The good news — WWDC 2009 starts tomorrow.
The bad news — WWDC 2009 starts tomorrow. What new crap am I going to feel compelled to buy? I wish I was there.
WWDC 2009 Starts Tomorrow
8 06 2009Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Apple, iPhone, WWDC
Categories : Uncategorized
New Bing Advertisement
8 06 2009I caught the ad below during the NBA Finals. Ironically, all the issues mentioned were why I hated MSN search. Is Bing actually a better search engine? The problem is that I’m happy enough with Google to not care.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: bing, Google, Microsoft
Categories : Uncategorized
Leo Laporte Blows up at Michael Arrington
8 06 2009The video below is of Leo Laporte blowing up at Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang questioning a positive review because Leo got a free phone. Well, valid question if you ask me. For example, Leo’s audible.com ads on the TWIT podcasts have tuned into live banter between his collegues where they all love the service. I have no idea if that is real or an advertisement. Some transparency would be nice.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: bloggers, leo laporte, michael arrington, podcasts, TechCrunch
Categories : Uncategorized
No Turning Back
7 06 2009Well, there is no turning back now. I’m all signed up for the 2nd half of the San Francisco Half Marathon on July 26th. Let’s be clear here — I’ve lived a fairly sedentary lifestyle and getting this out of shape body to run 13.1 miles (21,097.5 meters) is big deal! Here are a few things I’ve learned with my training thus far …
- Spandex is key
- Stretching is key
- Snacking along the way helps alot
- Never run on an empty stomach
- Hit the bathroom before a long run
I’ll let you know how the rest of my training goes. Good luck to me — I’ll need it!
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: marathon, Renato Mascardo, san francisco marathon
Categories : Uncategorized
Interesting Business Week Articles
7 06 2009Here are a few articles from this week that I found interesting:
- The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S. — During the past decade, innovation has stumbled. And that may help explain America’s economic woes
- RJM: Does true innovation need to move economies forward? Is there such a thing as spinning on useless innovation? It seems that Jim Collin’s new book seems to think so as well.
- How Cloud Computing Will Change Business — IBM, Qualcomm, Nokia, and other majors, along with startups, are preparing to cash in on new technology. Not that it will be easy
- RJM: Nothing to revolutionary about this article but interesting how companies are realizing the importance of having information at your finger tips. Very good case studies from various companies.
- Why We Tweet – We’re now big fans of Twitter. To those with eyebrows aloft, here’s how it happened
- RJM: The Welch family perspective on Tweeting. This is like my dad joining Facebook.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: business week, cloud computing, Entrepreneur, innovation, Twitter
Categories : Uncategorized
Google I/O 2009
29 05 2009This was my first year at Google I/O and I have to say that it was well worth the $300.
- Great developer vibe
- Great sessions
- Free Android Phone
- Wave Developer preview accounts
This is starting to turn into a Apple’s WWDC conference. Nice job Google.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Google, Google I/O, google wave, io2009
Categories : Uncategorized
Steve Ballmer Announces Bing Internally
29 05 2009Below is the company wide email from Steve Ballmer about the upcoming release of Bing.
From: Steve Ballmer [mailto:Steve.Ballmer@microsoft.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:30 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Announcing Bing
Today, at the D Conference in Carlsbad, CA, I’m announcing the release of Bing, our new search engine. This is an important milestone for Microsoft as search is a critical business for us and Bing is a significant step forward in redefining search and expanding our share of the online advertising market. But Bing is just the start. We know this is a journey that will require a long-term commitment to hard work and investment in innovation in order to be successful.
We have always believed that search offers huge opportunities for innovation. Currently, only one in four searches succeeds on the first try. And while search is pretty good for navigating the Web, it’s not good at helping people use the Web to accomplish more complicated decision-based tasks.
With Bing, our goal is to do more than just make it easier for people to find information. Today, we’re delivering a powerful set of tools that will enable people to make faster, more informed decisions.
In short, Bing is a decision engine that goes beyond what people have come to think of as search—and what our competitors offer today.
A new search product requires a name that clearly signals the arrival of something unique. We chose Bing because it’s short, memorable, and symbolic of the moment when information and opportunity come together and a simple search becomes an engine for taking action.
Today, we’ll begin launching Bing internally so Microsoft employees can have an exclusive preview. You’ll find improvements that showcase innovative engineering work, including tools that automatically organize, refine, and anticipate searches. We’re also delivering strong innovation in shopping, local search, travel, and health—the areas where people want to use the Web to help them make decisions that are important to their lives.
Next week, Bing will go live outside Microsoft at bing.com. I urge you to let your friends and family know that we have created a powerful new search engine that brings fresh innovation to their Web experience.
To learn more about Bing, please join Online Services Division President Qi Lu and me in Café RedWest on June 11 at 9:00am Pacific Daylight Time for an employee Town Hall. The event will also be webcast through the Employee Town Hall website. If you have questions, please send them in advance to execqa@microsoft.com.
Steve
Good luck Microsoft — you have a long way to go.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: bing, Microsoft
Categories : Uncategorized
Scient blasts from the Past
25 04 2009It’s been over a decade since my work experience at Scient and what a great experience it was.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: scient
Categories : scient
Where is all the engineering talent?
13 04 2009The national unemployment rate is 8.5% according to March 2009 report released by the Bureau of Labor. In the state of California, unemployment is at 10.5%. The amazing thing is that even under these conditions I find it very difficult to consistently find good software engineering talent. I had to think about why and came up with a few observations.
The recruiting process is inefficient — I get 6 -10 cold recruiter calls a day telling me that they have the perfect engineer for me regardless of the fact that they have no idea what my company does or what I’m looking for. They actually started randomly visiting the office now. I get at least 2 -3 random visits a month. I post a job on Monster.com, Dice.com or CraigsList.org and I get flooded with random resumes — almost too many for me to even go through. Once your network runs dry — it seems that using an expensive 3rd party recruiter is the only way to go. The means in which we connect hiring managers with perspective workers needs to get better.
Software engineers not prepared for the next generation of problems to solve – One of my areas of expertise is building platform teams and finding the talent to do so is difficult. Most software engineers have been cornered into using a set of technologies that are meant to make their lives easier by abstracting the lower level details. This results in many engineers that are experts of a framework but do not have the skills on their own to build their own software infrastructure. Cloud computing is bringing forth the problem – pushing software into a more centralized, mult-processor problem. Experience building complex multi-threaded software infrastucture is rare. Well, what about the introduction of multi-core processors? This changes the game at an even more fundamental level. What are we going to do with all the code that doesn’t take advantage of multi-processor hardware? Uh!
Is the US not producing enough engineering talent? — This topic seems to be under debate but I do know that 4/5 resumes I get are from non-US engineers. Nothing wrong with that — I’ve hired from all over the world and outsourced in all parts of the world. However, as a father, I hope that there are educational programs are in place to encourage kids to consider engineering diciplines.
The bottom line is that I guess life is good if you’re a good software engineer.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: education, hiring, recruiting, software, software engineering
Categories : Uncategorized
Google I/O Developer Conference
11 04 2009I just signed up for the upcoming Google I/O Developer Conference @ Moscone Center May 27th and 28th. For $300 bucks how can you go wrong? Most conferences are well over $2000.
If you plan to attend, let me know and we’ll grab some drinks after the show.
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: Google I/O
Categories : Uncategorized
