBrowser launch t-shirt long ago. Enjoy.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F18%2Fnostalgia-break-oracle-powerbrowser%2F'; addthis_title = 'Nostalgia+Break%3A+Oracle+PowerBrowser'; addthis_pub = '';

I haven’t had much to say about work lately, but Rich provided a nice nugget today.

He integrated OraTweet, Noel’s internal, micro-blogging app with Connect’s Activity Log.

So, now in addition to all the social activity and HR information we surface in the Log, you can also see the (Ora)tweets of your network, your groups and everyone, depending on which view you choose. If you want to reply, you can click through to see the tweet and reply.

One use case I’d like to see more often is sharing links to useful information; too frequently this is done through email. Now, you can do it with OraTweet/Connect, e.g. if I wanted to let Bill Jackson, a fellow Portlander and middleware guy, know about an interesting article I read about, say nuclear fusion, I could do that with OraTweet and Connect.

The integration of Connect and OraTweet allows our extended networks to see this fascinating article as well, spreading it much more effectively (and less intrusively) than an email could.

For now, there’s no inline tweeting, due to limitations in the API, but Rich and Noel are working on this. Rich has more plans to integrate with OraTweet, specifically reintroducing the Connect status, which got dropped when we upgraded to the Mix JRuby code line, and linking it to OraTweet.

This will be similar to what you can do with the Twitter app in Facebook, minus the duplicate storage. In other words, we’ll be using OraTweet for status. That sounds so much simpler.

So, you’ll be able to update your Connect status from the OraTweet web app, from within Connect or from IM, which Noel has working, one advantage he has over Twitter.

Just as we found with Connect, people are discovering mirco-blogging and its uses. I haven’t seen any data on OraTweet, but the activity there is pretty high considering he hasn’t done any promotion internally. Ideally, by tapping into our Connect users, he can see a spike of new usage.

Speaking of Connect, we’ve seen a steady increase of usage since the summer. I’m not entirely sure why because the community is pretty much self-maintaining now, and there still has been no official marketing. It’s all viral.

Good old hidden demand.

Any thoughts on this? Find the comments.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F17%2Ftwo-great-tastes-that-taste-great-together%2F'; addthis_title = 'Two+Great+Tastes+that+Taste+Great+Together'; addthis_pub = '';

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.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F16%2Fwhat-were-reading%2F'; addthis_title = 'What+We%26%238217%3Bre+Reading'; addthis_pub = '';

So, I had an eventful morning.

Automatic updates on my Macbook kindly let me know that there was a security update available for Tiger (yes, I’m still on Tiger). As I’ve done many times in the past, I agreed to take the update, entered my credentials and went about my morning email checking.

The update finished downloading and installing itself and asked me to restart/shut down, all standard operating procedure. I chose restart and kept plowing through my inbox. It restarted, giving me that classic Mac startup bong, but then it just looked at me, spinning around its process loop.

Not good.

After waiting 15 or so minutes and a few hard restarts, I’d made no progress.

Time to get some support.

I’ve blogged in the past about the path of least resistance for questions, especially technical ones.  Here’s a refresher:

1. Ask the people nearby: over the cube wall, in the hallway, kitchen, rest room, break room, wherever.
2. Ask the Interwebs, probably using Google.
3. Ask the “official” support people.
4. Read the documentation.

Following my own advice, I skipped straight to Google. I thought about pinging Rich, or another friend who’s a Mac-ninja, but Rich has been sick. Plus, I need to do this stuff on my own sometimes, and I really didn’t expect this would be a big deal. After all, the ‘tubes has a plethora of information about all kinds of Mac minutia. Luckily, I had a working computer Ubuntu, ftw!

I stumbled around a bit, finding nothing solid, which made me a bit panicked. The Macbook belongs to me, but like a surprising number of people who work here, I use it for work frequently. You might have seen me toting it at OpenWorld, complete with my childish stickers. Through Connect, I’ve found a horde of Mac users who, for whatever reason, use their Macs for work.

I struggle to explain why in a short sentence, but at least one person has said in effect that using the Mac makes work more fun. The downside of this is we have to do our own support, no IT security blanket. So, as I assessed my options for support, I cringed at the prospective of heading to the Genius Bar.

Natch, I hadn’t bought any service for it; why would I need service for a computer that “just works”? Irony break.

Apple Care wanted $50 to work on the issue, which seems high to me; I considered the Genius Bar, but even with roads icy and people staying inside, I couldn’t get a time slot until 5 PM. Wow, I hate going there.

Anyway, I did eventually find an answer on the Apple support forum and ended up installing the update manually from a USB stick after booting to the install disks. Not the most intuitive or easy process for most Mac users, since it requires running the .pkg from the terminal, which is fun when you don’t know the paths and the O/S isn’t fully loaded.

Sweet.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that I’m fully functional again, no thanks to automatic updates. I’m worried now that the fan is borked; it wouldn’t stop running before, and now it won’t start. Not good, but not relevant either.

My guess is most of you out there are pretty savvy and end up doing your own support, which probably means you do support for family, friends, and neighbors, too. You probably get asked computer questions at cocktail parties when you’re identified as being “in tech”. Just like a doctor, you get random questions about funny stuff people’s computers do.

Me too. It’s fun.

How do you support these people? There’s nothing worse than trying to diagnose and fix a computer with its owner hovering over your shoulder. Plus, I take chances with my own computers that I wouldn’t with other people’s, e.g. what it took to fix my issue today wasn’t something I’d want to do for the first time on someone else’s Mac.

So, when you hit snag, how do you get answers? My guess is the answers here are highly dependent on what software you’re fixing.

We’re at a weird time now. Computers have invaded just about every facet of our lives; it’s impossible to hide. Computers also cause huge amounts of frustration, e.g. my  father spent a weekend wrestling with a new inventory system. His main complaint: no one told him how to do tasks in the new system as compared to the old one. Seems obvious, but for whatever reason, he had to muddle through and figure it out on his own.

This is why businesses are built around instructional DVDs on how to sell things on eBay.

Customer support for technical products is one of the toughest jobs out there; having been there myself, it’s rarely fun, even if you can solve the issue. Because it’s so tough, good people don’t do it for long. So, constant retraining is required.

I wish I had a silver bullet idea to make it all better, but there are too many moving parts and too many contradictions.

Maybe the answer lies in simplifying the interface so much that it’s easy to use and hard to break.

Like a command line.

I’m open to ideas and opinions. Find the comments and share.

addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Ftheappslab.com%2F2008%2F12%2F16%2Fwho-does-your-support%2F'; addthis_title = 'Who+Does+Your+Support%3F'; addthis_pub = '';