Oracle AppsLab - Latest Comments

Re: Using the iPhone for Gaming?

jkuramot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:06:49 -0000

Looks tough, but the price is right :) If only I'd done this research before I had jury duty. I guess I could stockpile for my next trip on a plane or to the DMV.

Boredom. There's an app for that.

Re: Using the iPhone for Gaming?

jpiwowar — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:32:47 -0000

I highly recommend Dr. Awesome. Other ngmoco games are also well done and engaging, but Dr. Awesome got its hooks in deepest. :-)

Re: Using the iPhone for Gaming?

jkuramot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:08:20 -0000

Wow, I'm late to the iPhone for games party. Those sound fun. See my update about Fieldrunners if you want another fun one.

Re: Using the iPhone for Gaming?

facebook-502749470 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:29:35 -0000

Star Defense, Lux DLX (Risk), Arcade Bowl (Skeeball) :)

Re: On Product Management

jkuramot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:14:49 -0000

Thanks for the kind words.

From the beginning, we've wanted to open source Connect, and several people (customers) have expressed interest. The problem is that I'm not sure how to do that from a process perspective. Maybe you can assist.

Noel's release of OraTweet "as is" for free may help us build a case for Connect.

Connect (and Mix) are JRuby apps. When it launched, Mix was the largest JRuby production app, and I think it still is, unless Connect has passed it. Either way, we've used a combination of Oracle and open source pieces.

Also, even if we open source it, we can't fully let go of Connect until we find it a home with a team to support it. People use it for work, and we can't bail on them.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:04:52 -0000

Sure, Orson Wells did it in the 30s with War of the Worlds. A combination of faster media to spread information and way more people around to spread it makes this a bigger issue today.

Plus, the gullibility gene has been found to be dominant, meaning they are all around us, like zombies . . .

Re: On Product Management

JordanOAtOracle — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:53:58 -0000

Jake, first off I have to say how refreshing your blog entries and TheAppsLab is from an organizational perspective. Kudos and thank you!
Regarding your post, I have a couple of thoughts. First, what about donating Connect to oss.oracle.com? It sounds like once Rich and Anthony are done cleaning it up, you would have something worthy of submission. Doing this may actually provide many benefits to Connect, Oracle, and TheAppsLab. For Connect, the OSS benefits are pretty obvious from the number of contributors that you have the potential to garner. It will also give Rich and Anthony an opportunity to practice crowd-source product management :-). For Oracle, it shows our continued willingness to not horde innovation and ability to provide significant benefit to the community at large. And for TheAppsLab, it is just another example of justification of the benefit of the group.
This leads to my second point, that by giving Connect to the OSS community, it frees a majority of TheAppsLab team's time up for continuing to innovate. As a Sales Consultant, I am still struggling with ways to tie Social Networking into my daily activities. My personal goals are to be able to earn Trusted Adviser status to more customers, build more qualified pipeline, and stay more in touch with both the business and technology worlds. I think that as a group, all Sales Consultants would want the same thing. How would TheAppsLab begin to approach better defining the problem so that we can address it using current and future technology approaches. I would be very interested in being actively involved in such an effort.
So, short and sweet... AppsLab:
1. Keep up the great work!
2. Give your work to the community!
3. Create new products!
Cheers,
Jordan.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

empoprises — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:50:47 -0000

While I'll grant that Twitter provides a way to disseminate a message quickly, the issues with rapid reporting of false items are not unique to the 21st century. Take the 1835 newspaper reports about the discovery of life on the moon. No electronic technology was used to disseminate this information, but the fact that it was a multi-part series helped to guarantee that the newspaper would benefit from an increase in readership.

Lou Hampton wonders how people could have been so gullible as to believe that story, and then concludes: "The gullibility gene, by the way, was discovered by researchers at the UCLA Medical Center in 2003. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005."

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:29:43 -0000

No worries at all, I was just rechecking myself to make sure I hadn't come off as anti-citizen journalism. Your point is valid to this topic, which isn't just about Twitter.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

Jim — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:57:27 -0000

Sorry Jake - no criticism intended. It was more that I was probably using your post as a chance to get on my soapbox and drone on about something completely unrelated. Sorry about that. Great content as ever Jake - thanks!

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:32:01 -0000

I'm also glad we have a platform for citizen journalism, and I agree that advertising skews what is reported by the major news outlets. I hope my post didn't come off as against citizen journalism.

The Web provides a great populist tool that produces awesome stuff like citizen journalism, but one side-effect to populism is it doesn't discern, leaving you to sort out the gold from the crap.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

Jim — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:31:25 -0000

I think it's great that citizen journalism exists, and that the web provides such a great publishing platform for it.

The agendas pushed by the mainstream media outlets are often pretty biased. I guess my point is slightly OT compared to the one you're making - but if you look are projects like IndyMedia, ElectronicIntifada, MediaLens etc, they offer a different slant to that offered by Sky / CNN / BBC, which would never get reported on mainstream media because it would alienate advertisers, and cause a massive upset if they challenged the status quo.

Of course, there are always going to be useless rubbish posed as news, but I guess people learn to be discerning... mostly!

Re: The Oracle People iPhone App is Here

Andrew — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:09:08 -0000

Sounds great - can you please send me the link?

Re: The Oracle People iPhone App is Here

Sachin Agarwal — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:27:23 -0000

I work for Oracle and interested in this app, please send me the download link

Re: The Oracle People iPhone App is Here

desi lopez fafie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:10:20 -0000

Hi I am interested and do work for oracle and appreciate to receive the download link

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:07:11 -0000

Agreed, journalism isn't just reporting the news, it's analysis and access to sources that Twitter can never replicate. Even longer format blogging can't hope to replicate the immediacy of Twitter.

I share your concern about spikes driving ad revenue, and somehow I doubt that we'll see the end of paparazzi and gossip rags anytime soon.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:03:59 -0000

Yeah, Twitter is a great way to launch a DDOS attack. Just tweet something juicy and plausible with a shortened link and sit back while the site you targeted gets pounded by curious rubberneckers.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

jkuramot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:02:50 -0000

Hmm, that would be helpful, i.e. tracking trends based on original vs. retweeted content. Twitter (and Summize before they were acquired) never published the algorithm for trending topics.

Re: Measuring Influence and Reputation

jkuramot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:00:20 -0000

Interesting point. I suspect con artists online will evolve over time as the low-hanging fruit disappears, e.g. 419 scammers, and social networks with trust built in will be a natural place to start.

Re: Sony Walkman Turns 30

jkuramot — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:56:23 -0000

Funny, I was just thinking about that last night, i.e. cassette tapes, laserdiscs, and records are the only media I could think of with two sides of content. Never heard of that video system, sounds futuristic :) I guess DVDs sometimes have two sides too. I wasn't thinking very hard.

Re: Sony Walkman Turns 30

Gary — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:22:54 -0000

"Tapes have two sides."
True for audio cassettes, but not generally for VCR tapes. Except for the Phillips/Grundig Video 2000 system my parents invested in in preference to VHS or Betamax....

Re: Measuring Influence and Reputation

InternetStrategist — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:13:16 -0000

I consistently find it curious that people feel more comfortably judging people they meet in the physical than they do getting a feel for people online whom they most likely know far more about (unless they're in the habit of having background checks done on people).

Con artists in person are far more difficult to detect offline than on because there is a record and inconsistencies are made more obvious.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

Gary — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:12:11 -0000

News isn't a one-size-fits-all situation. The timeline is an important differentiator. The death of a celebrity is a spike, and doesn't require any in-depth understanding. Similar with a plane crash. The traditional news organisations are better suited to the challenges of reporting extended events, like an election campaign or the financial crisis.
Their problem is that, without the revenue from the 'spike' news, can they sustain the in-depth coverage ?
Personally if 'citizen journalism' can kill off the gossip sheets and paparazzi, I'm all in favour of it.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

joel garry — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:37:16 -0000

Twitter is good for faking a massive net attack.

Re: Twitter for Reporting the News

twitter-17676526 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:25:55 -0000

I think if there are a significant volume of original/unique tweets about a particular event, then that lends it credibility. When Melbourne recently experienced an earthquake, I tweeted it almost immediately and then watched as many other original tweets were published. Re-tweeting on the other hand, lends no discernible credibility. Not aware of any ways to figure this out from trending services.