blog.ulfw.com » Places

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

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!

LA fires

ulfw — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:57:25 +0000

So I guess this is the first fire of the season here in LA.
I just drove by on Sunset Blvd, crossing the 405 to see that the police has started blocking off all traffic going onto 405 N. Turns out that the hills behind the Getty Center are on fire. Yellow clouds could been seen from afar.

Last year we had a terrible season of fires here. In fact, one day I was coming out of a dinner in Beverly Hills – when all I could see was… the air! A very strong yellow-orange tint could be seen all the way to ground level, combined with an odor of BBQ. Really weird.

LA alright…

ulfw — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:38:41 +0000

Developer Sandbox Interview: MySpace Mobile

ulfw — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:53:42 +0000

Last week I visited Google’s 2nd i/o developer conference in San Francisco’s Moscone West center. As part of our presence there, we actually had the nice opportunity to demonstrate MySpace Mobile to the Android and Google developer community with our own stand for both days in the developer Sandbox section. Here is a short video that Google filmed while we were there.
Now I have to preface some of the awkwardness you’ll see by saying:
- we only had one microphone to share. Thus I was told to be as close as possible to Scott and Matt in order for their voice to be picked up by the mic
- the interviewer was standing left of us outside the video frame when she asked us the questions
- we were told not to look at her and to repeat the question, as the question will be cut out (which apparently didn’t happen. So Scott’s and my funny faces are actually on the video, which gives it a certain charm I think ).
Anyways – without further ado. Here you go:

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…

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.

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.

New car passed through Panama Canal today

ulfw — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:48:30 +0000

Okay and I thought I was crazy. Apparently there are a lot more crazy people out there who are tracking the long voyage of our BMWs from Bremerhaven all the way to Port Hueneme, CA on board of Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s Pacific Breeze.

Here is a video of her going through the Miraflores locks on the Pacific terminus of the canal:

This will give you an idea of the stages of progression from entering the canal through the Gatun locks and Lake Gatun all the way out to the Pacific ocean through the Miraflores locks:

And here are a few pictures at various stages of the route:

Gatun locks near the Atlantic entrance of the canal

Passing through Centennial Bridge

Exiting Miraflores locks towards the Pacific Ocean

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.

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!

Toyota dealership? No! Google campus

ulfw — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:59:13 +0000

Yes, people are THAT crazy here. I guess the (now-revised) $5K-if-you-buy-a-envirofriendly-but-freakin-ugly-Prius (TM) program has been successful…

A few impressions of yesterday’s SoCal trip

ulfw — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:16:53 +0000

I love going to LA. Usually I spend more time in the West LA area, but this time I used our Anaheim hotel location to focus more on the OC. The LA area beach cities are awesome – may it be Manhattan Beach, Newport or Laguna Beach – everyone has their unique flair.

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…

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…

Look what I saw…

ulfw — Wed, 16 May 2007 06:04:58 +0000

Driving down on 101 South (near the University Avenue exit in Palo Alto) a cute little billboard sign from our colleagues of Yahoo! awaits you.

I’m wondering who they actually try to reach with this. The billboard is placed against traffic on the leftmost side of an 8-lane grade seperated highway and partially obstructed by bushes and poles, but hey – whatever spreads the mobile word is good for everyone, I think.

I won’t actually comment on the accuracy of their billboard statement. I’ll just quote Wired:
“Yahoo jumps ahead of Google on mobile phone search [Reuters]
Cleverly phrased to sound like a market share story, it isn’t. It’s just one of those weird “news” stories that takes a jolly, light-hearted editorial tone, like a sports report, because the writer knows he’s just writing a fluffy marketing piece. Here, it’s about a new search app for mobiles, with which Yahoo vaults ahead of Google by delivering relevant answers, after making strides in recent months. Yahoo’s service serves up a list of actual information and flickr images (surely the only kind!). That the whole thing plasters your phone with ads is left to the penultimate graf.”

PS: Too bad that the 3/20/07 quote is also a week before Google launched the new Google mobile search experience…

Places to check out – today: Stanford Campus

ulfw — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 03:54:59 +0000

One of the irregularly recurring series of the blog will be focussing on cool, unusual or sometimes even just touristy places to see around the Bay and the world. Kicking off the series will of course be in honor of my alma mater: Stanford University.

Stanford is not just the first place to mention because I loved it there, but also because the Stanford campus is one of the most beautiful university campuses in the United States.

Palm trees line the whole campus including Stanford’s famous Palm Drive

Memorial Church – or MemChu – was built in the late 19th and early 20th century and nearly destroyed only a few years later in the great 1906 Earthquake. By the way – this picture is one of the regularly featured sceneries photographed at the digicam website dcresource.com among other Stanford vistas.

The Main Quad – heart of the campus.
By the way – to check out more images from the Bay Area and other cool places, such as Istanbul, London or Los Angeles – check out the Galleries section at waschbusch.com.