DISQUS

Jake, I've got this year's Christmas present picked out for you. You may like it so much you'll get one for the whole AppsLab team. ;) http://site.despair.com/socialmediatee/

I remember thinking how cool my resume would be if I could get a work-study job in a lab. What perspective...

Speaking of tripping over a cord and unplugging computers, I was a consultant at a place that stuck 10 of us in a small conference room with rows of folding tables as desks. We had to shimmy between chairs and tables to get to our workstation and you guessed it, I tripped on one guy's power strip, it came unplugged, he lost everything he had worked on for a couple of hours. Still feel bad about that incident.

I predict it will take Microsoft more than 10 days to resolve the Zune 30GB year 2009 bug. Ha ha Zune owners!

I think the economy situation is going to hinder consulting. (Probably not the biggest newsflash...) But I think it will be the catalyst for more startups as people who are out of work come up with ways to try and make ends meet. The upside of all the economic doom and gloom is that more companies will look for technology to provide better efficiencies in their business.

How your desk, computer, chair, and keyboard are set up makes a world of difference in productivity and health consequences. Avoid carpal tunnel, people!

I'm not in this group, but check out some cool (and some not) workspaces at http://wherewedowhatwedo.com and resolve to make some adjustments where your work for 2009.

Meh, I don't mind rich people buying shiney trophies that perform a function like an expensive car but something like this just proves vanity has taken over the reasoning lobe of their brain.

I don't see Apple as censoring the apps; rather, they're protecting the public from being scammed by spending an extravagant amount for an app that is only an icon. They would do the same if an app claimed to do something it didn't.

I remember using BASIC to code a game called "Snakes" in 7th grade. It was on some early Apple computer using a cassette tape to save our game. We also had the Commodore 64 at home. I would program it to display crude ascii art but mostly play the games on cartridges.

This post makes me want to order the 25th anniversary of War Games and show it to my kids and show them how it was back in the day.

I've had comments edited by removing a sentence or two because the author didn't like them. (Not here, obviously!) Frustrating that someone would remove something instead of addressing it. And since my email address is always required when I comment, why didn't they mail me to let me know of the edit?

I personally think people who run their blogs this way are full of themselves or are just a bully. I rarely read/visit them after that.

RSS should be everyone's standard. It brings every website you want to you without browsing there. What a great time saver.

I dislike it when people zombie reply to all but enjoy the rants that follow. I always wonder why some email admin person doesn't do something to stop the spam. (Not being an email admin I wonder if there is such an ability...)

However, I'm not totally innocent in these cases. Three or four years ago after at least 50 "please unsubscribe" and flame replies to the initial gaffe that was sent to 500+ employees, I replied to all with the response "You are all now off my Christmas card list!" =) Some people I didn't even know replied to me asking me to reconsider.

Without sounding like a physcologist, I think these things are coincidental but they make you realize or remember something you didn't intend to. I doubt God is forcing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on you as a punishment (or reward depending on your musical tastes) but I can certainly relate. Justin Timberlake's song "Love Stoned" uses a keyboard sample or a close remake from Salt-n-Pepa's song "Push It" and it was stuck in my head for a week before I realized it was Salt-n-Pepa. I probably haven't heard "Push It" since 1992, (and resented it at the time) but that tune got looping in my head and one day I inexplicably figured it out.

Another example is seeing a picture of Garth Brooks on tv or a magazine cover and I think of my childhood best friend who looks a lot like Garth. Then I'll remember playing basketball with him or something and his phone number will pop in to my head; 489-4548. It's easily been more than twenty years since I've dialed that number and I have only seen Frank twice in the last seven years since I live in a different state. Go figure!

Forgot to mention the two I found while clearing out cookies: login.oracle.com which goes to an Oracle Identity Management overview page but I'm pretty sure that's not what is intended. I think the cookie is there from logging in to OTN.

And search.oracle.com Lets you search multiple Oracle domains.

otnsemanticweb.oracle.com is beta but it's real enough to me. :)

Found a bookmark to htmldb.oracle.com which still works instead of redirecting to APEX.

Props for responding to your loyal readers and not responding "That's so web0.5!" ;)

Any chance of fixing the email validation that keeps me from submitting ideas because I use my Yahoo address instead of my work/Oracle customer address?

Jake,

Don't let the wet socks get to you. Let them turn off their servers and sit in the dark by themselves while everyone else has a fun time playing.

Eddie already has categories in OraNA with their own RSS feed. He just needs to publicize it more so everyone with readers will know and use them. Of course, then he'd get blamed by the wet socks for spamming OraNA with a post for each feed. ;)

Matt

I used Mosaic first in 1994 at Syracuse University but switched to Netscape as soon as I found out about it. Netscape seemed cooler for reasons I don't recall. Then came their huge IPO and all the cool stuff Netscape did as a company to demonstrate the web. Remember their web page that let you enter a message in a form and it would display your message on a scrolling LED sign somewhere at Netscape headquarters and show it to you with a web cam? Much better than the "blink" tag.

I still used Netscape up 'till version 7.something until switching to Firefox when it became unbearable to use with AOL's foulups. RIP Netscape, old pal.

Huh, I've never experienced that so thanks for the tip. However, the biggest sin he committed was hard-coding a value instead of referencing the block.field value. Think of the noobs who will see this and do the same. ;)

First and foremost, I'm subscribed to hear what Oracle is doing or at least interested in regarding web 2.0 and related technologies. If you were Apple, Sun, SAP or (shudder) Microsoft, I would not care. It's hard due to privacy and strategy concerns, but I would like to hear more about your progress and successes.

Second, I like AppsLab's take on computing and applications, i.e. "top 10 reasons Java", etc. It wouldn't hurt to get more posts from the rest of the group or more writers / guest writers from time to time. (Can't believe Jake hasn't experienced writer's block yet.) I'd specifically like to get recaps of the events you sponsor/advertise in your "Events" widget - that would be huge.

Third, I like the variety of other topics you point out. That's one thing that drew me to blogs is to see what interests other people I have respect for. For example, comments and reviews on gadgets, workspace, humor, etc. There could always be more of these. :)

GUI is much easier to use and new users learn the concepts faster because of it. We expect more from modern apps because they deliver more.

However, you're right when you say "Mousing wastes time." In Oracle Apps, I can hit F11 and start my query much faster than clicking View - Query by Example - Enter from the toolbar; 1 keystroke > 3 mouse clicks. Or if I want to start Firefox I hit Ctrl + Esc, then the F key. If I want to open that spreadsheet from yesterday I hit Ctrl + Esc, the D key, and the letter of the file name to open it from My Recent Documents. Try it, you'll like it!

The cubicles all have windows here, which was hard to get used to seeing every move people make. It's distracting but the real sunlight makes up for it. I have to use headphones to drown out other peoples' conversations because cubicles can never do it right.

I've seen companies stuff consultants, auditors, etc into conference rooms and then wonder why they're aren't productive or as happy as everyone else. Many places use desks and cubicle dividers until they fall apart; they wind up with a grotesque mish-mash of furniture. I've also worked at companies that wanted to do the right thing and bought new desks, cubicles, etc when moving to bigger offices but they always went with battleship-gray that just made you feel blah. No more splinters from wood desks or old gum sticking to your knees from the underside of the desk, but... ug.

There is so much evidence that office design affects performance, productivity and morale. Very few get it. I'd love to work in a building with this kind of design. (I'll bet the tiny pictures don't do the office justice.)

Patrick, you can get your MetaLink headlines emailed to you every day. I know it's not as good as RSS but it works if you want to see what's new...

This is cool; thanks for letting us know. Somehow, I've missed the fact that OraNA exists. I just added it to my Yahoo page to compare the rate of updates and posts between Oracle Blogs and OraBlogs. My way of aggregating the aggregators. ;)

My real intent is to comment on the picture you used: Very funny and apropos for all the "Appleism" believers. (Yes, I know the original work; just don't tell others or you'll get a bunch of blasphemous comments.)