Rumor has it that Match.com is coming out with a facebook app called "Little Black Book". Details on it are a tad fuzzy, but it sounds like it will show other users who have installed Little Black Book in addition Match.com users.
Little Black Book lets Facebook users sign up to see the other Facebook users who hope to date someone. Once they're signed up, users of Little Black Book will receive potential matches among Facebook users and non-Facebook users who are signed up with Match.com.
This could be just what online dating needs. Match.com floods you with a wealth of details about a person and lets you search on minute details. "Hmm, why yes, I would only like to date people who are in Financial services. But no legal for me!" The problem is, of course, even if you do care a great deal about your date's profession, you probably don't regard paralegal vs partner in a law firm the same way. You can also see if your diet matches your date's diet. I can just see someone now: "Well, sure, Suzie wasn't as well educated as I wanted, but her diet matched mine, and that's why we fell in love!"
So while Match.com shows you a suitor's carefully crafted profile, Facebook can give you a glimpse into their actual life. A Facebook profile is maintained for the purposes of sharing one's life with their friends. It contains actual photos - not just the top two or three shots. A comment on a person's wall such as "Remember that He's always there. We'll pray for you!" or "Do you remember anything from last night?" can tell you if a person is immersed in religion or partying (or both). Because Facebook is a platform for interacting with friends, it can tell you more about who a person actually is. Match.com profile are written expressly for attracting strangers and therefore represent who a personwants to be. Little Black Book could breath a bit of real life into online dating.
Will Little Black Book break online dating's "don't ask, don't tell" policy?
A gay friend of mine uses online dating because it's hard to meet other gay men without going to gay bars - and that's not really his scene. A family member of mine uses it because, as a single parent, there aren't many options. Attractive, social, intelligent friends in their 20s - the people you would expect to never "need" it - use online dating because they are frustrated with the dating scene or just figure, "hey, why not?" Numerous friends and family members have found their spouse or long term partner from a dating service. In fact, according to one study, 12% of couples married in the last year met online. Wow.
Despite the fact that most people I know are using online dating services, and that it appears to be working, they will only admit to it very quietly - if at all. (Note how I carefully worded the above paragraph to ensure that I'm not pinpointing any specific person.) Online dating is like this dark little secret.
The problem is that Facebook apps typically thrive off word-of-mouth (eg, mini-feeds and invites). I added Fun Wall, SuperWall and Nicknames because I wanted read the message someone had left me. I added BillMonk because someone invited me to it. I added Percent because I saw it in someone's mini-feed.
It's a catch-22. If Little Black Book advertises you use it, then many people won't install it. If they don't advertise that you use it, people won't discover that it's out there.
Or, maybe, just maybe, Little Black Book will show that online dating doesn't have to be a dark little secret.
[UPDATE: I emailedLinking for Dollars and they have now updated their code to include the rel="nofollow" attribute. They now fall within the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Nice work!]
Much like I nod my head to the inventor of Pet rocks, I would nod to whoever came up with Facebook gifts. If you can get people to pay $15 (adjusted for inflation) for a rock, or $1 to send an icon (eg, "gift") with a message, I say "bravo!" The sillier the idea, the more impressed I am when someone monetizes it. Really - I'm impressed with their brilliance in marketing.
In a similar fashion, I say "bravo" to Empowering Youth's Linking for Dollars* initiative. Empowering Youth* is, presumably, trying to raise its pagerank (or if not pagerank specifically, they're trying to market their company). Instead of paying people to link to them, which breaks Google Webmaster Guidelines, they'll donate $1 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for each person that links to them. It doesn't seem quite so unethical if the money is going to a charity, does it?
Empowering Youth, Inc, is sponsoring an effort to raise funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Last year, "Linking for Dollars" raised $500! You can help. Empowering Youth will pay one dollar to St. Jude, just for posting this announcement. Details are here
However, all the reasons that search engines don't like paid links are in play here (read Matt Cutt's post about this). The basic idea is this: if I see John hanging out with Daniel, I will assume that John likes something about Daniel. Maybe he thinks Daniel is interesting, or smart, or funny, etc - I don't know what it means, but it probably means something positive about Daniel. If Daniel pays John to hang out with him, well, it doesn't really mean much, does it? Paid links are the same way, regardless of where the money goes.
Now, in all honesty, I don't think Linking for Dollars / Empowering Youth knows about any of this fancy search engine optimizer stuff. They may have never heard of paid links, and they probably don't know that it's "illegal." They probably said "hey, we want to get the name out about our company - and wouldn't it be great if we could do this in a charitable way?" They came up with a great way of doing this - but it just may be one that'll get their site dropped. Yikes!
So, bravo to Linking for Dollars. I applaud your creativity and your ability to align reader's charitable inclinations (and likely your own) with marketing your company. Frankly, I think charities would be more effective if they could better align people's "selfish" motivations with their own donation goals. But, you're still breaking the rules of the game - or at least the Google Webmaster Guidelines - by paying for links. Tsk tsk.
I woke up this morning, checked Facebook, and discovered that Facebook had removed 'is' from status messages.
Previously, because all status messages were preceded by "is", users have been forced to either reword their phrases to be grammatically correct (eg, "Gayle is looking for people to play soccer on Wednesday nights. Let her know!" instead of "Gayle: let me know if you want to play soccer on Wednesday nights."), or to deal with bad grammar. I personally was in the awkward rewording camp. No bad grammar for me!
It appears that I should have started my petition to keep 'is' in status messages while I had the chance. I think I'm one of the few people who don't support this change.
The Facebook 'is' was part of Facebook's personality - the awkwardly worded status messages, the "So-and-so is happy because she got admitted to Penn", and the people who would just say screw it and deal with their bad grammar. It's part of what made Facebook Facebook.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The button is pretty silly:
You would only use if you know what the first result will be, in which case you probably would have bookmarked the page already.
It clutters up the interface with something that's rarely used.
It arguably costs Google money because it skips over search results, and therefore ads (or it would if people, you know, used it).
Any User Interface designer would tell you not to add such a button. But still, year after year, it remains. Why? Because it's what makes Google Google. It's "Googley".
Well, if you'll permit me to use Facebook as an adjective, 'is' is Facebooky. Of course, in a few months, it'll all seem silly. We'll forget that we ever awkwardly reworded our status, and high schoolers will relish with writing "Ana: omg Mrs. Crawford is so weird LOL!" instead of the more sophisticated "Ana is thinking that Mrs. Crawford is so weird." What's done is done - Facebook has given us more flexibility with status messages. What an application giveth it can't taketh away.
My laptop, which I fear is on its last legs, got a little servicing today from Dell. It'd been blue screening frequently since, well, since Dell last visited me two months ago (broken fan -> overheating laptop). I'm going to assume that's just a coincidence, although the timing is suspicious...
I tried reinstalling windows first, of course, but then it blue screened when I tried to reinstall. Excellent! At least Dell can't tell me it's a software issue...
I ran some tests and then Dell ran some more tests, to discover that absolutely every test passed. Wonderful! (Paraphasing)
Gayle: "All the tests passed." Dell: "Ok, well we'll send out a technician to replace the hard drive and the CPU." Gayle: "Ok, but we ran two separate hard drive tests and they both passed." Dell: "Sometimes the tests skip over things." Read: Dell is taking shots in the dark right now. Excellent.
One new hard drive and reinstall later, I'm in the process of getting my computer back up to a liveable state. It's much easier now than it was a year or two ago. There's less to install because of web-based apps, and it's easier to reinstall those few things.
Pictures: I use Picasa. Quick, easy install. Man I love Picasa / Picasaweb - have I mentioned that? More on that another time :-).
Word Processing: Somewhere, amongst piles and piles of CDs, I have the Word and Excel. I think. Google Docs & Spreadsheets works better for most things anyway (since I can access my files from other computers), so I'll hold off on installing Office for now.
Email: I weened myself off Outlook years ago (I used to be a big fan, but then it broke on me) and have been using Gmail for a long time.
Calendar: Google Calendar. Love it!
Web Browsing: Firefox. Installed.
Programming: For non-work things, I use .NET and Visual Studio. I recently moved my two websites (Social/Conduct and CareerCup) over to ASP.NET 2.0, which means that I can just use Visual Studio Express. Good thing too - the regular Visual Studio took sooo long to install.
IM: My friends are split between Google Talk, AIM and Windows Live Messenger.
Google Talk: I do prefer the windows client, so I downloaded that - small, quick, easy.
AIM: While a lot of applications don't significantly improve with each version, AIM was one of the few which actually got worse. Installing was always a hassle because you have to find the appropriately old version of AIM and then match that to the right version of DeadAIM (a plugin that adds some nice features). Gmail Chat now has AIM integration - I think I'll just stick with that.
Windows Live Messenger: Oh my this was hard to install! I download the installer (WLInstaller.exe) and open it. It starts a webpage with my default browser (firefox, of course) and then tells me that I need to use IE 5.0 or greater. Well, damn. Do I really have to change my default browser just to install Windows Live Messenger? Come on now. I eventually track down another site that offers the install file directly.
I'll probably get around to installing Office at some point, and maybe AIM as well. But if I had to pay a few hundred bucks for Office, would I buy it? Probably not. We really are getting increasingly close to the idea of the dummy terminal.
Really, name a cruise ship the MS Explorer, and of course it'll crash. Silly people. :-)
A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began sinking, but all 154 passengers and crew, Americans and Britons among them, took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.
The Chilean navy said the entire MS Explorer finally slipped beneath the waves Friday evening, about 20 hours after the predawn accident near Antarctica's South Shetland Islands.
I get asked pretty frequently to review resumes, by strangers and friends alike. I wrote a bit about this on CareerCup (my other website - technical interview questions and such).
When I was in high school, a teacher returned an essay of mine with the following written on the top of the paper: "Know your audience." The task was to write a persuasive essay on any topic of our choosing. I just so happened to pick a topic on which the teacher had extensive knowledge and strong feelings. I hadn't been thinking about this at the time I chose the topic, but he was right - I should have known this wasn't a good topic. Lesson learned.
Writing a resume is no different. Tailor what you're writing to the specific company and position.
Barack Obama is speaking at Google today. Supposedly, Eric Schmidt explained his speaking at Google was kind of like an interview. When we interview candidates at Google, we like to ask technical questions.
Schmidt: What's the fastest way to sort 32 bit numbers? Barack: Not bubble-sort.
Sure, we'd expect a little more from a technical candidate, but as a presidential candidate, I'd say that's not too bad of an answer!
I still read my university's newspaper. I'm not sure why, really - other than that little 'subscribe' in Google Reader is just too easy to hit.
Each year, it's the same set of crimes - some shootings near campus that don't involve Penn students, a bunch of muggings, the bank being robbed, and some violent crimes towards students. And really - I do think Penn security does a good job, but it's still West Philadelphia.
One of the recent incidents actually involves a Penn security officer:
The guard offered to escort the student from 38th and Sansom streets to her house, near 41st and Locust streets, at about 9:00 p.m. They arrived at her door, and he said something to get the student's attention. When she turned around, he had exposed himself.
The security guard, 21, was arrested shortly after the incident was reported and has permanently been removed from campus. He did not have a criminal record, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said.
Interesting, and upsetting to the student involved, but what really caught my attention is this:
Rush said the minimum age for security guards is being raised from 21 to 25 to ensure that guards are "mature enough" to handle the job.
Since it's not really acceptable for PR reasons for Penn to say "well, sh*t happens," Penn's trying to make a response. Do background checks? Already done - he didn't have a criminal record. Make the guards carry around IDs? Ok, but they've already caught the guy - that wasn't an issue here. Require guards to be 25 instead of 21? Yes! Now we're taking preventative action!
Right. Because boys don't learn until they've reached the age of 25 not to just whip it out in public. At 21, how could the guard have really known better? Bump up the minimum age to 25 and now we'll have guards "mature enough."
Is this legal? Yes. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) only protects people 40 and older from age discrimination. I love the irony in an age discrimination law that discriminates based on certain ages.
Though Penn's reaction abides by the words of the law, they are against the spirit of the act. Whether you're 21 or 25, guys know not to expose themselves - age is not the issue.
... viewers of the incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon after an extended drinking bout which ended in copious vomiting and apparent blackout for Molokwu, remain adamant about what they saw: Bezuidenhout lay down next to the comatose young woman and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. He carried on despite the pleas of another female housemate for him stop.
The TV station asserts that the incident was consensual:
if a "non-consensual physical relationship" began there, the producers - Endemol SA - would have intervened. "There is no indication that she was unconscious at the time," said Joseph Hundah, an executive at M-Net.
No indication? Really? Yeah, I know the media distorts things, but I'm having a hard time understanding this. How could a woman have clearly given consent while viewers perceive her as comatose and another housemate pleas for him to stop?
Bezuindehout, defending his sexual behaviour in a show that has featured copious nudity, recently told his housemates, "Well, this is Africa."
Yes, indeed. It is Africa....
In addition to being a fairly wealthy country, South Africa boasts the title of Rape Capitol of the World:
1.7 Million rapes per year, in a country of 23 million women. 7.3% of women are raped annually (assuming an even distribution of rape - which is probably not quite correct, but the alternative isn't any less scary).
A girl is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read (more)
Of South African men who know someone who was raped (doesn't that have to almost everyone?), 16% believe that the survivor enjoyed their experience and had asked to be raped. (more)
50% of women will be raped in their lifetimes (more)
About 30% of adolescents report that their first sexual experience was forced (more)
I've heard this argument before - that women who wear revealing clothing are "asking" to be raped or assaulted. That doesn't necessarily mean that the women deserve it, or that they're glad it happened to the women. Instead, they argue that dressing too sexy is like leaving your doors unlocked - you don't deserve to be robbed, but it doesn't mean you weren't being stupid.
If the woman was wearing sexy or revealing clothing, 6pc said she was totally responsible and 20pc said she was partially responsible.
If the woman behaved in a flirtatious manner, 6pc said she was totally responsible and 28pc said she was partially responsible.
Men, incidentally, blame women slightly higher than other women do. I'm not sure if this is surprising or not, as (in my experience) women are often more judgmental than men about other women.
In each of these scenarios a slightly greater proportion of men than women held these views - except when it came to being drunk, when it was equal.
Something about this idea of calling women partially responsible bothers me. If a woman is partially responsible for being raped, does this make the rapist less responsible? I would hope no one's actually suggesting that.
So, should women "lock their doors" so as to not be "asking" for it?
Several studies contradict this conclusion and suggest that women who dress sexy are actually less likely to be raped:
The men were then asked to evaluate which of the two women he would prefer to approach to do something she did not want to do. The men picked the submissive woman. These researchers also evaluated the differences in non-verbal cues between dominant and submissive women. They found that the submissive women generally gestured with less expansive movements and wore more body concealing clothing than dominant women.
Submissive women are more likely to be raped, and submissive women are less likely to wear revealing clothing. Who knew...
Robbery is about easy money, so that's why we don't walk around with a wad of cash on the street. That's why we lock our doors.
Rape, on the other hand, isn't about lust - it's about power, dominance and violence. "Locking your doors" doesn't make you any less likely to be a victim.
When it comes to planning large events (1000+ people invited, 200+ people attending), Evite just doesn't cut it. Heck, it's never great, but it really suffers on large, paid events. So, what are my options?
I've evaluated the following: Evite, Socializr, MyPunchBowl, Zoji, Renkoo,
Problem Description: I'm looking for an invite application for planning large events. These events have 1000+ people invited, and around 200 people can buy tickets. Guests need to be able to respond and invite more people with minimal hassle, and they need to be able to easily view who's actually coming (eg, paid). It also needs to be easy for me, as the organizer, to be able to copy the invite list over to the next one.
Evite: It's a bit buggy, but it works fine for smaller events. For large events, it's pretty weak. Guests can spam all other guests. There's a cap on the number of guest you can invite. You can't easily export and import guest lists. Slow and buggy.
Disclaimer: Evite is the standard in invite apps, which both helps and hurts its assessment. I know its negatives better than anything else, which hurts its grade. However, I'm also accustomed to Evite's features and expect every other service to have the same things.
Pros:
Templates: Large selection (although fairly mediocre design)
No forced registration: Guests can RSVP and invite others without registering
Guest List Management: Supports exporting as a .CSV, I can edit guest responses,
I can set a public url for people who aren't on the invite
I can add a field for payment (which is really just a link to paypal)
Cons
Lacks security on the guest list: guests can spam other guests. Unacceptable with 1000+ people.
Guest list cap of 750 - too small for me.
Description field: max character counts of 3000 - the count is buggy and include HTML characters.
Unable to importing guest list
Garbles links inserted into invite.
Invite email doesn't provide date or time.
Annoying banner ads
Painfully slow
Grades
Ease of Use for Guests: A. (It doesn't require registration for RSVPing or inviting people).
Guest List Management: B (You can export guest lists, but you can't import them).
Elegance: B- (Lots of mediocre templates, and a lot of ads).
Final Grade: B-
Socializr: It does almost everything evite does, and is actually better in a few ways. It's an invite service, plain and simple. However, it requires guests to register in order to invite more people. That's a deal breaker for me.
Pros:
Supports closing the guest list to future RSVPs. Awesome feature!
Templates: elegant, and you can save your own template or use other people's.
Description field: sufficiently long, and you can edit the HTML directly.
Good guest list management: guests can remove themselves from the invite, and you can export and import guest lists. Organizer can edit guest responses.
Can redirect users to another website to pay after RSVPing.
Invite email provides the date and time.
Registration is not require to RSVP.
Cons:
Not enough templates
Requires guests to register an account in order to invite more people. So close....
Grades
Ease of Use for Guests: C+. (Docked for requiring guests to register to invite people).
Guest List Management: A+
Elegance: B
Final Grade: C
MyPunchBowl: Slick design for invitations, but the invite email is pretty ugly. It does little more than evite does, and it doesn't have a way for guests to reply "maybe". Well, that's just crazy!
Pros:
Very slick designs!
You can load guests lists from previous parties
Invite email provides the date and time.
Organizer can change guest's display names after inviting them.
You can edit guest responses (sort of - you can move yes -> no or no -> yes), and you can do this quickly.
Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
People who respond "No" can't leave a public comment with their response (instead this gets emailed as a private response to the host). I'm not totally sure if this is actually a good or bad thing, but I'll put this as a pro.
Cons:
Invite email is pretty ugly (or I just don't like the gray background).
RSVPing is a multiple page / tab process. (1) Click yes, no or maybe. (2) Are you bringing anyone with you? (3) Comment. I prefer being able to do all of these at once - it's easier.
Guests can't view the comments unless they RSVP. (This might be a pro for a lot of people, but not for me.)
There's no "maybe" option. There's a "decide later" option, but that's just a way for someone to send themselves a reminder.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: C (there's no maybe option)
Guest List Management: B (you can copy invites, but you can't move guests to "Decide Later")
Elegance: B+ (Slick invites, but ugly emails)
Final Grade: C-
Zoji.com: A worthy competitor to evite which doesn't try to force guests into registering. It's missing a few guest management features that I'd like, but the groups ideas shows a lot of potential. Pros:
Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
Payment info: provides field for this info.
No cap on invite lists. Yay!
People can comment on your response. Cool!
Contact groups: you can invite people as a group. These can be public groups which anyone can add themselves too. This is potentially very useful for me.
Guests can remove themselves from the invite.
Founders are very responsive to feedback. (Thanks Dan and Kevin, who will no doubt be reading this ;-)).
Cons:
Display names: tedious to set. You can copy and paste email address with display names (but I hear they're working on this).
It appears to not accept "+" signs in email addresses - even though that is a valid character.
Templates: limited options.
Messaging guests: I can't message the "no response"s without message the "no"s too.
Organizer can't edit guest responses.
Exporting guest lists is not supported.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: A (It never forces people into RSVPing)
Guest List Management: B
Elegance: B+
Final Grade: B+ (with high expectations for the future)
Renkoo: Slick and elegant invitation system with one awesome feature: guests can reply directly from the invitation email. But... guests can't invite people. Importing guest lists is a pain. And guests have to RSVP to register.
Pros:
Guests can reply directly from the email invitation. That's awesome!
Slick, AJAXy at points.
Provides a message board for guests
Default theme is pretty, but a bit girly
Cons:
No bulk adds for guests - I can only import from address books.
Invite email: text is garbled, and it doesn't provide date or time.
Template: none.
Registration required to RSVP.
Guests can't invite more people.
Organizer can't edit guest responses.
Grades:
Ease of Use for Guests: D (you have to register to RSVP. You can't invite more people.)
Guest List Management: C (difficult to import guest lists, you can't edit guest responses.)
Elegance: B+ (some slickness and pretty default, but you can't customize the design.)
Final Grade: D+
And our winner is... Zoji. It doesn't quiet do everything I need it too, but it'll work well for my guests - and that's the most important thing.
I can't take the risk of using Zoji for my huge events of 1000+ people, much as I do like the service. I'll probably start by using Zoji for a smaller event - you know, test the waters and see how it goes. Then... just maybe :-)
Over the past few months, I've noticed more and more people using other services for invitations - not necessarily instead of, but rather in addition to. I, myself, use both evite and facebook for invitations - every party I throw has an invite on both services.
Evite gets more quick responses - that makes some sense. First, Facebook bugs you about lots of stuff (wall posts, etc), so you overlook those emails much more easily. Second, Facebook invites aren't going to get lost in your inbox like Evite - there's no pressure to respond. Third, Evite doesn't include any useful information in the invitation - guests have to open up the invitation in order to know when it is.
Example: I'm planning a very large event. The Evite has 1400 people on it, and the Facebook event has 650. Within two hours, I had 100 accepts on Evite and 5 on Facebook.
Facebook gets a higher response rate over all. Why? Well, an Evite comes in - you either open it... or it trickles down in your inbox. You might see one or two reminders about an event, but it's not continuously bugging you about it. On Facebook though, it's on the main page every time you log in, poking you to respond.
Example: I recently hosted a very large event. The Evite had about 800 people on it. After numerous messages, begging people to respond, I got almost 50% of people who responded. When I didn't do that, I got about 35%. The Facebook invite had about 550 people on it. 65% responded, without any bugging.
Both have their own network effect properties. On Facebook, people discover invites for (public) events through their friends - but without their friends inviting them, because of mini-feeds. Evite guest lists, however, tend to grow through direct invitations.
So what to do? I can't use Facebook instead of Evite - not everyone is on Facebook. I like the network effect of Facebook though. So what do you do? Continue using both.
Or, ditch Evite for something else (Zoji.com?) :-). Who's with me on the Evite strike? Anyone? Anyone?
Yesterday was my intern's last day, and we took Julia out for an amazing sushi lunch (so... much... sushi...) to say goodbye.
She did a great job this summer on all three projects. The first two I can't talk about unfortunately because it's a confidential project - but I can provide a detailed look into the third project.
At Google, we believe that interns should learn as much as possible during their internship. We've given Julia such as opportunity and we even offered that she can continue her third project into the school year. As a parting gift, we gave her a personalized present that provides her everything she needs for this project.
The Google Code Blog discusses her work on a project called Geozette. Julia's team implemented this as a part of a distributed computing course. You'll be hearing more about this course next winter, when I'll be taking over as instructor (yay 20% projects!).
Evite frustrates me. There are lots of bugs in the messages and hassles in using it, but the real issue is that I have to get an exception to organize an event with more than 750 people invited. I've gotten the exception so far, but it's on a case-by-case basis and at point they might cut me off - and they do. (Dear Evite, I know it's to limit spam, but isn't it obvious that I'm not a spammer? Why are you pushing away your best customers?) So, anyway, I'm looking for other options...
IBM Camp apparently has a camp which tries to get teen girls interested in technology. That's great - it really is. But their approach seems something like "hey, let's get women to learn about computers by showing them how to look up recipes!" The article scares me. Here's a few snippets:
Look! Pretty pink flowers!
... they watched a scientist from M.I.T. (Massachusettes Institute of Technology) dip a pink carnation into a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then shatter the frozen flower against the side of a tank.
Let's hold hands and make bracelets!
... girls learned how to make "binary bracelets" (of beads that sported ones and zeroes on them)
Girls like cooking and candy!
The girls learned ... how to make bubble gum
Seriously - whatever works to get girls more interested in technology, and I do applaud their efforts to try to look at it from a girl's perspective. I just question if this is really the way to get girls interested in learning about technology, any more so than little girls playing a barbie computer game would want to learn how to program. Instead, the camp seems to just reinforce existing stereotypes.
Contrast the image of pink flowers, making bracelets and cooking candy with the 7th and 8th grader's essays:
The application process involved an essay in which the girls imagined an invention that would improve their worlds. Yehia wrote about a biodegradable trash bag. Gidla wrote about a USB-based application-specific device designed to help organize her schedule. Bahnham wrote about a double-sided television that would allow family members watch two different shows, while still spending time together in the same room.
Call me crazy - but it sounds like these 7th and 8th grade girls might want to do more than make bracelets, cook candy and play with pretty pink flowers.
Way to go IBM - you've taken geeky girls and shown them how to do things "more appropriate" for their gender.
I raised my hand and (desperately not to scream) explained that there is actually a huge issue with women and sexual harassment online, and on blogs. I mentioned Kathy Sierra, Devious Diva, and the fact that women are threatened with rape and violence, simply for speaking their minds online.
While I've never been threatened online, I have seen my share of, well, offensive behavior. I've noticed that guys are more likely to be physically or verbally aggressive at a club where the music is loud and the lights are low. I've noticed that guys are more likely to make an inappropriate comment, gesture, etc, if you're walking by them than if you're standing next to them. I guess it feels more anonymous if you aren't going to stay physically near them. Is it that they think no one will notice, or that they actually think it's ok?
I've also noticed that a woman can't be in the news without someone making remarks about the woman's looks. It's as though many people lack the ability to assess one set of attributes (intelligence, etc) without assessing all attributes (looks, etc).
None of this is particularly shocking, I suppose. I guess what surprised me is how inappropriate the comments get.
About two years ago, the Seattle Times wrote an article about why people are choosing to work at Google over Microsoft. The first few paragraphs were about me, and I stumbled across some forum where they were discussing the article. I started from the beginning of the four pages of comments and at first, it was pretty much on topic. Around the end of page 2, someone found my website and some pictures of me. Pretty quickly the comments degenerated into a very sexual and very vulgar nature. When someone found a picture of me and a Black friend of mine, they became not only vulgar and sexual, but also racist. I would repost some of the comments, but frankly, I don't even feel comfortable re-printing it.
Just a few weeks later, I posted something about Google and Open Source. You expect the usual set of pro-Google or anti-Google comments there. You do not expect someone to make this comment (which, incidentally, didn't even begin to compare to some of the comments on the previous forum): "You certainly are a slut when it comes to corporate fanboyism. I hope you're this easy in getting into the sack."
More recently, digg.com posted a New York times article about students in CS which features a photograph of a few male and female students programming. As expected, a huge chunk of the digg comments were assessing the attractiveness of the women.
After a while, you just start to expect this kind of behavior. You take it as a given that guys will grab your waist in a club, that they'll grab your arm if you're walking away from them, that they'll argue with you if you won't give him your number, that if your name or picture ever appears in the news, that they call you "hot", "ugly", "fat", "easy", etc.
Such is life, and such is the behavior you expect from strangers. But here's what gets me: is it just that the guys I know are that much better, or do they not have enough anonymity to act like the rest?
The Seattle Scalability Conference was held on June 23rd in Bellevue. One person posted their notes a while back, and videos of some of the talks were recently made available.
I just started subscribing to Microsoft's Job Blog - I figured it might have some info related to CareerCup (my own site related to interviewing, with lots of technical interview questions).
The most recent post gives a Top 10 No-No's when you contact a recruiter. The basic points are:
Do your homework. Call with relevant specific questions.
Customize your letter. Address it to me.
Don't treat your recruiter like they are stupid. They are your advocate, if you want them to be.
Know when to back off.
Don't lie.
Don't make excuses like "I'm sick."
Good advice. From an engineer's perspective, let me give some advice to recruiters (yes, you'll notice the high degree of overlap):
Call your relevant positions. If I'm a Software Engineer at Google who already turned down a development position at Microsoft, I'm probably not interested in your testing contractor development position in Everett. Sorry.
Customize your letters to me. And please spell my name right.
Tell me how you got my resume. Did you find it on my blog? On another website? A recommendation from a professor? The more specific you can be, the less I think it's spam.
Know when to back off. Yes, I'm speaking to you, Friendly Microsoft Recruiter. I really don't need to be contacted every month. You're hiring! I get it! :-)
Call for a specific position - at least if you want to increase your chances of being interested. I'd have to be pretty desperate for a job to be excited to hear about a "development" position at some unnamed company - and is that really the person you want?
Don't call me for a position I already have. Ok ok, this only happened once, but it was still pretty funny:
Recruiter: "Hi Gayle, would you be interested in a Software Engineering position at Google? We have offices in Mountain View, New York, Seattle, ..." Me: "um, I work for Google." Recruiter: "What do you mean?" Me: "I mean... I'm sitting here, as we speak, at my desk, in Seattle, at Google." Recruiter: "Oh."
If you leave a voicemail, leave your name, number and company. Speak slowly and clearly. I recently had someone leave two voicemails and each time I couldn't hear the phone number. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have called back anyway... but still. My point remains. The same person also claimed to have sent me an email. She probably didn't spell my email address correctly.
Sigh... the fact is that this happens to the same reason that spam happens. Responses are low. Email is cheap. Personalization is expensive. What can you do?
So, imagine that you're a starving child in Africa. You need food, water, medicine, and school supplies. Children all around you have died for lack of these things.
Someone offers you a laptop. Yes, it was built for $150 and is therefore pretty damn cheap as far as laptops. It's better than nothing, absolutely. It's an impressive feat of engineering. But - according to late night commercials anyway - just $1 per day could sponsor a child in a developing nation. That's almost five months of food, medicine, school supplies, etc. Which would you pick?
Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.
Great, they can express themselves now - but does that make them any less hungry, thirsty, or sick?
Yes, the One Laptop Per Child program does good. It helps them. But is it really the best way to help them? It seems that microfinance, encouraging condom use in Africa to fight AIDS, improving irrigation and farming techniques or many, many other things would be more well suited to their needs.
Last week, at lunch with two Microsoftie-friends, we got into a discussion about why there aren't many women in Computer Science. I've heard so many theories, but all we really know is that there are so many factors and some of them date back to childhood.
"So how'd you do it?" Jim asked, as though there was some huge obstacle I had to overcome, what with my being a woman and all. "Well, much the same way as you", I replied.
I applied to Engineering school. I was accepted. I did my homework. I took exams. I interviewed for internships. I got offers for some, I got rejected from others. Jim and I - we did the same thing. Was it harder for me to correctly prove that p is prime in discrete math? Do I deserve special recognition because I was able to do that proof despite my having an X chromosome where Jim has a Y?
My mother studied Electrical Engineering and no doubt, she had actual obstacles: people who would actually say "Kathy, I'm not sure Engineering is really for you. Perhaps you'd want to consider something more suitable for you, like fine arts?" Although you'd never hear her say it, women probably did have to fight professors to get into class, or to find an employer who would consider hiring a woman. But look at where we are thirty years later - no one's ever told me "go away - you're a woman."
Instead, we have so much special recognition that it's as though there are two types of programmers: regular programmers and then female programmers. Does it really help encourage this latter type if we give them a special attribute?
I'm not saying there aren't subtle ways which make women less likely to pursue Computer Science. A quick comparison of the United States to other countries tells you that that must be the case. But, by and large, society does not actively push women out of technology - women just aren't getting drawn into it as much.
Is that a problem? Yes, it is. Let's try to fix that.
Was it harder for me to get here because I'm female? No.
So that's all I'm saying - while various cultural issues make women less likely to pursue Computer Science, it's no harder for women to do it. So why label women programmers as "special" if they're doing the same thing as the "regular" programmers?
It seems like generally a good idea to limit the amount of snail mail you get that has sensitive information on it (social security number, bank account, etc), right? I called my bank today to ask them to stop mailing me copies of my bank statements. I don't like snail mail in general and with all this identity theft and such, paper bank statements are just begging to be stolen.
My bank said no because apparently, Washington State has a law where banks have to send you a monthly paper statement. You'd think that with Seattle as a center of technology, Washington State would understand that paper bank statements are bad. But no no - it's law that I have to receive a nice little envelope every month with my bank written in large lettering so that would-be identify theives will know just where to look. What's up with that?
Despite my best attempts to not read through my RSS feeds in morning, I stumbled across an article about 7-Eleven turning some of their stores turned into Kwik-E-Marts. Well, I was curious, so I looked up the locations on 7-Eleven's website.
Not only was there one in Seattle, but it was just a few blocks from my apartment. I took a small detour on my way to work this morning to visit it.
I was somewhat impressed by the thoroughness of the Kwik-E-Mart makeovers:
It's the last thing - employees wearing Kwik-E-Mart uniforms - that stuck me as being strange. As it just so happened, the guy at the cash register was indeed Indian. Ok, fine, dress up your stores... but your employees? Really? Are they commodities like that? And in those stores who have Indian/Pakistani employees, it feels a tad uncomfortable - like the stereotype is screaming at you.
The makeover, while somewhat amusing, just strikes me as being a little tacky. It's like 7-Eleven is a Disneyland ride, themed and all. But hey, that's marketing, right?
Your syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook was great. Almost. But in the process, you've just spammed a whole bunch of my friends by sending out event cancellations for events that were 2+ months ago (well, let's hope it was only prior events and not future events). You also deleted the full guest list for an upcoming event and - for those who have Gmail - told them that it was canceled. Why, Plaxo, why? You came so close...
Maybe I'll try it again when you're out of beta.
Anyone got any good solutions for syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook (or Google Calendar and Blackberry)?
I do not want an iPhone. That's right, I said it. I do not want one.
I like my blackberry pearl. It's small. It's cute. Email works beautifully. It runs Google Talk, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. I can install new apps on it. It has actual keys on the keyboard. I like it.
Music on my phone isn't a bad thing, but it's not that great. If I want to play music, I'll bring my iPod with me. And besides, I'm fairly sure that the size of my iPod plus the size of my blackberry is still smaller than the iPhone.
I do, however, want to play with one... just for a few days.
On a related note - how much productivity will be lost over the next few days due to the iPhone launch? What's going on today at the Apple campus?
The email pretty much states that one of the primary goals of this article is to give pointers for how Microsoft can convince candidates to come to Microsoft. eg, how can we spin Google's perks the other way? Keep that in mind. These are not necessarily things he does or doesn't like about Google.
People are walking away from this article thinking "oh my god people at Google work really long hours." That's not actually what it says. It actually says that people work 10am - 6pm, but also spend time working from home. 10am - 6pm is an eight hour day - including lunch. Not bad. I work for Google, used to intern at Microsoft, and most of my friends work at Microsoft. I've seen no difference whatsoever in working hours.
"Nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7". Microsoft employees tend to have SmartPhones with work mail on it, Google employees don't. Also, Google employees tend to use separate accounts for personal and work emails, whereas Microsoft employees tend to use their work address for both (not sure why). So actually, Google employees can more easily stay away from their work email.
"Your [20%] project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager." Heh. That's not true.
"Most managers won't remind you to start a 20% project." That's true. Google has a more hands off management style. They don't babysit you.
"Google doesn't seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They're wrong." Ah, yes, the often discussed "open office" vs "private office" issue. There are pros and cons for each. The pros for a private office are pretty obvious, so I won't go into them. I think people overlook the pros for an open office: everyone on your team is right there. Have a question about the system architecture? Just ask. Everyone's right there. You don't have to call a meeting. You don't have to run down the hallway. You don't have to make a phone call. It saves a lot of time - and avoids unnecessary meetings. I actually had my own office for a few weeks when I first started at Google, and after that I shared an office with just one other person. It seemed cool at the time, but now, I actually prefer an open office plans. If I'm getting distracted I can put on my headphones, but normally, it's just nice to have everyone right there. (I've heard that the Bungie team at Microsoft was encouraged to switch to private offices when they were acquired. They declined. I didn't understand why they wanted cubes when I was at Microsoft either. It makes sense now.)
"My manager had over 100 direct reports and is the common case for managers at Google." A slight exaggeration on the reports, but anyway... The email discussion on management only tells one side of the story. You might think, for example, how can a manager with 100 direct reports review you? Well, they don't, your peers do. That's just one example. I guess what I'm saying is that you can't apply Microsoft's management structure (eg, reviews by managers) to Google's numbers (100 direct reports) - that's mixing and matching, and it doesn't work. The structure is very different between the two companies.
"Oh and conflict resolution between team members is very complex." Not complex, just different. Instead of some PM or manager coming down and saying "this is my decision - now go implement!", decisions are made more as a result of team discussion. A manager could step in, but usually a group consensus is better than just one person's decision.
"Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it's hard to think about leaving because of all the "stuff" you'll need to transition and then manage for yourself." Heh. Now you're just being silly!
Is he happier at Microsoft than Google? Why did he leave Google? I'd be curious about those two points which are never addressed.
In my mind, there's one pretty powerful fact in Google's favor: many people have left Microsoft for Google. Microsoft would be more than happy to take them back. If they were happier at Microsoft, don't you think they would return? I don't know anyone who has.
And... I really have to stop getting involved in petty debates :-)
Recently a few friends of mine have applied to Google - without letting me refer them. It makes me cry inside. :-(
So, I'll make the following statements:
If I know you (or you know someone I know), and you want to apply to Google, send me your resume. I'll submit it for you.
If I don't know you, you're welcome to send me your resume anyway. If your resume looks good, I'd have no problems referring you. No promises though :-).
Also, lunch!
If you know me or anyone I know: Yes, we have free food. It's tasty and free for guests as well. Join me!
I'm in the Google office in Seattle/Kirkland. Email address is at the bottom of the page. Hope to hear from you soon :-)
Most (technical) people by now know that it's not a good idea to give your real email address to websites when you register your account. But how much of a difference does that really make?
I have one email account for work, another that I give to family and friends, another that I post (obfuscated) on glaak.com, another that is posted in plain text on a university webpage, and one that I use to register for websites. All of them (other than my work email) forward to my "family and friends" email account, and all get spammed in their own special ways.
A few stats:
8000 spam per month: Generate-able Email Address ([First Name] @ [a common domain.com] ) This email address has a (remotely) common name + a common domain. It has never been posted anywhere, or been used to register for another service.
4000 spam per month: Plain Text Email Account This email address was posted in plain text on a university webpage
1000 spam per month: Less Easily Generate-able Email Address ([First Name + Last Initial] @ [a common domain.com]) This email address has also never been posted or used to register, but is easy to generate.
100 spam per month: Registration Email Address This email address would be difficult to generate, but is always used to register for services. Of course, the number of "legitimate" mailings this email address receives is a bit higher.
13 spam per month: Obfuscated Email Address This email address is posted on this website, but is obfuscated with javascript. Yes, yes, it appears in plain text when the page is rendered, but in the source it's in javascript.
Of course, this wasn't a totally fair experiment. Not all email addresses have existed for the same amount of time, some are posted in more places than others, and there's overlap between some figures (for example, I'd guess that some of the spam going to the obfuscated email address is actually from people generating the address).
Conclusions:
Don't have an email address that you can easily generate (or make sure you have a good spam filter)
Don't post your email address online in plain text
Registering for a website with your real email address? You're probably ok. (Still, I recommend a secondary gmail account which auto-forwards to your real email account).
Luckily for me, Gmail's spam filter gets nearly all of the 13,000 montly pieces of spam (missing maybe 10 or so per month). Not bad.
I've been using Google Calendar since it launched (well, actually, a bit before it launched :-)) and loved it. Yeah, I've used Outlook's Calendar and it's nice and all, but without an exchange server, I can't access my calendar from home and work. Plus, Google Calendar has Quick Add which is pretty much the best feature ever.
The only issue with Google Calendar was that since there was no way to sync Outlook & Google Calendar, there was no way to sync my blackberry with Google Calendar. Boo :-(
Plaxo just released a new version though which solves this. It can now sync between Google Calendar & Outlook (and a bunch of other services which I care less about). Ahh... meetings on my blackberry now :-).
On June 23, Google is hosting a conference on scalability. Speakers will include Google folks like Marissa Mayer (a Google VP) and Jeff Dean, as well as people from Symantec, Amazon and other outstanding companies.
When I joined Google last year, I was simultaneously thrilled to be building innovative applications and bummed to be leaving behind my college years. No, I'm not talking about dorm life and late night pizza runs - I'm talking about teaching.
I started teaching as a Sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and loved every minute of it. At first it was leading smaller sections of a larger lecture, but I later created the curriculum for a new course titled Software Design and Development and taught this in my final two years. As graduation neared, I toyed with two career choices: teacher and software engineer. I loved both but, since I had to pick just one, I decided to join Google as a Software Engineer.
Once I joined Google though, I realized that I didn't have to pick just one: I could do both! Google's 20% Time allows engineers to spend 20% of their time working on something outside of their main project. Long story made short, that's how I wound up teaching Software Design and Development at the University of Washington in Spring 2006.
Thirteen freshman and sophomores spent the quarter learning how to design and implement large software projects. Each project involved a graphical user interface, although the priciples and techniques learned would apply to a variety of topics.
In the final four weeks of the course, students had the opportunity to build any application of their choosing. These projects clearly reflected each student's individual passions and strengths - which, being college students, meant music, games, pictures, and chat.
Andrea Parkhill, a drama major who was interested in both music and computer science, wrote MelodyScript, an application which allows the user to compose music by adding notes to a musical staff. Alan Fineberg's project had some similarities, but his was specifically focused on generating music loops. Andy Peck, however, created an application which would enable users to search their music collections and create playlists based on a variety of categories.
Julia Schwarz, a sophomore who excelled in user interface design (and in a number of other areas), created a beautiful chat client that allowed Tablet PC users to chat with hand-written text and drawings. Nathan Weizenbaum's application also supported chatting, but was instead focused on collaborative drawing of images (complete with layers, history, and all that fun stuff!). Alyssa Harding also did something image related, but her application instead acted as a photo organizer and uploader.
The popularity of arcade-style games is never a surprise: Daniel Suskin wrote Pacman, Paul Beck wrote Bejeweled, Peter Beckfield wrote Snakes, and Peter Miller wrote a networked 2 player version of Tetris.
The final three students, Cosmin Barsan, Dayne Wagner and Eli Williams, implemented a file encryption application, a peer-to-peer file synchronizer, and a personal calendar, respectively.
While students were pushed to design applications with a clear user interface and clean, well-written code, they were still offered the opportunity to design and implementation an application that matched their passions. For me, however, this course offered me the opportunity to merge my passion for teaching with my passion for software development. I thought when I graduated from school that I had to pick one or the other - I never would have thought that I could pick both!
If you're wondering where all the previous comments have gone, let me assure you that I didn't delete them. Well, not really. I switched over my blog to be hosted by Google's Blogger and was able to import all the posts. But, unfortunately, I lost the comments in the process.
Now though, at least RSS feeds will work and I get a whole bunch of new admin features. It's a change for the better, I swear :-)
Gayle Laakmann is a Wharton MBA student and owns two businesses, CareerCup and Seattle Anti-Freeze. She has previously worked for Microsoft, Apple, Google and, most recently, EmptySpaceAds.
This could be just what online dating needs. Match.com floods you with a wealth of details about a person and lets you search on minute details. "Hmm, why yes, I would only like to date people who are in Financial services. But no legal for me!" The problem is, of course, even if you do care a great deal about your date's profession, you probably don't regard paralegal vs partner in a law firm the same way. You can also see if your diet matches your date's diet. I can just see someone now: "Well, sure, Suzie wasn't as well educated as I wanted, but her diet matched mine, and that's why we fell in love!" 
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