Jul 19, 2012The Yahoo! board of directors was leaving nothing to chance.
The Internet company is known throughout Silicon Valley as a leaky ship whose internal deliberations often turn up on blogs or in other media outlets.
So when the company’s four-member chief executive search team met Google veteran Marissa Mayer for the first time last month, their precautions evoked a John le Carré novel. No one inside Yahoo was told, and the interview was conducted 10 miles away from headquarters in the Palo Alto offices of law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
When Mayer met with the entire Yahoo board last week, the company’s directors were bused from Yahoo’s offices to another law firm on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. The idea was to evade potential tails, and anyone who had figured out the first interviews had taken place at Skadden, according to a person briefed on the process who wished to remain anonymous because the matter was private.
One Year Later
I started off this blog last year with mostly reblogs of other people’s content to make my own blog looked like it had content. I know, it was incredibly deceptive of me.
But anyways, I eventually got rid of all the reblogs and replaced it with things I found interesting like a Youtube video or an interface design. Not much better, but at least I’m doing a bit more work. Some of that stuff you’ll still see here, but ultimately I’m trying to move away from all that.
There are two things we do as people, especially on the Internet: producing or consuming content. I want to be less of a content consumer this year and more of a content producer.
Jan 5, 2013There’s no such thing as a dumb user. … There are only dumb products.Timothy Prestero, TED Talk Dec 26, 2012
Credit
I noticed that ever since Marissa started working here at Yahoo, she always takes her time to thank people. There was a recent email thread where people tried to thank her for a successful event, but she quickly put the spotlight on someone else.
I don’t think many CEOs do this. And it’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you’re under pressure to prove yourself for the first time.
Dec 7, 2012A computer used to be a place.
It was a giant mainframe that, in some cases, took up floors in a building. What was once something you had to visit, eventually moved onto your desk, then your lap, is currently in your pocket, and is now going onto your face.
It’s amazing how fast computers are not just getting smaller, but becoming physically closer to our bodies. It’s only a matter of time before we’re fully augmented with these things.
Oct 23, 2012Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Sep 21, 2012Engineers are taught to make decisions analytically and largely without emotion. When it comes to a decision between alternatives, we enumerate the costs and benefits and decide which one is better.
But there are times in our lives, when the careful consideration of costs and benefits just doesn’t seem like the right way to make a decision. There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate when a particular course of action just feels right. And interestingly, I discovered it’s in facing life’s most important decisions that intuition seems the most indispensable to getting it right.
In turning important decisions over to intuition, one has to give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately enfalls. Intuition is something that occurs in the moment and if you are open to it, if you listen to it, it has the potential to direct or redirect you in a way that is best for you.
What User Experience Means to Four Internet Companies
During this past year, I’ve seen people from different tech companies talking about user experience and what it means to them. So for fun, I decided to rebrand them with their definition of user experience.
New Domain
I’m changing my domain (again) to sudoco.de. I feel pretty confident that this will be my final domain change.
The name means a lot to me personally because it’s the name I’ve gone by in most of the hackathons and projects I’ve been in. It’s based on the word “pseudocode”, with “pseudo-” being replaced by the sudo command.
Also, I think I’ve finalized the design of this site. It looks really crisp, minimalist, and modern which is exactly what I was going for.
Jul 31, 2012How Yahoo! Kept Mayer a Secret
Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo!
Completely unexpected and awesome announcement from Yahoo! today. Marissa Mayer was a former exec at Google who was apparently behind the layout of the Google homepage, Gmail, Google News, and Google Images. She holds a BS in symbolic systems and an MS in computer science.
This is so awesome. I am super excited to see what she has planned out.
Jul 16, 2012HP dm4 Beats Commercial
HP is advertising their dm4 Beats edition laptop with one of the coolest commercials I’ve ever seen in a while. The energetic music and the consistent usage of circles and swirls really drives home the message of motion.
Jul 12, 2012iCal Heat Map
Winter quarter of 2012 was the most brutal school quarter I’ve ever experienced. Interestingly enough, iCal will generate a heat map based on how many events are going on in a day.
Anyways, it’s been pretty awesome how much free time I have now. No more homework to complete, exams to study for, or 8:00 a.m. sections to attend. I’ve been using most of my free time to finally work on my dad’s website. I’ll put up some comps eventually if I feel like it.
I’m hoping once that’s done I’ll be able to focus on learning some new hobbies.
Jun 29, 2012Ring Ceremony
Ron Reedy, cofounder of Peregrine Semiconductor, was the keynote speaker at the Jacobs Ring Ceremony for graduating engineers.
Reedy first talked how Rome’s greatest contribution to humanity was the Roman roads. It was on these roads that messages were quickly passed along and spread out into the world. But these roads also delivered something on a far grander scale.. civilization.
After the fall of the Roman empire, Reedy talked about how innovation was deterred during the Dark Ages. He then walked through each of the biggest breakthroughs in technology, from Gutenberg’s press to the modern cellphone, and revealed how each was strongly tied to increased growth of communication.
Reedy concluded by encouraging people to help strengthen communication amongst humanity by building things to help it prosper and/or by sharing our insight and knowledge amongst one another.
Jun 24, 2012What is all this content bullshit? You’re not a content company, you’re a technology company!Steve Jobs, criticizing Yahoo Jun 24, 2012
