Will Speaking

We are already into 2007 in the UK (where I am, as I write this post).        In 2006, AOL Silicon Valley had another great year – launching lots of products that increased page views, helped on member retention and generated unique page views.   From Webmail to Blogs, Topspeed to SLM,   dMoz to Polls, AOL Pictures to WooHoo – these are just a sample of many new launches.   Who can forget “Glasses on, Glasses off” on UnCut Video – a product well into beta now., but not even started until early in 06   Magnet kicked off, and the Feeds team launched some great new beta services.    And we increased focus on international – with localized versions launching the same day in many web products.   The China portal launched, and the India Portal reached internal Alpha.          Finally our team in Irvine focused on many areas, including advanced image recognition technology.     ...

Have you seen this movie?  I saw it when it was released early this year and wrote up my thoughts on it on my external blog.     With friends and family here tonight, we watched it again on DVD.  It's such a fun movie - it will make you laugh and maybe cry too....     Great fun, great cast - Netflix it!

Bill and some of the UnCut Video team wish a very merry christmas. Happy Holidays to everyone! I think this video is great!    

Community out of the box   Check out the Alley Cats   About 3 weeks ago, Kerry Parkins got together folks from Dulles and MV to brainstorm around creating "niche communities",  If you think about AOL,  we've had some great experience building communities - look at peopleconnection and you'll see a range from Pets to Photos to Message Boards on all subjects.       But I don't think any of us believe we are at the center of any one community - and we can be.   Looking forward to 2007,  the idea is to build some of these communities. First off is "Ficlet" that Kevn Lawver is spearheading.   I won't go into this much, but keep an eye on ficlet.com.   He is using Ruby on Rails to prototype (something I think we should use a bit more).      Shawn Carnell is creating a "message board, comments" combo that can be placed on any web page.  This allows a message board or forum ...

"Only in Santa Cruz" is a registered trade mark I believe.  Any way,  when you have little hair left like myself,  isn't it fun to try something new?       I am not sure, but Tommy did this to my hair today.  It caused a bit of a laugh in the salon,  but I had no comment. What do you think?      (Side note: my sister is a hairdresser, when she was learning she permed my hair once. I went to school (think high school) with what looked like a bunch of curls.  Most embarrassing.   That night I came home and had it all chopped out.)

The Irvine team has released to external greenhouse the "Image Organizer" client.  This uses the search technology developed in Irvine to find photos across your hard drive and sort them by face.    I have used it on my home machine and it works well. I actually had a lot of fun discovering photos I took in 2001, that I forgot about.  And that's what photography is all about - the event, the people in the photo - the emotion of it.  The app also uploads your photos to AOL Pictures (if you want - it's an option). Give it a try today.  If you have any problems, let Keren and Sharon know. Take me to Image Organizer

Checkout badjit.   Pretty cool way to say what you like and don't.  

Yesterday in CC2 in Dulles, lots of great carol singers.. Very nice, just in time for the holidays!  

This is fun!  Rob shared this url with me , and it's a hoot. Upload your photo (or someone else's) and have some elf fun.    OK, back to work. Too many blog posts. (Be sure to share your elf's with us!) Go Go Go

The new graphics are going up in Shasta.    Mike Macadan came up with this concept,  and Nancy in facilities has got it installed.    The idea being, when we have events in the room, photographers can snap away and catch the AOL logo ;-)   Very nice, check it out.  

Here's a good article outlining the appointment of Randy Falco, and the recent changes.  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/technology/19aol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin  

The beta team is testing the userplane chat system.  It's now fully integrated with SNS, so when you land in the room, it uses your AIM or AOL screenname.  It also links back to you AIMPage, and grabs your photo from your AIMPage profile. Give it a try today . It's in testing for a few weeks.  General feedback so far has been users want ability to change the font style. The video and audio features are very good. Go Chat

In my first meeting with the Social Media tech team on Thursday, one thing I mentioend was to "Expect Change and Adapt".   Little did I know change would come the next day, when Jim decided to leave.            I did talk to Jim, and he is looking forward to the future.  

Here's what I pumped up last week - almost to giddy heights.  Video stumbling is here (in beta).     I think it's great, very television like, and nice UI.    Personal channels and content.. nice! http://video.stumbleupon.com  

I'm tempted to come out like this in my first all hands for Social Media tech team.  What do you think?    

It should be launching tomorrow - well worth checking out ;-)  

One of my goals for this year (which should have been easy to achieve) was getting new signs for AOL Silicon Valley....   Nancy is still working on this, but it's been a struggle.... We may see the new signs early 2007 now, so that goal for me gets a "Red". Why is this important?  Well, drive by Ellis Street and it is really hard to find the building...   We want big AOL signs mounted on the existing signs so folks know we are indeed in Silicon Valley.  

It's been a tough year outside of work this.  3 people close to me have passed away...     Tommy's dad,  my nan, and tommy's uncle..   Monday was the day of funeral for uncle porf.....                 That's it.  Bad things come in 3's....     I actually can't wait for 2007 to come around. Ever since I was young, I kept a journal (or diary).... and this year I stopped writing in it.  I also have stopped running.  Next year (in 4 weeks or less!) I will start both again... I love to run, and I like to write.   How do you all balance work and life?   I wonder folks who have kids how you do it!  I have two cats, and can barely keep up....    Have a great night.  Onwards to 2007!   The countdown has begun.

06975-041001 New US Patent 7,146,505 - Secure Data Exchange Between Data Processing Systems Congrats to Larry who had a patent awarded this week.  For those that don't know Larry, he works on the Spider, Traffic Server and Tospeed area and has built some great, scalable software for AOL over the years. ABSTRACT A data transfer method performed at a proxy server includes intercepting a data request from a client computer that is directed to a target server, encrypting profile information, augmenting the data request by adding the encrypted profile information to the data request, and sending the augmented data request to the target server. A data transfer method that is performed at an information server includes receiving a data request from a proxy server, extracting profile information added to the data request by the proxy server, using the extracted profile information to generate a response, and sending the response to the proxy server.

This clip kind of sums up some of the fun dancing at the holiday party in SF last night.  (It's not from that, but it's fun, as was the dancing last night).     Maybe at the next all hands we can see who can out do this :-)

A rainy night, but good fun at the W hotel at the holiday party last night.         I know lots of photos were taken, so add your links in the comments below! What a great set of dancers we have in our team! 

The new buddy update features (exposed in the AIM 6.0 client) is really good... - everytime I update something, it appears in the feed. You can add your own feeds to this, so your friends can see what is changing in your own personal world... this includes the AOL family of feeds - location, journals, profiles, pictures but also others. E.g. I have my stumbleupon and yotube recommendations in mine.   What other things could be done with this?  Seems powerful - I wonder if it could be used to share items about "me". Go setup yours..

I met again with StumbleUpon tonight in SF.    They showed me a preview of something very cool, very simple and neat.  You'll see it next week. Needless to say, I think it's something that shows the power of personalization and rich media in a slick interface.  That's all I can say on it. Until next week. You'll see... next week. I'm a big fan of this company and product.   If you haven't tried it, go to stumbleupon.com, sign up. Add me as a friend  - williammorris - too. Why do I like it? Well: - Discovery of new sites and content is so good. I have found lots of unique sites using this product... many that I just would not find with Google.  Try it. Search for something on Google, then try the same on Stumble. You'll see what I mean. - Sharing sites is easy....  it has a nice share feature in the toolbar... simple again, but very good.  - Rich "Long Tail" content. This company has the long on long tail. It has subject...

What the papers say Interesting -- look at this as proof that the exact same conversation can lead to (at least) two different "headlines"... this was the same interview with Jeff Bewkes, but the headlines are very different! " COO Says Time Warner Won't Split Off AOL " AP  " Time Warner Opens Up Possible AOL Spin-Off "  Financial Times

Webcast takeaway Today's web cast for Time Warner was pretty fast.  We got to see Randy.. my friends in Dulles also told me that the webcast timed out through the randy portion.    Anyway, key for me was the very positive and upbeat news around AOL's growth and targets - that was a repeated message and theme.  TMZ.COM and People.com are both reaching huge audiences (ask the Polls team about that - TMZ.COM is generating a lot of Poll traffic!).      Also,  the breadth of Time Warner properties still to amazes me!  I one day may show up in an HBO show.  

Alank wrote earlier today about a new feature named "AIM Share"...  This is really, really simple (which I love) way to share a url through AIM.   It add's it to your "buddy feed", and users with AIM 6.0 can then get updates to the sites you have shared.  It's very simple. The "Share" button can be added to Firefox or IE, so when you goto a web site, it's easy to say "Share this".  http://share.aim.com  

A report on how web sites are failing to meet basic accessibility requirements. KEY SHORTFALLS 93% failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphics 73% relied on JavaScript for important functionality 78% used colours with poor contrast, causing issues for those with colour blindness 98% did not follow industry web standards for the programming code 97% did not allow people to alter or resize pages 89% offered poor page navigation 87% used pop-ups causing problems for those using screen magnification software   Read the article....