The Working Group

I teased this in my last post on the Blogging Council, which struck me as similar in purpose, but different in execution, to Paul’s latest brain child, The Working Group.
The Working Group isn’t an Oracle thing or an AppsLab thing. If you’ve read here for more than a few weeks, you’ll know we encounter all [...]

What Do You Really Want from a Social Network?

Eddie’s Oracle People Map got me thinking about what I like about social networks and why some are more valuable to me than others. Data visualization is cool, and seeing where people are geographically is a trip.
I had coffee with Rick Turoczy, the Silicon Florist, today to talk about the tech scene in Portland, and [...]

Hug a Developer

First off, sorry for sending spam and bacn, the other inbox meat, all over the place. I’m trying to build a community here, so mind the dust.
Remember Puneet from Life in the Bullpen? His comment on an idea of mine got me thinking of another reason why you should use Mix.
The network humanizes the software [...]

Help Populate the AppsLab Event Widget

A few months ago, I blogged about the events widget that appears directly under the Archives section in the left-hand column of this blog.
The list of events posted to the Upcoming appslab group is getting a little short, so I went through and posted a bunch more, including Web 2.0 Expo in April, which we [...]

Mix is for Everyone

Paul announced our new community, Oracle Mix, during OpenWorld. Rich blogged about the experience he and ThoughtWorks had building Mix in 4-ish weeks. Depending on whom you ask, Mix took anywhere from 6-3 weeks to execute, so it was a classic agile project.
Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know already, Mix is built in JRuby [...]

Let’s Mix

Hi all. Remember me? I used to blog here until of course Paul and Jake buried me with a crazy project that seemed impossible. Anyway, now that it’s out, I can talk about what I’ve been working on since all the fun we had with Connect this Summer.
So, far the buzz on [...]

Mix is Live

Today is a big day for Oracle and our team. We have been cranking pretty hard for the last 6 weeks to get here. Where are we you ask? We’ll, I like to think of it as camp. Y’know in those everest trips how the teams have to reach a series [...]

The OpenLab

When we started our Connect experiment in August, one goal we had for the project was to engage the tens of thousands of technical folks at Oracle in something new. We call it OpenLab, and it’s run like an Open Source project within Oracle. The only thing we ask participants to do is use free [...]

FriendFeed Crosses the Streams

Recently, I blogged about FriendFeed, a new app that aggregates all your friend’s 2.0 activity into a single river of goodness, a la the Connect Activity Log or the Facebook News Feed.
In typical new web fashion, FriendFeed is in invite only beta now, and earlier in the week, I got my beta invite. The concept [...]

Does Web 2.0 Lead to Laziness?

Not a day after Puneet commented that I am “able to churn out so many high quality posts so often” (his words, unsolicited), I am having writer’s block.
I blame the Interwebs and Life in general for not being interesting enough today. So, in lieu of real content, I’m going to riff (tongue in cheek) on [...]

Orkut, Jaiku, Google . . . Gesundheit

All the good names may be gone.
Reading this piece in Business Week on Google’s orkut and their plans for social domination, I figured it was finally time to give orkut a test drive to see what all the excitamento or halachala (I hope these are close) was all about.
Orkut is wildly popular in Latin [...]

Not My Space

I have a MySpace profile that I use occasionally for comparison purposes. I use the account when I read about some new feature they have or to see how they handle a specific social network feature.
Last week, I got bacn from MySpace saying that “Cathy” wanted to be my friend. Although I know MySpace is [...]

On Ties

The term social networking, like blog, has a fluffy connotation. Because its adoption began with young people through MySpace, many people assume that social networks are toys and time-sinks. Actually, they are correct on both accounts.
However, as working stiffs like yours truly and people who understand us immerse ourselves in social networks, new uses for [...]

A River of Information Runs Through It

Recent coverage (NYT, Mashable) of FriendFeed reminded me of discussions we’ve had about Connect features. Basically, FriendFeed applies the Facebook News Feed feature to the entire Interwebs, or at the 23 services they integrate with today.
You have a(nother) network of friends. Everyone posts stuff to the FriendFeed, which aggregates the posts into a river of [...]

On Social Apps, Trying Again

So, Billy and I had a whimsical dust-up over the differences (or lack thereof) between our approaches to the enterprise-ification of New Web. A few other voices chimed in too. Right, wrong, indifferent, it’s been a slow week.
Mr. Long Tail, Chris Anderson, posted an entry yesterday that hits the core of the differences between Enterprise [...]

You’re So Money.

I’ve been shaking my head since reading yesterday that Microsoft is in talks with Facebook to take a stake in the “social utility” darling, not because it doesn’t make sense for both parties (albeit in much different measures), but because the valuation is ludicrous.
Microsoft is reported to be seeking a 5% stake in Facebook, which [...]

Faceforce = Creepiness + Spam

I’ll start by saying what I like about Faceforce, the unofficial mashup between Salesforce.com and Facebook.

It’s a great example of ad hoc collaboration between two companies in what seems to be an unofficial way. Clara Shih, an AppExchange Product Manager at Salesforce.com and Todd Perry, a software engineer at Facebook, built this integration.
It’s a nice [...]

Video of Paul at Office 2.0

ZDNet has posted a short snippet of Paul’s commentary about Connect, after Dan Farber quizzed (and needled) him.
I lol’d when Paul said he had a team of developers who are web savvy. Rich apparently has cloned himself. Woo-hoo! Either that or I am now a web developer . . . bah?

addthis_url [...]

New SaaS Features? Easter Egg or Spam Blast?

I’ve spent the majority of my Life 2.0 using SaaS (Software as a Service), not producing it, but now that Connect is live and has users, I’m getting a taste for the production side of the house.
Ask anyone savvy, like Anshu, about the benefits of SaaS, and dollars to donuts says “seamless new feature and [...]

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.
He [...]