Girls In Tech

Which high-tech company do Americans feel has the brightest future: Apple, Facebook or Google?  According to Poll Position,  new polling data  finds that Apple tops Google and Facebook at 44 percent.

In a scientific national opinion poll, Apple won more votes than Google and Facebook, combined. Forty-four percent said Apple, 26% Google, 10% Facebook and 21% expressed no opinion.  More than half the young people, in the 18-29 year old category selected Apple as the high-tech company with the brightest future with 55.2% compared to Google’s 16.8% and Facebook’s 15.2%.

If you are interested in seeing a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation, you may look in crosstabs for this poll at: http://media.pollposition.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/Poll-Position-crosstabs-hi-tech-companies.pdf.

Poll Position’s scientific survey of 1,066 registered voters, nationwide, was conducted October 30 of this year.  It  would be interesting to see how this poll would skew if given strictly the Bay Area/Silicon Valley population?  Or Austin, LA, New York, Boston or the UK, for that matter — Would we see Google, perhaps, pulling closer to the lead?
What do you think?  Which high-tech company do you feel has the brightest future?  You can vote in Poll Position’s online companion poll and comment at: http://pollposition.com/2011/11/01/apple-tops-google-facebook/.  [The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.]

Learn more about Poll Position’s polling methodology at: http://pollposition.com/2011/09/26/our-polling-methodology/

Tags: apple, facebook, Google, high-tech, poll
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

We wanted to highlight this great video, a panel put on by Glamour/Conde Naste and moderated by All Things D’s own Kara Swisher.

You might ask: “What is a magazine like Glamour doing moderating such a panel?” To answer this, Editor Cindi Leive answers this way:  “Nothing is more glamorous than a woman with skills to make our world run more smoothly.”  Further, she adds: “We’ve always gone where the women are!”  I see this as a good sign!

With Hilary Mason of Bitly (their chief scientist), Stacy Brown-Philpot, director of Google-owned and operated properties; Julie Larson-Green, corporate VP of program management for Windows at Microsoft; Kati London, director of product for Zynga –  please enjoy as they talk the gamut of topics, including:  Why is it that girls, disproportionately, start to lose interest in science and math by the fourth grade? -to- How do we get women and girls interested in going into computer science and engineering degrees?, as well as how to foster role models for these skills in a career.

click to launch video

(photo & video credit: All Things D & Glamour)

Tags: All Things Digital, Bitly, Christine Oneto, glamour, Google, Hilary Mason, Julie Larson-Green, Kati London, microsoft, Stacy Brown-Philpot, women in tech, Zynga
Posted in All Chapters, Girls In Tech | No Comments »

I had a chance to sit down with Rob Pike from Google last week at OSCON 2011.  Rob Pike is a Distinguished Engineer at Google, Inc. He works on distributed systems, data mining, programming languages, and software development tools. Before Google, Rob was a member of the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs, the lab that developed Unix. While there, he worked on computer graphics, user interfaces, languages, concurrent programming, and distributed systems. He was an architect of the Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems and is the co-author with Brian Kernighan of The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming. More recently he was a co-designer of the Go programming language. Other details of his life appear on line but vary in veracity.

Tell us more about you, your role at Google and your team?

I was at Bell Labs for over 20 years, most of which were wonderful, but the last years at Bell Labs weren’t as much fun.  In 2002, I moved to Google, where I work on infrastructure- the technology behind the scenes. Lately I’ve been working on the Go team. At Google, I’m having fun. There’s strong interest from the engineers to learn more about Go, and we have users from from neophytes to experienced gophers. About 3 years ago, a few of us decided to address the problem that the programming languages we were using at Google for building system software were old and not well suited to the problems and the machinery we were working with. Right now, there are about 10 strong engineers on my team. We work on helping Google use this new language, but do all our language and library development as open source. As it says in my talk abstract, Go is not a small language but it is a simple one. By “simple” I mean that it is built upon a small number of ideas that combine orthogonally to generate power. Go may have fewer features than most mainstream languages but in expressiveness I argue it is ahead. Orthogonality lets elements be combined without unpleasant surprises. Simplicity makes Go easy to understand, fast to use and fast to compile. Go launched in november 2009. We are all over the world. we have team across the world from US to sydney as well.

What does the future look like for Go in the next 2 years?

It’s a maturation process. We want to grow a much larger community of users, which means we need a lot more exposure. Our focus now is to have it adapted by many users while we to continue to develop the language, libraries, and tools. We are giving talks and doing lots of advocacy. From the technical side, we are working on better libraries and making it even faster. It’s already very competitive; we just need to get the word out there: fun and fast.

What would be a single take away for the attendees that you want them to gain from your session?

You can have a nice language that is fun to use, safe *and* efficient

Whats next for GOOGLE?

Couldn’t speak to much besides my project, Go. But, this success of our social networking experiment, Google+, has been awesome!

You are one of the most accomplished individuals and a successful engineer, What can we learn from you?

it is important to do what you believe in. Some IT jobs can be very unrewarding and you can get trapped doing something that you dislike. So, if you find yourself in that position then you must switch to something you’re passionate about. What is  your goal and your interests?  What excites you the most? You should find them and make them what you do!

Which session(s) are you most excited about?

Sad to say I haven’t been focusing on others, except things related my project, and our sessions. I’ve just been swamped, but I know that I’ll be catching up by video afterwards. (I wish my talk had been videoed, hint hint.)

Is this your first time being part of Oscon? If not, then how’s it different from previous years?

This is my second year here. Last year, Go did not have a big presence – I was just a newcomer myself, although Google has been a major sponsor for years. This year, our team is more visible, with multiple talks and giveaways. Have you seen our Gophers? My wife, Renee French is an artist and she designed the gopher. There’s a plush incarnation, made by Squishable, and every attendee got the vinyl version, made by KidRobot. Renee’s name and a link to the Go are on the bottom of the vinyl gopher.

What’s a current device that you couldn’t live without?

Either my 11 inch mac air or my little digital camera. If there is no wifi, then it’ll be my digital camera for sure.

Read, download and check out the presentation by Rob on “Go” here. Good Luck Rob!

Follow me @MsSonicFlare

Tags: 24notion, Engineer, girls in tech, gitpdx, go, Golang, Google, gopher, Ivo Lukas, ivolukas, mssonicflare, OSCON, OSCON2011, Portland, programming, technology
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Events, Girls In Tech, GIT Mentorship, Portland | 1 Comment »

In less then three months, Mountain View based start up, Bizzy, has registered almost 120,000 local business favorites in the hopes of providing YOU with business recommendations for everything from a lunch spot to a mechanic.

We can all go to Google or Yelp and type in “lunch in San Francisco” or “sushi in Soho” but the thing is, we are all going to get the same results. Even if you like upscale fusion sushi and I like the all you can eat buffet. Bizzy, Bizzy.com, is changing that with their personalized local business recommendation engine powered by people with similar tastes to you.

The favorites that have been shared on Bizzy thus far have been used to make over 650,000 local business recommendations and with every new shared favorite, the recommendations Bizzy makes are getting that much better. So sign up and share Bizzy with your friends and family to get the scoop on where to eat, shop and play.

Bizzy has released lists of the most favorited local restaurants in the top 10 cities gettin’ Bizzy including San Francisco, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Seattle, Shreveport, La., Boston and Austin, Texas. Visit http://blog.bizzy.com/the-bizziest-cities-in-america to see the lists.

Top 10 Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area
1. Absinthe Brasserie & Bar
2. Pizzeria Delfina
3. Little Star Pizza
4. Yoshi’s San Francisco
5. Nopa
6. Cafe Borrone
7. DishDash
8. Coupa Cafe
9. La Fondue
10. Tied House Brewery & Cafe

Are some of your favorites in that list? Head to http://www.Bizzy.com and enter your favorites to start getting personalized local business recommendations. If you end up trying Bizzy and their recommendations, let them know how it goes! You could win $500 with their “Rec Check Challenge! Oh, and yes, there is an app for that: Bizzy.com/iPhone.

Tags: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, DC, dinner, eat, Google, Los Angeles, lunch, New York, play, recommendations, restaurants, San Francisco, shop, Washington D.C., win, Yelp
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Recently, my voracious appetite for movie-watching led me to discover Roku, a streaming player that allows me access to a world wide web library of movies, shows, music, videos, podcasts, games, and more. I’ve only had the Roku player for five days but I already know: it’s my #1 recommendation for a gadget gift this holiday season. Here’s the high-level:

• Cost: $59/$79/$99. Click here to compare the three different models (I went for it with the $99 model)
• Includes: Roku streaming player (4.9 x 4.9 x 1.2 inches; roughly the size and weight of a paperback book), HDMI cable, composite AV cable, remote control and batteries, power adapter
• Required: television, high-speed Internet

Setting up the Roku player was easy: the HDMI/AV cable connects the Roku and the television, and the power adapter connects the Roku to the electrical socket in the wall. Just power on and select the Wi-Fi connection; no special software involved.

Next, I did a tour of the default channels: Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu Plus, and Pandora. To access the shows and music on those channels, I had to validate each existing account through a code exchange process that required me to login on my computer. Although I had to do this for every account in order to access its library, the entire exercise was quick and painless.

The channel I’ve accessed the most is Netflix. Because my Netflix account is now activated on my Roku, I now have two queues (which I update online): my regular queue for Netflix dvds (mail) and my “instant” queue for on-demand shows/ movies. The small caveat is that not all of the Netflix library is available for “instant” viewing (less than a total of 2,000 TV shows and movies as of today). But the list is growing daily. And did I say these movies are instant and on-demand? As in, you can watch them anytime, for no additional fee other than your monthly Netflix subscription?

Pandora is awesome — all your personalized music settings projected on the television. Tunes for every mood and occasion.

Amazon Video is a bit on the expensive side, ranging from $1.99 to $3.99 for a 24-hour rental (with the option to buy). But it offers the latest and greatest shows, including those currently in season.

I’m excited to check out Hulu Plus, which just became available on Roku today.

In total, there are over fifty channels available on Roku, and the company says they are adding more every day. On day six of owning the Roku, I’m only discovering the tip of the ice berg. The channels are listed under the following categories: Featured, New, Most Popular, Top Rated, Movies & TV, Web TV & Special Interest, Music, Sports, International, News & Podcasts, Photos & Videos, Games & Screensavers.

Notable channels include:

• Facebook photos and videos
• Vimeo
• Blip.tv
• flickr
• MLB.tv

I have a feeling my Roku and I are going to be together a lot, inside and outside my home. The Roku player is smaller than a paperback book and very light at 7.2 ounces, so it will be a convenient travel companion (as long as the destination includes a television and high-speed Internet connection).

A little tidbit about the brain behind Roku: the company was founded by Anthony Wood, who invented the DVR. Enough said.

The one question I have to ask is: where do Roku and other streaming players fit in when Apple and Google enter living rooms?

Tags: Amazon Video, Anthony Wood, apple, Baochi Nguyen, blip.tv, DVR, Facebook photos and videos, Flickr, Google, HDMI/AV cable, Hulu Plus, MLB.tv, Netflix, Pandora, Roku, The Roku player, travel, Vimeo, Wi-Fi
Posted in All Chapters, Los Angeles | 1 Comment »

GIT and MediaBistro present…

Following the overwhelming success of the inaugural Freemium Summit in San Francisco, the one-day event moves to the East Coast and will explore best practices for succeeding under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering online business models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation affecting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.

See such amazing industry leaders as:

• Anne Driscoll of Ning
• Ryan Holmes of HootSuite
• Brent Chudoba of SurveyMonkey
• Scott McMullan of Google

Venue

Sentry Centers
730 Third Avenue (Between E. 45th St. and E. 46th St.), 17th Floor
New York, NY 10017
http://www.sentrycenters.com/

Register here!

Get the 15% Girls in Tech discount with this code: FSGIT

Tags: Freemium, Google, HootSuite, hybrid, Survey Monkey, Zing
Posted in All Chapters, Event, New York | No Comments »

Tell us more about Chris Dibona and your Google team

Chris DiBona is the open source and public sector programs manager at Mountain View, Ca. based Google. His team oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through programs such as the Google Summer of Code and through the release of open source software projects and patches. In the public sector space, he looks after Google Moderator, the polling locations API. More information about Google’s open source program can be found at http://code.google.com/opensource

Tell us more about your keynote presentation tomorrow?
I’ll be sharing more about how the open source has been changing in the last 3 years. I’ve been doing this for 6 years now in open source; I will give an overview how Open source is growing. A couple years ago were about licenses. Last year was about languages and now it’s about licenses, languages and people. It’s more entertaining now. In this short, weensy eensy, talk, Chris will give an update on how open source has changed over the last three years. Is Ruby growing? Actionscript? Or is it all PHP all the way down? How’s gplv3 doing? Agpl? MIT? Will the Nasa open source license domainte? Come and find out!

You are one of the most accomplished individual; what can we learn from you?
I was actually a very bad student; I wish I would’ve paid more attention earlier then I wouldn’t be in this much farther along. It took me a while to straighten up.

Which sessions are you most excited about?
Tuesday night-Ignite was a blast. Today is all about press.

What would be a single take away for the attendees that you want them to gain from your session/keynote? Open source is vital. Tons of exciting resources. It’s a place for us to hack. More importantly there are billions of codes out there to be used. Many people have never used them before and I think everyone who has a computer could use it.

Is this your first time being part of Oscon?
No, I’ve been here before. I like leaving for another city though. It gives me a reason to get out from my town every so often.

What’s current device that you couldn’t live without?
My mobile-Nexus one

So what’s next for you your team? Any exciting development?
More data, more code… and more of everything.

Be sure to watch Chris’ keynote presentation tomorrow morning at 9am- OSCON ; follow him @Cdibona

Be sure to join Girls in Tech Portland Chapter at OSCON 2010 this year at Portland Oregon.

If you are interested in being a guest speaker and/or panelist for our workshops and lectures, pls feel free to drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

tweet @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

Tags: 24notion, api, chris dibona, community, Developer, girls in tech, girls in tech portland, gitpdx, Google, ivo, Ivo Lukas, open source, opensource, oregon, OSCON, Portland, technology
Posted in All Chapters, Portland | 2 Comments »

On Strategy (by Sramana Mitra) recently featured an article describing Google’s recent entry into the “vertical search” space, as they acquired ITA Software: a 14-year old company making software that compiles flight and pricing data. The acquisition was quoted at $700 million in cash and marks Google’s entry into the travel search market.

With the addition of Boston-based ITA, Google’s Marissa Meyer states: “we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers… Once we’ve completed our acquisition of ITA, we’ll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.”  “We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise as the leading developer of flight information software with Google’s technology we’ll be able to create great user innovations in flight search.”

Google will compete in this space with the likes of such search engines as Kayak.com.  As the blogger points out, it is about time that Google joins this vertical search space. It can provide its much-needed (in her estimation) innovation and sophisticated search algorithms which these other companies may lack. However, now Kayak is also beefing up its offering as it has purchased lead competitor, SideStep. This combined venture will become the fifth-largest online travel company, with a combined estimated worth of $3.5 billion, revenues totalling $85 million.  More consolidation in this market is most likely in the making and inevitable.

However, will Kayak compete once Google gets up and running, full throttle with customers migrating?  And will these consolidated companies really make the consumer happier?  From my past experience, certain travel sites can be better for certain purchases than others.  For example, it used to be that Hotels.com was the best for finding your perfect hotel … (Unless you were willing to be flexible on your arrival date & time and/or quality of hotel, in which case Hotwire or Priceline would almost always find cheaper rooms.)  For flights, Expedia or Orbitz may have been one’s preferred choice.   This is all left to unfold — What are your thoughts?

(quotes courtesy of: www.sramanamitra.com)

Tags: Christine Oneto, Google, ITA, Kayak.com, SideStep, Vertical Search
Posted in All Chapters | 2 Comments »

In its 12th year, OSCON continues to be the premier meeting ground for everyone using open source. Join over 2,500 people passionate about open source, from developers, designers, trainers, and programmers to sys admins, IT managers, hackers, and entrepreneurs. At OSCON, you’ll participate in hundreds of sessions covering open source languages and platforms, practical tutorials that go deep into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products, fun networking events and activities, and the best “hallway track” around.

This year OSCON is coming back to Portland, Oregon – July 19-23, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. OSCON brings together people like you from across the open source universe to learn, inspire each other, and collaborate. I’ve had a great time chatting with Allison Randal, Program Chair for O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention.

Tell us more about Allison Randal. What’s the most accomplished technology you’ve seen today?

Her first geek career was as a research linguist in eastern Africa. But eventually her love of coding drew her away from natural languages to artificial ones. Allison is the architect of Parrot (a virtual machine for dynamic languages), on the board of directors of The Perl Foundation, and founder and president of Onyx Neon. She co-authored Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, and has edited various O’Reilly books on dynamic languages including Perl Hacks and Programming PHP. Allison is currently working on her PHD in UK. Her favorite technology built in this age would be thunderbird 3 of email applications. Two thumbs up to the developers who built this amazing technology platform

Tell us more about this year Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon? What can we expect from OSCON 2010 this year? What are the key differentiators this year?

Last year we shy away from Portland but we’ve realized that we want to come back to Portland because there is more support from the Portland community. Portland as a city is smaller comparison to Silicon Valley but they have a large technology community; it’s considered as the open source tech big event of the week. Basically, it is one of the biggest open source conferences in the US. New sessions include Government track and health track- open source in health and technology. The healthcare industry is changing; there is an opportunity for an open source to grow in that space- it is quite an expensive solution of keeping and storing patient’s data. So, there is a huge benefit for the open source solutions.

How would the process in developing key notes and sessions different from year after year?

This year there is a theme. The theme is “make it happen” – open source is in the position of broad acceptance now, we need to educate and expose as many individuals as possible- it’s on the cross road! You need to take the action now and open source can actively change the future. We encouraged public for proposal submission that flows along with that theme. This year we get about 700-750 proposals; we’ve had space about 150 sessions only. The committee takes different pieces of technology to review those proposals; for example: python and ruby each segment of program will be covered by the subcommittee then, we will vote on the final proposals. Basically, we’ll take the top ranks one.

Are you expecting more attendees this year?

We are hoping for more attendance. And yes, it will be; it will be bigger than last year and the year before.

Which sessions are you most excited about?

Two things most excited: cloud and Scala summit; as well as emerging languages camp! Crucial key elements in the open source community. Also, there are dozens of amazing speakers on top of the game that will be presenting. Jill Tarter, SETI Institute and Rob Pike, Google Inc and there are many more great keynotes/speakers throughout the week. To capture what’s hot this year; every year our conference changes with the current technology. Cloud technology is taking off; this year we have a great cloud computing key session by Simon Wardley, Leading Edge Forum. He will share the evolution of technology, the management challenges this brings and the common myths that surround the concept of cloud computing.

Any take away for the attendees?

The idea of how they could get involved in the open source community. To get involve in the local user group and get to know people in that community. Most people are welcoming and embracing the new idea.

Be sure to join Girls in Tech Portland Chapter at OSCON 2010 this year at Portland Oregon. Register today and receive special discount by being a Girls in Tech member.

OSCON takes place July 19-23, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon.

Register now and save 15%. Use discount code os10pgit when registering at: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010

For More info for our local Portland chapter, go to our facebook page. If you are interested in being a guest speaker and/or panelist for our workshops and lectures, pls feel free to drop me an email: ivo@girlsintech.net

tweet @allisonrandal @mssonicflare @oscon @24notion @gitweet

#oscon #portland #opensource

Tags: 24notion, allison randal, cloud computing, facebook, gitpdx, Google, health tech, IT, ivo, Ivo Lukas, open source, oregon, OSCON, Portland, programmers, python, ruby, technology
Posted in All Chapters, Events, Portland | 1 Comment »

More and more we all turn to Google for answers to our every day questions.  Dear Google: how far in advance can I buy movie tickets for the new Sex and the City Movie? Dear Google: will vitamin C serum really stop these fine lines around my eyes from getting worse?  We ask Google for answers from our Blackberries and iPhones over lunch.  We ask Google for measurement conversions when cooking – how many cups are in a pint?  We even ask Google for answers to medical questions.  But can we ask Google for legal advice? Google can answer everything else, right? So why not legal questions? Can’t Google lower our business’s legal costs?

True to my attorney-self, I answer: it depends. Yes, Google can answer any legal question you pose and make you more knowledgeable about a relevant legal issue.  No, Google cannot apply the law to your business’s particular legal situation, taking into account the variable factors that inevitably make each legal issue unique; nor can Google identify related legal issues that will arise in the future and help you avoid costly legal mistakes.  Additionally, while there is a wealth of legal information online, only some of it is reliable.  Attorneys are increasingly using websites and blogs as a marketing and referral reinforcement tool, providing basic legal information in their areas of practice and legal updates on emerging issues.  As a result, there are a growing number of attorneys providing sources of legal research online; and when you pose your legal question to Google, Google will faithfully respond by providing you a list of links to numerous potential answers, including links to these websites and blogs.

When determining the reliability of a legal resource on the Internet, use common sense.  The best sources of legal information are on state and federal government websites and state bar association websites.  Both of these sources provide information which can be very helpful for businesses in a variety legal practice areas.  For example, The State Bar of California’s website provides information on bringing a case in small claims court, which is often an effective recourse for recovering outstanding unpaid accounts.  State and federal government websites also generally have business portals, combining online business resources, including legal resources, in one place on their websites, such as the U.S. Government’s Business.gov.

When viewing legal information on individual attorneys’ and law firm’s websites, take a look at the attorney profiles to give you a sense of who is giving you the advice and what their experience is.  Most of the largest law firms, which charge many hundreds of dollars by the hour for their legal advice, frequently post articles about emerging legal issues in just about every area of the law.  Because these law firms are protective of their reputations and tend to hire highly qualified attorneys, their websites and blogs can provide a reliable source of legal information.

At the end of the day, however, actual human attorneys are in a better position to answer your legal questions than Google, although Google can certainly make you a more legally savvy business woman.  

Tags: attorney blogs, attorney websites, blackberries, business woman, girls in tech, Google, iphone, legal, legal information, Meredith Davis Williams, State Bar of California
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Los Angeles | No Comments »