Will Speaking

This post is = l=o=n=g overdue…   early June, Mike Macadaan,   Rob Metzger, Bill Wetherell  and myself attended an Innovation Conference in San Diego.     Side Note: Here I was, hoping we’d be in some hip hotel in downtown San Diego (my first time in San Diego!).   No, it was away from the ocean -   my hotel room had an awesome view of the  freeway.      The conference was good, with some good lessons learnt from teams from HP, Intuit, Google and Qualcom.     The bottom line   was “no magic bullet” and “no one way”.     Ant Creed gave a great overview of the innovation he uses at Initut for Turbo Tax.   Now imagine the Turbo Tax software , and imagine the subject of tax …. Everyone loves taxes, I for one can’t wait to   pay taxes, it is such a joy.    OK, so it’s an   ikky subject at best to most people.    Ant had some great examples of inspiring peo...

Some video blogging fun for you.  Here are the videos from the all hands, plus the WooHoo promotion. AOL Silicon Valley Accomplishments Running WooHoo Computer says No

Here's a nice article on our team in the Irvine (or the "O.C." for those fans) offices... The Multimedia Engineering team consists of 12 people – Keren , Sharon, Rodney, Steve, Dmitriy , James, John, Chris, Nikun , Yao (our intern), our new Project Infusion hire,   Pei-Hua (who began this week), and Ann (our administrative assistant). Our focus is on the research and development of cutting edge and innovative multimedia technology, and our team is actively working on a number of different multimedia products that has been or will be used within various AOL products.   Several members of the team are currently working on the research and development of facial recognition technology. We have a working demo that automatically finds faces that are similar to each other, and that can thereby organize a set of digital images based on who are in the images. We are currently in the process of designing the integration of this product into AOL Pic...

Innovation ?  Don't ask the customer Look at this quote... " And Philippe Kahn demonstrated some sort of a digital camera that could actually take a picture and send it across a network. Get real. Maybe I'm jaded, but I don't care that he was sending it across a phone network, without downloading it to a PC first ." Isn't that just interesting to read?  It was in 2001, reporting on a demo that Philippe Kahn did at JavaOne -- a demo of something we use all the time now - a camera phone.    This was not that long ago, yet the feedback from potential users was "can't do that" or "I'd have no use for it, I've got a PC".        Just goes to show that some of the greatest ideas don't respond well to customers or even tech folks. Interesting..... Link to that demo : http://www.lightsurf.com/news/releases/ma_053101.html Tags: ...

  I didn't get many bites on the last poll ... but the answer to who said this : “To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally is what destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite.   Now it’s the people who are taking control.” is Rupert Murdoch.  He was interviewed by Wired magazine, and made the front cover. Love him or loathe him, he has built a very successful business, spanning many countries.  He has huge investments in "old media", including some of Britain's best selling newspapers such as The Times , and The Sun, not to mention Fox Television and SKY Television.        To read that he thinks the people are in control shows how forward thinking he may be....   And he owns MySpace, so stay tuned :-) Read the article...

Holly has just posted a cool video mashup of last weeks Mashup.  Check it out ( and comment on it on uncut video ... lets see if we can get this ahead of glasses on, glasses off :-) )  

A OL is sponsoring " Topcoder 2006 "..  This will be a great event, that spotlights some of the best coders around the world.   It brings them together in one location to fight it out....  some really great prizes too. Check it out here for more details (and to apply).

Who said this?   No joke, this is a real quote. “To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally is what destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite.   Now it’s the people who are taking control.”

W ebsuite launched another release last week.  This was another global release, launching in the USA, UK, France and Germany.     Some cool new features:  "Blog This", improved search , Rich Text Edit in Firefox  plus some very good integration with AOL Pictures.    Late last week, the "Free Email" for Germany, France and UK services officially launched - enabling the web audience to get free @aol.de, @aol.fr or @aol.uk email addresses!   All based on the Websuite platform! Way to go Websuite team!   Also: Check out the newly launched UK , France and German Portal sites.

Major Kudo's to Brock and team who put on a great event for "Mashup Camp".   It was a great hit, and I heard many great quotes from people who attended.     See the full report on the office wiki : http://wiki.office.aol.com/wiki/AOL_MashupCamp2_Report

Here's an update from Jillian on community events...   AOL ’s Human Race – A Huge Success!   As part of AOL ’s Global Volunteer Days, AOL participated in the Silicon Valley Human Race, on May 13. The walk & run event provided AOL employees, families and friends the opportunity to raise money for their favorite nonprofits and school programs. This was the second year AOL employees joined more than 3000 Bay Area walkers and runners to raise $210,000 for 125 local nonprofit organizations. William Morris, Vice President, AOL Products and Technology, presided over the Human Race Awards Ceremony, remarking, “It was a great day for AOL and for the Silicon Valley community; we are proud to support our employees and the nonprofit organizations they care about.”     Also... AOL's Annual Back To School  - Emergency Preparedness Backpack Drive -  Save the Date! July 31 - August 14 ...

Some great shots on the promotions we are doing on Highway 101.. Getting the word out about openings @ AOL Silicon Valley.   Thanks to Tammy and Sheli for the photos.  ( We may even throw in an IKEA cabinet for the first 10 new hires).

This one deserves a mention in the blog :-) ---------------------- From: mlmacadaan@aol.com Subject: Mashup Shirts! Big props to those that contributed ideas and to Alisa and Jill for the great design work (your shirts are on there way!). These shirts are all over the mashup camp at the computer history museum this week. See more shirts: http://tinyurl.com/fmbgp Also on my blog: http://mike.macadaan.com mm.

the gales - ansecoria - video As I've said before, I believe in using our products to see how they compare and improve them.    One of my best mates in Santa Cruz has a band, so I set out to create an aimpage to see how it would turn out.   Could I use AIMPages + UnCut Video to beat Myspace?    So far, so good, though I would like to see a few improvements.     Since I could not add MP3 music to aimpages,  I first tried to embed the "Myspace Music Player" into aimpages.  That would not work - it embed the player, but the music tracks won't play.  So much for that mashup. Bill Schriener gave me an idea to use UnCut Video, and add music to video clips. This suggestion turned out to be a good one.  I did all of the editing of the video using Windows Movie Maker and photographs I took in New Orleans and that great village "Little Kingshill" (which I am sure many of you have heard of, if not ask me).   ...

Bravo to the Alerts team -  " Ebay Alerts" Congratulations to the Alerts team, on completing the eBay alert.  This allows ebay'ers to get IM's when they are outbid or win an auction. Sure to be a very popular alert!   Congratulations Pratibha !  Pratibha completed her MBA.. She graduated on Sunday!  This was the Evening and Weekend MBA at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, and required a lot of studying on her part! Way to go! A great and significant achievement. Focus on the People - IKEA Billboard We are focused on hiring great people. We now have prime time space on the billboard on 101, next to IKEA . Advertising the jobs in Mountain View.  It's great stuff.  I don't yet have a photo, so if you get one, send to me!   Thanks to Brock, Sheli and Jenna . And Finally... It's the World Cup Final this weekend.  Your chance to experience the crazy football worl...

The name may not be a good description, but the long awaited "vanity domains" service is now in beta testing.  Judging from the response to beta.aol.com,  looks like they got lots of people wanting to sign up for this beta! So you can get will@wombat.com  or thegales@rockbands.com  or whatever! Check out beta.aol.com -- lots of interesting products & services.

Check out Ted speaking about 10 years of the buddy list.   Very interesting!

On a more serious note for people following the world cup.  England is out.  I watched it this morning on TV, and at the same time got the play by play from AOL Sports World Cup coverage. It was a "nil-nil" match, in USA terms that is "zero-zero".   Went into extra time, then to penalties.  Too bad.  But it's good for Portugal, who've not made it to the semi finals since 1966.    OK, I guess this is not more serious than many other news items. But it is to the brits .  Now all my teams are out - USA, Mexico and England. I shall have to scramble and see who I want to win the semi finals. Some great photos from AP below, including that star player David Beckham .  Check out the AOL Pictures Blog for some news on who met David Beckham and his wife. I am now going off for an official sulk.