Oracle AppsLab - Latest Comments

Re: Meet Brizzly, My New Twitter Client

exde601e — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:42:56 -0000

yap, same here! :)

Re: Meet Brizzly, My New Twitter Client

jkuramot — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:37:41 -0000

Looks like it's finished now, nice work and very fast conversion. I <3 Brizzly.

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

brhubart — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:04 -0000

My first thought after reading this was of Pekka Himanen's 2001 book, "The Hacker Ethic," and it's description of the enthusiasm software developers apply to their work. It also brings to mind a conversation I had with Floyd Teter and John Stouffer at the Oracle ACE dinner during OOW09, in which we talked at length about how software development is as much a lifestyle and a culture as it is a career path. I know this is somewhat tangental to the subject of Paul's post, but there is a connection.

The first bunch of developers I met when I began my IT career in 1997 were young people who had little or no formal training in computer science or software. They were, without exception, gamers, who learned their craft by customizing or deconstructing their favorite games, starting as kids. The passion and focus they applied while playing -- and playing with -- those games as kids became the defining characteristics of their approach to the work they did as highly innovative -- and highly employable -- developers.

So, to bring this back around to Paul's post, imagine what kind of an economy we'd have --hell, what kind of world we'd have -- if every job, every task, could inspire that kind of passion and focus and sense of fun and challenge and satisfaction.

BTW: Similar thoughts expressed in my 2001 review of "The Hacker Ethic": http://bit.ly/h4WR2

Re: Meet Brizzly, My New Twitter Client

exde601e — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:08:43 -0000

a new announcement from brizzly about the integration with lists:
"brizzly: We're going to be converting your Brizzly groups to Twitter lists in a bit. Don't be scared. We'll update you when it's done. (about 1 hour ago from Brizzly)"

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

jkuramot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:07:28 -0000

I've seen that one, excellent video.

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

jkuramot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:06:48 -0000

Who said anything about pr0n and yachts? I don't get why you add that concern here, since we didn't mention it. Maybe I missed something. Or did you wander off the reservation a bit there :)

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

andrejk — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:58:42 -0000

Here's a good video of the power of games to make people do hard work: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-824646.... Luis van Ahn did a lot of research in this area, he calls it "human computation".

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

empoprises — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:36:15 -0000

I second Jake in thanking you for writing this. The AppsLab is certainly contributing some ideas in this area, and this post itself suggests a wealth of possibilities. (I previously used one of your writings as partial inspiration for a recent post of my own.)

You are correct in noting the negative connotations of play. I forget when this happened, but I was in a meeting once in which we were looking at a problem, and I mentioned that I would "play around" with a solution. The response was NOT positive.

You are also correct in noting that gaming is a prime driver in the advancement of technology. Which brings me to my one concern....Although it isn't discussed much, another very potent technology driver is pornography. And while there are people who have no problem with the Oracle AppsLab exploring gaming, I don't think that the "friends of AppLab" or your Oracle bosses would be receptive to incorporating pornography into your activities - especially if you wanted to use a certain person's yacht for filming purposes...

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

JordanOAtOracle — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:15:18 -0000

A different twist on this is the combination of gaming, social networking, and charitable donations as offered via GamesThatGive (http://www.gamesthatgive.net/welcome). Definitely worth a look.

Re: Why Gaming is the Future of Everything

jkuramot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:00:15 -0000

This was worth the wait.

I'll always remember one of my favorite Pedrazzisms, about playing a game of email. In my head, it's said by the WOPR voice from Wargames.

How freaking awesome would it be if Foursquare could get an IRL tie-in with a nightclub, e.g. the mayor jumps the line, VIP-style, with x friends.

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

jkuramot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:10:40 -0000

We vomit blog posts :) I tend to agree that generally, a Twitter account that only broadcasts posts is redundant for me. However, in our case, we polled to see what people wanted from the Twitter account, and as this post suggests, a lot of people use Twitter to follow blogs over feed readers.

I don't agree that following certain people's tweets (and their blog posts) is always redundant. It tends to humanize the blogger in many cases. Maybe you have to find the right person.

The solution I've found to short URL madness is Brizzly. See my post on it if you want an invite, not that you care, just saying :)

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

bexmex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:33:15 -0000

replacing Feeds with Twitter only makes sense if you follow people who use a blog vomit Twitter agenda... meaning everything they post they also tweet. If I find somebody I like, I follow their feeds... or perhaps their Del.icio.us bookmarks. Following their Tweets becomes redundant.

Personally, I prefer reading coherent, full posts to wading through the stream of consciousness rant that is the Twiscape... Also, cramming URLS into 10 characters kind of breaks the web, because you no longer have that rich information in the domain name and URL to get some kind of context for where the link is going.

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:29:36 -0000

Everyone will be assimilated.

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

empoprises — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:10:12 -0000

Jake, you can then convince Joel to "check in" to places... :)

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:54:59 -0000

And yet you still know this so somehow you've got the stink of Twitter on you :) It's not so bad. You'll see.

Insert Body Snatchers music here.

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

joel garry — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:29:46 -0000

You know how much data mining is available in twitter when the short links (-aZitZ) are more interesting as non sequiturs than the actual tweets.

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:28:23 -0000

Does this mean you want off the list b/c no one leaves the list. You understand that right.

:)

I don't think of lists as topical. Anyone who uses Twitter for five minutes knows topics vary wildly from one second to the next. Even if people try to group by topic, they're bound to be disappointed at times.

The point of the list is to showcase the people who loosely belong to the community around this team and/or blog.

I've actually warmed to hashtags for creating topics; they're frictionless and powerful. The #oow09 hashtag had tons of good content, but even then, some off-topic stuff.

I generally disagree that focus on people creates problems, since people do work. Sample any work environment, and you'll see tons of off-topic content. We need ways to filter out content, e.g. hashtags, search, etc.

Re: Meet Brizzly, My New Twitter Client

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:15:17 -0000

Agreed, saved searches are huge for me, especially seeing when they're updated. Lots of good stuff in Brizzly.

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:13:46 -0000

I got what you meant. The IRL stuff strengthens (or weakens I suppose) the connections, and it's a group not an audience. Makes perfect sense. I think it's a good rule of thumb, and I've actually seen a few Twitter lists for people the user knows. Solid.

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

brhubart — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:39:22 -0000

That should be "I didn't mean to imply..."

This is what happens when I multitask...

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

Bob Rhubart — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:35:22 -0000

I did mean to imply that I only follow people I know IRL. As a general rule I do indeed follow the updates of people that I've actually met f2f, but I don't limit online connections to that group. Rather, I try to treat those online relationships as real, two-way connections, rather than look at the list of people following me as an anonymous audience, as nothing more than a number.

But that's another issue, ain't it?

Re: More Fun with Twitter Lists

empoprises — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:29:10 -0000

One thing about lists - and, for that matter, followers - is that it focuses on people rather than topics. This could lead to issues.

The aforementioned Friends of AppsLab list presumably includes people whose interests are somewhat aligned with the AppsLab. Because of the diverse interests of the AppsLab - and because it is, after all, a lab - you would expect some level of leeway if you viewed the tweets created by the friends of the AppsLab.

For example, the fact that one of the AppsLab friends drank a banana split shake is, in a peculiar way, relevant. Oracle is, after all, an enterprise, and services such as FourSquare (the cited tweet was generated by FourSquare) suggest ways in which enterprises can engage their customers. This topic clearly falls within the realm of AppsLab interests.

But I challenge anyone who follows the "friends of AppsLab" tweets to find the relevance in this tweet ("it must take forever to film a hallmark channel movie. filming must stop for firefighters' day, millard fillmore's birthday..."). I feel sorry for the enterprise student who runs across that particular tweet in the AppsLab feed; the poor soul will end up invoking the former acronym for the Wisconsin Tourism Federation.

And the AppsLab list is a special case, because of its exploratory nature. What if someone were to set up a narrower list, such as "people interested in Oracle Database"? For that list, even a discussion of WebLogic may be considered off-topic.

While I know that social media is supposed to be all about people, in reality social media is also about topics that interest the people. For enterprises and enterprise workers to truly mine the information that is out there, we need better ways to do it. Following a person or a list of persons, while appropriate in a generic social media context, may not be appropriate in an enterprise social media context.

Unfortunately, our search tools aren't smart enough to do this at this time. I cannot think of a way to search Twitter for "AppsLab-y" tweets. When will our search tools become intelligent enough to distinguish "I just ate a mango" from "I just told FourSquare that I drank a mango shake at a local business"?

Re: Meet Brizzly, My New Twitter Client

uvox — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:10:39 -0000

Saved searches is another one. I can never remember what hastags, keywords, etc I used...

Re: Feeds: Dead to You or Still Kicking?

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:06:52 -0000

Thanks, exactly how I feel about the slow, social features that the Reader team keeps adding. Maybe they'll listen to Scoble again.

Re: Oracle Gets Social

jkuramot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:05:54 -0000

Thanks. We're seeing the same wins from Connect and Mix. It's funny to look back to when this post was written and see how far social has come since then.