blog.ulfw.com » Life

Singapore – here I come

ulfw — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:26:57 +0000

I guess the best way to describe what I’ll be doing starting next month is from Tim’s really nice article on Trendslate:

Former MySpace Director Ulf Waschbusch Becomes Chief Product Officer at Gaming Startup ‘Garena’
Submitted by Tim Schulz on February 24, 2010

Ulf Waschbursch, a former Director of Product at MySpace Mobile will be joining Singapore-based gaming startup Garena as Chief Product Officer in March. Prior to joining Myspace, Ulf was a Product Marketing Manager in Google’s mobile-product division after graduating from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB).

Garena Software is a gaming-platform company that was founded by another Standford GSB graduate and has grown to over 25-million registered users across 200 countries — making Garena one of the largest international-gaming communities in the world. The company has a strong foothold in cybercafes across Asia, Europe and South America, and they’re beginning to move up the value chain by partnering with companies like MTV to build rich entertainment experiences for users. As Chief Product Officer, Ulf will be based in Singapore and will be responsible for extending the product into new feature areas and countries.

Based on what we see from the company’s worldwide user distribution map, it looks like he’ll be earning quite a few frequent-flier miles. Best of luck to you Ulf!

More about the company here.

Update: More recent mentions:
- Techcrunch – MySpace Lost Faith For All Things Mobile
- e27 – Former Director of MySpace Mobile Joining Garena as Chief Product Officer

Top 25 songs of 2009

ulfw — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:14:44 +0000

Awesome mashup of the top songs of last year.

Jason Mraz – I’m Yours – cutest cover ever

ulfw — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:03:28 +0000

He’s gonna be a great artist when he grows up.

Nice speeds on Clearwire WiMax

ulfw — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:03:09 +0000

I�m trying out Clear WiMax mini Bay Area �Innovation network� right now and have to say, the speeds aren�t bad! I only get 4 out of 10 bars reception but was able to pull in pretty nice downloads speeds of 4.5 MBit down.

Considering this test line is supposed to be only 1MBit/sec and that I’m not supposed to be in the reception range (I guess being on the 10th floor helps) ,this is quite impressive.
Sadly there is no Snow Leopard driver yet, so for now I’m running the USB modem in Windows 7 only.

Update: Looks like this is as fast as it can get. Downtown Palo Alto with full reception (10 out of 10 bars) on a pretty empty WiMax 4G network:

7mbit down over the air

New Microsoft Windows 7 videos actually nice

ulfw — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:24:00 +0000

Let’s hope Windows 7 will be less of a disappointment than Vista back in the day. So far the press echos seem to be really favorable. Either way, it seems Microsoft is going with a more hip branding campaign for this launch.

Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo

ulfw — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:56:52 +0000

Next up is a HD video of one of Tokyo’s best known street crossings in the Shibuya ward just off the Shibuya station on a Tuesday evening.

Hong Kong – Victoria Peak

ulfw — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:38:43 +0000

I just got back from my awesome Asia vacation, seeing the impressing cities of Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo.
More to come, but I thought I’d start it off with a panorama shot taken from Hong Kong’s Victoria peak.

More pictures can be seen on my Photo Albums page – including slideshows. Larger version here.

Good-bye MySpacers

ulfw — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:53:33 +0000

I had a few days to think about wether I should write this post or not. But it seems people have noticed my absence. or chose to write a similar post before me.
So with this I would like to dedicate the post to the awesome people I had the chance to work with at MySpace.
As we all know, all good things come to and end eventually and thus it’s time for me to say good-bye. A move to the Bay Area will be next for me in a month or two. And from there? We’ll see.

To reminiscence a little: I really had an awesome time with all of you there!
In the last year we had a phenomenal turn-out of new products, gaining and satisfying literally tens of millions of new and existing users and changing the mobile landscape together with our tremendous set of partners from Microsoft to RIM, from AT&T to T-Mobile, from Google to Shazam. I’m proud to have been able to work with a tremendously dedicated and passionate group of people, which I am happy to call friends now.

With our nimble mobile team, we were able to achieve a great set of product launches, including among many others:
- Mobile WebNext, one of the world’s most advance mobile websites for WebKit browsers
- a whole new m.myspace.com, with enhanced graphical abilities and new feature sets and tremendous performance and uptime improvements leading to tremendous usage growth.
- a unified new look and user interface to make users feel home on multiple platforms
- a revamped SMS status product
- photo uploads via eMail, MMS, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Sidekick and more. Today a very large percentage of photo uploads to MySpace come from mobile.
- the first social networking application on Android, gaining the number two download spot on the Android Market
- the fastest downloaded application on RIM BlackBerry devices
- numerous new releases and feature updates for the Apple iPhone app, Sidekick, Nokia devices and more.

One thing we should not forget is the tremendous scale at which the team worked. Every little piece of code literally has an impact on millions of people. This I think should humble us all. Farewell friends and best of luck!

Facebook user names

ulfw — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:44:50 +0000

Today at 9:01pm PT Facebook opened up their signup for usernames. In good old MySpace style, people can now access Facebook profile pages by going to a facebook.com/name.

As one can imagine, the rush to get one was crazy. At first I tried to get my well-known and long-lasting standard username ‘ulfw’, which I tend to use as much as I can. My car’s number plate says it, my yahoo and aol accounts are ulf and even my URL as you all know is ulfw.com
Sadely Facebook permits 5+ character names only (like Google). So instead of going with something like ‘ulfmw’ or ‘uwaschbusch’ I opted to go with something different this time and made my profession the user name.

You can now find me on http://facebook.com/productmanager

Here are a few other funny ones:

Star Trek and Earthquake rock my world

ulfw — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:16:37 +0000

Yesterday I watched the newest Star Trek movie. And I have to say – I loved it! The actors are great, the action was awesome, the story was good. Even the JJ Abrams lens flares rocked!

In unrelated news. I am scared. We just had a 5.0 earthquake literally less than a handful of miles of my apartment. Everything and everyone’s alright, but I got pretty shaken.

PS: Several aftershocks after the quake. Today we had a 4.0 while I was at work. This one felt more like a fighter jet going supersonic rather than an earthquake. I am getting worried about the amount of them lately. I had nothing like that in San Francisco.

Stanford Love

ulfw — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:59:30 +0000

I miss Stanford. A lot. I miss the great friends I made, the great experiences I had, the fun, the excitement, the frustrations, the laughter, the late night study sessions, the abundance of brilliance, the palm trees. Everything. It’s one of the great places to be or have been at.
Stanford now has a twitter channel. So when I expressed my joy of seeing Stanford on twitter, someone was friendly enough to write me back from the Stanford account, welcoming me home. Aww I hope I can visit again soon. And god knows – maybe even share my knowledge and teach or guest lecture there at some point. One can dream…

Music makes the body move

ulfw — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:25:01 +0000

Crazy LA…
Saw these couple of guys and gals randomly dancing in a side street in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA. Why they’d dance like this in front of a Buddhist temple is beyond me, but hey – why not…

Filmed with my new Canon SD780 in 720p HD.

Wayback Machine

ulfw — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:35:08 +0000

The Wayback machine project is awesome. I was lucky to have my website featured and cached in the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization, since 1999. waschbusch.com started in 1995 (see History) btw.
Anyhow, check out old episodes of times way past here.

Trapped in LA

ulfw — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 02:51:50 +0000

LA traffic sucks. There I said it.

Los Angeles is a strange town. Having lived more than five years in the Bay Area and only about 10 months in LA, I might still have a jaded view of NorCal vs. SoCal. But one thing is clear: Los Angeles is not a city. It’s a conglomerate of small communities that pretty much only function on their own.
If you live in Santa Monica, best to have your friends, shop, go out to eat and do business in Santa Monica. If you live in Beverly Hills, best to have friends around there. God forbid you live outside of central LA, say in Pasadena or down south in the OC.

Here is a prime example of what I’m talking about. A random shot of Google Maps on my iPhone, taken at the same time. Left is the peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area (where I used to live) and on the right is West LA (with the blue dot marking my current location).

Now in San Fran, my options to get from place to place are almost endless. If I live in SF and want to go south to see friends in the valley – let’s hit 280 and I covered the 50 miles in 45 mins. And vice versa.
In LA, the story changes. When you check the map, you’ll notice I really only have one option: go west on the 10 to Santa Monica, i.e. go home. That’s all. If I want to go to the valley (the San Fernando one), I’d be stuck in south-north traffic. If I’d want to hit downtown to see a show, I’d be stuck in bad west-east traffic. If I’d want to visit friends in Orange County, god forbid I’d be stuck forever in north-south traffic.
The map only shows part of the story. When you zoom out you’ll see lots of more red and even black (stand still) traffic.
Now I don’t want to use this post for random ranting. It’s actually not even about what is better or worse. There actually is an interesting social difference I have noticed between those two places. In the Bay Area, it was never really an issue where people lived. You can pretty safely guesstimate how long it would take each other to meet and just plan accordingly. In LA, it’s more like – OMG you live 20 miles away? Er… I think I’m busy or… Maybe let’s meet later in the evening (i.e. when the roads are free). This seems to lead to smaller communities who are much more focused on themselves than the interconnected communities in the Bay Area seem to be.
Interesting stuff…

Update: Here’s some statistical data to back up my case. Study: Los Angeles has worst, most costly traffic jams and the mobility data report for Los Angeles. The Los Angeles area topped a study looking at urban traffic congestion, saying that area motorists spent 485 million hours idling in traffic delays in 2007, which was the most in the nation. The delays also caused area motorists to use up 367 million more gallons of fuel in 2007 than they would have if it were not for traffic delays. Overall, traffic congestion in the area cost an estimated $10.3 billion in 2007, again, ranking number one amongst all areas.

MySpace launches new mobile website

ulfw — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:40:06 +0000

I am proud to announce that we launched our new mobile website for all MySpace users today. The new site has been months in the making and features
- a stream-lined backend architecture that should allows us to scale better and serve you faster and more reliably
- a whole new user interface that more closely resembles MySpace and other mobile MySpace products that our users are accustomed to
- Friend Updates will keep you up-to-date on what is happening in your friends’ MySpace lives
- You can now activate MMS/eMail photo uploading right from m.myspace.com
- Numerous smaller enhancements, features and shortcuts compared to our former site

The new site has been optimized for newer devices with screen sizes that are 176 pixels wide or larger in mind. Our MySpace Mobile website is one of the highest trafficked mobile websites in the world, with more than 20 million users worldwide across our mobile properties. It is available in in 13 languages. With the new site we estimate to increase that number significantly going forward.

Happy to walk!

ulfw — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:19:51 +0000

European stays European. One thing that I haven’t and don’t plan to give up since moving to the United States is my desire to have things in walkable distance from the place I live. My first residence in Berkeley was in walking distance to Campus and all the crazy shops out there. It stayed somewhat similar with my stay at Schwab Residential Center at Stanford. And when I moved out from there in 2005, the first thing I was looking for is a place with shopping and other possibilities nearby. My first home in Mountain View had a Whole Foods store, a Target, a fresh grocery retailer, a Trader Joe’s and Safeway – everything in less than half a mile. Even my next home in San Mateo was kind of walkable, though the choices were a bit more restrictive.
When first moving to Los Angeles I thought okay – it doesn’t half to be walkable, but at least I should be close to major attractions. So when I found my first apartment on Mid-Wilshire I figured the relative vicinity to West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Downtown would be cool.
It wasn’t. I realized that taking your car out the garage in Los Angeles is an exercise in frustration. Traffic moves slooooooowly.
Thus when I moved to my new apartment in Santa Monica, I specifically looked for walkability and having a lot of stores, restaurants, cinemas and other things to do nearby.
It turns out, this might very well be one of the best places to walk in all of Los Angeles county!

(Map from walkscore.com)

In a fun turn of events though, I did decide to buy a bike yesterday and can’t wait to take it out for a spin.

Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays!

ulfw — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 23:16:46 +0000

Hi all,

I would like to wish you all the very best this holiday season and a successful and happy 2009!

Ulf

Danny Boy:

Chinese woman fights tow truck

ulfw — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:18:20 +0000

Go girl!

My latest attempt to get internet in the United States of America

ulfw — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:05:22 +0000

Useless. Really useless. Whoever followed my previous posts about getting Cable or DSL Internet at various places throughout California (Mountain View, San Mateo, Los Angeles, Santa Monica) knows that the US is nearly dead-last when it comes to providing quality of service for connecting to the intertubes. With the exception of Comcast in San Mateo, I NEVER had speedy or properly working service (which includes Comcast in Mountain View).
Strange how my mom has been getting a reliable (!) 16Mbit ADSL2+ connection in our little village in the middle of nowhere on the German-French border for more than 5 years now…

Here is my latest futile attempt to get online:

Time Warner Cable
Price point: $57.95 per month + $20 sign-up cost. Useless. Completely useless. Alleged connection speed: 10 MBit/sec. It’s Sunday morning. There is barely anyone else online.

Barack Obama elected 44th president of the United States

ulfw — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:29:09 +0000

Congratulations go to Mr. Obama, 44th President-Elect of the United States of America. Watching the election results on Tuesday night were an interesting mix of suspense and non-suspense. On one hand the enthusiasm for Obama as well as the disappointment with the Bush administration were so strong that few people doubted how the elections would turn out. On the other hand the 2000 and 2004 elections showed everyone that results can end up being surprising.
The world-wide echo has been huge throughout the whole election cycle and culminated with congratulations around the world:

Oh No… It’s that crazy lady from the McCain Rally!

ulfw — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:20:15 +0000

So funny…

And the sad original:

Now for the sake of all of us, I hope this will go on

ulfw — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:37:19 +0000

Ex Google Mobile Product Manager Criticizes Android – Setting the record straight

ulfw — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:34:36 +0000

This for me is tech journalism gone horribly wrong.

I’m now being portrayed as the ‘Anti-Googler’, the disgruntled ex employee who isn’t loyal to his former employer. Fact is that my little intro-post of my personal opinions on Android was taken completely out of context and without waiting for the announced series of posts to start.

All I did was merely critique the look of the G1 device. Which I stand behind. I am sorry, but I think it’s dated. I was not talking about the hardware being crap (in fact many things are better than in an iPhone e.g. the autofocus 3MP camera or a removable battery or a full size keyboard) nor did I say a word about the Android OS being bad in any way (which it isn’t). Fact is: I wanted to write POSITIVE posts about the OS – which is developed by Google and has made GREAT advances over the years. I wanted to write about the advantages of an OPEN OS where anyone can build applications for.

I know many of the people on the Android and Google Mobile teams, who’s work I highly respected and still do. I feel sorry that I am now portrayed as a disgruntled ex-Googler, which is far from the truth. I will stop voicing my opinion (positive or negative) on this going forward because I learned my lesson that you can very quickly be singled out by the valley’s main stream media. Which is weird because there were articles in very significant blogs, such as Gizmodo which have a 10x more negative view on things but weren’t highlighted as much. Fact is: I have been and still am a big fan of Google. Why else would I have decided to work there so long?
Fact is also: I do believe Android has a future ahead of it that’s bright and has the potential to become a major player in the market space. The G1 is just the first of many devices.

Wasilla City Hall

ulfw — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:46:23 +0000

No comment

Joining MySpace in August

ulfw — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:17:53 +0000

After the big bomb has been dropped, here is part 2 of the story. Where am I heading?
I have always been interested in social networks, having signed up for a Facebook account right when they came out (and when they were restricted to just Harvard, Stanford and a few other universities) and used MySpace and LinkedIn for years. So I concentrated my search on social networking and video companies (a second big area of future growth in my opinion). Having gotten multiple offers, I finally decided to go with… MySpace.

For me, it basically were three reasons that drew me to them:
- I genuinely liked all the MySpace folks I met throughout my interviews, from the SVP of Engineering to Products and many in between. Thanks for inviting me to your pizza Friday, guys!
- MySpace is a massively used product, in scale with Google, Yahoo or Facebook.
- The opportunity is just awesome. I am fortunate enough to be on the intersection of Social Networking and Mobile, THE future area of growth for social platforms.

So I am happy to announce that starting August 4th, I’ll be joining MySpace as their new Product Management Director for Mobile!

MySpace is coming up with a lot of new products and features, for example last week a new homepage design launched:

Here is a look at the current MySpace mobile website (m.myspace.com):

This is MySpace’s current building with Fox Interactive Media in Beverly Hills 90210:

Apparently a parking nightmare is awaiting me there.

Starting in June 2009, we’ll be moving to a new campus in Playa Del Rey though, as Techcrunch already reported recently:

All FIM companies in Southern California will move to the new facility starting from June to December 2009. The site will house over 300,000 square feet of commercial space and is part of a development called Horizon at Playa Vista (a rendering of the development is above). The area is quickly becoming LA�s media hub, with EA, Rubin Postaer and others now with offices in the area.

Going away Google bash

ulfw — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:40:21 +0000

Today Effie and Lawrence organized a little going-away meeting/party in our Building’s microkitchen. Effie baked an awesome chocolate cake that looked like an iPhone with the sneezing Panda video on it while Lawrence set the whole thing up and took a video or two as well.
Creative as Googlers are, we organized a little round of Four Square to keep us occupied:

Effie’s super awesome cake:

SNL – MySpace

ulfw — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:15:55 +0000

A funny Saturday Night Live skit I found on hulu:

Setup your MySpace page at the Learning Annex

Comcast continues to run

ulfw — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:25:07 +0000

I’m liking the recent speed upgrades from Comcast in my apartment. I hope I’ll find something similar at my new place. They only started this after AT&T started running out their Fibre-to-the-curb U-Verse service in my area. Best example on how competition can be a good thing.

The big one: I’m leaving Google

ulfw — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:17:14 +0000

Yes, I did it. I gave notice yesterday. 07/07/08 will be my last day at Google. While I know, 08/08/08 would have a nice ring to it too, I figured it’s as good a time as any.
Now – I won’t use this space to rant or praise Google. There were good times and bad times. I made lots of friends. I met some amazing people. I met some pretty unimpressive people. I guess – after all – Google is just like life everywhere.

It was time for me to move on though and I am excited about the changes ahead in my life. More updates on that to come later, but for now let me just say – a move not only to a new company, a new role, a new job level – but also – to a new location is coming up next month. I’ll be moving down to LA!

Watch out for more info coming in future blog posts.

90210 baby!

ulfw — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:26:10 +0000

Without comments…

Finally got the new car

ulfw — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:56:02 +0000

Yay! My new car finally made it to me, after a long 10 week wait and eager anticipation while it crossed the Atlantic and the Panama Canal.
Of course I had to snap a few early pics yesterday in a gorgeous location – the Stanford Oval.

Colored balloons

ulfw — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:35:42 +0000

So it was colored balloons day at Google and I couldn’t resist having my iPhone-picture taken.
Et voila – here it goes:

I wish everyone a great long weekend!

Yes, No, Yes again – I’ve got a Macbook Air

ulfw — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:41:24 +0000

Okay okay – so first I loved the Air when it came out at Macworld this January.
Then, rationality kicked in and I cancelled my order – realizing that it’s just not enough ‘machine’ for what I do.
So what happened now?
Well, the biggest drawback I saw with the Air was it’s disk space. 80GBs just can’t fit all the data I have. No way. Hm – well, at least that used to be the case.
When a recent backup-attempt-gone-horribly-wrong actually deleted most of my data (instead of appending updates I made), I was left with just my pictures and text documents. Videos, 30GB of music, lots of other files – all gone.

So – horray. No 80GB is suddenly enough again!

Truthfully though, I am happy I got the machine. I was seriously considering getting a black Macbook instead as it is 50% faster, can have 6x the storage capacity and twice the RAM. But at the end of the day the GORGEOUS LED display and the way the Air is constructed won me over. It truly is an outstanding machine that can only be enjoyed when seen and used in person.

Anyways, here are the must-have unpacking pics. This is the smallest box I ever had the privilege of unwrapping a computer from.

Public transportation at its best

ulfw — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:19:01 +0000

Now if THAT doesn’t make you want to use public transportation, then I don’t know.
Something to look forward to, in times of rising fuel prices. Here is a small collection of train riding experiences from around the globe:

Trains in China

Trains in Tokyo

Trains in India

Trains in Bangladesh

Trains in Melbourne

Trains in London

Trains in New York City

and of course, let’s not forget the awesomeness of Thai transportation reported earlier.

MINI reaches milestone – 5×6 miles

ulfw — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:03:49 +0000

Okay not quite 5×6=30 miles, but rather I hit the 66,666 mile mark today in Palo Alto, CA.

Now my friendly MINI is up for sale (interested anyone?) while I await the arrival of my new vehicle.

Stanford GSB is now #1

ulfw — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:28:27 +0000

I always feel happy when I read good things about my Alma Mater. You know, especially the world of MBA programs is heavily competitive (for better or worse). More than in many other programs, rankings do matter.
So I’m happy to announce that US News and World Report now ranks the Stanford Graduate School of Business the number one business school in the country (tied with Harvard Business School), up from the number 2 spot in previous years.

See list here.

Makes me proud to be an alumnus of the Class of 2006.

(my old business card)

Best Business Schools (Ranked in 2008)

1. Harvard University
1. Stanford University
3. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan
4. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
4. University of Chicago
7. Dartmouth College (Tuck)
7. University of California–Berkeley (Haas)
9. Columbia University
10. New York University (Stern)

Farewell to a great friend…

ulfw — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:08:38 +0000

My buddy Ivan recently made the big decision of leaving San Francisco for Dubai. Now I am not sure if I would have made the same decision, but I can very much understand the rationale for offering his family a brighter (or hotter?) life in the deserts of the Emirates.

Anyhow I just want to use this post to wish Phil, Sanja and Ivan the very best for their future endeavours and… see you soon!

Here’s a very favorable shot of him in Bangkok btw:

(and no Ivan – I won’t take this picture off the post)
Check out his new blog here.
And oh yea – should anyone see a guy dressed like this in Dubai. Make sure to say hi. There shouldn’t be too many…

The tale of three Venetians

ulfw — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:02:49 +0000

Okay – this post is a sign that I’m not afraid to admit silliness. So a few days ago I was watching a TV documentation about the new Venetian resort in Macau:

Supposably it’s even bigger and nicer than the one I’ve been to a few times in Las Vegas:

Now the kicker though:
A couple of days later when reading a magazine article about how Venice, Italy is about to sink when the sea level rises just a few inches I had my brain stop for a second or two.
When looking at the Piazza San Marco…

…I actually thought…

Oh my! There’s a Venetian in Venice too now!

Yea. I know. … Don’t say anything…

More impressions from BMW Welt

ulfw — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:07:06 +0000

As requested, here are a few more pictures of BMWs impressive new delivery center – the ‘BMW World’ in Munich. It’s funny, the only other folks I met that were there as early as me was a friendly elderly couple from Los Angeles, who were there to pick up their 535i (about 4 hrs later).

Yesterday I dropped off my car at E.Harms in Frankfurt to have it trucked to Bremerhaven hopefully shipped to Port Hueneme this weekend. The whole delivery time is estimated to be around 8 weeks. Urgh.. those will be tough!

Facebook: Gay men? No? How about Christian women then?

ulfw — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:50:15 +0000

Is it me or is Facebook’s social targetting of ads a little…hm.. off. These are two ads I got served consecutively:

Picked up my new car in Munich

ulfw — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:11:36 +0000

See pic below Miles driven at time of pick up: 0.2!
More info to follow…

BMW European Delivery

ulfw — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:29:04 +0000

T-2 days till I’m boarding LH459 on route to Munich, Germany where on Wednesday next week I’ll be picking up my new car! After looking at lots of different models (all the way from Infiniti G and EX over the VW Eos, the gorgeous Audi A5, BMW 328 Coupe, Mercedes SLK, you nameit) I finally settled with my first (hardtop) convertible. The BMW328i SULEV Convertible. Now now I know.. urgh.. everyone drives a Bimmer (particularly in California), so why on Earth did you pick that?
Well for one it actually is a really great car. And for more.. it’s the only one that offered the variety of a hardtop convertible with all the technical gizmos like ComfortAccess, iDrive and whatnot with reasonable lease rates. And if you think BMW dealers are bad, good luck talking to Audi here in the Bay Area. One South Bay dealer told me he doesn’t know when if ever they get A5s in, even if I’m willing to put an order in right now. The other East Bay dealer didn’t bother giving me any price quotes even after several emails where exchanged. But thankfully he put me on his spam list, so that now I get stupid ’special lease deal offers on A4s in stock’. Really valuable. Thanks again.

Anyway, as part of the European Delivery program, I’ll pick up my car in Munich, drive it for about a week or so and then drop it off near Frankfurt (to have it trucked to Bremerhaven and ultimately shipped all the way through the Panama canal to California). Believe it or not, but it is actually cheaper to buy a car this way than ordering it directly from the dealer. More info on the program here. After that I’ll have another 1.5 or so well earned vacation days – as a matter of fact the first ones since I joined Google over 1.5 years ago. Yes. I was THAT busy. I’m definitely looking forward to having a break, eating mom’s cooked food and maybe driving down through the Alps to Rome (with stops in Lucern, Milano, Florence…). Not sure if that’ll happen yet, but right now that’s the plan. So – expect to see more photos and infos on here soon.

Pretty but uselessly unreliable

ulfw — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:20:30 +0000

When my Mini Cooper works, I love the car. It’s small, you can park it anywhere, is fairly snappy and frankly is just fun to drive. It’s cornering capabilities are awesome. I originally got it in my first quarter at Stanford (custom-made order sent from the factory in Oxford, UK). The whole time I was at Stanford (aka the first two years of ownership of the vehicle) it worked (nearly) flawlessly. Yes I had to bring it once in for a broken steering engine fan after my long trip back from Seattle to California, where the dealer ridiculed me saying: this car is not made for the wet. The fans break when wet. To which I thought… hm.. not only is this thing sold in Seattle but it ACTUALLY is made in the UK – a country somewhat (just a little…) know for rainy days. But anyways – other than that it worked great.
Too bad things changed dramatically since the warranty ran out. Now, thankfully I never had anything major happen to it. But it surely is annoying to have a laundry list of things to fix. There were times (just went I joined Google in fact) when I had to bring the vehicle into the shop every 3 weeks.
So what’s wrong with it?
Frankly I forgot already. It was so many small things that most of them just escaped my mind, but a few recent items include:
- Three steering engine fan repairs (Two real repairs and once I brought the car apparently in for nothing as they didn’t bother replacing the fan, but just ‘realigned it’, which did NOTHING whatsoever to the extreme loud noises it made. In fact the noise was so bad that passers-by honked at me regularly.)
- Several software faults that needed updates
- Once the transmission didn’t go beyond 2nd gear. Fun! Thankfully it wasn’t the transition that’s at fault – it was the software. Car three days in for service.
- Had to jump start the car three times, only one of which is my fault for ACTUALLY having left the light on. Just today again I got back to my car seeing that the light was on and noticing I need yet another jumpstart (I just had one last week). The sad thing is: the light switch was on the off position and I never turned on the light today.
- Several inspections lead to small things here and there when I brought the car in for oil changes, inspections or new tires, new brakes etc.

Now I have to go get some jumper battery kit for $80+ as I’m traveling to Europe for the next three weeks. I know I can’t rely on my car to start after such a period of time, so I better get it now before I’m stranded when I come back.

So as you can tell, all in all I am not too happy. Pretty does not necessarily equal reliable. I guess that’s a general lesson in life.

For financial decisions listen to one person. Yourself.

ulfw — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:15:42 +0000

This is one GREAT example how people can be misdirected by making investment decisions based on what ’some dude on TV’ says. Here Jim Cramer said “Bear Stearns is not in trouble” “Don’t be silly”. The video was taken just a week ago on March 11th 2008 when Bear Sterns was at $62.97/share . Six days later, today Bear Stearns traded at $4.81.

Me going gangsta

ulfw — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Okay, not quite. But today is my friend and colleague Jonathan’s birthday (Happy birthday old man!) and we celebrated yesternight with a ‘Mustache party’ at his loft in SF. It took me half a day to find a store that does sell fake mustaches, but I think the end result was worth it (even though the hair color obviously didn’t match).
Enjoy:

How simplification makes life complicated

ulfw — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:47:53 +0000

We all struggle with this: childproof medicine bottles, ointments or other containers that us grown-ups struggle with opening, while most kids can do it in seconds. This is supposed to keep kids away, but actually keeps mostly adults away.
Now, a second trend is to make everything as simple as possible. Idiot-proof is the concept. Sadly it’s similar to the example above: the only people who this helps is, well, idiots. My current car is the prime example for it. It beeps whenever anything happens. Open the door while your belt is off: beeps. Open the door while the light is on: beeps. Do anything out of the ordinary: it beeps.
I have become so accustomed to the constant let’s-warn-the-idiots-beeping that I don’t react to it AT ALL anymore. Sadly this led now to me leaving my light on for the second time in three months, thereby completely draining my car’s battery. The warning ‘light is on’ beep was supposed to prevent that from happening.
The moral is: let’s not try to cover ‘all bases’. Why my car beeps whenever I open the door (for any reason) is beyond me. Sadly this led to me not reacting to the (in this case meaningful) warning anymore.

Chocolate

ulfw — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:03:51 +0000

On the lighter side of things:
There are certain things I just can’t let go off, no matter what I do. I realize it’s detrimental to my recent gym activities, but
I just can’t get rid of it: Chocolate. Milk or White (sometimes Dark), maybe it be Chocolate mousse or Belgian Chocolate fresh off the block. I am addicted to it.
Here’s a funny lil’ picture my colleague Jesse recently took at Crittenden campus, where Google has those full blocks of chocolate where peeps can just scrape their own chunks off of. Let me tell you. It rocks!

Audi A3: This car saved my family’s life

ulfw — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:06:38 +0000

Dramatic title for two dramatic accidents:
About 5 years ago, my mom and I were on the way to Frankfurt airport when a drunk driver early Sunday morning tried to overtake us at 110 mph on the right side on a two-lane per direction highway. Not noticing that the lane is blocked by a slow truck, the driver swirled onto the left lane and rammed us frontally. The front of the car (including complete) engine were wrecked and ultimately rebuild.
When moving to California I left the car with my mom, who continued driving it until last week. A truck rammed here from behind on a wet highway, completely destroyed the rear portion of the car this time.
Luckily for both of us we stepped out of both accidents with mere little blemishes.

The simple moral of the story is that investing in a safe car is money well spent in my mind. There are many opportunities to save money in life. This one shouldn’t be one.

Oh and btw, my mom’s new car will be the Mercedes A Class Coupe:

Happy birthday me ;)

ulfw — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:49:44 +0000

Hm okay. Was kind of a non-event, turning 31. I remember last year where I thought the world would end when the clock strikes 30. But I guess that didn’t happen (or did it??).
Anyways – I wanna thank everyone for the well wishes. You guys rock!

Oh and above all – thanks to my friend and colleague Jonathan who put this crazy video together. Thanks buddy!

Jamie in LA and Jamie in San Diego

ulfw — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:57:44 +0000

So I was in LA again this weekend to congratulate my old Berkeley roomate James (called Jamie) and attend his wedding with his beautiful wife Azadeh. Now this Sunday WAS Oscar season and thus Hollywood was closed in about an 8 block radius. Sadly I didn’t see any stars.

To my surprise though, when I went on a brief trip down to San Diego on Saturday on the table next to me Jamie Alexander (Jesse from Kyle XY) had lunch with a friend. Sorry for the bad pictures, but she IS actually really beautiful in person. More so than in the TV show – surprisingly.

Comcast Bay Area upgrade real speedy, hits 22Mbits

ulfw — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:10:59 +0000

I thought I’d never say those words, but.. here goes: Thank you Comcast!
After having endured a 1.5Mbit/sec DSL line in Mountain View I upgraded to the 8Mbit high-speed package that Comcast offers in San Mateo, CA. Officially starting tomorrow Comcast is offering all those 8Mbit customers TWICE the speed with 16Mbit download/1.5Mbit uploads.
And what can I say? They started early! And they started strong. See this:

San Franciscans’ quest for coolness

ulfw — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:19:20 +0000

I have to say I am surprised every weekend by the rise and fall of perceived cool and hip hang out spots for San Franciscans. The mission seems to be particularly prone to that phenomenon. A small hole-in-the-wall type shop, restaurant or cafe suddenly becomes hip, people wait in lines around the block to get in, which only adds to it’s perceived mystery and coolness and thus draws an even larger crowd. Crowd behavior at it’s best.
I have to admit I fall for this trap quite a few times. Friends recommending me places and me checking them out. With the willingness of a sheep herded by a shepherd’s dog I stand in line 20 minutes in the cold just to get a cappuccino. The problem? It never, ever lived up to it’s hype. On the one hand that’s understandable. Expectations are so great that they cannot possibly be fulfilled. Yet on the other hand, I had croissants or coffees so bad, my local Starbucks in my apartment complex does a 10x better job at half the price and without the 20 minute wait. I’ll leave the name of the cafe depicted here off, but frankly you can take any of the plethora of overhyped places and get the same feeling of disappointment once you tried it and woke up to reality.

Ulf hugs Donald hugs Ulf

ulfw — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:29:57 +0000

I know as a kid my Disney hero clearly was the underdog: Donald Duck. I just looooved the guy. It took me a few… well… decades really, but I finally managed to get a little hugging and photo shooting done with Donald tonight at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA! And oh yes, that’s Pluto in the back trying to sneek into the picture as well.

Google goes Disney

ulfw — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 06:40:59 +0000

Tomorrow I’ll be on my way (thanks to the support of the Virgin America folks) to LAX and then to Anaheim for Google’s yearly ski-trip! Oh wait. There’s no skiing in Anaheim. So what’s this all about?

Well it turns out that Google with it’s 16,805 employees is now so big that we cannot by any means rent enough rooms in Tahoe, so it was decided to give us a choice this year:
- Camping at the Pinnacles National Monument south of Salinas, CA (bring your own tent!)
or
- Disneyland! Google’s got the whole park just for Googler’s after 8pm on Tuesday.

Nuff’ said. Gotta pack my bags!

PS: I decided to rent a car, so as to be more flexible. Don’t really wanna hang out at Disneyland all day…

Cancelled my Macbook Air order

ulfw — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:40:54 +0000

I’ve always been a fan of subnotebooks. I truly loved my Powerbook 12″ and can’t find anything negative to say about my age old Thinkpad X20 either. For me – those are real notebooks – not some 17″ behemoth with six speakers and 12lbs of weight.
So it comes as no surprise that I was first in line to order a Macbook Air, when Steve Jobs announced it at Macworld. I had a chance to play with it there and immediately fell in love with it.

So why did I do this then?

(this is before tax, with EPP discount)

Frankly, I love the idea of the machine and it truly is a beauty to look at. I’m pretty sure I’ll be first in line again to order when a newer, better revision comes out.
But right now, there are just so many compromises that needs to be made, where I just can’t see myself get an $1800+ luxury item like this. The thing is, I don’t have a ‘main’ personal computer right now. My trusty old Powerbook 15″ 1.67GHz is getting old and isn’t exactly a racehorse, whereas my Google-provided work laptop (15″ MBP 2.33Ghz C2D) is awesome. The thing is just: what should I get?
- another Macbook Pro? Why – I already have the very same thing (even if it’s not my personal machine)
- a Macbook? Maybe. If it just had the backlit keyboard, didn’t feel so cheap and the black color didn’t cost more (I really don’t like the white plastic).
- a Macbook Air? Seemed to be the most logical choice.
The thing is. The Macbook Air just ISN’T a proper main personal computer. It’s great if you just use it to check websites, email, IM or whatever else one does 95% of the time. The thing is: there is this 5% which just renders the machine useless.
For once, I have wayyyy more than 80GB of data. And no way I slice or dice it, it just wouldn’t work to put stuff on Timecapsule (another $499 extra!) or constantly move data back and forth between stationary backup drives and the portable computer. Not fun.
And the fact that I can’t even fit my Sprint U727 EVDO adapter without using a big ugly cable and holder totally tipped me over. The Macbook Air is made for being always connected and without 3G built-in, it just isn’t.
Now I just wonder if I should hold out for an iMac 24″ revision or get a black Macbook and put a 320Gig HD in (with the 4gigs of RAM I have lying around). Besides being 2 lbs heavier and a good deal thicker, it funnily is the SAME SIZE as the Macbook Air.

Democrats and Republicans doing nothing to spur economy

ulfw — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:44:40 +0000

from cnn.com:
” WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. taxpayers would get checks of several hundred dollars from the federal government under a plan to stimulate the economy, congressional and Bush administration officials said Thursday.

“Tens of millions Americans will have a check in the mail,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “It is there to strengthen the middle class, to create jobs and to turn this economy around.”

Sources on Capitol Hill and at the Treasury Department said the plan would send checks of $600 to individuals and $1,200 to couples who paid income tax and who filed jointly.

Those who earn up to $75,000 individually or up to $150,000 as a couple will be eligible for the payments, said Republican and Democratic sources familiar with the tentative deal.”

Cool. Thanks for nothing. 75K/year before tax in the Bay Area doesn’t even pay the rent if you’re single. Out of all people, Pelosi should know.

Slaughterfest

ulfw — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:17:16 +0000

Without words….

Yes, this is GOOG and AAPL stock vs. Dow and NASDAQ just for the last month. Happy new year to us all.

Live from the Macworld showroom floor

ulfw — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:27:12 +0000

Quick update from the packed Google both. CNET has been covering our booth already apparently (and even have a terrible shot of me )
I was presenting first in our booth today, showing what new products we have for the iPhone. Let me just say – people loved it!
More to follow.

Of Events past…

ulfw — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:38:34 +0000

So as we’re all awaiting Macworld next week, I thought I share some pictures of Google Mobile’s previous booth, which we set up at CTIA in Orlando last year. It was our first time demoing our products and showing the market “we’re there”. All in all I think it was a great experience that I certainly don’t wanna miss (oh and my little trip to Miami afterwards wasn’t too shabby either…).

The CTIA Google and Youtube mobile team:

The booth:

Happy new year 2008!

ulfw — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:39:05 +0000

I wish you all a very happy new year 2008 filled with joy, health and happiness. Best of luck with whatever endeavours you have planned for the new year.

Ulf

Okay, so Leopard officially sucks

ulfw — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:32:04 +0000

I’ve had lots of operating system upgrades in my past. Back when I was a technical beta tester for Microsoft, I basically installed OS updates every few weeks. And kudos to MS, most of the (beta!) builds were really really well put together. Sadly often better than the gold master.With my Macs I only run release versions. Starting with OS X 10.2, the upgrades were smooth. 10.2 -> 10.3: Awesome!. 10.3 -> 10.4: Great!10.4 -> 10.5: Oh my �10.5 runs nicely until, god-forbid, I try to use my Apple TV and stream anything to it. After a minute or two my Mac completely freezes. I can still click on dock icons, but they don’t do anything. Neither can I switch nor kills apps. iTunes completely breaks down. So even with 10.5.1 now, I have a hot 46″ TV, but no programming to watch (I get all my shows off of iTunes). VPN to Google doesn’t work either. So, no more quick fixes of docs in the evening (I guess this can be seen as good or bad. But still! I wanna have a choice!). That combined with the fact that Leopard added no functionality I needed, except maybe quick view, leads me to say: this is a bad one Apple. Fix it. And fix it fast. Let’s hope Macworld will bring us joy – and 10.5.2

Thanksgiving trip to LA

ulfw — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:44:24 +0000

So I had a literally last-minute idea of driving down to Los Angeles, while I had my usual morning coffee at Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto Thursday morning around 1030ish. Going home, getting a hotel and packing my bags didn’t take long, so I was up and running and right on the road just about an hour later. The drive down 101 was wonderful, no traffic, sunny and warm. As was my time in LA. I think I really like it there. Shopping it up and having dinner in Beverly Hills, dancing in WeHo or strolling along Venice Beach…hm…
I wonder if I shouldn’t look for my next job in the West Los Angeles area…

Happy Thanksgiving

ulfw — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:11:54 +0000

Happy Turkey day to y’all!

Yay for having four days off in a row. It definitely has been a while that I had so many days off (well since Christmas last year in fact). Since joining Google I haven’t taken a single day off, as there was always so much to do and now I feel I really miss it. I’ve got like 20 or so vacation days saved up by now and hope I’ll take them this Feb/March and go on a big Asia tour. We’ll see

Googleween 2007

ulfw — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:11:34 +0000

Arrr… greetings! So, the big Google Halloween bash went down yesterday and it proved to be pretty nice. Lots of people were dressed up (though barely anyone from my team. Boo!). But hey – let pictures tell the story…

The new Pirate of the Mobilean – Google Mobile PMM team (Lawrence et moi).

Cyber Pirate. A little lost in today’s world…

Urban Pirate. Completely lost in this world. Arrr.. what are carrrrrs?

Lot’s of people came to Crittenden Campus.

Our new mobile PMM lead – hail hail, Marc!

The day has come – and so has my green card!

ulfw — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:59:34 +0000

Yay – after 13 months of going through two labor certification rounds, EADs, APs, I140 and now the I485 approval process, I finally got my green card yesterday!
It just so happens that apparently I’m a permanent resident since 10/4 Oh well… now I’ll use the time in the next couple of months to weigh my options and see how to best move on with my life. Exciting times indeed…

The speed of moving

ulfw — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:35:44 +0000

Urgh, so the move is finally done and as was expected the movers took their time. They were paid hourly after all.
I’m still getting set up (especially my Comcast internet), but I wanted to share a little screenshot of joy with you. As many might remember, I’m coming from a 1.5 Mbit/s DSL line:

The joys of moving… or… why I cancelled my at&t service

ulfw — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:01:04 +0000

So, I’m currently going through the ‘joys’ of moving from Mountain View, where I’ve been living for the last two years (while at Stanford and my first year at Google) to now San Mateo. Why am I moving? Well first of all Archstone is charging me hundreds of dollars less than Avalon offered me for my renewal (oh the joys of living in Google View), but I also wanted to live closer to the city (aka San Francisco), while still being relatively close to work and while (importantly!) still being in the sunny part of the Bay Area (locals know what I’m talking about. ‘Summers’ in San Fran can be ‘fun’).

Anyhow, besides throwing away lots and lots of stuff (it’s surprising how much you collect over the years but never use!) and packing looooots of boxes, I just went through the process of transferring my utilities and other bills to my new location.
PG&E – check, simple phone call – took 5 minutes, cost me nothing. Grade: A
Comcast – oh dear. Was logged into my account and clicked on ‘Move?’, only to see a web form that asked me to input my current address (while being logged in! Shouldn’t your system be intelligent enough to get it yourself?) only to then transfer me to some web chat thingie to ‘answer final questions’. So I thought, ok. Can’t take so long. I don’t actually have any questions. Oh was I wrong. The chat took 40 minutes to complete, with me reciting every single information I entered before (from old to new address to service choices, 20digit customer account number and more). Grade: C for annoyance, but at least they got the job done and offered a Saturday ‘installation’. Why I have to pay $39 for the whole thing is beyond me, but oh well – at least I signed up for the 8Mbit internet thingie (god knows how much of that will effectively come through).
Citibank, American Express, Netflix – check. All online. Zero issues. Super quick. Grade: A+

AT&T – the SuperMaBellReloaded Telco. Oh my god… Where do I even start?
I wanted to move using their internet site, because they offer free moving (aka waive the $42,xx moving charge) and give you deals on the internet access, such as 3 months off and a free new modem (my current wireless modem is a non-working pain in the you-know-where, which I just replaced with an awesome Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n/Gigabit, so I’m just looking to get a regular modem now).
So what does Ulf do? He goes to http://www.att.com, only to find a weirdly put together page that doesn’t tell you anything. Well, that’s what Google is for right? A search for ‘AT&T Move’ reveals the ‘AT&T’s Mover’s One Source‘ website. Silly as I am, I’ve been using Safari on my Mac, which apparently is incompatible with PacBell’s, I mean SBC’s, no sorry, AT&Ts URL redirects (which still use sbc.com half the time). To cut a half-hour story long: at&t created an endless loop that went from Mover’s page to ‘do you want to move’ page to ‘click here to move page’ back to the Mover’s page.
Switching over to Firefox and still clicking on ‘Yes, damnit I do want to move’ about 500 times finally took me to a signup page on which you have to answer silly questions via radio buttons before going to the next screen. One of the silly questions? – You guessed it! ‘Do you want to move service?’. Urgggh, yes I do!

Well to cut another long story short: I inputed all the required information and logged into my current account to transfer service, just to get a little nice screenshot telling me that ‘an error 647′ occurred and that they are just incapable of processing my simple request. So I thought, okay, I’ll call them up, tell them that their website (which I already spent 2 hours on) is worthless and politely ask them to transfer my service. The nice gentleman on the phone took all my info, only then to inform me that the move costs $42, that he won’t waive it because it’s ‘only free when you sign up over the website’ and that he can’t offer me the internet discounts either. He suggested I should try again the next day and call back if that doesn’t work. Well, of course it still didn’t work the next day and I wanted to call back to see if the whole move-thing of my DSL line is even worth it.

A bit of background, re: DSL: The only reason I went with DSL in Mountain View to begin with was that Comcast had so many dropouts in their service (and lost packets) that could never be resolved, which made it just not usable. So I turned to SBC. When I did sign-up for DSL though they let me know that only 1.5Mbits/s would work, because I’m too far from their service station. I was flabbergasted. Living in a cute little German town with a population of less than 40,000 literally in the middle of absolutely-nowhere, my mom who barely uses the net, enjoys a 16Mbit ADSL2+ DSL line from Deutsche Telekom, whereas here in Silicon Valley – the birthplace of high tech and the hometown of the largest internet company in the world, all that SBC/AT&T actually offered me was…. drumroll please… 384Kbit/s! Yes I kid you not. That’s what they signed me up for! Thankfully I could chat with an engineer who did activate the 1.5Mbit for me, but still, even this is pathetic if you think about it.

So I called at&t again this morning, only to get another bad experience. All that was available at my new location is 3Mbit/s (not the fastest 6Mbit one they offer, which frankly at this point I doubt even exists). Getting this information though took 25 minutes of me repeatedly telling the customer service rep that, “No Sir, I do NOT have a phone number at my new location yet. I am trying to decide whether I should stay with you guys or not, depending on the speed of internet you offer. Can you please use my new address instead.”

Let’s just say, I was happy to cancel service, which interestingly enough was my best experience with at&t. It took only 10 minutes, the customer rep was very friendly and no one tried to sell me anything, nor did I have to deal with the retention department. I guess they don’t need customers. For the statistics: they now have one fewer AT&T Yahoo! DSL and AT&T local landline customer.

So much to do, so little time

ulfw — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 04:50:01 +0000

Urgh – you know how these things go… So you promise yourself to keep up the and then your usual work habits keep you away from it. May it be blogging, doing laundry (which reminds me…) or exercising (which I finally started… a little…). So yes – work has been keeping me busy and right now it looks like this will stay that way for a while.

So, my team is looking for a Marketing Director (even craigslist and live.com it seems!). So if you feel like you’re up for the task: we’re looking to hire in our Mountain View HQ and London office!

What else has kept me busy at Google?
- At the end of March, we launched our new mobile search experience in the US. Right now you have to click on a promo link to get to it after going to google.com on your mobile device, but this will change in the next few days and our new mobile search experience will go live as default for everyone. We’ve been building and testing it for quite a while and really do think it’s a superior solution to search on your mobile phone. Not only are those pesky radio buttons gone (are you looking for Web or Mobile Web results??), but you can also add modules such as weather or news directly onto your Google homepage and rest assured you’ll be getting the most relevant results to your query – regardless of the query type.
- Gmail has launched in 10 more languages, namely Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Portuguese (BR), Polish, Russian and (yay!) Turkish. Cok guzel!
- I was at Youtube for the first time last week. It was really cool see their still-existing startup mentality and a welcome change to the nice and cushy Google-I’ll-cater-awesome-lunch-for-you-type of my daily work. Youtube is doing really cool things in Mobile (e.g. see Verizon and Vodafone, as well as Nokia’s mobile Youtube solutions) and have even greater things in the pipeline.
I even went go-karting with one of their PMs, who – btw – beat me by lengths. Of course I kept blaming my go-kart, which had serious performance problems… er… right.. – Tons of other things that I now forgot. Geez, I’m getting old…

The Big Three Oh

ulfw — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:57:14 +0000

Today’s my birthday. Yay!
It feels kinda weird to go from being <30 to 30. Even though it’s just a day like every other day, it somehow feels different. Maybe it’s a magical number that makes you think where you are, where you’ve come from and where you wanna be in the future.

All in all though – I have to say – I lke the number 30.

Concorde – one of mankind’s greatest achievements in the 20th century

ulfw — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 20:51:28 +0000

Only once I had tears in my eyes when I saw a technological achievement of the past retire: On October 24th, 2003 – Concorde flew for the very last time. On 1/27/07 I saw it fit to have us remember 27 years of supersonic flight and raise the hopes that we as a civilization can work on continuing to achieve great things. Here’s to hope that in our lifetime we’ll see something as great as Concorde in the skies again.

And to show that beauty can be timeless:

See Concorde at Heathrow on Google Maps

Happy new year!

ulfw — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:43:07 +0000

Happy new year everyone!

I’d like to wish you the very best for 2007. May you be healthy, happy and prosper and that all your wishes may come true!
Fun fact of the day: I’ve been trying out this whole hotornot thing. Why? I don’t know. I know it’s so 2002, but I guess I was lazy over the holidays or whatnot. I thought it was kinda fun and yet I was surprised over the rating, especially ‘cuz I thought the pic looked kinda weird. Oh well…

Happy holidays

ulfw — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 00:23:37 +0000

Hi everyone,

wow – what a busy start at Google this was.

Right now, I’m covering a LOT of different mobile products, from SMS over Search, News and the new Gmail app up to a couple of other projects we’ll be working on for 2007, doing overall mobile research and will now be making sure that our website is made ready and newly setup so it can be launched in several non-English international markets early next year.

Wow. That’s the best three letter word I can come up with. While I’m obviously incredibly busy, I think I’m learning so much more than I could have ever imagined. It’s been a great ride so far and I hope 2007 will be topping this.

I’m wishing you all a very happy holiday season and all the very best for 2007!

May all your wishes come true,

Ulf

Happy Birthday meebo!

ulfw — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:22:47 +0000

Just saying hello to the friendly folks at meebo, who today celebrated their very first baby. meebo is the baby of a classmate of mine, Seth and his co-founders Elaine and Sandy. It was quite a nice gathering at the meebo HQ in downtown Palo Alto and it reminded me again on how many Stanford GSBers are still in the area.

At Google alone, 8 of my classmates have started and for whatever weird reason I see another one of my classmates walking around the Google campus nearly every day. Must be the great food we’re getting over there.

New blog started

ulfw — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 01:18:19 +0000

Hi everyone,

starting a new blog can be a daunting task. It’s like writing an essay when all you have is an empty sheet of paper. Yes, we all do have a lot to say – but where do we begin? What’s really worth writing about? I truly think, this blog will grow and shape over time – may it be the looks or the content of it.

One can certainly try to write a blog from an abstract point of view, focusing on a single subject or even have a whole editorial staff (like one of my favorite blogs – Engadget). Yet here, I would just like to post my personal views – life as seen from the eyes of a single person: me.

Thanks for checking in!