Will Speaking

I had the pleasure of attending Sree ’s Developer Conference.    Like the previous [ OCP based] conferences, this has a theme.   This time it was “Lord of the Rings”.   Addressing the most obvious question I have to give it to Sree .    He’s honest, and addressed the question on “should I stay or should I go” head on.    He also clearly believes in Open Services and Open Platform.—and states the reason clear why: We must be present to win,   and you can’t bet against the internet .     My favorite Sree phrase - “We need to be the soil, and let the plants grow”.    He said that a few times, essentially meaning we become the layer other developers and users build upon, because who knows what they can come up with.     Back to “Should I stay or should I go”, which I think is a name of a song from the 90s.   The rumors flew around that he had resigne...

Who said this ?  A quick poll to get you thinking!  Saving Save to AOL Pictures Shoebox | Download " SOA may move to WOA , and in the long term generate many RIA , built upon REST that use JSON , ATOM or other methods.  Time will tell if it can serve multiple protocols and produce the ultimate mashup ".

We have a great collection of Podcasts, that is helping (among other things) create visibility for AOL Mountain View in the Silicon Valley region.   Thanks to MikeM and his team for getting these going. Check out the latest edition (you can subscribe using iTunes). http://www.stirr.net/posts/show/15 AOL podcast of STIRR 1.3 June 24, 2006 AOL podcast : Mike Macadaan & Tami Zhu from AOL podcasted STIRR 1.3 . Those interviewed are: Dorrian Porter, Mozes Jeff Clavier , SoftTech VC talks about Loomia Tara Anderson, Valleyschwag Jessica Hardwick, SwapThing Jakob Snilsberg, Jajah

The AOLU team is asking for feedback on "Web 2.0" training.... it hasn't got much response. Complete this quick survey and give them feedback. Maybe we can get some decent training in Mountain View using this feedback.

Wow!  Can you believe the number of new people who have joined AOL Mountain View since January 2006!  This is the face gallery of all the new hires. It's very exciting to have new people joining us!      (Click on the images to get more details!) Did you know that among the people who joined we have :  a DJ..,   a Relay runner..., a Snow Boarder..,  a pizza lover..., a tandem skydiver... a whitewater rafter...    You'll have to read and find out who! Alex Ye                  Sabrina Ko          Jay Hundal Naoman Abbas      Pallavi Vittal         John Murphy Bharani Sivaswami Kavitha Devireddy Karl Dotter Edmund Zhu          Jill Foley             Zhendi Su   Kirk Adams...

Last quarter, we started the quarterly rewards system for the Audience Products and Technology teams.  We have 3 types of awards : Spot Awards (that can be done any time),   Team Awards (on a quarterly basis) and Individiual Award.        Anyone can nominate a team or person -- just complete the short 1 page document and send it to Tammy Kusch and Will Morris.  Be specific in the description, and give examples. Here is a summary of the awards : "To recognize employees who have contributed significantly to the success of Audience Product Technologies, by embodying the Audience Goals, Core Values, and AOL’s Personal Best attributes.    The Achievement Awards Program consists of three separate awards: Spot Award, Quarterly Award, and Team Award.".  To nominate an individual or a team, please complete the form and send it to myself and Tammy. For more details on the awards, take a look here.

Thanks to a few folks here (Brock and Jenna), plus the developer.aol.com team, AOL Silicon Valley has a nice jobs page.  It's also on the "developer.aol.com" site, which is a great tie in for our campus. Check it out, and add it to your email SIG : http://developer.aol.com/mvjobs/ Remember that in June we have double referral bonus!  That's $2000 if you refer someone in June who is hired.

We had some good press articles this week on AOL products developed by the teams here....  Yet one or two negative ones seem to get more attention.    One (the MP3 incident) was probably well deserved by us, since it was wrong.   Webmail and Websuite Webmail got some good press coverage in Infoworld this week , which talked about the latest beta.   This came out of no official press release, and was picked up by other websites and press.  They liked the search features. "AOL tests search-enhanced Webmail" Also,  the Europe teams sent kudo's to the Websuite team on meeting the beta dates for the European free AOL mail rollout..   Great work! AOL Pictures We had loads of coverage for AOL Pictures. Among the headlines "AOL's AJAX Powered Photo Sharing Site Adds In-Store Printing Service",  "Online photo print service site from AOL" and "AOL, Walgreens in Digital Photo Pact".  In general, great coverage of the AOL Pi...

Uncut Video hit beta 2 today -- now with tagging, some streamlined UI, SEO optimization, search... It's looking good.  Please give it a try today! http://communityvideo.aol.com/ I am here in the AOL Europe and AOL UK offices today (more on this in another post - some exciting things going on here).  At least 4 different people have asked me about "UnCut Video" and how they can get it in Europe...  I told them right now . Use it now. Use the latest beta 2 build, and submit and comment away. One quote was  "Uncut Video came out of no where... how did you do that".. Of course, I took no credit for it, since it is the doing of the Uncut Video team... probably by me staying out of it, is the success :-)      But it has come far in a short amount of time, like many of the products being built by our teams. 

Technology changes.   Software changes.    So must we.   Remember Lotus 1-2-3 ?   dBASE?   Wordperfect?    How about Wordstar? What about Turbo Pascal or Turbo C ? Remember the fight between a Graphical User Interface – GEM .v. Windows? What about Microsoft Test, an early GUI Test automation tool?   I’ve used all of the above software.   I learnt a lot from doing so.    But don’t they seem ancient and years ago?   Of course, you can still use all of the above.   And if you do, that’s just fine.    Infact, you can still buy “Visual Cobol” and “Cobol for .NET”.     These all have a place in the ever changing history of software and computers.   What seemed like the best thing since sliced bread is now a moldy loaf of bread.   My point: we’ve all got to stay current.    No matter at what level, we must have a good understanding of the technology, where it is no...

Need some quick feedback from the MV and Irvine teams:  two questions here -- one 1) Who comes up with product requirements,  and 2) Do you have time to think about product features.     Please take the poll and give your vote!  

What a refreshing presentation by Jason Calacanis on the new Netscape.... It looked very good, and exactly where the site should go....   I for one can't wait to give it a try.  I was impressed with his passion. What a breath of fresh air to listen to his views.  I agreed with the majority of them. Let me know what you thought!  

One of the blogs I've been reading recently is from the CEO of the photo search company "Riya" - Munjal Shah .  It has some fascinating items on how the company launched Riya,  the excitement,  the way they had to fix bugs and address issues fast.  Now he is blogging about the change in direction for Riya. What stands out to me is how many images got uploaded in the first few days... and how a startup has utilized engineers in the US and in Bangalore -- the growing pains, and the payoff for a "global" workforce.    Often when you think of "startup" you think of 6 people in your garage.... here they have just a little bigger team than 6, but they are spread across 2 parts of the world. The excitment of launching a product, watching the numbers grow, fixing the bugs -- all very fast -- must give everyone a great feeling.   And recall that Riya has no huge marketing budget... they got pitched from other blogs like techcrunch.com..... Just goe...

AOL Products and Technology East Newsletter Lu Lu is Vice President for AOL Products and Technology on the East Coast.  He has a monthly newsletter for his team.   The latest edition is here .   It's got some interesting items -- news updates, including a write up on  QA Automation ,   AIM Triton 1.5 updates and an overview of the Architecture Review board .       Check it out. Media Metrix / Comscore on sight next week Next Tuesday (6th) and Wednesday (7th), a team from AOL and Media Metrix will be on site.  The goal is to describe how Media Metrix tracks metrics (which is an industry standard for the web), as well as do some sessions with individual teams.  A brown bag is planned for Wednesday.     Come with your questions!   It's important to know how they measure page views,  and how that impacts your product. The new Netscape.com and Webblogs Jason Calc...

The Dogs of AOL, By Sabrina Ko I’m currently an intern in the Product Management group working on AOL Pictures, but a couple weeks ago, I was a 1st year MBA student at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. With a focus on Management of Technology and Digital Media and Entertainment, AOL seemed like a great fit for me, especially with all the cool new products and features coming soon (that I can’t talk about…yet!). When I arrived at work on my first day, I realized that AOL Mountain View has a little known benefit that makes this a really fun place to spend the majority of your day…an open-dog campus. So when I got the opportunity to write an entry for this blog, I thought…what a great way to share my obsession with dogs with all of you! We have dogs walking around in conference rooms during presentations, sunning themselves outside on the grass, and sitting on laps during meetings. There is a very diverse group of four-legged “employees” here…from three little pugs running around...