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Oracle AppsLab

Driving Innovation


Using the iPhone for Gaming?July 2

I never expected my iPhone would be a gaming device.

Earlier this week, as I did my civic duty, I found myself bored to tears in a jury room, waiting to be called. It was actually a bit funny. The day started with a video about jury service, including interviews where jurors said they were excited when their names were called for a trial.

Sitting in that jury room with nothing to do, I began to understand the excitement.

Flight Control, 64 is my best, but I'm still new

I only had my phone with me. Note to self, next time prepare like you’re going on a plane: laptop, power, movies, headphones.

I managed to kill an hour playing Sudoku, but after that, I got restless. The jury room had wi-fi, a nice perk, and I remembered Paul mentioning Flight Control to me as awesome and totally addictive. I’d read that in a couple reviews, too.

So I decided to buy it, and happy day, it’s on sale right now.This blog isn’t an iPhone app review blog, and I’ve stopped talking about apps (other than the

On Product ManagementJuly 1

I’ve been in software product management for about ten years now.

Connect, my latest product, has reached a critical stage in its life. It’s the first product I’ve managed from its inception, so I’m getting interesting new experience as it grows.

It’s pretty robust and has most of the big features people need in a social platform. So, we’re trying to decide what’s next: build something new or add incremental features.

Photo by woodleywonderworks on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Photo by woodleywonderworks on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Our last release increased the codebase quite a bit, and Rich and Anthony are busy documenting and refactoring the code and writing tests for all the new stuff they built. I know, it’s backwards, but we pushed pretty hard to get it done on a timeline.

Since they’re tied up, Paul and I have plenty of time to noodle what we’d like to do next and what we should do next. Every product team is faced with this decision, and there is never an easy answer. So, in addition to pondering our future direction and strategy, I’ve been thinking a lot about the

Sony Walkman Turns 30June 29
Oringinal image by Marcin Wichary on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Oringinal image by Marcin Wichary on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Hard to believe it, but the Walkman will turn 30 on July 1.

Thanks to the ‘tubes for reminding me of this, specifically to this 13-year-old kid’s review of the Walkman, compiled after using it in lieu of his iPod for a week.

Well worth the read, if only for a laugh, and an interesting study in technology advancement over the years, especially through the eyes of someone who’s never used a cassette tape.

Protip for you kids out there: Tapes have two sides.

I assume most of you had a Walkman or a similar device back in the day. Upon reading that post, I immediately began digging for one of my old Walkmen (or is it Walkmans?), which I know my parents sent me in a dump of old stuff last year. You know, the “here are the boxes of crap you left at our house when you moved out decades ago, but never had the decency to remove yourself” shipment.

Unfortunately, I think I tossed it in the trash, along with a slew of old cassette tapes. I guess that should read “fortunately”, at least if yo

Twitter for Reporting the NewsJune 29
Photo by Ernst Moeksis on Flickr used under Creative Commons

Photo by Ernst Moeksis on Flickr used under Creative Commons

The events surrounding the reporting of Michael Jackson’s death last week bring up issues with news reporting that I think are worth discussing.

Granted, this discussion isn’t new, but it’s interesting, at least to me.

Twitter offers a new channel to reporters, due to its immediacy and network effects, i.e. it’s very quick to publish and easy to spread a story to thousands of people. Obviously, this appeals to mainstream media as a distribution channel.

However, as we saw last week, Twitter doesn’t wait for standard journalistic practices like fact-checking. In the case of Michael Jackson’s death, Twitter (and TMZ) turned out to be correct, but I wonder if this will have a detrimental effect on future news reporting.

News outlets like to have exclusives and scoops because being first and exclusive adds readers and viewers. Adding readers and viewers means more advertisement, which means more money. Balancing the desire to be first and exclusive with accuracy has always been a fi

Citizen Journalism Gets a TestJune 25

People report that Twitter had a brown/blackout during the MJ tweetsTwitter has a pretty impressive list of news stories its users have broken and covered more accurately than mainstream news outlets.

To name a few: