The AppsLab

Welcome VirtualBox

Jake — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:02:28 +0000

Have you noticed the subtle change to the VirtualBox logo? Probably not, but thanks to ReadWriteWeb for pointing out the change.

VirtualBox is one of several open source projects that Sun oversaw, and in his strategy briefing last week, Larry Ellison announced that VirtualBox images will be deployable on Oracle VM, which is great news.

If you read here, you’ll know VirtualBox is my virtualization client of choice, and I’m geeked at the prospect of having VBox images of all the software I need readily available. No more building VMs.

I also hope that having a full virtualization stack will lead to more images for developers and customers. In many ways, virtualization trumps cloud-based offerings, so this makes a lot of sense.

I’m excited about this. How about you?Possibly Related Posts:

Scoring Topper on the Tablet

Jake — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:10:39 +0000

Image from Mac Daily News

Last week, you got not one, but two posts by authors not named Jake. I felt lucky too.

Matt (@topperge) gave us his rundown of “no brainer” features in advance of the iPad announcement. As a giggle, let’s score his accuracy:

Books in the App Store: Win. Apple announced a new app called iBooks, delivered through the App Store for download to the iPad.
It’ll run a modified iPhone OS: Win. The iPad will run iPhone OS 3.2, and the SDK was announced, in case you’re ready to start building apps.
Sensors: Win. The iPad has the same sensors the iPhone does–accelerometer, GPS and compass.
Front Facing Video Camera: Fail. This is one of the top misses for many people, but it seems pretty likely that it will be in future releases. Apparently, the SDK has already implemented the interface for a camera.
New Health Care Focus: Fail? I was telling Floyd (@fteter) and Ted (@badgerworks) last week that this feels like a made up use case that someone threw out as plausible in a meeting that snow-balled into the killer use case. I didn’t watch the announcement, but since last Wednesday, I haven’t heard a peep about the iPad for health care professionals. Maybe 2.0.
Wifi and 3G: Win, although Matt might see this as fail, since he said “this will be their place to get away from AT&T”. Heh, not so much. Matt predicted a $50 unlimited plan, but it came in lower at $29.99.
Storage: Win. The iPad will come with a 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive. Matt predicted 16 and 32GB, with a bonus prediction of a 128GB model coming soon.
Remote control interface: Yeah, fail, although this makes a ton of sense. Again, probably 2.0 or later.

So, five out of eight, not bad, Matt, and I’ll bet two of the three you missed will be coming soon, probably camera first. Although the iPhone OS finally implemented copy/paste in version 3.0, so the future is murky.

Matt also added two final pieces to make the phantom tablet a killer device: cloud-based storage for all your media and what he calls MediaSync.

Although both of these were misses, he’s on the something here that will eventually be Apple’s ace in the hole. Microsoft does a decent job (I’m told) of managing digital assets within the home, but not from a central location accessible outside the home.

I think that’s right.

Anyway, Apple could take a huge step toward pwning the home entertainment experience by pushing everything to the sky and centrally managing access, distribution and backup there. Just as Matt says, with that infrastructure in place, cool features like MediaSync (to turn a phrase) would be easy to add.

So Matt, are you queueing up to buy an iPad, or are you bumming that it didn’t meet all your expectations?Possibly Related Posts:

What Do You Think of the iPad?

Jake — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:12:06 +0000

In case you were unplugged, Apple announced a tablet last week, called the iPad.

By now, the jokes have died down and the geek world has been furiously dissecting the pros and cons of the iPad. It’s what we do.

My quick take is the same as its been for a while: I don’t need a gadget that fits between my iPhone and my laptop. That gives me some impartiality I suppose, since the iPad wasn’t awesome enough to create that need for me.

The iPhone’s success came initially because it met one super obvious use case: cellular telephone. And it just so happened to do other smartphone things in useful ways.

The iPad lacks that same killer use case, and general consensus among most geeks is similar. The iPad doesn’t create a need for them; it creates (or meets) one for casual users, e.g. your mother.

Ah Mom, the classic geek measuring stick for so many use cases.

The problem with all the analysis is that it’s being done by people who don’t share the killer use case; we’re all guessing. Arguably, everyone needs a cell phone. Not everyone needs an internet appliance, probably the best term I’ve heard to describe the device that’s not pocket-sized, but is still relatively portable.

Cripes.

Back to Mom for a second. Probably the most interesting iPad coverage I’ve see so far is this post by Ultimi Barbarorum (h/t Signal vs. Noise) that points to women as the iPad’s target demographic:

Women will like the simpleness of the iPad not because, like an increasingly creaky boomer, they cannot put up with computing complexity; they can. They just don’t see why they should have to.

As I said before, everyone is guessing, but this one holds water for me. In fact, reading that snippet, I pictured my lovely wife as she handed off yet another gadget to me to make work. She likes to skip the configuration and get right to the value.

Crazy right?

She could figure it out easily on her own, but why bother when she can outsource it to me, the happy tinkerer, who is happy to make gadgets work. It’s win-win.

I’m very interested to hear the thoughts of the technical women out there, e.g. our women friends at TalentedApps. Does this hold water or not?

Gizmodo has some interesting points on why the iPad is for old people, which I also found interesting. One of the more compelling arguments for the iPad as a device for casual users is that its locked-down iPhone OS variant will make it more secure than a standard OS like Windows or OS X.

I’m sure this assertion will be tested, but in theory, it makes sense.

At the same time, the sanitized internet experience and DRM create a serious challenge for free-as-in-beer internet types like Chris Messina and most of the rest of us who like it way it is now.

Not that those people with real use cases for the iPad care even a little. They love Facebook’s approach to the intertubes, so why would they care?

Interestingly, Chris tweeted his agreement with Joe Hewitt’s stance that the closed platform is good for developers.

I suppose he was agreeing with the “good for developers” part and not agreeing with the sanitized internet and DRM.

FWIW, I think the iPad is a sweet little device, and I’m sure it’s a joy to use. Like a typical geek male, I’m especially curious to see how Apple’s A4 processor performs in other devices, ahem Macbooks, since everyone who has used an iPad marvels at how fast it is.

Anyway, there’s a lot to noodle in there. I’m looking forward to your thoughts, about the device, its use cases (real or concocted), its target users, what it means for the intertubes, etc.

Put all that in the comments.

Update: After reading some interesting comments, I’m beginning to see some plausible use cases emerge. First, the iPad as a kid’s computer is legit; Paul (and others) have noted how intuitive the touch interface is for young children. I wonder about durability, but that’s not a design problem.

Second, the iPad as a media device, i.e. the couch computer also holds water. Makes sense since the iPad’s portability is questionable.

Good times. You guys are smart.Possibly Related Posts:

The Importance of January 27, 2010

Jake — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:19:22 +0000

Wednesday was an interesting day, with two very interesting announcements happening at the same time, one in the consumer space, one in the enterprise space.

I’m talking obviously about the Apple event to announce the iPad and the Oracle-Sun strategy announcement.

It’s well-known that Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison have been friends for many years, and there are very few figures in technology as well-known and polarizing as these two. Oh, and they both know how to put on a show for an audience.

I spent my Wednesday attending an Enterprise OpenSocial meetup at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, so I didn’t have to make the tough choice between the events. Of course, in this day and age of broadband intertubes, I’m sure many people followed both simultaneously (kudos Floyd).

Heading into the Apple announcement, Steve Jobs was rumored to have called the iPad “the most important thing I’ve ever done”. Time will tell, but the iPad definitely has potential to be a game-changer. Whether it forces good or bad change is the question. More on that next week.

On the possibly less exciting, but equally important enterprise side, the Oracle-Sun announcement was months in the making, and ever since it was announced, way back in April 2009, I’ve been excited for the future combination of companies.

Why? Oracle will be building on Sun hardware, which means the software should take full advantage of all the hardware capabilities, and the hardware can be tweaked to run the software better. Sounds like Apple’s model.

Sun brings a bunch of cool open source projects with it, including OpenOffice, MySQL, VirtualBox, etc. I’m a huge fan of open source, and I’m hoping that continued investment and support by a large corporation will help push open source acceptance into the mainstream.

Finally, I’m a huge fan of virtualization, and the combination of virtualization technologies Oracle has now is pretty sweet. I’m constantly amazed how little people know about visualization. Maybe it’s a Mac thing, since we have to keep a Windows machine around for legacy stuff.

Anyway, it’s curious to me that two longtime friends, heads of very large and powerful technology companies, made critically important announcements on the very same day. And not any announcements, but the kind that could change the complexion of their respective competitive landscapes and influence the directions and fortunes of their companies dramatically.

Even though I think it’s a dud right now and doesn’t fill a need for me, the iPad is important.

Oracle buying Sun is also important and will have influence beyond the enterprise.

While I doubt this was planned, I do wonder if the two exchanged congratulatory calls that day.

Am I overstating here?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Be Safe Out There Kids!

Paul — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:26:50 +0000

Last week my imac (home computer), that my wife uses to run our little lunchbox company begin having some serious issues. Slow access times, constant rebooting and as of yesterday a complete inability to boot. Just a lovely grey screen of solitude much like the image above, until it refused to even show that little folder after numerous frustrated reboots. I am quite certain that this would never happen to the Jesus Tablet, but I digress…

So I grab my trusty Snow Leopard install CD (Family Pack, yes I am a sucker). Throw it in, hit the button on the back of the imac, holding the “c” key of course, and it happily boots to the disk. I confidently launch the disk utility and low and behold, no hard drive shows up.

See this is where I get kinda worried. Usually you are able to at least SEE the hard drive. Then you do all the fun repair, repair permissions or worst case reformat and move on with your life like a bad first date. In my case, this baby was lost beyond all recognition.

Once again I pay a visit to the gods of the Internet for advice. Turns out a few nerds (here and here) have actually taken their imac’s apart and swapped the hard drive. So I figure, how hard can it be, I own a drill. I pick up a 1.5TB Seagate drive ($128), a set of Torx wrenches ($18.51) and a suction cup ($10.95) for removing the screen – all from Amazon with 1 day shipping for $3.99 – Have I told you how much I love Amazon?

Here is how it went down:

1) I removed the glass with my new favorite toy, the suction cup. It was a real Mission Impossible moment for me. Life changing.

2) Here I have the outer casing removed and you can see the lower front as well as my kick ass Bosch drill in the reflection.

3) After removing 8 torx bolts you can see the innards in all their future human killing Skynet glory – along with the awesome drill again – show off.

4) There she is. What a quitter. Never again Western Digital. You get one shot with me.

5) The crime scene as it went down. See the LCD on the floor with the purple bear. Yeah I was pretty nervous at this point. Hold me.

6) It’s alive, alive!! I totally knew it would work.

OK, so now I have a functional computer (after about 40 minutes of open screen surgery). I partitioned and formatted the drive, installed the OS and everything is good, right. Uh, not so fast, what about my data, my passwords, my bookmarks, my life (it may not be much, but it’s mine)!

The good news is that since having my laptop stolen last year I have been pretty rigorous to keep EVERYTHING in the cloud. Here is what I use for serious peace of mind:

XMarks – This keeps all my bookmarks in sync between browsers and computers.

DropBox – ALL files I work on that I care about live on DropBox. They are AWESOME.

1 Password – Keeps all my passwords and login details for important stuff like my Safeway Club Card. Incidentally, I use Dropbox to keep the vault file remote.

Mozy – This is my second line of defense and I do a daily backup of EVERYTHING. Dude, it is $5 a month, c’mon.

Between these services I literally lost zero data. Photos, music, passwords, work files – all safe and already my “new” machine is on par from a data perspective with my old. I did have to install a few desktop apps like iwork, ilife, and illustrator, but that’s a breeze compared to re-buying your itunes library. In the end I also went from a 500GB drive to a 1.5TB drive – which is pure awesomeness.

Never to be underestimated, I saved my wife a ton of hassle and worry, which means I saved myself a whole bunch of hassle and worry. Yep, more time for me to cuddle up with my PS3.

Be safe out there and stay in school!

PaulPossibly Related Posts:

13 Hours Until the Jesus Tablet

Matt Topper — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:43:38 +0000

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge trying to figure out who’s getting my attention. At noon Larry is going to be revealing the strategy for the Sun acquisition here, and Steve will be releasing his new world saving device the Jesus tablet. I’m sure Larry’s 5 hour presentation tomorrow is going to be riveting, it’s especially going to effect my Identity Management world but for now lets focus on some consumer fun. You can’t hit twitter or any blog without seeing someone predicting what features the tablet with have. Here’s my list of no brainer features:

Books in the App Store – Steve doesn’t like anyone making money that he can’t dip his fingers into. With the success of the Kindle, the Sony, and Nook eBook readers it only makes sense.
It’ll run a modified iPhone OS – Because of the power of the app store, it just makes sense for the tablet to run the same operating system. The biggest issue will be to see how they scale the graphics / applications. I think we’ll finally see the ability to background apps or run multiple apps at a time like windows widgets.
Sensors – Its going to have all the same sensors as the iPhone, compass, GPS, and accelerometer. This is critical to keep all the games from the app store alive
Front Facing Video Camera – With the form factor of the device its definitely not going to be made to take any pictures, but it makes sense to have a front facing video camera for iChat and Skype type activities. We may have a new application that logs you in by your face since some are saying Steve only sees one tablet per family. The camera can’t differentiate between twins so maybe not a feature.
New Health Care Focus – Most of my doctors already carry an iPhone or touch in the office to look up all their drug and treatment information. The tablet gives them a better platform to read charts, view x-rays, etc. It should really revolutionize the health care industry. I’m not seeing a major business play yet, but someone smarter than I will come up with some killer business apps…maybe some BI real time analytics applications.
Wifi and 3G – This will be their place to get away from AT&T, the Verizon network just makes sense here. Verizon learned their lesson the first time around missing out on the iPhone boat and they won’t want to miss this one. My guess is a $50 a month unlimited plan.
Storage – 32 and 64 GB options for the launch, they’ll release a 128 GB version in 6-12 months.
Remote control interface – The tablet will be able to remotely control all the Apple devices in your house. Whether its the Apple TV, Airport, or iTunes, you’ll be able to remotely control it like the Sonos controllers.

All of these features seem pretty obvious to me, nothing truly ground breaking. We’ve been talking about this a lot lately and they really need a killer application to marry with it. There are two pieces that will make this a killer device. The first is cloud based storage for all your media. Using cloud based storage should be a no brainer for Apple. Their purchase of LaLa last year adds to this theory. They sell one copy of a song thousands of times over and all they need to do is set an ACL on the server side. This way you can access your music where ever you are on the go and Apple provides your backup solution. This would finally make their MobileMe service useful to consumers. The only problem with this I can see is how to you share your collection with your family easily, the latest iTunes versions are starting to address this but their current model of signing one central account into multiple machines isn’t a longer term viable solution. With this we will see a 100% browser based version of the App Store where you can purchase directly online without having to open up clunky iTunes.
Cloud storage is the first step, but what I really see as making the tablet a killer device is what I’m calling MediaSync for lack of a better term. Imagine linking all your devices together, your iPod/iPhone, laptop, iSlate and Apple TV. Apple through their cloud service manages all the media between the devices and based on your usage patterns automatically loads the device with your most utilized media. Much of the math behind this they’ve been figuring out with Genius already. With the iPhone over WiFi you can stream anything that isn’t stored locally in your collection. So now you’re sitting at home with your tablet on your lap with the TV running in the background, tell your wife “Hey, check out this YouTube video”, flip on your Apple TV and now you’re playing it live in your living room for your wife. You get up from the office and start a podcast on your iPhone listening all the way home. Pause it as you pull in the driveway, turn on the Apple TV and continue to listen in the exact place you left off in the car. Your wife gets home and wants to watch last nights Grey’s Anatomy so you’re forced to pull out your tablet and continue listening right where the Apple TV left off.
This is really the only killer component that will make the tablet useful to most consumers. Without it I don’t see it being the most important device Steve has ever been a part of. I guess we’ll all just find out how close I was 13 hours from now. What are your thoughts on the tablet and the way it’ll revolutionize your life.Possibly Related Posts:

Does Geo Location Matter to You?

Jake — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:33:58 +0000

Photo by BluEyedA73 from Flickr used under Creative Commons

As with last week, the geo news has been hot and heavy again this week, but before I get to the tidbits I’ve found interesting, let’s talk about why geo matters or doesn’t.

Unlike social, you shouldn’t be guilted into geo. Not that you were guilted into joining Twitter or Facebook, but the riskiness of joining those networks is much lower than joining a geo location service and adding all your contacts.

People seem to get this, for the most part, which is why I’m sticking with my prediction that the “where are other people” use case won’t get off the ground, and the “where am I” use case is the one that matters more to people.

Why? Because there are real incentives to telling retailers where you are, or are not, which is leading to rewards like mayor deals and virtual loyalty programs. Venues can take advantage too by encouraging others to checkin and play the game for rewards.

This symbiotic relationship between the geo location service and the retailer holds a lot of promise for consumers. Beyond the obvious capitalist applications, there are others as well, e.g. tracking travel patterns leads to better routes for you and for your city planners.

Foursquare is already partnering with BART, and it’s logical that as geo adoption increases, city officials would welcome views of how their citizens travel. Having more data always helps, e.g. yesterday’s speed data from Tele Atlas would be a nice compliment, assuming they have an API.

Need more use cases? Marshall has a bunch of other examples.Anyway, this is why I think geo location matters because it can benefit me and it produces useful data.

Your turn. Do you see potential in geo location, or is it just another fad? What would it take to get you on the bandwagon, assuming you’re not already on it?

Now, for the news bits.

Foursquare deals in your town.
Everyone likes to get a deal, and that’s one of foursquare’s attractions. However, there’s no single view of all the deals you can get in any particular city. This is likely by design, making them Easter Eggs you discover as you checkin around the town.

Now that foursquare has an API, you can get a single view, thanks to the legwork done by Arthur Klepchukov (@arvankilmer) who built (h/t TechCrunch) a Yahoo Pipe that spits out the deals for the East Bay cities Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville.

No worries if you don’t live in the East Bay, just modify Arthur’s pipe to check your city. Like so:

Run the pipe and get your list of deals. FYI, I had to add multiple item.city rules to get it working.

Newspapers on foursquare?
The Metro News, a daily, free newspaper in Canada, announced a partnership with foursquare yesterday that includes restaurant reviews, city tips, to-dos and articles about Canadian points of interest. Sounds like a guide book.

This makes a huge amount of sense, since local papers should have great hyper-local content. To get people playing there are Metro badges, an iPhone giveaway and Friday specials listed in the paper.

Interesting stuff. What’s not clear is how the paper plans to make money off the content, which is presumably surrounded by ads in print. Maybe foursquare has an ad model coming.

Anyway, the timing is great, considering the Winter Olympics will shortly be taking over Vancouver, BC.

Geo is hot right now. Expect to hear more about it as the year progresses.

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Speed Data Pr0n

Jake — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:06:53 +0000

Photo by JaseMan from Flickr used under Creative Commons

If you read here, you know I love data and data visualizations.

So, you won’t be surprised to hear this post from Hot Hardware immediately intrigued me: “TomTom’s IQ Routes Prove Americans Aren’t Speed Demons”.

Aside from the blatant advertising, the conclusions, initially published by Tele Atlas, TomTom’s map business unit, were great data points for me, since I’ve lived in and driven in many of the larger cities here in the U.S. of A.

The fastest road in America is I-15 in Utah and Nevada, where average speeds top 77 mph. The posted speed limits are pretty high there, and take it from me, it’s pretty sparse and flat, making it easy to go fast.
Washington D.C. has the slowest average speeds on its interstate highways, only 46 mph. If you’ve driven in that area for any amount of time, you’ll be shocked that the average is that high.
Hawaii’s average interstate highway speed is second-lowest at 53 mph. This seemed surprisingly high at first, based on a) the small number of major roads on the Hawaiian Islands and b) how winding and small they are. Interstate is a funny word in this case, and there are actually three interstate highways, all on Oahu.

Tele Atlas published a similar report on traffic congestion in major U.S. cities in December. Not a lot of surprises here, except maybe that Seattle has the worst traffic, followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

Interesting stuff, at least if you live here in the States. I’m sure Tele Atlas has similar data for international cities as well, e.g. they mention that speeds on unregulated stretches of Germany’s famous Autobahn average over 100 mph.

So, how did Tele Atlas get these data?

The results were calculated using data from Speed Profiles™, the historical speed database from TomTom’s map business unit Tele Atlas that helps personal and professional fleet drivers find the best routes. Speed Profiles is integrated as IQ Routes™ on TomTom devices. It aggregates, anonymously, the actual speeds that millions of GPS-enabled drivers have traveled over the last two years to provide the most accurate view of historic speeds available.

The data are collected anonymously, but it would be interesting to track behavior across geographies. For example, do drivers who live in congested cities drive faster, regardless of traffic or location, simply because they can?

The theory goes that if you’re used to going slow, you go fast when you can. If you’re used to going fast, you temper your speeding. I think states neighboring California might exhibit see behavior when Californians cross over their borders.

Anyway, I’m easily dazzled by data, and this is no exception. It would be nice if Tele Atlas/TomTom had licensing to use these data for mashups. Having real-time traffic data in consumable form would lead to some great apps; as would having historic traffic data.

Find the comments with your thoughts on speed and/or data.Possibly Related Posts:

More WebCenter Goodness

Jake — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:13:00 +0000

Yesterday, Vince posted the third installment in his “What is WebCenter” series, and as promised, he dives into the design points with more detail.

After reading all three parts, it should be clearer that WebCenter is a lot of things and is therefore, difficult to describe in a terse manner. To date, we’ve been working to extend and tweak WebCenter Spaces using its native capabilities, mixing in a generous amount of the REST APIs.

As Rich mentions on this post on WebCenter’s REST APIs by Peter Moskovits, he’s posted some of his code to GitHub, in case you’re interested in taking a look.

Now that you know more about WebCenter, you can try it out for yourself using the OTN development licenses.

Remember my install-WebCenter opus? I chatted with some folks in product management about documenting that process and voila, there’s a new Oracle-by-Example (OBE) for installing WebCenter on Linux here.

The OBE covers all the pieces you need, including UCM, and all the steps you’ll need to take in a single place. Plus, it has lots of screen captures, which always helps me.

Good stuff.

I’m curious to know thoughts on WebCenter, now that you know what it is and how to install it.

If you’re a consultant (ahem, Chet), would you consider learning WebCenter to add to your list of skills? Why or why not?

If you’re in IT, would you consider using WebCenter internally?

I’m interested in your impressions. Find the comments and share them.Possibly Related Posts:

Oracle & Sun Strategy Webcast

Jake — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:58:02 +0000

Word leaked yesterday that the EU was set to approve the Oracle-Sun acquisition, and today, it’s official.

Justin announced that Larry Ellison will hold a live webcast on January 27 to unveil the corporate strategy for the combined companies. Here’s the official description:

Transforming the Way You Buy, Run, and Manage Your Business Systems

Find out how Oracle + Sun goes beyond your expectations to:

Offer a broad range of products including servers, storage, networking, and software

Integrate all the components–hardware, operating system, database, middleware, and applications–for unmatched performance, reliability, and security

Simplify IT management and reduce system deployment and integration costs

Continue to drive innovation in SPARC, Solaris, the Java platform, and many other technologies

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about how this powerful combination will transform the IT industry. Register today for this live Webcast.

I don’t know if space is limited or not, but it’s probably a good idea to register sooner, rather than later if you’re interested.

Of course, you might be doing other things on January 27, like maybe attending the Apple event, rumored to be chock-full of goodies, and maybe later that day, watching the State of the Union address.

Better start planning now, looks like the 27th will be a busy news day.Possibly Related Posts:

Would Better Online Ads Matter?

Jake — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:46:22 +0000

Photo by missbossy from Flickr used under Creative Commons

Earlier in the week, I posted about Next Jump and their use of data and algorithms to target offers at consumers who are most likely to buy.

Their results are impressive, 60% click-through on offers with a phenomenal 11% rate converting browsers to buyers. Apparently, 5% click-through with 2% conversion are consider very good rates.

I find myself wishing they’d hurry up and colonize the intertubes because since online ads aren’t going away anytime soon, they might as well be interesting and useful to me.

My personal rates for these two metrics are so close to 0 that any measurable data would be considered a statistical anomaly. I mainly ignore ads, and the only click-throughs I can recall registering are on accidental, errant clicks. I don’t remember ever buying something based on an online ad.

Although I manage to ignore pretty much every ad I see, a couple lately have annoyed me into paying attention.

The first one was on Flickr, one of my favorite services, where I find great Creative Commons licensed photos to spice up these posts. Yesterday, the search results there showed me the same series of “get ripped fast” ads, over and over.

The repetition was annoying enough to make me pay attention and wonder why Flickr wanted me to get ripped so desperately.

Was it random? Did they do a BMI calculation based on pictures of me? Do I appear emotionally unhappy with my lack of ripped-ness in photos?

Then today, while on Facebook, Gillette wanted to educate me about body shaving. Aren’t Facebook’s ads supposed to be better because they can use the data in my profile and networks to target me?

What about my profile, aside from being male, would lead Facebook to show me that ad?

I pondered closing the ad, but correctly assumed that Facebook would ask for metadata about why. I don’t really have any interest in making it easier to show me ads I have no intention of clicking.

Taken together, I suppose once I get ripped (fast), I might want to shave my entire body. This is all a bit ridiculous.

Ironically, both these ads disappeared when I went back to screen capture them for this post.

In Flickr’s case, I could upgrade to Pro to suppress the ads. The freemium model is alive and well, as evidenced by the New York Times’ announcement today that they are going freemium next year. I wouldn’t bet on any fewer ads though, even if you pay for more content.

Advertisers are simultaneously trying to get better at targeting, based on social data, and better at skirting ad-avoidance, e.g. an interesting post yesterday about the first DVR-proof commercial.

Advertising is huge business, so why aren’t advertisers getting better?

Most online ads don’t seem to have any connection to the content, which makes them even easier to ignore, and so far, Facebook’s promise of better ads through social has lead to more humor and embarrassment than click-throughs and conversions.

Incidentally, did you hear that Google might be adding its own ads to Street View, overlaying billboard ads? I suppose AR is probably going that way too, but again, these are annoyances and not any more effective. Right?

Thoughts about ads, funny ones, annoying ones, effective ones?

Thoughts about why online advertisers aren’t more successful?

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Geo Me This

Jake — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:08:46 +0000

Photo by .schill from Flickr used under Creative Commons

Wow, geo is a hot topic lately, with coverage, announcements and features dropping every day.

Here’s a summary of what I’ve seen lately that caught my interest:

Gowalla appears to be preparing an API.
MyTown has 500,000 users, even though no one talks about it.
Yelp is adding location checkins to the next version of its iPhone app.
Eric Butler (@firerabbit) built a sweet foursquare app for OS X called FoursquareX.

I like all this activity because it means innovation in geo, and the release of APIs for geo-services means development, which means cool apps. It’s like mid-2007 for Twitter.

Competition among services is also good for users. Remember Jaiku and Pownce? Probably not. They taught us that the network mattered, which is why we all stayed with Twitter despite its downtime issues.

Geo services don’t turn out to be as social as people expect (one of my 2010 predictions), so to attract users, services need to be engaging and fun, the main reason I’ve stayed with foursquare.

Sure, Gowalla has game mechanics based around the exchange of virtual goods, but I haven’t really found that to be engaging yet. They have a beautiful app, but I don’t see myself playing long term unless the game changes.

I’ve played a little MyTown too, and its game mechanics are solid, i.e. you accrue money to buy properties and collect money. There are also levels to the game.

So far, it’s fun, but lonely. I know, I did say geo isn’t as social as people think, but without a little social goodness, it’s just not as fun, e.g. I want to taunt people I know when they have to pay me rent.

This leads me to the biggest and most interesting news of late. Yelp is getting into the geo game by adding the ability to checkin to venues.

Yelp boasts 1.25 million users and loads of user-generated content. It’s extremely popular among its users and was hot enough to be a recently rumored target for acquisition by Google.

Not too shabby.

While I’m not a Yelp user, I know it’s well-liked, and I can see why their entry into geo is viewed as a threat to services like foursquare and Gowalla. I wonder though.

I wonder if Yelp will be able to convince its loyal users to checkin. After all, Yelp’s core value is its user reviews, which work best when they’re viewed as authentic. Whether they are authentic or not is a hotly debated topic.

Yelp’s core service is reviews and comments on reviews, not social features and not geo features.

So will Yelp users, many of which will not be familiar with services like foursquare use that feature? Beyond the obvious ability to get a “Regular” badge for repeat visits, Yelp hasn’t fleshed out much about the game mechanics of checkins.

As with foursquare, the assumption is that regulars would receive discounts from the merchant, but this would seem to taint the impartial nature of any review done by a regular, further adding to the storm around the veracity of Yelp’s reviews.

Also, there’s the real-time problem of checking in and writing a bad review, which removes the veil of autonomy that some use on Yelp. Merchants get upset about bad reviews on Yelp, and adding real-time to that equation could end in tears. Just saying.

Yelp will be an interesting test for geo, and one that Facebook will likely watch with interest. Though it released its geo-tagging of tweets months ago, Twitter has yet to see much uptake of the new service.

With geo services debuting APIs, I wonder how long before someone builds a checkin app that can check you in to all these services at once and update all the other location-based apps.

And while we’re on the subject, I wonder why Fire Eagle, the location broker, is never mentioned? Were they too early to the game, or does the open model just not work?

Wonder what the future holds for Fire Eagle as Yahoo evolves.

Anyway, find the comments to add your thoughts on geo and these services.Possibly Related Posts:

The Evolution of Crayon Colors

Jake — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:05:38 +0000

As a lover of data visualization, I couldn’t resist sharing this one from Stephen Von Worley depicting the evolution of beloved Crayola crayons from their humble roots as an eight-pack of fun in 1903 to today’s 120-pack.

I’m a total data geek, which is why I love data visualizations. I couldn’t help looking for patterns and analyzing the official chronology of what has been added, retired, renamed, etc. in each iteration.

Some noteworthy nuggets I found:

The original eight are all still in the box, and they were good enough for 32 years.
I wonder why, during the Great Depression, Crayola decided to double the number of colors. Seems like an odd time to innovate, due to higher costs, but definitely a morale booster during economic times, at least for those who could afford crayons. I wonder if the box of 16 became a status symbol.
There’s a good correlation with macroeconomic cycles, i.e. the 90s spurred lots of color innovation, raising the box to its current population of 120. Likewise, after the Bubble burst in 2000, the colors have remained more stable, and the box has stayed at 120.
I immediately wondered where the retired colors went; turns out they were enshrined in the Crayola Hall of Fame.
The color name changes mirror the political climates of the time.

Enjoy, and share any patterns or anomalies you see in these data. I love this stuff.Possibly Related Posts:

Next Jump and Why Data Win

Jake — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:49:06 +0000

Ever heard of a company called Next Jump? Me neither until I read this piece in the New York Times (h/t TechCrunch) last week.

Next Jump had stayed stealth for 15 years, raising $45 million in venture money and hiring 225 people, all the while signing 60% of the Fortune 500 as customers.

Not too shabby.

It gets better. Next Jump is in the data business. They operate employee discount and reward programs for about 90,000 companies, organizations and affinity groups reaching more than 100 million consumers.

They connect about 28,000 retailers and manufacturers, who typically provide deep discounts to Next Jump, to these 100 million plus consumers, of which 10 million actually become customers.

Why the discounts? Because Next Jump has great data.

Next Jump collects transactional data, preference data from its customers and demographic data about its customers from their employers. All of which, analyzed with a great algorithm, produces offers people really want to see.

This approach is better than social advertising offered by networks like Facebook. Next Jump is considered a benefits provider, i.e. they are contracted by HR to offer employees a benefit paid for by the company, and because of this status, they are granted access to some parts of the employee record, e.g. name, address, employment status, home and work address, marital status, and sometimes even job title or salary grade.

Next Jump cannot determine actual salaries, but the salary grade information is to put people into salary buckets, which is a key attribute.

Charlie Kim, founder of Next Jump calls income “the single largest predictor of future purchases,” so having this attribute is a huge differentiator. This is information most people would never put on Facebook, and it’s unaccessible to large online retailers like Amazon.

Next Jump knows that many people shop online at work, making them more likely to take advantage of an offer, especially one provided by their company as a perk.

Next Jump also gathers transactional data from credit card companies and collects preference information for all its customers, not only what they want to buy, but at what price point. Next Jump then acts as the broker, presenting these data to retailers.

Again, the fact that Next Jump is a benefits provider allows them better access to data.

Over the years, Next Jump has been collecting huge amounts of data and honing their algorithms, which makes for very high success rates.

The click-through rate on Next Jump’s offers is 60%. You read that right. 6-0. This is phenomenal compared to the 5% that is normally a high bar. Imagine your own behavior as an example. Do you click-through on 60% of the ads you see in email and on websites?

Next Jump is also excellent at converting browsers into buyers, achieving about 11, much higher than the 2% rate of effective e-commerce.

As they branch out beyond white label offerings to corporations and reach consumers directly, Next Jump’s goal is to become the Intel Inside of offers, e.g. Yahoo Daily Deals prominently features the “Powered by Next Jump” slogan.

Interesting, considering that back in 2005, when he defined Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly declared “Data is the next Intel Inside“.

I found this all fascinating and mildy unsettling. The idea that the covenant of work allows benefits providers access to my employee records is fine, but I hadn’t considered that providers like Next Jump existed to market to me.

Not a huge deal, I suppose, as long as the data about me are purged when I leave an employer. Seem irresponsible (and illegal) to warehouse the data of ex-employees; I assume that HR would ensure these data were removed, but who knows.

I also wonder if browsing history would ever qualify as accessible to Next Jump. If IT released the web server logs to Next Jump, they could further hone their offers to address specific products, possibly at a user (IP or MAC address) level.

Seems intrusive, but if you’re shopping on work time, using work assets, you’re walking a thin line. Anyway, the possibilities for data mining get pretty Big Brother if you think on this for a while.

Check out both the NYT and TechCrunch posts for more information on Next Jump.

The future holds more of this, so you might as well get used to how it works.

Find the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

What is WebCenter, Part 2

Jake — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:30:47 +0000

In case you’re following along at home, Vince has posted the second installment in his “What is WebCenter” series. You can find the first part here.

So far, he’s kept it pretty high level, which makes sense. I expect that in future parts he’ll dive into the nitty gritty details a bit more, e.g. he says his next part will cover “core design points”.

Drop a comment here or over at the official WebCenter blog if you have specific questions or want Vince to cover particular areas in his series.Possibly Related Posts:

My iPhone Dilemma

Jake — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:23:54 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter (@jkuramot), you might already know that my iPhone, the OG version, is failing.

I noticed last week it wasn’t charging or syncing over USB. I performed all the usual tests to trap the problem–swapped cables, swapped ports on the Mac and on my USB hubs, swapped ports on my Ubuntu box–nada.

I was really freaking out, as the battery faded, but luckily, I can still charge it with the AC adapter, if I jiggle the connection just right.

Not a good thing because behavior like this almost always spells the end of a gadget. An hour, mostly waiting, at the local Genius Bar, confirmed my suspicions; water damage, the Genius said, was corroding the port.

Crap. I’ve never dropped my iPhone in water. However, it does rain here in Portland sometimes, and I do talk on the phone in the rain. Still, the port is at the bottom of the phone, making it tough for gravity to put rain in there.

Weird.

So, it looks like I’m going to need to replace it. I can limp along for a while, but eventually, I’ll need to sync my calendar and iPhone OS updates from iTunes. Bummer.

Usually, I’d feel guiltless joy at the “need” to replace a gadget with a newer one because I love those shiny objects.

Not so much in this case because, frankly, I haven’t fully amortized that baby yet. I was one of the suckers who bought the OG iPhone at the full freight of $499, i.e. before the price cut.

And I’m out of contract with AT&T.

Before we go on here, I should clarify that I’m sticking with the iPhone, despite the numerous Android phones out there; I’m too attached to it, and the iPhone envy would consume me. I have love for Android, and the Nexus One looks awesome.

But I just can’t do it.

And no, I won’t consider a Palm or Windows device.

So, now I’m in a quandary with several options, and I’m looking for some good old crowdsourcing to help me suss out all the arguments.

The following are the choices I’m considering.

Buy a used OG iPhone and just swap my SIM card.
Buy a used or new third party (i.e. not AT&T) 3G iPhone and upgrade to the 3G plan.
Buy a new 3G iPhone from AT&T, upgrade to the 3G plan and get into another two-year contract.

I’m not considering a 3GS because I don’t really need video, and I’m pretty sure it will soon be out-dated. More on that in a minute.

Used OG iPhone
This is the easiest solution; all I need to do is locate a used OG iPhone and swap my SIM card. No change to my current plan, no new contract. No fuss, no mess.

Thanks to Twitter, I’ve already found a friend here in Portland willing to trade/sell me his old OG iPhone.

The only cons here is that it’s not a new shiny object, and it’s slower, both the device and the network.

This is the practical solution, but also the boring one.

Used/Third Party 3G iPhone
This solution allows me to get a new device on a faster network, and stay out of a new contract with AT&T.

The 3G data plan costs $10 more each month, plus $5 a month to get 200 text messages. So, my monthly outlay would go up $15, not terrible.

Thanks again to Twitter, John (@jpiwowar) has let me know he would sell me his used 3G at a very fair price. Even if John comes to his senses, I’m confident I could find a 3G at a decent price on Craigslist or through Twitter.

I’d also need to get a new hard shell case for it, since the OG accessories don’t fit the 3G phones properly. Not a big deal.

This plan is a nice combination of practical and shiny.

New 3G iPhone from AT&T
Finally, I could just buy a new 3G from AT&T for $99 and sign a two-year contract. The plan would still cost me $15 more each month, but the equipment would be cheaper. Oh, and I’d still need a new hard shell case for it.

I guess I’m least excited about this plan because it means a new contract with AT&T.

Other Factors
Apple is rumored to be updating the iPhone this June, which seems pretty solid, since they’ve done that two years running. Today, I saw the latest rumor that hints an update might come sooner to answer the wave of Android devices swarming the market.

This affects my decision by further burying the 3GS. I’m not about to pay full freight again, only to have a new model out-mode me within months.

I suppose I could wait, but I’m pretty sure I’ll need to sync before Apple gets around to announcing a new iPhone.

There are also rumors swirling that AT&T and Apple will be ending their exclusive agreement this year, bolstered by AT&T’s recent announcement that Android and Palm WebOS devices will soon be coming to their network.

I’m not sure how that would impact my decision, but it makes me less likely to sign a contract with AT&T. Will other networks may be offering deals to bring iPhone users to their networks? Seems risky, but possible.

The bottom line is, I just don’t know.

Find the comments and add your thoughts. Help me decide.Possibly Related Posts:

You Asked What is WebCenter . . .

Jake — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:28:48 +0000

A little while back, Chet (@oraclenerd) asked the Oracle WebCenter account (@oraclewebcenter) over Twitter, “What is WebCenter?”

Makes sense since Chet, and many others out there, are general Oracle practitioners, meaning they may specialize in a specific product, but are always curious and eager to expand their knowledge to other Oracle products, which is very easy to do thanks to OTN (@oracletechnet) and its developer licenses.

I like to think that WebCenter had risen to the top of Chet’s mind due to the WebCenter content published here, which has increased since we joined the team.

Anyway, “What is WebCenter” is a tough question to answer in 140 characters, and one I thought warranted some ink here. So, I went to the source.

Who better to answer this question than Vince Casarez, VP of Product Management for Oracle Enterprise 2.0 and Portal Products, and co-author of “Reshaping Your Business with Web 2.0: Using New Social Technologies to Lead Business Transformation“, which incidentally he cowrote with friend of the ‘Lab Billy Cripe (@billycripe).

So, I give you What is WebCenter, Part 1, courtesy of Vince.

As the title suggests, Vince plans to break his answer into multiple parts. I hope he’ll also include some customer case studies or quotes to add to the story.

Of course, much of this content already exists at oracle.com, e.g. Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer case study, but that doesn’t mean we can’t add more.

So, check out Vince’s post and comment there or here, if you like. We’re interested in your WebCenter impressions and stories.Possibly Related Posts:

Email Address Matters

Jake — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:32:09 +0000

Thanks to Reader, today I found this piece (h/t Slashdot and Lifehacker) by a freelance writer asking whether her aol.com email address was hopelessly square and dated.

I noticed this post initially because I can’t think of a single contact of mine with an aol.com address. I used to help a friend with AOL about five years ago, but eventually, she switched to Yahoo and forwarded her AOL account.

Lifehacker turned an interesting phrase by asking “What’s Your Email Prejudice?”, which totally rang true for me. You can tell (or assume, anyway) a lot about someone based on an email address, or more specifically, its domain.

In this case, I’m referring to consumer domains, i.e. webmail and for-pay inboxes provided by ISPs like AOL, Comcast, etc. not to work domains.

The more I thought about this, I realized that I expect a GMail account when vetting resumes or candidates for work or other collaboration. Frankly, an address on a personal domain is probably highest on the list, then GMail.

After that, they all seem pretty equal, maybe with aol.com at the bottom. Tough to tell really. I can’t recall the last time I came across that domain in a professional situation. I still see some yahoo.com and a few hotmail.com, but it feels like pretty much everyone has GMail.

Obviously, I work with a much geekier crowd than average, so I doubt my prejudices are typical.

I don’t usually notice the account name, not sure why, just the domain.

Looking back at my history of consumer webmail accounts, I can trace an interesting trajectory. I started out with Excite (mailexcite.com) and Hotmail (before they were acquired by Microsoft) addresses, then added yahoo.com and now I use GMail primarily.

Unlike most people, I never sent an announcement that I was moving, I just left the old accounts open and started communicating from the new account.

Everyone should have at least two email addresses e.g. a private account for real communication and one for potentially spammy situations that require a valid email. So, I don’t see a huge need for a moving email, unless the old service isn’t free (like AOL), and you plan to nuke the inbox.

Anyway, I find this fascinating, and I wonder why I hadn’t thought about it in the past. Email addresses, both the account and domain, are interesting sociological studies and can create impressions all by themselves.

Find the comments and share your email prejudices.Possibly Related Posts:

Twitter as Plumbing

Jake — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:29:51 +0000

Cue the jokes.

So, Chet (@oraclenerd) floated this notion, originally proposed in the NYT, and it’s completely true. Check the evidence: $25 million from Google and Microsoft to pump the firehose of tweets into search results, a full ecosystem built around the Twitter API, even an apps marketplace, Oneforty, built around the ecosystem.

Incidentally, Oneforty, the brainchild of Laura Fitton (@Pistachio), who covered OraTweet back in the day, recently raised some venture money and will be debuting its premium service next week.

So yeah, Twitter has become plumbing. I like the analogy because if Twitter gets clogged, then a lot of parties get, ahem, downstream, problems.

This is fun.

But check out “How Much Are Twitter’s Tweets Really Worth?” in BusinessWeek today for an interesting perspective.

Last year, Twitter’s 50 million users posted 8 billion tweets, according to research firm Synopsos, which means Google and Microsoft are paying roughly 3¢ for every 1,000 tweets. That’s a pittance in the world of online advertising. Top media sites often get $10 or $20 per thousand page views; even remnant inventory, leftover Web pages that get sold through ad networks, goes for 50¢ to $1 per thousand. The deals put “almost no value” on Twitter’s data, says Donnovan Andrews, vice-president of strategic development for the digital marketing agency Tribal Fusion.

OK, that really does add perspective.

In fact, it makes we wonder if the ecosystem might benefit more financially from tweets that Twitter actually does.

This is, of course, a tried and true business model for the Interwebs.

Look at Google. With Page Rank, they created a fast and accurate way to find information and took off from there. Google didn’t initially create content (or anything for that matter); they simply provided the plumbing.

Likewise, Twitter doesn’t create content, users do. Twitter, through its API, provides easy access to the content.

Unlike Google, Twitter’s path to this point was rife with uncertainty. Imagine hearing this pitched as a business plan in 2006. Way too much risk, which makes me assume a lot of Twitter’s success was happily accidental.

Twitter’s future isn’t assured either. I suppose, assuming continued growth, that they could negotiate higher prices for access, or use metadata, like geo-tagging, to up the asking price per tweet.

Facebook is a wildcard in the plumbing game (ah, the NSFW puns). Privacy concerns prevent them from turning on a firehose that would rival Twitter’s, but they seem determined to open up people’s News Feeds.

At a paltry $0.03 per update price, I doubt Facebook would care, but if the value rises, expect a battle over data ownership to ensue.

Thoughts you’d like to share? Sound off in the comments.Possibly Related Posts:

Checkin to Foursquare by Taking a Picture

Jake — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:42:19 +0000

I know I predicted that geo would be left at the altar 2010, but I think there’s huge potential in geo services.

Dissecting my prediction, I’m forecasting gang-busting growth for the “where-am-I” use case. Along those lines, I give you Photocheck.in (h/t TechCrunch), which hits two of my favorite things: geo and APIs.

In very simple terms, Photocheck.in lets you checkin to foursquare simply by taking a picture with your mobile phone.

You read that right. Sounds a bit like magic. Magic made possible by APIs and open data formats.

Here’s how it works:

Go to Photocheck.in, sign in with your foursquare credentials and authorize it to use your foursquare data.
Collect the email address to which you’ll send your photos.
Next time you’re out, take a photo of the location and email it to that @photocheck.in address.
Watch the magic happen.

The app was built by Jon Steinberg, and it uses the EXIF metadata that smartphones like the iPhone and Android devices apply to photos to approximate your location. It then checks you into foursquare using that approximate address.

Using the address rather than a venue to checkin excludes your checkin from the game aspects of foursquare like mayorship and badges (not sure about checkin points), but the concept is very cool.

In the future, Jon hopes to guess the venue using the EXIF data and, I assume, foursquare’s venue data.

I tested this out yesterday, expecting it to fail, since I have an OG iPhone. You know, the one without GPS. Much to my surprise, it worked. I guess the phone applies EXIF data based on the My Location feature that uses cell towers triangulation to find me.

Here’s my list of checkins from Photocheck.in:

Each checkin has details, including a map:

Here’s what the checkin looks like on foursquare:

The checkin was pretty accurate, checking me in at 3819 SE Holgate Blvd, when I was actually at 3909, but there is a cluster of businesses closer to 3819. So, Jon’s going to have some issues guessing the right venue in heavily developed area.

Overall, I’m excited by the app; it shows the mashup possibilities that create great use cases. Photo checkins have business applications, e.g. for package delivery or inventory shipment. Combining RFID and EXIF data from pictures would provide extra security for valuable shipments. I’m sure there are more use cases, but I’m not a domain expert.

The app also creates a new client for foursquare by allowing checkins from outside a foursquare app. This could lead to gaming, natch, e.g. by providing the @photocheck.in address to other people, you could checkin from anywhere, anytime.

Not that there’s a lot of incentive to game foursquare, but as they advance the game and the rewards, it becomes a concern.

The OAuth integration seems a bit off to me; I didn’t expect to have to provide my foursquare credentials. Usually in OAuth implementations, you’re immediately redirected to the Accept/Decline dialog on the data provider’s page. Not a big deal, just a bit odd.

Possibly Related Posts: