adamyntium

Category: technology

  • Google’s new browser, Chrome, and Google Bookmarks

    Have you tried Google’s new browser, “Chrome”?  It’s fast and it rocks.  But there’s no Google Toolbar!  How can you bookmark pages to a central location (Google Bookmarks)?  Here’s how, in just a few quick and easy steps :-D.

    1. First, download Chrome (duh!) :-D.
    2. If you don’t already see a bookmarks bar (right below the address bar or “omnibar” and above the actual web page) turn it on by hitting CTRL-B (you can hide it anytime by hitting CTRL-B again).
    3. Visit this help page on Google Chrome and bookmarking.
    4. Go ahead and—you guessed it—drag that little box to the bookmarks area of Chrome.

    VOILA!  Now whenever you want to bookmark a page, just click on that little bookmark.

    *  *  *

    But what happens when you want to find that page again?

    Well, for one thing, Chrome’s omnibar is pretty damn smart… even smarter than you might initially expect!  Try typing just a few letters from that site’s URL or title and it may very well show up for you in the omnibar :-D. But if you still want to see all your bookmarks, you can do one of two things:

    • Revisit Google Bookmarks OR
    • Check out the cooler experience of Google Notebook, and you’ll find all your bookmarks under the UNFILED folder (click on the left), where you can annotate, group, and optionally share your favorite bookmarks with friends.

    * * *

    Hope these tips help you enjoy Chrome even more!

    * * *

    EDITED on Wednesday, September 3 to add:
    Thank you to Simon B for the improved link to the bookmarklet! 😀

  • Gmail tip: Use "Quick Links" to help you find important mail quickly

    Do you use Gmail?  The new “Quick Links” feature, offered via Google’s Gmail Labs project, can help save you time and highlight important mail.

    WHAT QUICK LINKS DOES
    Think of it as sort of a “Saved searches” feature :-D.  Basically, you can take any search and “save” it so that it appears as an option under a Quick Links menu on the lefthand side of your Gmail screen.  For instance, one of my favorite quick links is this saved search: “TO:me IN:inbox.”  When I click on this link now, it shows me all mail that’s been sent to me personally that’s still in my inbox, weeding out all the “junk” bulk mail… e.g., newsletters, ads from vendors, etc.  Other options could be showing mail just from a specific time period that has attachments, mail that is starred but not in your inbox, etc.

    HOW TO GET THE QUICK LINKS FEATURE IN YOUR GMAIL
    1) Go to your Gmail.
    2) Click on “Settings” at the top of the page.
    3) Then click on “Labs”
    4) You’ll find many add-ons, or labs features which may interest you.  Enable “Quick Links” and/or any other labs features you like.
    5) Lastly, click “Save changes” at the bottom.

    HOW TO USE QUICK LINKS
    1) Type in any search into Gmail (in the regular search bar, or using the Advanced Search).
    2) Click “Add Quick Link” on the lefthand side of your Gmail page.  Voila! 😀

    *  *  *

    For those of you who have used Quick Links, what are some of the favorite / most useful / most creative links you’ve created?

  • Bureaucratic snafu snags Catholic Priest and leaves me wondering: what’s my role?

    A friend of mine just let me know of a frustrating and seemingly unfair issue in his neck of the woods:  A popular and much-loved priest in South Dakota is apparently about to be deported due to what seems to be a pretty lame bureaucratic snafu (pemanent residency application accepted but later lost/misplaced).  An advocacy site is here: HelpFather.

    But nothing is quite as simple or as black-and-white as it seems, of course, at least in my mind 🙂

    Here are reasons why I was tempted not to post this on my blog:
    – I’m agnostic, and am not a fan of Catholic doctrine / influence / etc.
    – This matter’s already gotten press.  What more could my humble blog do?
    – Speaking of my humble blog, and selfishly for a moment, would my readers really care about this somewhat-local-oriented issue at all?
    – This guy’s a priest.  Can’t he just pray for this to get fixed?  If that’s ineffective, maybe it’s God’s will for him to return to Ireland?
    – There are always at least two sides to every issue.  Can we trust that the folks advocating on behalf of this priest are telling the whole story?

    And reasons why I ultimately posted this:
    – A favor to my friend 🙂
    – Someone’s gotta help the little guy.  And this one seems like a nice fella, mired in an uncaring and often-crappy bureaucracy.
    – I do have some power as a blogger.  Perhaps by helping get this guy’s predicament known outside of South Dakota I—and my readers—could make a difference.
    – Sometimes it’s the little things in life that matter.  Is this guy really important in the grand scheme of things?  Maybe not.  But he means a lot to my friend and my friend’s family.  Lots of small things, “small people”… they all add up, all contribute to the richness of communities, to our planet.
    – And, let’s be honest here… I bet people are more interested in this story than in my swinger blatherings, no? 😛 (hmm… I’m combining a priest-related posting with a swinger reference; it’s a good thing I am agnostic, or I’d be going to hell :D).

    *  *  *

    What about you?

    What do you think of this priest’s situation? Of me posting this on my blog?

  • Embedding a chat room with Meebo… just testing.

    Intriguing.  I’m attempting to embed a Meebo chat room below.  I’ll keep this window open for a while, and will make sure to be here at 7pm PST (10pm EST) today, Sunday.

    http://www.meebo.com/rooms

  • All "friends" aren’t created equal! (why we need better relationship marking in social networks)

    I’m planning on quitting twitter.  Flickr—at least as a social site—is getting frustratingly unwieldly.  You know why?  Because pretty much all social sites like this treat all my friends, co-workers, acquaintances, online buddies the same, and it’s a big, stupid, completely off-putting mess!

    Sure, these services want to reduce complexity… they know that many folks may not want to take the time to put friends into groups.  And eventually, some really smart service is going to actually do it automatically for me (“Hmm… Adam only looks at Fred’s pictures once in a while, but he looks at Mary’s photos minutes after he’s notified of her updates…”).

    Look, I’m not an insanely popular guy.  But I have over 600 people in my personal contacts folder.  I regularly interact with tons people at work, and sincerely care (personally) about at least a dozen or two of ‘em (to the point where I want to see their travel photos, want to know when they’re excited or depressed, etc.).  But when people have “friended” me on Twitter or Flickr, I’ve often unselectively reciprocated… and now I’m just getting overloaded.  Too much info.  Too much info I do not care about.

    And this is where nearly all social services seem to get things wrong.  At risk of being callous, I could pretty much care less if a distant acquaintance is having an off day or just uploaded photos of his Aunt Elda’s wedding.  But I sure as hell want to know if my office mate is about to arrive at work grouchy or an awesome friend in a different timezone is having a rough week, and so on.  To the extent that social services of all types can eventually alert us to events and feelings that mean a lot to us, that’s a huge win.

    Flickr lets me mark someone as a contact, friend, or family.  That’s somewhat useful, but I’d say that these distinctions barely scratch the surface in helping me manage photostreams or viewing permissions.

    Facebook lets me mark someone as a “limited friend” (is that like “single serving friends” from Fight Club? :-P), but—again—that’s not all that helpful. 

    Why can’t I rank my contacts’ importance on a scale from 1-10… 10 being I want to know their every feeling and action and 1 being I don’t want to be bugged by any notifications ‘bout them unless they’re getting married… and to a hot celebrity.  Or in addition to / instead of degrees of that sort, why can’t I indicate that I want monthly digests of most my contacts, weekly digests of a few, and daily or even as-it-happens updates on my select group of best-friends?

    *  *  *

    And it’s not just what I want to know, it’s also about what I want to share.  There are very different things I want to share with my Mom, my recent-ex-girlfriend, most of my colleagues, my closest friends, my roommate, and so on.  I should be able to put my contacts into “share groups”—with easily check-box-able overriding options per shared item—and then quickly and powerfully indicate which groups I want receiving which update or types of updates.

    And, again, to the extent to which my preferences and habits can be algorithmically determined (albeit manually overridable) and designed to streamline my sharing and discovery choices, that’s super!  Facebook’s gotta know whose wall I post on most often, who I tag in most of my photos, and so on.  Surely it can make educated guesses on the strength of our ties.

    Oh, and just to make things more complicated… it’s not all about only the strength of ties… it’s about context.  Many of my colleagues and friends get excited about news about new geek toys or web sites.  Other friends are in my lindy hop (swing dancing) group, and many of them couldn’t care less about the newest Web 2.0 doodad.

    So I may want to share tech stuff with some friends, arts stuff with others, personal musings and rants with close buddies, and so on.  Complicated, yes, and likely with no absolute/easy answers.  But at least the social networking/sharing services could try a bit harder! 😀

    *  *  *

    So probably this week is when I’m gonna uninstall twitteroo and give up on both reading and posting occasional updates.  It’s not just a matter of signal vs. noise, which I lamented earlier, but the complete lack of any sort of targeting, grouping, etc.  There are days in which I really do want to read the blatherings of my fellow SEO/SEM/Search-engine geeks.  But some days I just want to know if a good friend is happy or sad.  Or if another friend finally bought her airplane tickets to come back to the States.  Right now, I can neither selectively broadcast nor read notes sorted/filtered by strength or type of ties.  And that’s jarring, frustrating, distracting, and whole ton of other negative adjectives.

    I’m not going to delete my Twitter account just yet.  In case it’s not clear, I think there are some compelling cases for this sort of thing… and I’m hoping that eventually the service will help me share and glean what my friends and I are “doing now” with greater granularity and thoughtfulness.

    And indeed, I hope other services eventually wise-up, too.  MySpace may be the most popular social network, but it is so (I’m confidently sure) only because of the obnoxiously strong power of the network effect, not because it really supports social sharing and discovery in an effective way.  The sooner other services learn that not all relationships are equal, the sooner the online world will truly help us manage and improve our (real, offline) relationships.

    *  *  *

    Updated on June 18, 2007:
    I don’t always agree with Robert Scoble’s take on communications and networking and I’m frankly displeased that he’s invoked “nazis” for something far from evil, but I nonetheless think he makes some excellent points (related to my rant above) in his blog entry “Social networks as “friend” Nazi (design flaws in Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter).”

  • How to pick an apartment (with the help of a damn cool Google Spreadsheet "wiki")

    I’m in apartment-hunting mode, and have amassed a set of criteria for my search that I thought you might benefit from… and be able to easily add to!

    With the new release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets (horrid name, super product), I can now do all sorts of cool stuff!  For instance, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet below for you to read… but I’ve also included links at the bottom for you to:

    • EDIT ONLINE:  Load up the spreadsheet online in edit mode!  Your changes will be reflected within five minutes on the document AND this page, so please be both thoughtful and nice (I can revert as necessary, of course).
    • EDIT OFFLINE:  Download the CSV and load it up in Excel or Excel imitator :-P.
    • VIEW: …as PDF, HTML, TXT, and in other formats as well.
    • SUBSCRIBE:… view Atom or RSS

    Pretty neat, eh?  And now, on with the show!

    • EDIT:  View and edit online (general Google Account required; add lines as needed by right-clicking cells and selecting INSERT… or you can highlight several rows and select INSERT [n] ROWS ABOVE/BELOW)
      Aw, bummer!  As described in the comments below, I hadn’t realized that the usernames (and, thus, gmail e-mail addresses) of collaborators would be listed in this doc, so I’m un-sharing the doc until and unless this no longer happens.  Thanks, Rockya, for the discovery.
    • DOWNLOAD / VIEW:  CSV, XLS (Excel format—new link for this entry), PDF, TXT, HTML, ODS
    • SUBSCRIBE (1st page): Atom, RSS

    I welcome your comments below…
    – On the actual criteria I’ve listed (or has been added)
    – On this use of Google Docs and Spreadsheets
    – On anything else related to this entry 😀

  • Where is Adam (online)? My participation in and thoughts about various presence/sharing services

    In case you’re interested in stalking me and/or knowing what my thoughts are on various online presence / networking / bookmarking sites I have tried, here’s a (completely unscientific, wholly biased, unabashedly uncomprehensive, and generally of questionable use) list 😀

    FYI, I’m findable via my full name on the services below unless noted otherwise.  And sites owned/operated by Google are indicated by [g], as a brief disclaimer/reminder since I work for Google (but not on any of the
    products or product-types below).

    Social networking

    • Facebook
      – a social networking site which used to be used primarily by college students (perhaps still is) and is gaining fame and respect in new quarters

      It’s my favorite social networking service by far. I belong to the Google, San Francisco, Indiana University, and Northwestern University groups, and generally only add friends, co-workers, professional acquaintances I know decently well from meeting in person, and so on. I’ve actually found this to be useful not for making new friends, but rather for catching interesting info and fun tidbits and insights into my current friends’ lives. I am impressed with nearly all aspects of this site: the strong configurability of privacy options, the reasonably-clean and standardized views*, decent navigability, and overall utility. I haven’t really gotten into the groups, though, which mostly seem like exercises in humor and/or vanity.

      *This just in: According to Eliot on Wired, Facebook may be opening up its profile pages to widgets. Given the smart people I know that have recently been hired to work at Facebook, I can only hope that the service won’t be horrifically MySpaced (uglified to hell and made practically unusable). But hey, if things turn south, I’ll at least have people I can poke about it!

    • Friendster
      – one of the first social networking sites, now apparently a haven for lonely Filipinos.

      I have an account here, but almost never log in. Some nice integration, I suppose, but nothing that really interests me. The brash obnoxious ads are a turnoff. And regarding the demographic reference… it’s more a puzzled commentary on how various services (Orkut, Friendster, probably others) end up becoming so particularly popular in a handful of countries. I suppose much of this could be explained by the network effect (e.g., some popular Filipinos became active on Friendster, invited their friends…), but I can’t help but wonder if UI / User Experience interlaces in interesting way with cultural preferences and expectations. Put more pedestrianly… I wonder what it is about, say, Friendster that causes it to appeal so much to Filipinos? (and Orkut to Brazillians, etc.) I bet someone has studied this. Paging danah…? 😀

    • Orkut
      – a quirky social networking experiment by a Google engineer, now noted for its loyal userbase outside of the USA.

      Ah, not much to say about the service at this point. I no longer use it, but hey, many many millions of people around the world love it.

    • Multiply
      – What’s a total of seventeen users times practically zero awareness? Join this service to find
      out!

      Seemed interesting initially, but it was hobbled by a confusing interface and an anemic adoption rate. I think maybe two of my friends at most use this service nowadays.

    • MySpace
      – Just like what you’d get if you had a spastic monkey doing design, an evil genius devising navigation (how many ad views per simple action?), and a bunch of lemmings for fans.

      Aaaaagh! Make it stop. Make it stop! At least make it stop blinking-spazzing-playing-seven-clips-simultaneously and generally serving as an affront to aesthetics, art, common sense, and humanity. To
      preserve what’s left of my sanity, I prefer to view the success of this monstrosity as due purely to the network effect (it was an early entrant, everyones’ friends were on MySpace, yadda yadda). Anything else is just too depressing. And yes, I have an account here only so my surprisingly-less-enlightened friends will quit bugging me to establish one, so I suppose that makes me mildly hypocritical.

    • Tribe
      – Want to meet artsy, hippie, burning-man types? This is your scene 😀

      I like the threadedness of the message forums, but the site feels a bit cluttered and unfocused. Plus… again, sorry to bring up the network effect, but… most of my friends outside of the Bay Area are elsewhere online.

    Professional networking

    • Ecademy
      – The professional networking site that’s the non-American version of LinkedIn. But more
      expensive.

      Tried it once. Was annoyed at the apparent lack of any free level of service, so that was the end of that. I didn’t see anything about this service worth paying for that I couldn’t find via other online or  offline means.

    • Ryze
      – “Hi, I’m a stay-at-home marketer. Would you like to join the most amazing wealth creation
      scheme that combines hot dogs, Buddhist monks, and…”

      Used to use this professional networking service quite a bit, but now it feels relatively empty and multi-level-marketing focused.

    • LinkedIn
      – Like any other powerful tool online or offline; great if you use it wisely, potentially painful if you don’t.

      I like this service overall. I’ve not used it much for my own networking, but I have definitely been pleased to help others… pass along legitimate requests, and so on. The key is not treating it like MySpace (adding everyone who requests you to add them), but rather judiciously linking to people you trust and who trust you… ideally, folks you have professional ties with or can similarly vouch for.

    Resource sharing / reviewing / bookmarking

    • CitySearch
      – Big, colorful, commercial, and overstuffed site that features user-submitted reviews on restaurants, hairdressers, etc.

      Used to use this, but have moved over to Yelp, which seems — if not more accurate — at least more interesting, more entertaining, and slightly-less cluttered and commercial.

    • Del.icio.us
      – Lamely named social bookmarking site that’s been (sort of) superceded by more robust and feature-rich offerings and is now owned by Yahoo

      The geek “Web 2.0” (ack, I feel dirty already) crowd latched onto this early on, and I never quite got the appeal. Other services have offered considerably more features… of particular note, the ability to take a searchable “snapshot” of the page when it’s bookmarked for easier retrieval later. On the flip side, this site had (and still has) an admirably spartan feel to it. No ads (that I can see), and no clutter. For those who crave APIs, minimalist feature sets, and simple bookmark sharing, del.icio.us could still be a reasonably good pick.

    • Digg
      – Watch out, here comes the highly-opinionated and non-buying mobs! (is so! is not! yeah, well, your mamma was an SEO! LOLZ!!!!!!!1)Okay, so perhaps that’s a bit unfair. Digg was an interesting idea and still continues to surface some noteworthy or at least entertaining sites. But, as with many fine ideas, it’s been creaking at the seams
      due to its mass adoption and resultant oft-moblike/groupthink feel. Anyway, I no longer check this site with any regularity… not enough time, too poor signal/noise ratio.
    • Google Reader –
      An outstanding feed-reader that’s easy and fun to useSure, I’m biased, but after an unsuccessful first version, the Reader team’s got their groove goin’ on. Nifty keyboard shortcuts (hit ? to see ’em!), a pleasant UI, and the capability (which I sadly haven’t used yet) to make any of your tags/folders publicly-viewable. Now if they’d just combine this with a
      public-version of Google Bookmarks… 😀 [g]

    • StumbleUpon
      – A serendipitous and often wondrous way to surf the Web and discover cool stuffI shied away from this service for ages; I don’t have time to aimlessly “stumble” around the Web! But I’ve been slowly using it more, and finding it has useful features and unearths cool sites for me :-D.
      [My Stumbleupon page]
    • Yelp
      – Irreverent, sometimes painfully hip, but typically entertaining and often useful

      Want consistently unbiased and deeply thoughtful reviews of restaurants and other local places? Then Yelp may or may not be your cup of tea. But if you’re patient and have a good sense of humor, you can often glean quite a bit of helpful info about various places around town. The conversations in the Talk section can be surprisingly cathartic, friendly, and even useful. [My reviews]

    Photo sharing

    • Flickr
      – The most active and diverse photo sharing site I’ve ever seen, with a doggedly committed community-oriented management

      Sure, they’ve gotten a lot of flack after getting absorbed by Yahoo. Yes, like on any user-generated-content-site, there’s bound to be crap, controversy, jerk-offs, and so on. But that aside, Flickr undeniably has an astounding number of gorgeous, hilarious, and downright captivating photos taken by talented photographers as active members. And speaking of active members… the Flickr crowd is hugely loyal, passionate, and not shy :-D. [My photos]

    • Fotki
      – The skinnable and surprisingly easy-to-use popular photo site you’ve never heard of

      Sets within sets! While Flickrites are still begging for this, Fotki’s had it for ages. It also has journals and a bunch of other doodads that are done better elsewhere, but thankfully that stuff doesn’t clutter up the simple-yet-powerful photo interface. $30/year gets you unlimited storage and very cheap (and good!) prints. [My photos]

    • PicasaWeb
      – Jarringly basic and spartan for geeks, surprisingly easy-to-use for normal people (who just want to easily share their photos with their family)

      Want to join a feature-rich photo site with great sense of community? This ain’t it. But it’s reliable and — as a very nice bonus — you can upload your videos to be displayed within your galleries (Google Video style). Best hidden feature: use the right and left arrow keys to zoom through galleries and enjoy the pre-caching and the perfect-fit-to-your-display views. [My Photos] [g]

    • Honorary mention: Smugmug
      – I’ve never used it, but really like the attitude of its CEO and the intense, friendly customer-focus he has pushed throughout his company.

    Instant messaging

    • Trillian
      (my choice at home) – Offered in both a free and more-powerful $25/year version, Trillian is mostly reliable and amazingly handy

      No matter how much I try to convince all my friends to use Google Talk (“GTalk”), a ton of ’em still insist on sticking with Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, or — dog forbid — MSN Messenger! A few of them even still use their AOL accounts for e-mail; I’ve disowned those folks… but hey, I digress
      those other apps at the same time and having my computer grind to a halt, I use Trillian at home, which automatically logs me into all the networks and displays my buddies in a totally customizable and wonderfully compact single-column view. Downside? Sometimes connectivity to different networks is flakey. And though they promise a Web-based version Real Soon Now ™, it’s seemingly impossible at present to easily sync one’s Trillian account across computers, so your chat history gets split between your desktop and laptop and so on. But hey, one app to rule them all? Pretty damn useful!

    • Google Talk (my choice away from home) –
      Simple, great voice quality, usefully integrated into Gmail (and elsewhere).

      It’s lightweight, fast, and just works. I really like how chats are (optionally) archived in my Gmail account, so I don’t have to remember whether I e-mailed a friend or chatted with her about an upcoming party… I can do one search and know for sure that I forgot to invite her! [g]

    Other

    • Plaxo
      – “I’m updating my addressbook…” aaaaagh! Thankfully, Plaxo is much, much more than this.

      This is one of those sites despised by many geeks and, in fairness, journalists and other popular peeps who at least previously got deluged by the perfect storm created by clueless n00bs and a suboptimal viral approach pushed by Plaxo in the early days. With an improved emphasis on improving the existing network rather than wildly expanding it, Plaxo is now increasingly loved by millions of folks (like me!) who appreciate the service’s (mostly free) offerings. The core feature which I use and find invaluable is the sync’ing of my friends’ contact info into my various addressbooks. Plaxo has recently announced that their upcoming 3.0 version (ah, gotta love engineers’ creative naming skills) will also support
      Gmail addressbooks. w00t!!! Disclaimer: I was a contractor with Plaxo a couple of years ago.

    • Twitter
      – Look, I’m having a cheese sandwich! I just burped. I tat i taw a putty kat! i’m a twit therefore i am. Just got my cell phone bill, lemme open it up and… AAAAAAAGH!Twitter — the oft-stultifyingly boring but oh-so-Web-2.0-utility that lets you, uh, share “what are you doing now?” (“I’m picking my nose, but it’s really hard to do while typing…”) Maybe it’d be more
      interesting if I had more friends on it. Feel free to twit (?) me at http://www.twitter.com/thatadamguy.

  • Getting hired by Google

    I recently noticed that a fellow Googler posted some thoughtful tips about interviewing at Google, and — now that I’m a bit more comfortable blogging about Work — I figured I’d contribute to the conversation a bit by offering my own, unofficial tips.

    Note the unofficial part. I work in Search Quality; aside from occasionally being asked to interview candidates (like most Googlers) — I have nothing to do with our recruiting, recruiters, etc., nor do I pretend to speak for the HR folks. The stuff below is based on my own observations and opinions.

    * * *

    Application and interview tips
    Broadly: be interesting, be humble, demonstrate outstanding competence in your direct area, briefly highlight your well-roundedness (academically, workwise, and personally), and clarify how you are an excellent
    fit with both the position you’re applying for and Google overall.

    Admittedly, with an insane number of applications a year, it is a bit of a numbers game.  Some outstanding people get rejected.  And, though I haven’t witnessed this personally, I’m sure some jerks get offers.  Luckily, Google’s been overhauling its hiring processes, and I’m optimistic that particularly the percentage of great people getting overlooked (in relation to the number of apps) will decrease.

    Some specific tips and notes:

    • Write a decent cover letter

      • Write with a tone that’s professional yet warm… not stiff or dry.  Your (discernible) voice should come through.
      • Keep it to one page (max!) or less.  Maybe even a lot less.
      • Convince Google of the fits described above — that’s critical!!!
    • Your resume can be in PDF, Word, HTML, or text formats (unless otherwise requested, of course!)

      • But note that it will be ultimately printed out.  This means that reasonable pagination can be helpful and also suggests that a comprehensive 20 page document is perhaps not a great idea.  When you want your recruiter and interviewers to know more about your background & interests, links are your friends. 

    • Respectful persistence can be appropriate

      • If you genuinely have another offer on the table, let your recruiter know! If the recruiter promised to get back with you in [x] days, and in [x+1 or x+2] days you haven’t heard back, politely e-mail them.
    • If you have a friend at Google who can articulately and sincerely vouch for you, that can work in your favor.

      • Your association / relationship with that person matters.  They’ll be asked how they know you and how well they know you (and your skills).
    • Passion matters and is skillfully perceived.  You’re probably wasting your time unless you really are
      excited about a particular position.
    • Getting turned down for one Google position does not mean you’re ineligible to apply for another position down the road.
    • General interview advice that probably applies for pretty much any company:

      • Ask thoughtful questions.
      • Allow time for traffic and parking and finding the right building. Google — at least the Mountain View campus — is a big place!
      • Dress one or two steps better than you expect your interviewers to be.  Less than that, and people may wonder about your judgment. More than that, and people may think you’re clueless or arrogant.

        • The “right” dress at Google probably varies by department. Engineering folks tend to be more informally dressed than sales folks.  If you’re interviewing for a senior management position, I’d probably dress a bit more formally than you would for an intern interview.  But the official advice also really makes sense here:  dress comfortably.  If you feel comfortable and confident, it’ll show.
      • Get a good night’s sleep the two nights before.  Sleep deficits are cumulative.  If you have a
        morning interview, make sure you’re getting up early the two or three mornings before to get yourself ready to be mentally and physically alert during your interview time.  On a similar health note, drink and eat smartly the day of your interview.  Hunger pangs are distracting.
      • Invest in a good pen to take to interviews.  The heft and reliability can be a real-even-if-small confidence booster.  Taking occasional notes can help you remember info or questions for later, and also might indicate a sense of thoughtfulness and interest to your interviewer.
      • On the whole, think of interviews kind of like first dates.  You don’t want to do all or even most of the talking.  You’re there to impress, to learn, to help determine whether there’s a good potential for a relationship.  First impressions are important.  Show you are caring and thoughtful by asking good questions.  Avoid having spinach in your teeth (floss beforehand!).

    Possibly-little-known factoid:

    No Googler — not even Larry or Sergey — can singlehandedly extend an employment offer to anyone.  While candidates don’t have to go through as many interviews nowadays, most candidates — regardless of level — typically interview with quite a few peers; team-fit is critical!

    * * *

    I expect to offer some more Google-thoughts in the future, but — as a reminder — this is my personal blog, and as such, I expect to generally blather on about anything I feel like discussing, ranting, dissecting, punning, lamenting, etc… which is more likely than not to be boring to the impatient sort.

    Oh, and one last thing: please keep comments on-topic as a courtesy not only to me, but to the cool folks reading my blog. Thanks!

    * * *

    Related entries:
    – A blunt note to HR folks and interviewers
    – How to evaluate your current job & career… and thoughtfully consider future options

    and lastly, for a blast-from-the-past… some perspective & a bit of cranky ranting…

    – What do you do? (self = job?) And how are you?

  • I hesitate to read your opinions when I can’t talk back

    Please forgive the unsexy title. I know it would have been far more Diggable if I had titled it “Top 10 Reasons Why Your Opinion Blog Needs Comments.”

    Anyway… I can sometimes enjoy link blogs (“101 uses for a paper mache African swallow. No, European!”) without comments. Or info-blogs (new product released, site will be down next Tuesday, check out these new features).

    But blogs in which the AUTHOR is mostly discussing his or her opinions about stuff, or blogs that cover controversial stuff (news stories, culture, etc.)… damn, those better have comments enabled, or they won’t get my eyeballs for long.

    For instance, I’m looking at you, BoingBoing.  Aside from the fact that I have (somewhat) of a life that precludes reading a bazillion entries a day that are talking at me, not with me… when it’s uber-oh-so-important-or-popular sites, I’ll be bound to find the same links in my friends’ blogs anyway.

    Yes, I know, comment and trackback spammers are a bitch.  I hope their nether-regions suffer from this and/or they are forced to be locked in a closet with Vanna White night after night after night after night.  But with good software, good plugins (YAY, Akismet!), and a little elbow grease, these cretins are substantially less of a problem.

    I have mixed feelings when it comes to comments on corporate blogs.

    Positives:

    • Bullshit can be called out or, on a less severe note, readers can offer corrections, add useful contextual info, etc. (hopefully resulting in better blog entries in the future and more informed readers)
    • Readers can request for clarifications or additional info from the company.  But see the flipside of this below.
    • Occasional registration requirements aside, commenting has a comparatively low barrier to entry, meaning that quality input is sometimes more likely to be offered when commenting, not just forum posting, is available.
    • Comments can often be generally insightful and/or entertaining… sometimes more than the blog entries themselves :-D.

    Negatives:

    • Someone’s gotta monitor those comments… to delete spam, to (ideally, IMHO) delete offensive and off-topic crapfests, to note info to take back to other employees, to correct misconceptions or outright lies, and to (potentially) answer questions in-line.  That takes time… sometimes a LOT of time.  Time that, one could argue, might be better spent actually tackling questions in a forum, fixing bugs, speaking at conferences, retooling UIs, or even getting sleep.  And let’s face it: tech support, at least, is most likely pretty damn inefficient via blog comments (“Help!  When I turn on my qpod, it doesn’t work!”).
    • Sometimes comments can draw out the worst in folks, especially anonymous folks.  Even simple, informative posts can trigger shockingly nasty and uncomfortable exchanges… making the company not only less likely to blog, but (non-masochistic) customers or potential customers less likely to read the blog or even respect the company.
    • Major companies can be attractive targets for comment/trackback-spamming script kiddies.

    *  *  *

    So I’m curious… do you feel the same way I do? 
    – Do you also draw distinctions amongst link, info, and opinion/commentary blogs?
    – Do you care one way or the other about comments on blogs or not?

  • Forbidden phrases (e.g., no more Web x.0, dammit!)

    Hear ye, hear ye!  From now on, the use of the following phrases is to be discouraged, if not downright forbidden:

    • Attention metadata.  Attention anything for that matter, unless it’s used in a non-technical phrase such as “Put down the crackberry and pay attention to the real world for a sec, dammit!”
    • Web 3.0.  Web 4.0.  Web anything.0, for crying out loud.  See my comments on Web 2.0 and Web 4.0 for more information on this ridiculous fad.  Note:  Web 2.d’oh! is okay.  For now.
    • Relationship economy.  I just saw this one today.  Grrr!  Note:  Okay if used to refer jokingly to prostitution.  For now.

    I’m sure there are others, but I’m getting nauseous just mulling over the above trite phrases.  And yes, I realize that it’s a sadly losing battle to do away with Web 2.0.

    So… what empty, cliched, uber-annoying geek-phrases drive you nuts?