Earlier this month, we had an outdoor movie night at Google. The movie was Back to the Future, which is one of my favorite movies. Having a movie night is fun. Having a movie night showing Back to the Future is geeky fun. Having a movie night showing Back to the Future with a DeLorean standing by is Googley fun.
I ended up leaving early due to the cold (it turns out I was actually sick), but I still had a good time and might give my Back to the Future DVDs a long-overdue screening when I go back home in September.
Helmets
Shortly after the movie night, we learned that we were all getting new helmets. Google had given away helmets before, but the company has grown a lot since the first giveaway, so they decided it was time for a refresh. It’s a verypractical gift, and I really appreciate it! Now I keep one helmet at home for my weekend rides, and my Google-provided one at work for when I bike across campus. Here’s a picture of Reid wearing his new helmet in front of the colorful bikes we use for inter-building transportation.
I promise that there are times when we get actual work done.
Yesterday, Tony Trumbo and I presented at a webinar organized by WhippleHill about using Google Places and Google Webmaster Tools to manage how people find schools online. What we presented could apply to any business with a physical location and a website, but the primary audience for this talk was independent schools. There are one or two parts where we talk about WhippleHill, but remember that all of the Google stuff is open to anyone. If you’re feeling charitable, after watching the presentation try looking up a favorite local school or business and seeing if their listings could use some help.
We were originally scheduled to present this week in Nashville at the WhippleHill Summit. Unfortunately, severe flooding in Nashville damaged the Gaylord Opryland venue (where the conference was to take place), and the summit was cancelled. Since they already had a bunch of speakers lined up, the organizers asked the scheduled presenters to do webinars instead.
As a viewer, a webinar is pretty convenient. You don’t have to travel anywhere, you can multitask, and if you’re bored, you can quietly leave without the presenter seeing you. As a presenter, it’s convenient, but not ideal. You can’t see the audience, so it’s tough to know if they’re following you, and you miss out on that fun 1:1 hallway Q&A at the end. Fortunately we had Melissa acting as a moderator, so I didn’t feel completely disconnected.
Because of the nature of the content presented, it was tough to do a presentation without relying on slides. Generally when I present (such as when I teach how to search), I avoid slides and do live demos. In this case I think slides worked out pretty well, and Google Presentations has definitely improved over time. We were able to escape with only one slide using bullet points, and another using two ordered lists.
Sharing information
I think it’s pretty cool that WhippleHill is offering this type of training for free. If you follow the advice we give about SEO at Google, you’ll often hear us say something along the lines of “Create high quality content or a unique service and establish yourself as an authority.” That’s exactly what WhippleHill is doing. Many people may come across these webinars and watch them for free without becoming a WhippleHill customer, but that’s fine. Once the webinar is created, I’m guessing it costs WhippleHill virtually nothing to distribute. Bandwidth is cheap. But some people may come across this content, determine that Whipplehill must really know what they’re doing, and consider purchasing their services or referring someone else to their site.
Special thanks to Nelson for taking my picture with Googlebot and to Albert for walking by the conference room and staring at me while I was presenting.
Here’s another search story/tip, and it’s much shorter than my previous one. Hint: You can skip the next paragraph.
Ever see those signs on the road that say “No engine braking”? During one of my many drives between my house and Baltimore in college, I learned that I can accurately mimik the sound that these signs are intended to prevent. My family has heard me make this sound once when someone asked what that sign meant, and I explained. Since they had such a strong reaction (it was positive) to the accuracy of my impression, I now can’t perform the sound in front of people without getting too self-conscious. While visiting Washington, D.C. last weekend with my family, I was asked to recreate the sound for my aunt, uncle, and cousin. I was too nervous, and said that I would find a clip of it on YouTube. It wasn’t as easy as I thought.
I figured I could just type in something like [engine braking] and get what I wanted. I found a couple of clips here and there that were close but low quality, and there was a lot of noise that had the braking sounds of cars and motorcycles. After a few more searches, I noticed that the term “Jake Brake” was used in a few results. It turns out that Jake Brake is a brand of engine brakes, and it’s common for truckers to refer to engine brakes simply as “Jake Brakes” whether they are that particular brand or not, just like one may refer to an adhesive bandage as a “Band-Aid.”
With this new knowledge, I modified my search to use the terms that a trucker would use when describing his or her sound clip. [jake brake video] did the trick!
Final Cut Pro’s built-in Boris Title 3D feature has been driving me a little crazy. On my first machine, I couldn’t get any of the buttons (including “Apply”) to activate unless I clicked it about 20 times. So, I moved to a second machine where I ran into an even stranger bug:
If you copy text with a substring of ffi, the i will be omitted. Traffic becomes traffc, and office becomes offc.
Try it and let me know if this happens to you. I’m running FCP 7.0.
Google I/O is this week, and this year you can watch the keynote presentations live on YouTube. There will be two streamed events that I know of: one at 9:00 AM Pacific (noon Eastern) tomorrow, and another on Thursday at 8:30 Pacific (11:30 Eastern).
This is a developer event, so I’d expect the content to be geared toward that audience, but if you have just a general interest in Google and the web, you still may find some of the presentations interesting.
Warning: This is an admittedly gushy post about Google. If you can’t take this kind of stuff, run while you still can and stop reading!
I’m often asked about how I started working at Google, so it’s about time I tell the story in a blog post.
A couple of Googlers (Google employees) visited JHU in November 2005, and even though I wasn’t an engineer, I went to their talk just because I was interested in the company. I enjoyed the presentation, but I don’t think I even left my contact information since I assumed there wouldn’t be any positions there that would fit my skills. Sometime in the spring, Bill (my roommate), a CS major, heard about an opening in Search Quality at Google. He was going to be staying in school, so he passed the information along to me. While the job had some technical requirements, it was more focused on analytical skills and knowledge of the industry than raw coding abilities, so I applied.
When I scored an on-site interview, I was more excited at the idea of visiting the famed Googleplex than the thought of being employed. I simply assumed that I would not get the job, and felt like I had won a free trip to Disney World. In fact, the possibility of actually getting hired was so far from my mind that my most nervous thought was, “I hope they don’t take me to lunch, because it will be embarrassing when they find out that I really don’t like anything.”
Before leaving for the airport, I printed out almost every page linked to from the About Google page so I could study it on the plane. I read it all.
I can clearly remember almost every detail about my short visit to the Bay Area. I arrived the night before at the San Jose airport, where I was taken by a friendly cab driver to my hotel. Riding up 101, I remember looking out the window and seeing signs for famous technology companies. I couldn’t believe that they were all right there. We quickly arrived at the Hotel Avante in Mountain View. I completed the application, reviewed my printouts, and went to bed.
Leave it to Google to book a room in a hotel that provides guests with toys.
I woke up early (which almost never happens, even when the time difference is in my favor), and it’s a good thing I did. I spent the next 45 minutes putting on my tie. It wasn’t the very first time I had attempted to tie a tie myself, but I certainly didn’t have a ton of experience. Finally, just as I knew I was running out of time and was preparing to go in without a tie (which I now know wouldn’t have been a big deal at all), I was able to get it. By this time it was too late for breakfast, and I took a cab to Google.
I arrived early for my interview, and have a vivid memory of sitting in the lobby while I waited. I can recall some queries that scrolled by on a projection screen. I remember what the receptionist was talking about on the phone. I remember seeing a chef walk by, and I know I drank an orange Naked Juice from the lobby refrigerator as I looked at the newspapers on the table to pass the time. Oh, and the lava lamps! There were huge lava lamps that must have been turned on right before I arrived, since the wax inside wasn’t moving yet.
Finally, the time for my interview arrived. What happened next is under an NDA.
When I went back to the lobby (with a new Google notebook and t-shirt!), the wax in the lava lamp had done its initial rise, creating that lava tower that it does, but hadn’t actually gotten to the point where it separated into spheres that moved up and down. I think that the lamps probably hit their stride a few minutes before being turned off for the day.
The receptionist called a cab for me and I was soon back at the hotel. I walked down the street to a nearby Pizza Hut for lunch. It felt a little weird eating there in a suit. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was actually weird for me to even walk down the sidewalk in a suit. Nobody wears a suit in California.
After lunch, I took a cab to Apple’s headquarters, and of course I had the address memorized. Even though I was happy with the morning’s interviews, I was still running under the assumption that I wouldn’t be coming back to Silicon Valley anytime soon, and wanted to get in a bit of sightseeing. I wasn’t able to see much of the campus as an outsider (I’d have the privilege of going inside later thanks to Skip), but I did pick up some items at the Company Store, where I almost dropped my camera at the register. I can’t remember if this was before or after I was asked if I was an employee.
After my brief shopping spree, I called the cab driver from the night before (I think I still have his card) and had him take me back to the airport. While I was waiting, I snapped this shot of the main entrance:
Shortly after I arrived home, the recruiter called me back and I was offered a temporary position (6 month assignment), and I accepted it, moving out to California for the job.
When I wasn’t assembling IKEA furniture, I spent most of my time after work learning about Google, so I could satisfy my curiosity and also feel confident that I’d know what people were talking about at work. I read blog posts, subscribed to industry podcasts, and watched every video I could find of talks from Google leaders. I continue to do this today.
A few months into the work, I liked Google and Google liked me, so I applied for a permanent position and was hired. I’ve been working on search quality the entire time, and now focus on communicating with webmasters to help improve their sites, which improves Google’s index.
And still, after over nearly 4 years, I get excited when I’m sitting outside at lunch and see this:
Of all the companies I applied to, Google was the only one that granted me an interview. In fact, they were one of only a couple that actually gave me any reply whatsoever.
I got a C in course called “Internet.” You have to admit that this is pretty hilarious.
In February, I remotely contributed to some light art in Vancouver. It’s kind of like when that guy let people control his Christmas lights online, except this was cooler and not a hoax.
Around lunchtime on February 27th, I submitted my design, using an interface which used the Google Earth plugin to show a preview:
About 12 hours later, I received an email saying that my design was displayed, and I could see pictures of it. Here they are:
This is my personal blog. The views expressed on this blog are mine alone and not those of my employer. Comments left on this blog are only representative of those who left them.
