diamond docs

Diamond Docs is Dead

2009-10-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

It's time to admit that I never update this blog. What's the best way to do so? By creating a completely new blog of course! But this time I'm not going to tell myself or anyone else that it's going to be interesting, regularly updated, or coherent. Perhaps by not hoping for anything I'll achieve something. Check it out here:

Failed Blog ger

And for some closure: Dodgeball is still unfinished, Hero World is on Facebook and doing well, Birthday Cards has over 40 million users, my friend is still hacking away at his iPhone project (I never found the time to help), I'm knee-deep in a completely different project from any I've mentioned before, and I still want to try my hand at building a talent identification web crawler.

Quick Update

2009-03-01T21:58:00.001-08:00

I'm am clearly not fit to be a blogger. Judging by the dates on my last two posts I post about...once per year! I would say I'm going to try to do better, but who knows if that will actually happen or not. Instead here's a quick summary of what I'm up to:

-Work at RockYou is going great! I can honestly say I enjoy going to work everyday and I often find myself staying late just out of personal interest in what I'm doing. My current projects are the Hero World application on MySpace and Birthday Cards on facebook. The new Hero World app is keeping my hands full as a developer, so I've shifted into more of a PM role on Birthday Cards (which is getting more than 100k users per day!).

-I've been talking about it for over a year, but I finally started revamping Dodgeball into the app it was supposed to be from the start. It was always intended to become a RPG-lite style game where you moved up the ranks and aquired items, but I became busy with graduation and starting a new job. Unfortunately it's not such a novel concept anymore thanks to the Mob/Mafia game craze, but I just can't bear to leave it unfinished!

-If I finish up the Dodgeball revamp soon enough, I want to help one of my buddies with a very exciting iPhone app he's developing. Can't spill the details yet, but I was shocked to find out it hasn't already been done on the iPhone (seems like a natural fit). The idea is solid, take, naturally meshes with the iPhones unique features, and with the amount of enthusiasm he has for the project I'm sure it will find some degree of success.

-After Dodgeball and possibly the iPhone project, I'm going to try my hand at something completely different from the world of social network and mobile phone applications. I want to try my hand at creating a system that is able to identify people that have a high probability of being talented at a set of specified skills. Sort of a Google for people. There are plenty of obvious business applications, but I'm more interested in seeing if it's possible to get good results using publicly available data sources. It will also be fun to start with a very basic and unoptimized algorithm, and then see how the result set changes as the algorithm is refined over time.

Google & Me

2008-02-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=bold.html

See that rather handsome looking fellow on the left? That's me! I wasn't a diversity program intern, and I certainly didn't work in one of those 6 business groups (software engineering for life!). But I will admit, black interns aren't exactly plentiful over at the Googleplex, and you've got to have a black person in all diversity photos right? ...right? ;)

It's been a long time since I've posted, and there are lots of great new things to share, including my new job at RockYou, thoughts on working at Cooliris and Google, some new projects I'm working and more. Check back soon for updates.

UPDATE: Sadly enough the picture featuring me has been replaced by a slideshow...I guess that's the end of my 15 minutes of fame =(

School, Computer Technology, Web.2.0, and more

2007-01-18T00:24:00.000-08:00

School's back in. Looks like it will be a busy quarter. Not necessarily because of schoolwork, but because in addition to my CS course load I can't help but load up on side projects to make extra $$$ and gain experience...ah well. A few things I've been thinking about lately:

-Are we ultimately failing in our use of computer technology? It seems like the aim of computers was to help us work more effectively, thereby freeing us up to indulge in more enlightening pursuits. The work week should have been sliced down to perhaps 25hrs a week with 40 being a firm cap. Instead 40 hours a week is the absolute bare minimum anyone I know works, with some reaching up into the 100hr work week...doesn't sound very progressive or fulfilling to me.

-This whole Web 2.0 thing is simultaneously ridiculous (just how long...can you be beta?) and incredibly powerful (user-generated content ftw). On the one hand there's a great deal of potential, but it seems to be suffering horribly from "bandwagon fever." Either way though, it's shaking things up and making people think differently, which is generally a good thing. Plus we get nifty Web 2.0 logos!

-There was something else, but I can't remember what it was. More later.

International TV Via the Internet

2006-12-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

British Comedies, Japanese Cartoons, Indian Movies, these are just a few examples of television programs that have a broad appeal outside of their domestic markets. What we need now is a company that takes these local broadcasts and makes them available to the rest of the world. The Internet provides the perfect medium for such a task. In addition, instead of just streaming the original broadcast, this company needs to go a step further and splice out the original advertisements with ads specific to the native country they are being viewed in, as well as employing a staff to provide subtitles in the local language. This creates a triple-win situation for the company, its users, and the original TV broadcasting station. Users get the international content they want, instead of having to hope their shows will get translated or scrambling to import a copy. The company will make profits from advertisers and perhaps user subscription fees. The broadcasting stations will expand their viewing audience and make profits from already-existing content by licensing it out to the company distributing it across the web. Beautiful!

Merry Christmas

2006-12-24T23:52:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone, and if you don't celebrate Christmas I still hope you have a great day!

Why we need a "Google Team" web app

2006-12-22T16:32:00.000-08:00

"Google Team, Google Project, Google Collaborate" Whatever you want to call it, it needs to happen. Working on a team project? Log-into Google Team (...Beta), click "Create New Project", enter the project name and Google IDs of your teammates, and bam, you've got a one-stop place to exchange and view messages and files (all searchable and easily browsed of course), engage in live chat, and simultaneously edit documents. The best part is, almost all of these features are already available from Google (Gmail, Google Chat/Talk, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, etc). If they could just roll these up into an elegant interface that manages the services on a per-project basis then I think they'd have a hit on their hands. Small investment, big return. Any Googlers reading this? Maybe if my schedule ever clears up I'll see if I can hack it together myself, but with CS140 (Stanford's infamous Operating Systems class) that may not be for awhile.

Marketing for marketing's sake

2006-12-21T21:54:00.000-08:00

It seems like my work always comes in large chunks separated by periods of total inactivity. Great for parallel computing, not so great for leading a restful life. A few new developments today. Looks like I'm going to do some web development for another local start-up, and I'm also going to start my own viral marketing campaign. What am I marketing you ask? Not a thing, but I came up with the idea in the shower, and thought it would be fun to see if I could at least generate a little buzz. As always, I'll write more as it moves further along.

Busy

2006-12-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

I've got a few ideas I'd like to post, but time's tight right now (ironic considering it's supposed to be vacation). Between last-minute Christmas shopping, a small project from SwayLaw, spending time with the family, and trying to find time to work out and catch up on some reading there's just not enough hours in the day. As soon as things cool off a bit I'll have some interesting posts to share, as a sneak peak here are the general areas some of the ideas fall into: International Television, Audio & Search, Tech Support...stay tuned for more info.

Exciting Times

2006-12-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

I'm glad to report I have a great new idea! In fact, I like it so much that I'm actually not going to share this one just yet because I plan on contact Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing in order to discuss filing for a patent. Even if it doesn't turn out to be viable patent material, it will be a good experience going through the process. I also plan on working towards creating a functional proof-of-concept that could be used to pitch the idea. I'll make sure to write about what I learn along the way. In addition, over the next few days I will begin posting other ideas that I'm not planning on pursuing.

Top 10 sites I visit most often

2006-12-17T23:23:00.000-08:00

In no particular order:

www.google.com (along with gmail)
www.slashdot.com
www.reddit.com
www.facebook.com
www.caranddriver.com
www.gizmodo.com
www.arstechnica.com
www.ign.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.woot.com

What are some of your favorite sites?

Home for the Holidays

2006-12-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

I arrived home for Christmas break yesterday evening. After enjoying some delicious home cooking and taking a leisurely 10 hour "nap" I'm ready to start updating DiamondKnight.com and checking out some of the latest happenings in the tech world. Unfortunately, I often find these activities getting pushed to the side during the daily grind of the Stanford quarter system.

I've got the portfolio page up and running. So far I only have 3 projects (all done in the last quarter of school) posted, I'll be working on getting up examples of my past web design next. As you can also see the Diamond Docs are now finally online. For now I'm going to stick with the minimalist look. I'm still a bit wary about this whole blogging business, but it does seem like the best way to quickly and easy jot down my thoughts and also share them with the public on some off chance that someone may be interested in them.

One of the reasons I'm motivated to get DiamondKnight.com back up to date is because I've already started thinking about my plans for the summer. I'm looking at a few different options right now:
-Internship at a big company: Google, another summer with IBM, SAP, Intuit
-Work at a small company/start-up: Facebook, SwayLaw, Guidewire
-Stay on campus and do CS research, probably something to do with Human-Computer Interaction.

Each choice has its upsides and downsides. CS research is really the only totally new venue, I've done full-time work at large companies before, and I have also worked (part-time) at start-ups. At this point I'm simply trying to keep my options open in order to make sure that I have a great experience this summer. As always, any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.