Will Speaking

In June, we have doubled the employee referral finders fee for all Mountain View Full Time positions.     The normal small print applies. But if you refer someone in June who is hired, you will get $2000.  Please submit your resumes and refer people to Jenna Garcia.     

Not Mountain View or Irvine specific, but check this out... The AOL Shop... You can buy pretty much all things from the store with the AOL Logo -- a mouse,  a wind up flash light,  t-shirts,  even some picnic wear... http://www.bdasites.com/theaolshop/

We have seen a lot of companies branded "Web 2.0" popup with new ideas, re-hashes of old ideas,  and some crazy ones.  The ones that stick in my mind have some common elements:  1) they are useful -- you go back to them again for something you could not get before.    2) they look like they can make money.           Ah.. I see it now, a NY Times bestseller "Making Money with Web 2.0 and other useful tips".    One article caught my eye this morning on techcrunch.com named "AllYouCanUpload".  This got a very positive review from techcrunch. It allows you to upload images, then get a permalink so you can embed them on ebay, myspace etc.   The amazing thing is it doesn't require any kind of registration -- just upload and paste in to your sites.            Branded "web 2.0" like many others.      ...

Rich, Jenna, Sailu, Montse and myself spent a couple of hours at "UCSC" (yes, in Santa Cruz!) giving an overview of AOL,  the technology and careers.   This was aimed towards the Computer Science students.   Of course Free Pizza and T-Shirts always help.   Firstly, if I were a student at UCSC, I'd love it.  It is such a beautiful location -- lots of trees, lots of green fields, and in the distance the ocean.    Infact on a day like today, if I were a student I'd be in heaven there -- it was such a nice day.... Next,  one of the questions I ask in these types of events (before I give the presso) is what the audience thinks of, when they hear "AOL".      Today we got some really good feedback : - ISP (of course) - Community - lots of people chatting or in one place.... hmm, sounds good right? - AIM - CDs :-) We had more comments than that...  But the community one really stuck in my...

A great part of my time is spent on raising the presence of AOL in and around Silicon Valley...    And it's not just me -- many people in our group do this in one form or another -- by blogging, bringing people in for brownbags or simply sharing with your friends what we are doing. Obviously,  being in Silicon Valley, we are in a competitive market for hiring.      But we are making progress and have made some great hires already this year. Tomorrow we'll be doing some university recruiting (on site).  Last week,  Manuela and her team attended a Mountain View event. Check out the photos. If you have any ideas or referrals on hiring great people, please let me know!

The AOL Access team are busy building a new client named "Frontier".    I installed build 2 this morning,  which has much of the new UI framework in place, and the mail, browser applications seem to be working (I am using Frontier to make this journal post). It is an interesting shift in the UI -- presenting a single UI, that focuses on "what you are doing"... so if you are in Mail,  the Mail window gets larger and the others get smaller... If you are in media center, that gets larger.  You've got to play with the app to really understand what this means. It reminds me a little of a Mac...    (that ought to cause a few ears to perk up among the Mac crowd). I must admit, I've been surprised by this UI....   I find the way it shifts focus to the browser and mail apps nicely done, and maybe this new way of working will fit with our members.   I am not totally sure yet.  You should try it. You may wonder why "Will from...

AOL at the Human Race .   It's been a great week.    We kicked it off with a number of AOL team members attending the Human Race.  This year, like last, AOL was lead sponsor for the Human Race. We had about 25 folks from AOL Mountain View attend -- some walked and some ran.      Check out the pictures. DOJO Developer Day Also on Saturday, the DOJO Javascript toolkit team held the first "DOJO Developer Day".   I counted about 65 folks attended.  We supplied the location and sponsored the event for this team.    A number of AOL folks attended. At the end of the day some good demo's from  developers.   DOJO is a Javascript / AJAX / Web 2.0 (you name it) toolkit, that AOL is using for AIM Pages.     Yahoo! is also using DOJO.  Product Reviews We held "Product Reviews" with the business leads to ensure everyone understands the product plans, discuss and help resolve open issues,...

Hey there.. welcome to the blog for AOL Mountain View and Irvine teams.    I was toying with the idea to do the newsletter on a website, and thought it would be much quicker to get any related news out using Journals/blogs.   What do I call it ?  Well, I saw Sree's blog " Graphically Speaking ".   And I've seen many blogs across the net named " Technically Speaking ".   I thought I'd call mine " Will Speaking " since it may not be graphical, and it may not be technical, but most certainly will be will... what a pun.  I'm going to use this as a way to highlight what is going on in and around our teams, plus a way to solicit ideas from you.. So your comments will be much appreciated!