Oracle Community Update
The social network for Oracle people OracleCommunity.net was launched on January 31, 2008. Since then, it has had a tremendous growth. We went from 1 to 2,445+ members in 8 months. Existing features have been enhanced and new features have been added. Features like chat, events and the iPhone version did not even exist when the network was created.
Here is a summary of features currently available to all OracleCommunity.net members:
Member Profiles: Each member has a fully customizable profile with their photo, basic information and everything they’ve contributed to the community.
Event Listings: Schedule events, invite community members, and keep track of who’s attending.
Interest Groups: Create groups inside the community around hobbies, interests, affinities, geographical locations and more.
Real-time Activity Stream: Keep up with the members of the community. Find out what members are saying, how they’re interacting and what they’re sharing.
Discussion Forum: Start a discussion on any topic and watch other members respond with posts, photos and attachments.
Blogs: Create your own blog hosted on OracleCommunity.net and potentially have all community members as your blog readers.
Custom Video Players: Upload original footage or share videos from popular video services like YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo.
Photos & Slideshows: Post photos and organize them into albums. You can show off your photos in galleries or slideshows.
Message Center: Send/receive messages and review pending friend requests.
Chat: Chat with other members of the community in real time.
iPhone interface: Sleek, compact, and easy to navigate, this new iPhone/iPod touch version will enable you to take your network with you wherever you go.
New features are constantly being added. Wait for a big one next month. 
Here is a screenshot of OracleCommunity.net on the iPhone:
Oracle Blogger Meetup and Oracle Ace Dinner Photos
In the past couple of days, I attended two special events. Here are the photos from the Oracle blogger meetup (Mohan has more here), and here are the ones from the Oracle Ace dinner.
I know that you want to put names on the faces. So, if you see yourself in any of the pictures, please join the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Flickr group and then you will have the option to add a note (your name and blog URL) to your face like what I did on this picture.
Filed in Oracle with 2 Comments | Tags: OpenWorld, openworld08The Naked Truth of Mogens
Let’s take a short break from the deluge of Oracle OpenWorld related blog posts and watch this video of Oracle ACE Director Mogens Norgaard (WARNING: Not safe for work):
(via Dan Morgan)
Filed in Oracle with 4 Comments | Tags: funny, OpenWorld, openworld08, videoLive Blogging Oracle OpenWorld 2008
Bookmark this page for continuous coverage of Oracle OpenWorld events and happenings. I’m planning to keep this live blog open until the end of the conference on Thursday. Feel free to send in your comments and questions during live blog sessions. Also, follow me on Twitter for updates when the live blog is in standby mode.
Filed in Oracle with Comments Off | Tags: OpenWorld, openworld08New RSS Feed for Oracle Database 10g Documentation Search
How do you create an RSS feed for a web page that does not have one? you use Dapper. That’s what I did with the Oracle database 10gR2 search result page. I used the Dapper generated RSS feed for this page in my oradoc Ubiquity command.
John already had an RSS feed for the 11g documentation search results. He commented on my Ubiquity post:
A lot of the potential RSS goodness is tied up with the Web 2.0-style stuff in the 11g library. E.g. there are URLs for RSS feeds for new books, but have to find the right place(s) in the UI to link to them; for example, perhaps in the left navigation bar for each book. But the RSS feed for search results doesn’t have such dependencies, so it shouldn’t be a problem to backport.
So, a few days later, John email me the URL for the 10gR2 documentation search results RSS feed:
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/search?word=search_term&format=rss
and for 11gR1 it is:
http://www.oracle.com/pls/db111/search?word=search_term&format=rss
I have updated the oradoc Ubiquity command to use the new 10gR2 feed.
Thanks John, you rock!
Filed in Extensions, Firefox, Oracle with 2 Comments | Tags: Documentation, RSS, ubiquityOracle OpenWorld 2008 – My Schedule
I made it! I finally finished building my Oracle OpenWorld 2008 schedule. It was not an easy task, believe me. If I had multiple Eddie Awad clones, I would have been much happier. I will arrive in San Francisco on Sunday, September 21st around noon, so unfortunately I’ll miss half of the Oracle ACE Director product briefing.
There are a few interesting sessions over at the Unconference that I would like to attend too, so I may have some last minute changes to my schedule.
By the way, check out the Oracle OpenWorld 2008 Group on OracleCommunity.net. Make sure you join the group if you’re attending.
See you all in a few days.
Filed in Links with 2 Comments | Tags: OpenWorld, openworld08New Ubiquitous Ways to Search Oracle Documentation and More
If you use Firefox, you’re in for a treat. If not, please download it and resume reading about Ubiquity and how you can use it to query the Oracle database documentation library and do other neat stuff using simple commands.
Jake was struggling to define it, but basically, Ubiquity is a Firefox extension, a powerful one. Here is a short video that gives you an introduction to what it can do.
Cool, isn’t it? Go ahead, install Ubiquity 0.1.1 and give it a whirl.
OK, now that you have Ubiquity enabled in your Firefox browser, visit the following page:
http://awads.net/firefox/ubiquity/commands/ubiquity.html
When you are on that page, you will get a message offering you the choice of subscribing to my Ubiquity commands which are also listed on the page.
Currently, I have only one command: oradoc. It is similar to Don’s command but it has the added feature of displaying the search results in Ubiquity’s preview area.
Currently the preview is for Oracle database 11g and 10g documentation libraries. This was possible because John provided an RSS feed for DB 11g search results. I used Dapper to create the DB 10g search results feed.
I use and parse the feeds in the command code to generate the preview using jQuery’s AJAX and XML Goodness.
By the way, you can use Ubiquity’s “search” command to search with your Oracle Search Plugins, or other search plugins, installed in your browser’s search bar.
Here is a short screencast that demonstrates how to use the oradoc Ubiquity command and shows you other neat Ubiquity features: Click here to see the screencast.
Filed in Firefox, Oracle with 6 Comments | Tags: Documentation, ubiquity
