Web Page Tools and Browser CGI flash Plugins and Dynamic Controls

Apple Patents Travel, Hotel and Fashion Applications

Three new patent applications which just became public on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website reveal that Apple is now patenting ideas for mobile applications. Specifically, these patents applications describe iPhone apps that would aid in making travel arrangements, booking hotels and shopping.

The patent applications were uncovered this morning by wireless news site Unwired, which called the development "scary" and equated Apple to a patent troll. If granted, these apps would allow Apple to patent ways in which mobile applications function, including everything from mobile boarding passes to store locator functions.

Sponsor

Here's what each app would do:

Travel

The travel application would help users make reservations, create an itinerary, view airport guides and information, use mobile boarding passes, check-in to flights remotely, access in-flight services, send and receive automatic arrival notifications and browse and send travel guides and promotions. The app would also have built-in social networking to aid in finding nearby friends or others in the vicinity interested in socializing.

Hotels

The hotel application would allow a user to check in and check out via the app, order hotel services (e.g. making reservations at the spa, ordering or pre-ordering room service, scheduling wake up calls, etc.) book tickets for nearby attractions, schedule reminders and control room settings even when away from the room (think AC, audio/video equipment, etc.). The app could also be used as a universal remote control for the hotel room's TV and video equipment and could suggest programming choices based on stored user profile information. 

Shopping

The mobile shopping application focuses on connecting users to high fashion. The app would send invitations and reminders regarding fashion events, display fashion ads, allow the user to browse through inventory of stores, offer a store locator function, recommend items and check for availability, and display ratings and reviews for stores. Social networking is incorporated into this app, too, allowing friends to provide feedback on fashion items. The app could also provide details on items snapped using the phone's camera.

Why is Apple Competing with Its Developers?

While on the one hand, the above applications sound fantastic and certainly like things we would want to use, the fact that the patents are coming from Apple and not some enterprising startup is somewhat unsettling.

It's not unusual for Apple (or any company) to patent its ideas, but most of Apple's previous patents have been for technology improvements, like using wireless sensors as heart rate monitors, tracking sports in real-time, allowing iPhones to "socially network" with each other when in proximity with one another or modifications to the iPhone's homescreen. Apple has not been in the habit of patenting actual mobile applications.

What does this mean for companies already building applications similar to these? For example, OpenWays, which has already built mobile applications that allow smartphones to work as hotel room keys or Socialight which can be used to build a "virtual hotel concierge" service, among other things? What of the fact that multiple airlines already have their own mobile boarding pass applications? What of the universal remote apps like FLPR, Bobby, L5 and RedEye, to name just a few? And the list could go on and on.

Does Apple want to compete with these developers with its own native apps or does it just want license this technology to others building related services? Are these patents defensive maneuvers to block Google from providing services like these on its Android mobile operating system?

News like this is one of the reasons why so many in the technology industry are so vehemently against the idea of software patents. Foundry Group's managing director Brad Feld, for example, recently called the litigation surrounding patents "a massive tax on and retardant of innovation." Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady agreed, saying "it is not reasonable to expect that the current patent system, nor even one designed to improve or replace it, will ever be able to accurately determine what might be considered legitimately patentable from the overwhelming volume of innovations in software."

Philosophical arguments aside, given Apple's cryptic ways and its behavior when dealing with competition (see: Adobe, AdMob, Flurry Analytics), the idea of Apple venturing into its developers' playing field is one that could greatly affect the innovation in mobile applications for years to come. Discuss

Memcached: What is it and what does it do?

PostRank Live with Google Buzz Firehose

Before now, PostRank, the popular social media analytics service, had to manually crawl all Google Buzz accounts and subscribe to the public feeds it found separately prior to meshing that information with the rest of its data. It was unlikely that all the public feeds made it into PostRank and the process "imposed a high server tax for both sides."

Now, however, with the Google Buzz firehose, PostRank subscribes to one real-time PubSubHubbub feed of all publicly-available Google info. PostRank's users, the company says, will notice a big difference in the amount and depth of Buzz content.

Sponsor

PostRank's Ilya Grigorik explains.

"If you're an Analytics subscriber, then you will see greatly improved coverage of Google Buzz starting today: more users, more meta-data, and a more complete activity stream on your dashboard. And if you're a user of our Data Services, RSS feeds, or API's, then you will also undoubtedly benefit from the improved coverage of Buzz activity: more accurate engagement scores, and more accurate PostRank scores."

PostRank measures the level of public engagement with online content. It determines how interesting and relevant a piece of content (blog post, article, vides, etc.) is "by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience's interaction" it. So the ability to completely represent a popular service like Buzz is integral to maintaining PostRank's efficacy.

Read more ReadWriteWeb coverage of PostRank and Google Buzz.

Hurricane Season: The Push for Cloud-Based Disaster Recover Plans

There's an old Dilbert comic in which Dilbert explains his company's disaster recovery plan: it consists of running around in a panic, screaming "help! help!" As with most Dilbert comics, the comedy is intertwined with the tragic truth: most of us are woefully unprepared - at work and at home - for a disaster that wipes out our technology and our data.

Sponsor

We're a month or so into the official hurricane season for both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the time of year when those who find themselves in the path of destructive storms determine what sorts of precautions they will take to protect their homes, businesses, lives, and yes, their data. A series of stories this past week in the Miami Herald on the adoption of cloud computing in what the story calls "mainstream firms" in south Florida may be well-timed then. In addition to efficiency and cost-savings touted by the article, the need for a disaster recovery plan is also part of what is driving many businesses in the region to adopt cloud technologies. Cloud-based services, according to one local data center manager cited in the article, are the fastest growing segment line for his company, and the demand for them is growing at an increasing rate.

While the Miami Herald article notes that it's still a small number of firms in the region that have embraced the cloud, it may be that the ease with which cloud-based disaster recovery plans can be implemented is what helps convince more individuals and more businesses - not just in south Florida - to reconsider some of their uncertainties about cloud computing.

The humorous pandemonium in the Dilbert cartoon aside, many small and medium sized businesses have foregone disaster recovery plans because they are costly and cumbersome. How will you administer your remote storage? How will you transport the data there? How will you make sure the information is synced? How will you test it regularly? Before the advent of cloud-based tools, developing a formal disaster recovery plan often wasn't very practical.

And while there are still challenges (the bandwidth required to move massive amounts of data being one of them), the cloud can make it much easier to implement a disaster recovery plan:

It's not simply those in hurricane-prone regions that need to consider disaster recovery obviously, but as the hurricane season heats up, it may be a good reminder about the importance of planning for the worst.

Half Past a Freckle: The Software That Could Make You Wear a Watch Again

Wristwatch and apparel maker Fossil is developing a new watch with an open software development kit (SDK) to allow any kind of notifications to be pushed by bluetooth from your mobile phone to a watch display. The company believes it could win the hearts of geeks by combining programability, real-time data and fashion.

Could that get you wearing a watch again? After hearing the company's reasons why a watch could be best suited for certain types of notifications, I went from skeptical to definitely interested. Here's why Fossil thinks a watch is what the real-time web needs.

Sponsor

We talked to Bill Geiser, Vice President of the Innovation Team at Fossil, who's been working on bringing data beyond the time to watches for years. Here's why he believes the wristwatch is the ideal interface for certain real-time notifications. I find these arguments compelling. Do you?

Some types of notifications can best be consumed at a glance - ones that are short, actionable and time sensitive, Geiser argues. Think geolocation, Twitter DMs, medical or industrial alerts. "Imagine the hundreds of interruptions we're going to get in the future," he says.

"A watch is the world's greatest glancable display but you need to be able to consume it all in a glance. As a product team, we have to have a very healthy respect for the Input/Output capacity of your device. Watches have little of both. But for a particular kind of push notifications, a watch is a very cool place to consume those."

Right: Related. Google transit geek Joe Hughes writes, "This is my Sony Ericsson MBW-150 bluetooth watch, showing the next few SF Muni bus arrival times for a nearby stop. The code to fetch the arrival times is running on my Droid phone, and communicating with the watch using Marcel Dopita's OpenWatch software for the Android platform."

I'm interested in location-bookmarking and geofencing. Hit my phone whenever I'm near an important historical landmark. Is there an historical photo available on Flickr of the place I'm at from more than 50 years ago? Has the intersection I'm standing at been in the news lately, for good or bad reasons? I'd like to glance at that info on my wrist, in case I want to view said photo or news stories on my phone. The possibilities are wide ranging. Add some internet of things data and you'll be able to see on your watch if your refrigerator is running, so you can go run after and catch it.

Unlike a mobile phone, a watch's default display mode is on, Geiser points out. The forthcoming Fossil programmable watch will be an analog display with a little bit of digital space. Think of the opportunity and social cost of pulling out your phone and turning it on, compared to glancing at a watch display that's already on and at hand. That small difference in user experience could have a big impact on our data consumption habits. Bill was in China when I DMd him on Twitter requesting an interview. His wristwatch vibrated, showed him my message and he got back to me almost immediately.

"The rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated," Geiser says of the wristwatch industry.

"People are saying the wristwatch will go the way of the buggy whip - in no way is that true. The mobile experience already isn't tied to one display. If I've got a hands free kit in my car, my car dashboard becomes a display for my phone. But if you're going to wear something, it had better look good. Our best days are in front of us because of these kinds of possibilities. The watch actually serves to create a very useful experience."

The next Fossil programmable watch is still in development but will be available as a developers' preview before it hits the mass market.

The Cloud Can Save Us Billions...But Can We Afford it?

Yesterday the Oregon state treasurer's office announced that it has seen power consumption in its data center drop 25% in the first month since it adopted a virtualized infrastructure.

That kind of example makes it seem like cloud computing and virtualization are viable options for leaders at the state and federal levels of government. It's a correct assumption. But the reality is all together different.

This week the Obama administration ordered a stop in upgrades to 30 major information technology projects, a decision that, according to The Washington Post, impacts about $20 billion in government spending. The projects were designed to upgrade computer systems that manage financial information and transactions for federal agencies.

Sponsor

The news reflects a paradox for the Obama administration. It is a big proponent of cloud computing but it faces pressures from all sides to cut expenses. Elections are coming up and the GOP has some influence. In that respect, the spending cut is as much about politics as it is about managing technology infrastructure.

Thanks to the recession, anxiety about job loss is in full bloom. In this environment, moving IT assets to the cloud or adopting virtualization can be perceived as a potential threat.

That dynamic creates a challenge for IT. Ongoing advances in virtualized and cloud computing environments could help governments save billions of dollars. But what exists instead is a patchwork network with little data exchange between government entities and even less accessibility to information about the running of government. It's a problem with implications at the local, state and national levels.

Terror Threat: Data Failure?

The patchwork network problem is apparent at the highest levels of government. Sharing between federal agencies is impeded as the ability to share information often involves extracting it from silos and then aggregating and analyzing it for subsequent collaboration and review. The data from each silo has to be viewed almost in singularity. That can be time consuming, expensive and error-prone.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit, had been entered in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) system before he attempted his attack. TIDE contains the list of about 550,000 known or suspected terrorists. He had been reported by his father to the United States Embassy in Nigeria, who had believed his son had been radicalized. But no one prevented Abdulmutallab from attempting to attack a Northwest Airlines flight as it started its descent into Detroit last year on Christmas Day.

From The Atlantic:

"Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name was in the database, officials have said, along with biographical information and the warning provided by his father, who told the CIA's chief of station in Nigeria that Abdulmutallab had fallen in with terrorists. Why Abdulmutallab's name was not forwarded to the State Department or the FBI for further review, especially in light of warnings about Nigerians preparing to attack the United States, is the focus of an intense investigation. Datamarts like TIDES are only as good as the info that goes in and only as good as the common format it is compared against."

And this from Wired:

"[A] Justice Department inspector general report earlier this year found that the FBI was mishandling the watch list and was failing to add legitimate suspects under terrorist investigation to the list while also failing to properly update and remove records from the list, subjecting U.S. citizens to unjustified scrutiny."

Next page: Even the antiterrorism database has been slated for budget cuts.

It's conceivable that better data storage, analysis and optimization could have provided the capability to discover information about Abdulmutallaband and get it to the people who need to make quick decisions.

The task of passing critical information relies on processes that require checking multiple sources. Why the FBI is mishandling data is a reflection on how we have been dealing with the process of modernizing legacy environments and outmoded database environments.

A dearth of funding mires many government agencies. Even the antiterrorism database has been slated for budget cuts. Again, from The Atlantic:

"According to one official, who asked not to be identified because intelligence budget matters are classified, the administration and Congress slashed the budget for the National Counterterrorism Center by at least $25 million. Those affected, the official said, included employees responsible for maintaining the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) system, which contains the list of about 550,000 known or suspected terrorists."

Starving IT: Legacy Environments

It's almost come to the point of starving for some agencies. The IT environment becomes so antiquated that sustaining life is all that matters. Virtulization is impossible as changes to the entire system are required even to access data.

The state of New Jersey, for instance, has a payroll system that is 41 years old.

What's striking is how poorly the New Jersey government is serving the public by not updating these aged systems. Information that should be freely available to the public is so locked up that it can't be reached. Only the most important agencies get the funding needed to keep systems modernized.

According to The Press of Atlantic City, the problem became apparent when the newspaper's requests for computerized records from two state agencies couldn't be granted because of severe technical limitations.

"In one case, the records are not even kept on computers. In another, The Press was told agency operations would halt if it attempted to copy the computerized records requested.

Situations like these mean that independent - or even state - analysis of certain records to find trends or trouble spots is impossible. For example, The Press sought to analyze complaints about injuries inflicted on customers by nail salons. Without computer technology, that work would be overwhelming or cost-prohibitive. The newspaper also sought to analyze complaints against cable television providers. The analysis was not feasible given the outdated technology."

In the article, New Jersey State Treasurer Andrew Sidemon echoes the sentiment about the lack of funding:

"But Ebeid said funding has not allowed widespread modernizing of systems, only for maintenance of what's installed now. The gulf between departments, where some run these "legacy" systems while others have been modernized, has depended on raising the funds themselves.

But most other departments rely on the general fund. Those, Ebeid said, have been left with the old technology from previous generations. Young information technology (IT) staff, fluent in current programming languages, have even been trained to work with those old machines."

Legacy systems are often maintained by an older generation of IT professionals who were schooled in the complexities of heavyweight applications tied to central-server networks. Managing these networks is a bit of an art form. Technicians and engineers each wield their own unique set of skills. They write scripts that repair problems. Over time, it's analogous to using too much duct tape.

The Politics of IT Savings

And then there is - as we mentioned earlier - the issue of jobs. Chief information officers from the state and federal level gathered earlier this month at the Government Technology Research Alliance conference. Their remarks at the time highlighted the problems associated with jobs and the adoption of modern technologies.

According to Government Computer News, there's a push by the Office of Management and Budget to consolidate data centers. It makes sense. There are 100 federal agencies. Each one has anywhere from five to 20 data centers.

Ken Griffey is transition manager for NASA's National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage (NCCIPS), a federal shared services data center. NCCIPS hosts data centers for the Homeland Security and Transportation departments, as well as the Navy's supercomputers.

Government Computer News wrote that:

"Pure common sense says that we can save billions if we consolidate," Griffey said."I wonder how practical that is going to be. NASA has 10 fiefdoms. NASA appears to be an agency on the surface, but it is very politically driven for each state that has a NASA center."

The challenge, he said, results from the fact that NASA data centers provide jobs. It's unlikely that any state is going to volunteer to give up its data center and the 1,000 or so jobs the center provides.

"I see those as obstacles to data center consolidation. The obstacles are more in the political arena," Griffey said.

Success Stories

While there are significant obstacles, success stories do exist. GCN points to the state of Utah, which consolidated from 35 data centers down to two. The state now has enough scale that it can provide data center capabilities to cities and counties. The cities and counties then pay for data center services out of their operational budgets.

And in the state of Oregon, its treasury department isn't content with just reducing power consumption. It's also replacing its servers in two phases. In the first phase, 37 servers have been virtualized. The department says that equates to about $46,000 in hardware costs. In the second phase, the state will save about $373,000.

New Google News is More Personal and Spontaneous

Google News today announced it is rolling out a new layout with new features designed to bring readers a more personalized, local and social news experience. While still highlighting top stories and adding a list of trending topics similar to Twitter's, Google is now giving the reader additional customization options and adding a section for local news and weather, among other features. As Megan Garber at The Neiman Journalism Lab puts it: "The new site is trying to balance two major, and often conflicting, goals of news consumption: personalization and serendipity."

Sponsor

The new "News for you" section is an enhanced version of the old "Recommended" section, giving readers the ability to rank both topics and sources up and down, and add additional topics to their news stream. By allowing users to exclude topics and sources they don't want to read about, they're free to create personal "info bubbles" of their own design.

In order to keep readers abreast of the world outside their custom bubble, Google has added the "trending topics" section (something that's been showing up in the wild since February) and is keeping the "Top Stories" section at the top of the center column. Google is also giving its "Spotlight" section, dedicated to in-depth stories and longer lasting stories, a more prominent spot on the right column.

Local news and weather features are being added to the right column, rounding out the personalization of service.

A new "sharing button" is being added to each story to enable easy sharing via Buzz, Reader, Facebook or Twitter, and presumably to mine more data to better personalize the "News for You" section.

News is a key part of Google's ongoing strategy. Recently, rumors circulated that Google approaching news outlets about a micropayment system for content. In May, Atlantic Monthly ran an extensive article by James Fallows on Google's ambitions towards saving the news industry.

New CSS Reference Guide and Improved JavaFX API docs

The Future of Location Data, Beyond Social Networking

Data about the geographic locations of people and things will in the near-term future become a massive flow of sensor, satellite and citizen input made freely available to developers through government and other collaboration programs. It will be available in real time, to and from mobile devices, and be machine processed to pick out objects and patterns that can be used as hooks for mashups.

That's the vision of geospatial specialist Matt Ball, articulated in a high-value blog post today titled How will the geospatial data market evolve over the next ten years? The post provides a great look at the way the future may take shape, if current trends unfold as expected.

Sponsor

"The next ten years," Ball writes, "will be a time of many changes, but will also bring a greater empowerment of the GIS [geographic information systems] user given the amount of available data, with much of it for free."

Volunteered Data

Ball points to Open Street Map as a free, collaborative location platform that "nearly matches that of the commercial providers, and in some cases it surpasses it for accuracy and level of detail."

Open Street Map is a good example of an emerging location platform. See, for example, TopOSM, a collection of topographical maps based on Open Street Map. Blogger Leszek Pawlowicz described the state of that project in detail last month.

Along with web-based volunteered data, mobile is aimed to become a force of deep disruption. Ball puts it very well, like this:

The better location precision of these devices will help greatly in both the collection of accurate geospatial data, and the delivery of helpful location-aware applications. The mobile platforms are quickly dwarfing all other computing platforms in terms of their number, and their pace of innovation. This trend will continue to the point where we have less robust computing platforms, but much greater connectivity to each other and the details that are of interest to us.

Higher-Level Developments

Ball also offers inspiring descriptions of the rise of sensor data, machine processing ("machine learning and automated extraction tools that pull information from data"), real-time data, standards and government mashup contests. (To take a peek into the conversation about remote sensing and machine extraction of geographic entities for mapping, check out this forthcoming conference by the International Cartographic Association in November.)

The resulting landscape is one that could look like this, he says: "The 'app for that' mentality could easily take hold toward a 'data for that' ability, with the software developer orchestrating the different data feeds in order to create custom solutions."

It's an awesome vision of location data as a platform for innovation, something we've discussed before specifically in reference to location based social networks and aerial surveillance video APIs.

Ball believes this will emerge as a key area of specialization, knowledge work and innovation. We're apt to agree, which is why we track developments in location technology closely and so appreciate articulations like Ball's of the space.

Additional reporting by Justin Houk.

Google Rolls Out Ad Tags Nationwide

Last month, Google announced the advent of "Tags." For $25 monthly, businesses can leverage these yellow symbols to communicate additional information. Tags rolled out initially on a trial basis in 11 cities. As of late last week, they are becoming available nationwide.

Tags appear below a business's listing and carry information such as coupon offers, sales and website URLs. Starting with the states where the previous 11 trial cities are located, the goal is to roll them out across the U.S. Currently, the only place they are available statewide is in California.

Sponsor

The next states they will be available in will include Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Illinois and Washington.

Location-based advertising has proven very profitable, as we have reported before. One in four U.S. adults use location-based services. Half of those users engage with location-based advertisements on those services. Check-in service Foursquare has grown wildly. Competitors like TopGuest have entered the arena, offering real-world deals.

We looked up vinyl, books, shoes, archery and other searches in both San Francisco and Seattle to no effect. (The screenshot above is from the Google announcement) Admittedly, this is in the early stages. But, Google Tags will prove useful, to both businesses and customers, only if they get used and get seen.

Thanks to Charly Omer

Is There Art on YouTube? Guggenheim Wants to Find Out

The Guggenheim Museum is teaming up with YouTube in partnership with HP to discover the art of YouTube videos. Tasked with uncovering the "most creative video in the world," the companies have launched an international search by way of YouTube Play, a specially branded YouTube channel that will feature the entries in this new competition.

Sponsor

About YouTube Play

Anyone is invited to submit a video to YouTube Play, even video creators themselves, and the submission deadline is July 31.

The videos may consist of animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and even "entirely new art forms" that challenge the perception of what's possible to do with video, explains the YouTube blog post about this unique collaboration project.

Two hundred of the leading videos will be selected for further attention by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Twenty of those initial 200 videos will then be presented at the Guggenheim. Yes, that's right - at the Guggenheim itself. The YouTube videos will appear in the Guggenheim network of museums in New York, Bilbao, Venice and Berlin on October 21 and will be made available for the world to see on the youtube.com/play channel.

This isn't a contest per se, as the winning videos don't receive a cash prize or other sort of physical reward. But having a video dubbed "art" and being showcased internationally in one of the world's most famous art museums, is a reward in and of itself, most would agree.

This isn't the first time YouTube has proven itself the medium of choice for artists worldwide. Last year, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, an online experiment in music, sought out musicians to participate in the world's first collaborative online orchestra where the endgame was a performance at Carnegie Hall.

YouTube: Internet Leads to Instant Success?

What's most interesting about this current art competition as well as the Online Orchestra is the way that it is able to surface undiscovered talents and allow them to achieve fame without all the requisite toiling and tolling for years in "starving artist" mode, as was once par for the course for those wanting to break into the art world. Instead, with YouTube, a handful of videos can lead to a lifetime of success. Just ask Justin Bieber. Or Soulja Boy. Or Esmee Denters. Or Journey's new singer Arenl Pineda, discovered a few years ago. Or FRED, the annoyingly overactive boy whose high-pitched voice befuddles parents but whose videos and associated kid-friendly merchandise have made the teen rich beyond belief.

But while the above are certainly high-profiled examples, let's be clear about one thing: When it comes to art and music, YouTube hasn't surfaced the next Leonardo or Monet, the next Beatles or Stones, the next Janis Joplin or Jimmy Hendrix. To date, the folks who have made their way up through YouTube are not necessarily, forgive me Bieber fans, going to make their mark in the annals of history as being among "the best of the best." In some cases they may be great... but are they the greatest? Really?

However, with this contest, that may change. For next-gen video artists, there's surely no better place than YouTube to flex your artistic muscles. It should be interesting to see what video creation wins this latest attempt to elevate YouTube to art form. The end result will likely be just that: art.

OWB és heterogén adatforrások, Oracle Magazine, 2010. május-június

Megjelent az Oracle Magazine aktuális száma (naná, az aktuális számnak ez a dolga. Oracle Magazine, 2010. május-június.
Ebben a számban sok érdekes cikk közül válogathatunk: cloud computing, Java, .Net, új generációs backup, párhuzamosság és PL/SQL, OWB,...
Ajánlom a Business Intelligence - Oracle Warehouse Builder 11g Release 2 and Heterogeneous Databases cikket, melyben megtudhatjuk, hogyan használhatunk heterogén adatforrásokat az Oracle Warehouse Builder ETL-ELT eszközzel, hogyan tudunk például SQL Serverhez csatlakozni, és nagy teljesítménnyel adatokat kinyerni. Az Oracle adatintegrációs weblapja.
Ez a gazdag heterogenitás az OWB az Oracle Data Integrator testvér termékb?l jön. Az adatintegrációs SOD azt mondja, hogy ez a két Java alapú termék, az OWB és az ODI egy termékben fognak egyesülni.

The 30 Best (And Worst) Web Tech Tattoos

Love Linux? Love your Mac? No you don't - not like the hundreds of people out there with Apple and Tux tattoos. But even then, that's not hard core - it's not like Apple is just a Web 2.0 darling du jour.

Sponsor

This is Lynn LaVallee's monument to the composition of the Web: "I'm a Web engineer," she explained to the L.A. Times, "so the tattoo represents the proper separation layers of a Web document. The first file is the structural layer - which is the house. The second is the presentational layer - CSS - and the third is the behavioral layer, which is JavaScript."

RSS

Wordpress/Drupal

Google

Farmville Hot Rod Tractor

@critter

Rackspace

Cisco

Fork Bomb

(Don't know what a fork bomb is?)

Firefox/Safari

Android/BlackBerry App World

@BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi

Want more? Geekytattoos.com is a good place to start. Got your own geek ink you want to share? Let us know about it in the comments.

Lead photo: fiatlux. Lynn LaVallee: jayzombie. RSS: gorillasushi, bestdamntech, creepysleepy. Wordpress/Drupal: bakershours.com, vegasgeek, Dries Buytaert. Google: ivanmor, growabrain, mezdeathhead. Farmville Hot Rod Tractor: geekytattoos.com. @critter: digitalpapercuts, korneliuz, freezerburns.com, critterscode.com, trioutnc.com. Rackspace/Cisco: MarJor24, simonov, geekologie.com. Fork Bomb: silveiraneto. Firefox/Safari: liveneedle.com, fisherwy.blogspot.com, bmezine.com. Android/BlackBerry App World: ivanmor, gadgets.boingboing.net, blindfutur3. @BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi: supeertakai, urdb.org, geekytattoos.com.

Google Maps Now Makes Getting on the Right Train Easier

Earlier this month, Google announced the addition of biking directions to Google Maps. Today, Google is also enhancing its maps by adding more data about local public transit options. Whenever you search for a train station in Google Maps, you can now see a list of transit lines that service this station. Google Maps will also display the next scheduled departure times for every line.

Sponsor

We have to say, however, that while this feature worked great for the example given in Google's blog post ("Zurich HB") and most of the larger transit stations in big cities like New York, finding the right name for smaller train stations can be rather frustrating.

One More Feature That Sets Google Apart from the Competition

While this is only a small addition to Google's mapping product, the constant drumbeat of new features and partnerships that Google Maps announces on an almost-weekly basis makes it hard for competitors like Bing Maps to keep pace. Even though Bing Maps offers a very competitive set of mapping and directions features that still outperform Google Maps in many ways, Google is currently offering a more comprehensive set of features. Thanks to Google's strong emphasis on getting local businesses to update their own data in Google Maps, the company is also able to offer better results for local searches.

Given Microsoft's renewed focus on Bing - and the Web in general - it would be wrong to count Bing Maps out, but for the time being, it looks like it will be hard for Microsoft to catch up with Google.

What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience

Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism.

Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler.

Weekend Reading: Drive, by Daniel Pink

The businesses of the 21st century are rapidly evolving to incorporate radical new methods of running a business and managing employees, and no group knows this better than the startup community. Startups have been at the cutting edge of innovation not only in the products they create, but in the way they run their companies and treat their workers. In this week's Weekend Reading selection, we look into how years of scientific research has uncovered what motivates people to be outstanding employees and how successful companies are incorporating these methods.

Sponsor

This week's book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by author Daniel Pink, attempts to uproot traditional business incentive models and teach us how we can be better motivated to produce amazing work. As Pink discusses in the book, humans are biologically wired to specific factors that can help them be more productive: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy is our desire to direct our lives in the direction we want, instead of being told what to do, or where to go. When we choose to do tasks on our own, our ability to complete them in a timely and skillful manner skyrockets. Pink spoke earlier this year at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in London (see video below) where he went over some of the lessons in his book. Software company Atlassian, he says, gives employees a day each week to work on whatever they want with whoever they want - an experiment that often produces bug fixes and innovative ideas that would have otherwise never been.

Humans also have an urge to learn new things and master new skills. As Pink puts it, our urge for mastery is the same reason why some people play a musical instrument on weekends. The same applies to the millions of people who contribute to open source software projects, like Linux, Apache and Wikipedia. People get satisfaction when a challenge is met with mastery, and the results are at a much higher quality level than those produced by less motivated individuals. Combine these factors with a purpose, and Pink says you have a recipe for success.

In his book, Pink dissects scientific studies that show how monetary incentives will often work contrary to how businesses want them to. When a task involves anything beyond purely mechanical skill, incentivizing higher performance actually produces worse results. We mentioned this a few weeks ago with Tom Wujec and the marshmallow challenge where teams building structures of spaghetti and tape performed worse with higher cash incentives. As Pink puts it the "carrot and stick" approach to motivation doesn't work to solve the problems companies face today.

Larger businesses move slowly, and smaller ones, like startups, are more agile and can institute change more quickly. Because of this, startups, with their smaller teams and greater acceptance of radical thinking, are more likely to benefit from the lessons Pink spells out in Drive. It's no mystery why when we are given a behind the scenes look at some of the world's most successful businesses that we find unique and innovative business practices motivating employees to produce amazing work. Entrepreneurs should look into this book and see how they can install a more friendly atmosphere of motivation early on in their young companies.

Apps on Wheels: Developing Mobile Apps that Work at 70 MPH

When we talk about mobile apps today, chances are that we are mostly talking about apps for cell phones and - maybe - tablets. The latest trend in mobile apps, however, is apps for cars. One of the companies leading this trend in the U.S. is Ford, which just unveiled a number of apps that students at the University of Michigan created on top of Ford's platform.

Sponsor

Making Mobile Apps Work at 70 mpg

Earlier today, we got a chance to talk to K. Venkatesh Prasad, the group and technical leader of Ford's Infotronics Research and Advanced Engineering team. Ford unveiled its SYNC AppLink technology for controlling Android and Blackberry mobile apps through Ford's voice-driven SYNC interface last month, but as Prasad told us, the company is obviously also looking at mobile apps that are developed specifically for the car.

Cloud Computing in the Commute

As Prasad stressed when we talked to him, developers have gotten very good at developing apps that work well at 0 mph, but interfaces that also work well at 70 mph are still in their infancy. Apps that run in cars obviously have to overcome a number of issues - especially with regards to safety - that aren't normally an issue for developers of mobile apps.

In order to tap into the creativity of students who grew up with mobile apps and social networks, Ford, together with Microsoft and Intel, teamed up with the University of Michigan and the university's professors and Ford's engineers taught a 12-week course entitled "Cloud Computing in the Commute." The students developed their apps using a Ford Fiesta with a built-in touch screen running. The software platform for these projects was Windows 7 and Microsoft's Robotics Developer Studio. On the cloud side, the students used Microsoft's Windows Azure platform.

Over the course of the semester, these students created six different projects, ranging from a gesture-driven Waze-like app that allows drivers to alert others of traffic jams, accidents and police cars along the road, to a ride-sharing app that taps into Facebook and an app that automatically uploads your fuel economy data to a cloud server. Some of these apps use Ford's SYNC for voice recognition, while others use gestures that drivers can draw on the car's built-in screen.

Caravan Track

From these six app, Ford, Microsoft and Intel chose Caravan Track as the best app. Caravan Track allows clusters of vehicles traveling together to track each other during the drive - which sounds like a great application for anybody who has ever been on a road trip with more than one car. The app uses vehicle telemetry to track each vehicle, maps routes and sends alerts about stops and road conditions. The winning students will take a car that runs Caravan Track on a two-week road trip from Michigan to the Maker Fair in San Mateo on May 22.

Cars: The Next Big Market for Mobile Apps?

Even more so than just these apps, it's exciting to see how cars are finally becoming a part of the mobile app ecosystem. While there are still many user interface issues to deal with, systems like Ford's SYNC could potentially give developers the same kind of resources and computing power as a modern desktop machine.

Today, most car buyers assume that their experience with the car won't change much over the next few years of ownership. Once we get to the point where a lot of cars can run mobile apps however, we might see regular software updates that could greatly change the user experience at intervals that are currently unheard of in the automobile industry where upgrade cycles are usually measured in years.

Four Principles of Basic Web Design

Google Earth Goes DROID

Google Earth for the Android phone is now available on the Verizon DROID, according to Peter Birch, writing on the Google LatLongBlog.

Google Earth for Android launched in early March, but the specific needs of adapting it for Verizon's phone and service took an extra month.

According to Birch, Google Earth for Android is compatible with most Android devices running 2.1. More Android phones will accommodate Google Earth as they adopt Android 2.1 or higher.

Sponsor

"Google Earth requires hardware floating-point acceleration, so it will run on devices such as DROID and Nexus One, but not on devices such as myTouch 3G and DROID ERIS."

Oracle's CFO Summit: Live Updates Tomorrow