Google Unveils Dart Programming Language

Posted on December 9, 2011 by tech jobs

It is official; Google is developing a programming language. Lars Bak, a Google project manager, at the Goto Conference in Denmark, detailed the news of the new Google programming language. The new language, called Dart, is designed to be used for all sorts of projects ranging from small simple projects to massive collaborative projects like Gmail.

Programmer and project leader Lars Bak detailed the project in a talk today at the Goto conference in Denmark and in a blog post. Dart is geared for everything from small, unstructured projects to large, complicated efforts–Gmail and Google Docs, for example.
“If we want to focus on making the Web better over time, we have to innovate,” including with new programming languages, Bak said in an interview.

The unveiling of the Dart programming language also included a site that provides developers tools, code samples, and tutorials for programming with the language. The website also features a discussion forum, libraries of supporting software, and the language specifications. When an internal Google memo leaked in 2010 with details about the Dart programming language – called Dash at the time – one of the notes from the memo was that the language was designed to replace Javascript as the preeminent programming language of the web.

Of course, this does not even mean that everyone at Google is adopting the new language. Numerous individuals within the company remain strong proponents of Javascript and even Bak is not claiming the impending demise of Javascript. While he remains incredibly ambitious about the future of Dart, he said, “It’s not going to replace JavaScript. JavaScript is a cornerstone of the Web today, and it will continue to be for a long, long time.”

He was not receptive, however, to complaints by many about the fact that the language was developed completely in-house at Google, and not with an open and collaborative approach. He said, “I don’t buy the argument that before writing any line of code or designing any features, you put it in a standards committee, because that would just be a lot of screaming. You have to have coherent design before you start adopting Dart as a standard.” This closed, in-house approach is a large departure from Google’s past support of open collaboration and is more akin to the Apple approach to tech; a business model that Google has ridiculed on numerous occasions.

Google does want to make Dart a standard though. They have moved Dart forward to the next phase of its maturation, which includes getting outside feedback and active participation from potential partners and developers. On moving to the next phase of development Bak Said, “We hope the other browser vendors will be excited.” It remains to be seen how quickly others will adopt Dart.
Creating and introducing new programming languages is difficult. Many industry experts have tried to encourage the development and adoption of new, more advanced programming languages. Many of the programming languages that are widely used were created decades ago when computing was in its infancy, and they lack features that can easily take advantage of modern hardware and computing architecture. One of the biggest obstacles to reforming and replacing existing programming languages is the fact that millions of people use the languages and have extensive supporting libraries and knowledgebases. With that said, some new programming languages have been introduced in the past 20 years that have seen wide adoption including Java, Javascript, and C#. In addition to Dart, Google is trying to encourage the adoption for the Go programming language, which is designed to be used for native software applications that would generally be written with either C or C++ today, which are not known for their ease of use. Google has created Dart to address a variety of shortcomings present in today’s web programming languages. According to Dart’s technical overview, some of the problems it intends to address include:

1. Unwieldy code growth. It is not uncommon for small scripts to develop and grow into massive web applications with huge amounts of code. These gigantic apps are incredibly unwieldy and difficult to maintain and debug, and because they are monolithic structures in nature, it is nearly impossible to break up the code into different parts. This prevents teams of programmers to work on different pieces of the program independently.
2. Choosing Static or Dynamic. With the existing programming languages, programmers are forced to choose between using a static language or a dynamic language. Current static languages necessitate an inflexible style of coding that can feel constraining and difficult to work with in addition to requiring large, complex toolchains.
3. Lack of Client/Server Homogeny. With few exceptions – Node.js and the Google Web Toolkit for example – developers have failed to build systems that encompass both client and server operations under one umbrella.
4. Cumbersome Context Switches. The different formats and languages require content switches that made coding more complex and time consuming.
5. Heavy Comment Usage. Scripting languages are popular because they are lightweight languages that are easy to learn and allow programmers to develop applications quickly. One drawback is that they rely heavily on comments to detail how each part of the application works with the other parts. This can make it difficult for other programmers beside the author to read, understand, and maintain the code.
One potential advantage that Google has with the Dart language is that they will be able to integrate it directly into their Chrome browser, which recently overtook Mozilla Firefox as the number 2 browser behind Internet Explorer. This integration is something that Bak and the rest of the Dart team is extremely excited about because it will enable “snapshotting.” Snapshotting greatly reduces a web apps startup time, and speed and efficiency are one of the hallmarks of the Chrome browser and operating system. Snapshotting makes this possible by taking the web application and serializing it into a single data block.
To demonstrate the potential of snapshotting to improve performance, Google loaded a 55,000-line Dart program in 60 milliseconds with snapshotting. Without snapshotting, the same 55,000-line program loaded in 640 milliseconds. A traditional Javascript program would have comparable load times to a Dart program without snapshotting. He said, “I can see a lot of optimizations that’ll be applicable to Dart when it’s integrated directly into a browser.”
Bak also elaborated on Google’s design goals for Dart:
1. Create an easy and familiar language for quick learning and adoption by programmers.
2. Deliver great performance on all modern web browsers and computing environments from server-side execution to handheld devices.
3. Create a structured and flexible web programming language.

Bak envisions Dart being used in a wide range of different development scenarios. The goal is to have Dart as viable for a small one-person project with very little architecture as a large-scale enterprise projects using teams of programmers needing format types in the code. In order to support such wide variety of projects, Dart includes optional types allowing people to code without types and add them further down the road as needed.

Dart programs will be able to run in a variety of ways. The fact that Dart programs will be able to run using a compiler that translates Dart code into Javascript will be huge boon to its viability allowing it to run on browsers that do not support Dart. Dart will also run within its own virtual machine.

Google has used its Chrome browser as a vehicle to roll out other technology products such as WebM and SPDY, and the 2010 Dart/Dash memo discussed Google’s plans to integrate Dart into the Chrome browser. On this topic, however, Bak was hesitant to make any definitive affirmative statements beyond mentioning that full integration would have a whole host of benefits. With that said, Bak is intimately familiar with working with the Chrome team and the challenges involved with improve web app performance; he was the lead developer of Chrome’s V8 Javascript engine.

One of the biggest benefits for getting Dart integration into the Chrome browser would be the fact that it would allow Google to build more advanced versions of its Web Apps suite than is currently possible. Google is betting big on cloud computing and its Google Apps platform, and if Dart lives up to its stated design goals, the improved performance could further increase the adoption of its browser and web apps. “Google has a lot fairly big Web applications. That includes Gmail and Docs. I hope many of these apps will be converted into Dart,” Bak said. He went on to say that this is merely his opinion and there are currently no explicit plans to convert these web apps into Dart programs.

“At this point it is mostly the language we are focused on,” he said. “We hope to get positive feedback on the language.”

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Silicon Valley Sets Sights on Smart Grid Sector

Posted on December 7, 2011 by tech jobs

Silicon Valley has been the center of the technology revolution for decades, and one of the most promising areas of the tech sector is smart grid technology. Silicon Valley is ideally positioned to further development of the smart grid and applications that take advantage of a smart grid.

Because Silicon Valley is home to many of the world’s largest technology companies, many of the components required to make the smart grid viable are designed and created in the area. One of the core concepts behind the smart grid is the utilization of monitoring systems and meters both on the small scale – within electric devices – and system-wide. These devices will generate huge volumes of data that need to be analyzed, shared, and stored, which will offer new opportunities for data management and analytics companies.

Recent analysis by the Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force has provided attractive projections for the future of smart grid technology and many companies both large and small will benefit from growth in the sector including Cisco, Google, General Electric, and Oracle to name a few. The president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Carl Guardino, said in a statement, “For decades, Silicon Valley has been on the forefront of new technologies. Increasingly, those new technologies touch the smart grid, and Silicon Valley is reaping the economic benefit of these advances.”

The task force’s report breaks down the smart grid industry into four separate sectors. The largest of these sectors – based on employment – is the distributed power generation sector, which accounts for 59% of the overall industry. That is followed by energy storage and power management and efficiency with 17% each, and the transmission and distribution sector with 10%.

While Silicon Valley has been one of the bright spots in the American economy for decades, the smart grid industry has been particularly vibrant. From 1995 through 2009, the number of people employed in the smart grid industry increased by an astounding 129%. Even at the depths of the global recession of 2008 and 2009, the smart grid industry managed to grow by 4%.

Our lives have been completely revolutionized over the past three decades by advanced technologies, but our electrical system is still antiquated and unintelligent. With the threat of runaway global warming lurking in the not-too-distant future unless we drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, smart grid technology offers huge efficiency gains, drastic reductions in wasted energy, and impressive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The environmental impact of widespread smart grid development and utilization would be considerable, and financial savings on both the individual and institutional levels would be considerable as well. Many technologies currently in their infancy – electric cars, for example – will require a smart grid in order to be viable on the large scale.

In response to the release of the task force’s report, the mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed, said, “A central tenet of San Jose’s Green Vision is that clean technologies are the economic drivers of the future. This report shows that the future is now and that the smart grid has already begun creating jobs in Silicon Valley.”

The Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force was a joint project consisting of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, PG&E – one of the nation’s largest utilities – and the City of San Jose. The task force was launched in 2010 to analyze how the development of a national smart grid would affect the Greater Bay Area. In a press release, the president of PG&E, Chris Johns, said, “Investment in the smart grid by PG&E and other utilities nationwide is good for customers, good for Silicon Valley tech jobs, and good for the Bay Area economy. The smart grid is a part of PG&E’s commitment to delivering safe, reliable and affordable energy to our customers.”

Numerous other private and governmental groups are involved in smart grid research and development including the NASA Ames Research Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the City of Sunnyvale, Google, and Juniper Networks. The Moffett Park Community Smart Grid Project – a large public-private partnership – is currently developing and rolling out a fully integrated smart grid in Sunnyvale, California which is home to both the Ames Research Center and LBNL.

As with many technological revolutions before, Silicon Valley is setting itself up to be ground zero of the smart grid revolution.

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Hottest Tech Startups in NYC

Posted on December 5, 2011 by tech jobs

For Decades, Silicon Valley has been the home to the vast majority of tech startups. From Apple, to Google, to Facebook, if a tech startup is not started in Silicon Valley – or moved to “the valley” shortly thereafter – it is widely considered a serious headwind to company growth. Over the past decade, however, New York City has become increasingly competitive in the tech startup field with many big names calling NYC home. The increase in New York City’s popularity for tech startups is due in part to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to make the city start-up friendly with subsidized office space, funding, and favorable local tax benefits for startups in the city. Below are ten of the biggest and best tech startups that call New York City home.

Foursquare

Foursquare is Dennis Crowley’s second foray into the geolocation space having sold Dodgeball to Google a number of years ago. Foursquare allows users to “check in” to bars, restaurants, and stores letting friends know where they are and earning “badges” that can provide special perks for that establishment. Foursquare has millions of users, and it is currently one of the darlings of the tech industry. Many people consider Foursquare to be the next Twitter or Facebook, and with skyrocketing valuations, the comparison to these other tech giants is understandable.

Square


Another square? Square is a mobile credit card processing service founded by Jack Dorsey who also founded Twitter. Square allows businesses and individuals to accept credit cards as payment using their mobile phone. By using a small peripheral card reader that plugs into the headphone jack on a smart phone, the person can swipe credit cards, accept payment, and send receipts all with their smart phone. Unlike traditional merchant accounts, anyone can open a square account, the card reader is free, there is no contract, and the fees are around the industry standard. Tens of thousands of businesses and individuals have adopted Square, and Square is processing well over $1 million in transactions every day.

Etsy

Etsy has gotten a great deal of press recently for good reason. Etsy is growing as one of the largest marketplaces online for handmade goods. People have always wanted to support small time craftsman and artists, and Etsy gives artisans across the globe the opportunity to sell their goods to buyers anywhere. The business model for Etsy is similar to eBay in that it takes a small fee for listings as well as a cut of the total sale. You can get anything from handmade ceramic plates, to knit scarves, to blown glass, and just about anything else you can imagine, and all of it is made by a small-time craftsman. Etsy has raised huge sums of money totaling well over $30 million from big name angel investors and venture capital firms including Albert Wenger, Union Square Ventures, and Accel Parters to name a few.

Kickstarter

Got an idea for a product to change the world? A volunteer project that needs funding? An art installation? Kickstarter exists for people like you. Kickstarter was founded to provide peer-to-peer funding for people looking to bring ideas to life without having to trade large amounts of equity for small sums of money. Kickstarter allows inventors, artists, or anyone with an idea to post their project, outline their funding goals, what they will do with the funding, etc and attract funding from hundreds or thousands of people. No one is charged unless the total money needed for the goal is met, and the projects posted on Kickstarter are generally quite good.  Kickstarter isn’t all altruism; the company takes a small cut of each successful funding round.

SecondMarket

SecondMarket has gotten a great deal of press and business by being part of the great Facebook trade. SecondMarket is a private “stock market” that allows people to buy and sell illiquid assets like shares in private companies, including Facebook. While Facebook stock trades are what have brought SecondMarket into the mainstream, it also has markets for many other illiquid assets including collateralized debt obligations – CDOs – mortgage backed securities, and bankruptcy claims among others. Like a traditional exchange, SecondMarket makes money on transactions. The company also has some big money behind it including the Chinese Billionaire Li Ka-shing.

Boxee

Boxee allows you to stream web content to your television easily. The Boxee Box is a networked device that – for $179.99 – makes streaming content from your computer and watching it on your TV as easy as changing the channel. Getting content from the computer to the TV has been a problem for the mainstream as few people have the technological skills to create the integrated setup necessary to do just that. Boxee fixes this problem, and it has attracted money from investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and General Catalyst Partners. Boxee will also allow content creators to sell their content, which will create a whole new market for web-only content and potentially bring it into the mainstream.

Hunch

Hunch is a “recommendation engine.” Basically, what Hunch does is it takes all sorts of information that it has learned about you – which you give it – and it makes recommendations that it thinks you might like based on the information that it has. Unlike traditional recommendation algorithms that are used by companies such as Amazon and Netflix, Hunch incorporates tertiary and seemingly irrelevant information to build a deeper profile resulting in better recommendations. The company has raised over $20 million from venerable angel and venture firms including Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners among others. Currently, Hunch is only a recommendation engine for shopping, but the algorithm could easily be licensed to third party companies such as Amazon, and it has such detailed user profiles that the information could be used to provide incredibly targeted advertising in the future.

Onewire

Onewire takes the idea of business social networking pioneered and perfected by LinkedIn and focuses solely on the finance industry. However, instead of targeting recruiters and candidates, Onewire is entirely recruiter facing, which allows jobs there to be filled within a matter of days. Onewire makes money by charging financial firms large sums of money for accounts — $15,000 or more – and almost every large bank and financial institution has accounts on Onewire. Onewire uses a structured data system that forces candidates to use answers from a limited number of options, so there is no need for recruiters to use traditional search functions.  Instead, it uses a faceted search that lets recruiters set the criteria they are looking for and confidential results are returned. Personal information is not displayed, and the recruiters can only contact the profile through e-mail and request that the candidate reveal themselves so the recruiter can see the profile and personal information.

Adsafe

Maintaining a positive company image can be incredibly difficult on the web, especially when it comes to web advertising. Ensuring that your ads are not appearing next to inappropriate content is a full-time job, and ad auditing is done after the fact. As a result, by the time problems are found, waste and damage has already happened. Adsafe, on the other hand, does ad auditing in real time by using algorithms on large computational networks to prevent ads appearing next to offensive or inappropriate content. The number of firms signing on with Adsafe is growing incredibly quickly, and with more and more companies relying more heavily on online advertising, there is even more room to grow. There is no confusion as to how Adsafe is making money; it charges users for the service it provides.

Makerbot

3D printing has been getting a lot of interest over the past few years. One company that is producing and selling 3D printers is Makerbot. The Makerbot printer sells for about $750, and it allows users to design and “print” three-dimensional models out of plastic. People can upload the designs for their creations and other individuals from all around the world can then have the Makerbot “print” a copy of the item. Currently, 3D printing is still in its hobby stage, and it is not at a point where it has many useful real-world applications; however, as the technology matures, the possibilities are limitless.

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Codeacademy Makes Learning Programming Fun and Easy

Posted on December 3, 2011 by tech jobs

Few things in life are as certain as death and taxes, but one considered by many to be up there on that list is the fact that learning how to program is tedious and boring. While the vast majority of people who use the internet assume the internet just sort of happens, it is actually built by millions of people writing code. Without programmers, all of exciting websites and programs that we all know and love simply would not exist. Today, there is a shortage of people with the knowledge and skills required to build the digital world.

This was the central problem that Zack Sims and Ryan Bubinski set out to solve when the created Codeacademy; a website that aims to teach people how to code online in a fun and effective way. Codeacademy came is one of many successful businesses to come out of Y Combinator – one of the most successful startup incubators in the world – and by the time it was presented at a Y Combinator Demo Day this past summer, it had more than 200,000 users who had completed almost 3 million exercises.

Codeacademy utilizes game mechanics within a crisp, clean web interface to make learning to program easy and fun. Codeacademy also keeps track of a person’s score and accumulated trophies as well as awarding badges that can be shared across various social networks for completing lessons. One of the biggest reasons for the success of Codeacademy is the fact that it is free to use – simply sign up or login with your Facebook account – unlike its competitors who charge a fee

Based on its incredible success at such an early stage, many prominent angel investors and venture capital firms have put money behind the fledgling company. More than $2.5 million dollars have been put behind the company from prominent venture investors including Union Square Ventures, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Yuri Milner, and Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund to name a few. Codeacademy also launched a new programming course simultaneously with their announcement of venture funding. Albert Wenger, a partner at Union Square Ventures, designed the course, and USV was one of the leaders in the round of funding.

Zack Sims told VentureBeat that the capital Codeacademy has raised will largely be spent hiring coders and designers to aid in expanding the number of programming languages that the academy offers. Currently, the exercises primarily teach people how to program in Javascript. The co-founders started with Javascript because it is one of the easier programming languages to learn, and it is the backbone of websites and web-based applications. While Codeacademy currently offers hundreds of JavaScript lessons, Sims said the plan is to have thousands of lessons soon for numerous languages including HTML.

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Second Life Founder Creates New Online Marketplace

Posted on November 30, 2011 by tech jobs

Successful entrepreneurs often have more than one great idea for a company, and the greatest entrepreneurs go on to create many successful companies. Elon Musk – founder of Tesla Automotive, Paypal and SpaceX – and Jack Dorsey – Founder of Square and Twitter – are two of the most notable additions to the serial entrepreneur club. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab – creators of Second Life – is poised to join the esteemed ranks with his innovative new startup; Coffee & Power.

Coffee & Power is attempting to take what Rosedale learned from Second Life and create an online marketplace where people can buy and sell small jobs. Unlike the freelance websites that currently exist, Rosedale has designed Coffee & Power to be fast, fun, and easy. The marketplace has many game features including its own virtual currency with an integrated payment system, a rating and review system, and live chat rooms. Game features are integrated into the whole experience. Job listings are called “missions” and cover a wide range of services including everything from web development to commissioned art. In addition to the website, Coffee & Power also has an iPhone app and It also provides real-world office space where users of the marketplace can meet each other and work together in the heart of San Francisco. The meeting space provides coffee, power, wifi, and a place to work; and the company plans to open many additional collaboration locations as the company grows.

Rosedale says of his inspiration for creating Coffee & Power, “What can you do for someone else, right now? There are so many amazing and useful things that we could all do for each other if we just had a way to quickly find, explain, and pay for them. The remarkable range of jobs and services in Second Life was the inspiration to create Coffee & Power — we wanted to bring the same thing to the real world.”

Second Life gained a great deal of publicity for the fact that it had an extremely vibrant virtual economy that translated into real life jobs and profits for many people. Rosedale wanted to bring that success to a wider audience and as a standalone endeavor. He said, “Work is really about directly providing value to others, not where or when you do it. Coffee & Power provides a shared space, both virtual and physical, where people can meet and do small, interesting jobs for each other.”

Coffee & Power was built from scratch to make the most of the connectivity resulting from social media, and it matches job posters and job seekers through many different avenues including live chat, a reputation system, social media connections, and searchable project histories. These features, along with the real life meeting space, go a long way toward differentiating itself from rivals such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

The virtual currency that is unique to the marketplace can be used to buy services from other Coffee & Power users, which keeps money in the system and helps to drive more activity and growth. The website also taps into user’s social networks by encouraging people to invite their friends by allowing people to give free gifts or missions to their friends. The marketplace brings everything together in one place, and the ratings and feedback system helps to build trust within the community.

The number of people who are full-time mobile workers is growing astronomically, and the poor economy has accelerated this trend. Over 25 million Americans spend one day or more per week working remotely, and full-time mobile workers make up 14 percent of the overall U.S. workforce.

The idea has gained a significant amount of traction, and it has attracted more than $1 million worth of funding from tech giants including Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg among others.

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Converting Human Energy to Electricity

Posted on November 19, 2011 by tech jobs

Green tech is one of the biggest emerging sectors of the tech market with private and public investment growing exponentially every year. As our impact on the climate and environment becomes more evident, we are collectively looking to reduce our impact on the planet. Renewable energy is a particularly large sector of the growing green tech market, and there are some truly innovative creations coming out.

One of these new innovations are paving tiles that convert the kinetic energy of people walking into electricity that can be used to power anything a wide array of public goods. The new “PaveGen” paving tiles are currently being tested in London and at other locations in England, and the special energy-generating tiles are going to be used to power a huge urban mall in London as part of the 2012 London Olympics. This installation will feature 20 tiles scattered along the crossing between the Olympic stadium and the Westfield Stratford City Mall. Based on the estimate of 30 million visitors, it is projected that the tiles will provide up to 50% of the power needed for the outdoor lighting in the mall. While the initial rollout for the tiles will be in modern cities like London, eventually, they could be used to help power third world cities and slums that lack the electrical infrastructure to keep the lights on.

The PaveGen tiles were created by Laurence Kemball-Cook, a 25 year old engineer who created the tiles while a university senior in 2009. Kemball-Cook designed the tiles as a means of powering off-grid appliances like street lights, illuminated signs, and advertising. Because of the nature of the system, they would be most effective in high traffic areas including major transit hubs, city centers, shopping malls, and schools.

The current iteration of the tile is made from a highly durable rubber and includes an on-board battery that stores energy in order to provide consistent electricity. Because the tile only produces energy when it is stepped on, the energy is produced in spikes so a consistent transfer mechanism was required to make it effective. The tiles compress approximately 5 millimeters and that kinetic energy is converted into electricity; however, Kemball-Cook declined to share exactly how that process takes place. The PaveGen tiles also feature an integrated LED that lights up to convey the idea that it produces energy to the user. The LED only uses 5% of the energy generated by each footstep allowing it to encourage people to walk on it without negatively impacting its performance.

The PaveGen tile has already won a whole host of awards for its design ingenuity including the Shell LiveWire Grand Ideas Award and the Ethical Business Awards “Big Idea” award. The enthusiasm for the tile has garnered attention from numerous angel investors and venture firms and the company recently closed a round of financing from a consortium of London-based angel investors.

There is a great deal of enthusiasm for the product; however, many are withholding far reaching predictions of the tiles potential impact. Richard Miller, the head of sustainability at the Technology Strategy Board said, “As much as it’s an effective, common-sense source of some sustainable electricity, it’s also a great way for people to engage with the issue of sustainability … to feel like they are part of the solution in a very immediate, fun and visual way that doesn’t make you do anything you wouldn’t already be doing… As with all things of this nature, on a large scale and in the long term, its success will be determined by how cost-effective it is to produce … If it turns out to be expensive, then it will struggle to find a place as anything more than a niche application.”

Kemball-Cook would not comment on the current cost of each tile, but he stated that the current price is considerably higher than it will be once it begins to be mass produced.

The test installations of the tiles have been getting a good deal of traffic, and durability testing has been promising. According to Kemball-Cook, the tiles easily withstood testing from a machine that mimicked being stomped on 24/7 for an entire month. Based on these results he said, “We’re confident enough to give it a five-year guarantee, but that could well go up. […] It’s also really easy to install as a retrofit on existing pavements, because they can be made to match their exact dimensions … you just replace one slab with another.”

Even though one step produces very little electricity – enough to power an LED-powered street light for 30 seconds – he believes that widespread use could make a significant energy contribution. Discussing this potential for outsourcing, Kemball-Cook said, “We recently came back from a big outdoor festival where we got over 250,000 footsteps — that was enough to charge 10,000 mobile phones.” Looking to the future, he sees immense possibilities, “The average person takes 150 million steps in their lifetime, just imagine the potential.”

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How to Get a Job at Google

Posted on October 24, 2011 by tech jobs

For years, Google has been considered one of the top places to work in both the United States and abroad. The huge number of perks from gourmet cafeterias, free massages, game rooms, laundry service, and many others have drawn the attention of most everyone. It was ranked #4 in 2011 by Fortune Magazine on the best companies to work for list, and it ranked #1 in 2007. If there’s one place where almost everyone wants to work, it is at Google. Even while the life of a Google employee has gotten a great deal of attention, so too has the peculiar and innovative hiring practices and interview methods that Google employs. Because Google’s interview process is so outlandish, it has been the target of many internet rumors, which obscure the truth. In an interview recently, Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shed some light into what makes a Google employee, and how the interview process actually works.

• Be Independent. According to Mr. Schmidt, the best employees are ones who do not need to be micromanaged. Employees that can come together and make decisions without looking for affirmation and approval before they proceed keep things running smoothly. “People are going to do what they are going to do, and you’re there to assist them. They don’t need me, they are going to do it anyway. They are going to do it for their whole lives. Maybe they could use a little help from me. At Google, we give the impression of not managing the company because we don’t really. It sort of has its own borg-like quality if you will. it sort of just moves forward,” said Schmidt. Independence breeds innovation and innovation is what brought Google to the top.

• Be Exceptional. If there is one thing that Google demands of its employees above anything else, it is exceptionality. In this sense, Schmidt said, “We spent more time — and pretty ruthlessly — on academic qualifications, intelligence, intellectual creativity, passion and commitment. What bothers me about management books, they all say these things generically, but nobody does it.” If you want to work at Google, you have to be exceptional, and it is not just the engineers that are exceptional either. Even the sales and customer support people at Google are the best of the best.

• Be who you are. Schmidt mentioned how important it is to get the right people for the job. The right person for the job, however, is not always the most friendly and outgoing. “You are going to have to deal with the odd people. Not every single one of these incredibly smart people is a team player… even if people don’t want them around, we still need them,” said Schmidt.

• Enjoy the interview process. Google is known for having a creative and often arduous interview process. According to Schmidt, Google is streamlining its interview process and prospective employees are no longer subject to up to 16 interviews before the company makes a decision. Today, he said that they can make a decision in only 5 interviews. These interviews often include brainteaser questions like, “explain how would you fit an elephant in a refrigerator” and “figure out how many piano tuners are in New York.” The quirky interview questions are designed to show how your brain solves problems and your intellectual creativity.

Even though Google is no longer ranked the #1 best company to work for, working at Google is still the dream of many college grads. In fact, this February Google announced that it was hiring 6,000 new employees, and they received over 75,000 resumes for those openings in less than one week. Getting a job at Google may not be easy, but it is an amazing experience for all who get the opportunity. Furthermore, a job at Google opens up the opportunity to work almost anywhere else.

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Simple Tips For Acing a Phone Interview

Posted on October 21, 2011 by tech jobs

For many, the telephone interview prior to the face-to-face interview can be more anxiety-inducing than the actual face-to-face interview. Most employers use telephone interviews in order to further screen potential applicants and narrow down the number of applicants they need to call in for an in person interview. For a larger percentage of job seekers, the telephone interview is often the last step, and they are weeded out of the applicant pool and never make it to the in person interview.

Despite the fact that many people struggle with phone interviews, it should actually be one of the easier steps in the application process and one that can be used to really differentiate yourself from the rest of the applicants. By taking a few easy steps, the phone interview can go from a dreaded step you have to squeeze through in order to get a shot at the job to your strongest showing that will almost guarantee a face-to-face opportunity.

The single most important thing about a phone interview is preparation, preparation, preparation. This cannot be stressed enough. An interview is a test, and it is much easier to be prepared to take a test when you have all the answers sitting right in front of you. Research your employer, learn about the company, its founding, the founders, how it has grown, how it has diversified, etc. Make notes on all of this information.

Use the research that you did on the company to write some good questions. Be creative. Let’s say you read a press release that the company is expanding their operations into another country. When the time comes to ask questions, you can ask something like, “I saw that you are expanding into the UK, is there potential for relocation as I grow with the company?” It demonstrates that you have done your research, you plan to stay with the company, and you are forward thinking.

Another important document to have at hand is your resume. This is one of the few things that the interviewer will have about you. For every point on your resume, write up additional information and embellishments that you can share should they ask you about that point on the resume.

Having polished answers to a list of common interview questions is imperative to a successful telephone interview. Ad-libbing is something that you may have to do in a in-person interview, but you should have everything you need written down for a telephone interview.

In addition to having all your research and information printed and laid out in front of you, it is vitally important to conduct the interview in a distraction free environment. A quiet room with no distractions will help you focus on the task at hand, and it will convey a sense of professionalism that you would lose otherwise. No one wants to hear a television, fan, air conditioner, children, or any other noise when they are interviewing a potential employee. Another thing that prospective employers don’t want to hear is gum chewing, drinking, eating, smoking, or biting your nails. All of these things are deal breakers when it comes to a phone interview. It is okay to have a glass of water handy should your mouth get dry, but make sure to avoid making any loud noises while sipping.

Wearing the clothes that you would wear to an in person interview also helps to get you in the proper frame of mind. What we wear has a huge impact on how we feel psychologically, and that can be picked up on by another person. By wearing professional attire, you will feel confident and professional and that will be conveyed through the phone. Smiling while you speak will also change the way your voice sounds and project an aura of confidence and strength.

If you do these things and follow regular protocol for any other interview like addressing the person properly, speaking slowly and clearly, and thanking the interviewer for their time after the interview is over, you should have no problem making it past the big telephone interview bottleneck and making a good impression while doing it.

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Competition for Tech Talent is Red Hot

Posted on October 14, 2011 by tech jobs

Despite the incredibly soft labor market, the competition for tech talent has been increasing, and it shows no signs of slowing down.  The robust growth in the tech jobs has pushed the sector-level unemployment rate to below 4 percent, which is less than half the overall unemployment rate. Based on a survey of 900 recruiters and managers responsible for hiring, 65 percent said that they plan to hire more tech professionals in the latter half of 2011 than they did in the first.

With an unemployment rate below 4 percent, the demand for qualified technology professionals is red hot. Positions will remain unfilled for months at a time because of a shortage of qualified professionals. A majority of those surveyed said that the amount of time it takes to fill a job opening is getting longer, and of those, 63 percent say this is a result of a lack of qualified applicants. Shortages in tech talent affect some regions more than others, and respondents in the Northeast and Midwest in particular were aware of severe talent shortfalls. Over two thirds of hiring managers and recruiters located in these two regions had hired individuals from outside the local talent pool in order to fill open positions. Certain positions have been more difficult to fill than others including those in Java, .Net, mobile development, SAP, and Sharepoint.

The fierce competition for IT professionals has lead to increasing pay. 47 percent of the respondents said that pay was significantly or slightly increasing. More companies are recognizing that IT professionals are the key to improving efficiency, unlocking innovation, and building and integrating an increasing mobile work environment.

34 percent of recruiters plan to utilize outside resources in an effort to find qualified talent to fill positions. One of the primary factors that recruiters are looking for is experience, and a majority of recruiters are looking for applicants with six to ten years of experience. With the economy remaining sluggish, companies are using idle capital to transition over to the cloud and embrace an increasingly mobile workforce. The high demand for IT Professionals combined with a low supply of qualified applicants means that there may not be a better chance to use market dynamics to leverage a strong compensation package. Unlike the rest of the labor market, tech is one sector where the employee has the upper hand in negotiations.

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Microsoft Office Takes to The Cloud

Posted on October 7, 2011 by tech jobs

Since its introduction in 2007, Google Docs has been eating into the market share of one of Microsoft’s most dominant and profitable products: Microsoft Office. The cloud-based Google Docs, which is free for individuals and integrates with Gmail and other properties, has changed the rules when it comes to productivity software. Since its inception, Google Docs has been adopted by more than 3 million businesses and organizations, as well as over 30 million individual users. Finally, Microsoft has released a competing cloud-based productivity suite with Microsoft Office 365.

It is true that Microsoft has waited four years to take the threat from Google Docs seriously, and many tech prognosticators say that Office 365 is too little, too late, but Microsoft is betting big on Office 365. While Google Docs has been cutting into the Microsoft Office user based since it was introduced in 2007, Microsoft has finally fired back with its Office 365. While the number of adopters of Google Docs is impressive, Microsoft claims that over 1 billion people worldwide use some version of Microsoft Office. This number does not sound too unreasonable considering the fact that Microsoft Office is the number one selling product for Microsoft and accounts for over 30% of the company’s revenue.

Of course, the big question is is it time to ditch the free Google Docs in favor of the subscription-based Office 365? The answer to that question depends on what your needs are. The basic Office 365 subscription starts at $6/mo, and it definitely has much more robust functionality, which is to be expected considering Microsoft Office has been the leading suite of productivity programs for many years. In addition to all of the usual Microsoft Office programs – Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. – it also includes numerous new features like web-based e-mail, shared calendars, instant messaging, video conferencing, web meetings, web-based e-mail, and shared documents to name a few. Microsoft is also in the process of integrating Skype into Office 365 and that feature should be rolled out in the near future.

Microsoft currently offers two different Office 365 plans. Plan P is the professional and small business plan that is, at $6 per month, a very good deal considering it can be used by up to 50 people. Plan E – the enterprise version – supports up to tens of thousands of users and the plans range from $10 per month to $27 per month. Considering Microsoft Office has truly massive user base, and the vast majority of corporations use Microsoft Office already, it is unlikely that individuals and organizations will continue flocking to Google Docs. Additionally, Microsoft Office and Google Docs do not play well with each other as moving documents into Google Docs will often result in formatting issues.

There are still some issues that need to be worked out with Office 365, however. The cloud-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all lack numerous functions that the desktop versions offer, and in order to utilize all of the functions, users still need to maintain a desktop version of the program. Additionally, the iPad version of the software is a tad buggy, but the fact that there is a tablet version is definitely a plus.Despite the handful of issues with Office 365, it seems like Microsoft Office will continue to be the top dog in productivity suite software for the foreseeable future.

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