Candida Kutz's Blob, er, Blog

Google Takes on Microsoft Office!

Just in! Exciting news courtesy of Andreas Ramos' Google Adwords User Group:

Yep. Google Office.

Google will partner with SUN to deliver a complete suite of software to compete against Microsoft Office. This will include a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. It will be based on SUN's OpenOffice, which is open source.

If you've tried NetOffice, it's a Microsoft Office clone. It works just like Microsoft. And it works with Microsoft files. You can replace Microsoft Office ($600 or so) entirely with OpenOffice, which is free.

This was announced an hour ago (NOTE from CK: approx. 11 am PST) in a joint press conf at Google by Scott McNealy (CEO of SUN) and Eric Schmidt (quasi-CEO of Google).

This is a declaration of war between Google and Microsoft. MS Office is Microsoft's cash cow. By releasing G-Office, Google will undermine MS's revenues.

First Report on BlogHer Conference

On Saturday, 30 July, I attended the BlogHer confab in Santa Clara.

I missed the morning sessions and got there in time to have lunch during the Flame, Blame and Shame panel. Favorite moment? When Mena Trott (co-founder of SixApart with her husband), sitting in the audience at a table very near me, never got a chance to respond to an implicit criticism of Movable Type. The scene went kinda like this:  The panel turned, as these blog discussions often do, to the issue of spam. A complaint from audience member Heather of News.com regarding the enormous amount of spam comments she gets every day (about 300) inspired commentary from the audience moderator --"Is Mena here?" she asked -- that she  was moving to Drupal because of how well it deals with spam.  And she went on. Many eyes were on Mena- was she going to get a chance to respond? She did not. And I, like her pals at the table, rolled our eyes when the panel moved on and she never got that chance. She got flamed!

And just like another panel member mentioned earlier, women, unlike men, flame softly.

Oh by the way, the soon to be released v3.2 of Movable Type has much enhanced spam fighting capabilities, according to what I've been hearing.

(Note-I'm writing this from work and don't have my conference notebook in front of me. Apologies to those of you I've referred to anonymously.  Stay tuned for more.)

BlogHer Conference

A conference devoted to women bloggers is taking place July 30 in Santa Clara. BlogHer is a nonprofit organization that is creating a community of women who blog.  Looks like a pretty cool line-up with lots of fun promised! Check it out here.

And I Thought She Had Better Things to Do . . .

The blogosphere will soon feature the deepest thoughts and "zippy one-offs"  of your favorite personalities thanks to one-time CA gubernatorial candidate Arianna Huffington! Bless her heart. See story here.

Google: Virtual Ottoman Empire

OK, I've succumbed. I have to write again about Google, the Ottoman Empire of advertising. Andreas Ramos, a Google Qualified Advertising Professional, just posted news to one of his lists that Google's revenues recently increased by an astounding 477%! He goes on that "Google's ad revenues are now half as large as ALL outdoor advertising (billboards, etc), a bit less than half of ALL magazine advertising, and about a quarter of ALL radio advertising." I've been hearing a lot of excited hype about a new technology bubble, promising crazy opportunites and money like during the height of the dot com era, but haven't really believed it (cynic that I am!). Anectodal evidence has shown that there's been a surge in hiring of engineers, but otherwise things still seem slow. However, Andreas' post included this conclusion to news about Google's domination of advertising: "This may well kick off another web boom, just like Netscape's $5B IPO in August 1995."

36.687561,-121.805073: GPS Coordinates via Google Maps

Here's a very cool trick I just learned about from one the many mailing lists I'm on:

What some (may be even most) don't realize is that you can GPS coordinates for any location you specify from Google maps.

Say you spot a nifty little cove in Mendocino, with what looks like a pretty decent trail leading down to the beach.  From the satellite pix, it looks like it's probably been used by locals with faint trail, but you haven't seen it before. Wouldn't it be nice to get the GPS coordinates of the cove, and maybe the GPS coordinates where the trail head begins.

No problem.  Let's try that secret cove.  First, let's pan to the cove and view it with the appropriate magnification. 
1) Put your cursor where the cove's beach is on the satellite view.
2) Double click.  Now, the map should center itself with the location indicated by the cursor being at the center.  Cove is now in the center of screen.
3) Look up at the URL line.  What do you see? You ought to see "http://maps.google.com/"  Boring so far.
4) Go over to the upper right hand corner and click "Link to this page"
5) Now look up the URL line again. What do you see?  This is what I saw for my cove.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=mendocino,ca&ll=39.204583,-123.771844&spn=0.021544,0.031672&t=k&hl=en

That's right. There are your GPS coordinates in the URL line (39.204538 and -123.771844 in this case).  They are right there!

If your GPS is set up for a different coordinate system than DD:MMMMMM (where MMMMMM is % of a degree, so that 0.123456 is 12.3456% of a degree), you may need to change the receiver's coordinate setup or do a simple arithmetic conversion to the coordinate system familiar to you.

If you hop to another spot, make sure you hit "Link to this page again to obtain the new coordinates. 

Also, you can look up GPS coordinates from the map view, but how fun is that?

As always, "NOT TO BE USED FOR NAVIGATION" but using my house as a reference, the GPS coordinates given are pretty darn accurate.

Have fun.

NOTE: The image above is the best satellite image Google has for my address in Marina.

Silicon Valley Watcher gets too much attention, again!

Ex-colleague Tom Foremski, publisher of Silicon Valley Watcher (SVW), published a recent scoop that has now landed him a mention in the amicus brief involving an Apple lawsuit. Tom's SVW story is here.

First the Google API story caused site traffic to more than double in one day (I used to handle all the back-end stuff on the site, so witnessed this rollercoaster ride first-hand), then he published a hypothetical Google "bomb" piece that caused ripples throughout the blogosphere, and then this Apple scoop again caused the numbers to skyrocket. Good going Tom! You've got juice.

Trial by Google:An interview story

Like me, "Kate," is looking for work in an economy that appears to be picking up (unlike me though, she lives in San Francisco). She's an attractive blond "techie," 50 years old looking 10 years younger, and wears glasses so that the engineers will know that she's smart!(Yep, it's unfortunate that stereotypes re: women still reign). She has such an appealing skill set that she was called in for a Google interview. Google, in case you didn't know, is extremely secretive, so much so they can pull off a meeting of 1800 marketing personnel (see my SiliconValleyWatcher scoop) without any outsiders knowing!

"Kate" gave me permission to post her notes on the interview, giving you an insiders look at the Google machine:

I thought I'd keep you all posted on my interviewing at Google saga. Had my first in- person interview today. I've been told that they are extremely rigorous and will ask a lot of technical questions. I also heard that they might ask me some strange life sort of questions too. I was told to expect the worse possible interview scenario in my life.

Maybe I've been thru some pretty doozy interviews but I didn't find this interview day to be the worst I'd ever been thru at all. Not even close. No one asked me to write code in C (not my language), no one mentioned my age or even hinted at my age (not even asking me when I graduated from college). No one made any "girl" comments. No one told me that if they didn't hire me it would be due to my personality defects (as if I was mentally ill if they didn't hire me). They did ask me technical questions. Sometimes they could ask clear questions and sometimes they couldn't.

Due to life circumstances I was not as prepared as I would have liked to have been, but I did spend last night brushing up on my SQL. I was having so much fun brushing up on my SQL that that was ALL I brushed up on. But that turned out to be a good thing. They did hint at SQL questions in my phone interview which is why I focused on that.

Google runs a tight ship and almost everyone was on time (one manager was late by about 2 min. but he's a manager in the ops group and well, ops groups are always having a crisis!). They mostly asked me database and Unix sys admin questions. Most of them were fairly easy but in one session (the only session with two people interviewing me) I had a LOT of trouble figuring out what they were asking me -- which made me nervous. They gave me stuff to drink (I choose water) and they let me take bathroom breaks (I've been to interviews where neither was offered or given). BUT there was no lunch and I came from SF leaving a bit after 10 am. I left there a bit after 3 pm. By the end, the lack of food was making me a bit dingy and spaced out.

I didn't find the tech questions outrageous. I found everyone pretty engaging, although the last guy was a bit arrogant and surprised that Google approached me and not the other way around.

Everyone I saw was much younger than me. It didn't look like there was a single person over 40 on campus. But then I was warned about that from someone working there.

Not sure if the ops interview has put an end to this interviewing at Google thing or not... OH! the nice thing is that Google never disappears -- they tell you if they aren't interested anymore. How refreshing is that? I'm used to all this interviewing (including second rounds) and then the company disappears and never responds to your emails again!. AND they give you a Google goodie bag with a Google tshirt (very high quality and a woman's one cause they knew I was a woman!), a baseball cap and and small notebook and pen! How classy is that??!!!

EVENT: Penquin Day SF- Open Source Software and Non-Profits

The open source movement is a beautiful, radical thing, and nothing less than a godsend for individuals and orgnizations lacking in funds. To foster communication between open source techies and non-profits working with open-source, or looking into doing so, Aspiration and CompuMentor are co-organizing an event in Oakland, CA, April 12, from 9 am to 5:30. Registration costs $60 for individuals or organizations with budgets under 100K. $75 if over 100k.

From the official site is this event description:

What is Penguin Day? Nonprofits, eRiders, software developers, and activists will meet at Penguin Day in Oakland, California to demystify free and open source software for social change organizations. This day-long event will explore free and open source software in plain language, serve to build networks among nonprofits technology users, and help socially-minded 'geeks' find ways to support nonprofit organizations.

"Neo-Marketing Gibberish"

Coming as I do from many years on the "soft-side" of tech, i.e., starting in 1988 working as production manager of the ground-breaking Electronic Whole Earth Catalog, and until most recently as blog mistress for the insanely popular  Silicon Valley Watcher (which I launched with Tom Foremski in late Sept. 04), some of you may have been expecting this to be a geek blog. But no, though I have countless opinions on the tech industry, and stay moderately in tune with what's going, the thought of writing about it makes me gag (and besides, there are plenty others doing it with more juice than me!). I prefer to bore you with mostly nature news.

However, while perusing my Google Alert results yesterday, I came across a hilarious little cartoon lampooning geek speak. And I'd like to share it with you:  Geek speak/cartoon.  Because even if you're not a geek, I think you'll laugh out loud. (Scroll to end of article- not far)