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May 15 Talking about all good things come to an end!Quote all good things come to an end! April 30 Adieu DaneIt was early October 2005, redwest cafe, my first 1:1 with Dane Glasgow our new general manager replacing Hadi Partovi. my opinion prior to the meeting 'this guy has big shoes to fill' :). it was an interesting meeting, i wasn't going in to the meeting with the best attitude, distraught over the news of Hadi's departure.... it didn't help that Dane talked about a hot button of mine, staffing. i'm a huge believer in very selective hiring, less is more. Dane kept on insisting that our team of 4 working on start.com was short-staffed, he was right :) that was the only on edge interaction i had with Dane...
Fast-forward 1.5 years of working together, and i'm extremely bummed to see him go. I have learned a lot from Dane, constantly pushed by him and most importantly inspired by him. Dane is the type of leader that we need more of at Microsoft, at only 30 years young he infuses a fresh perspective and understands building services. But 8 years is a long time to be at any company, and i understand his decision to focus on his family and other passions.... best of luck!
April 04 Debunking myths about the "Third World"I've watched this video 5 times and find it absolutely amazing. I hope to give a talk as captivating as Prof. Hans Rosling's one day.
who's your celeb look alike?myheritage is a really fun site! good design and cool technology..
upload your pic, the face recognition software does its thing and boom you'll get a list of top 10 celebs that look like you! not sure i agree with this analysis - mandy moore ?!?!. but it's fun nonetheless and claire forlani is one of my favorite actresses :)
 March 19 Carmen takes a divecarmen electra takes a dive on the runway @ MAX Factor fashion show... pretty funny :) hope she's ok.
the urban satchelyou read it right... the $150,000 purse from Louis Vuitton. I can create a knock off of that one pretty easily: a water bottle, marlboro pack, spearmeant guym, tully's cup... is this a freakin joke! I hope the money's going to a good cause. 
March 18 What is FAD in GeEk world?you hear the term FAD and you think of skinny jeans, bell bottom jeans, platfom shoes, ripped jeans, etc...
what is FAD in the software world? ... software that doesn't evolve, stagnant, same and hence lame. software that leaves you high and dry, a good start, and good rythm that doesn't keep on singing. a beat that doesn't go on. something can go from hot to fad and back to hot. the difficulty of the 2nd transition from fad to hot is correlated with time. the more time you take to react, the harder it is.
with that definition - dear bloglines i declare you a FAD you can certainly become hot again if you act quick, but a former FAD, google reader has outdone you taking the hot crown. thanks, it was good using you.
i know what you're thinkin - don't be a hypocrite. yeah, Live is tip toeing on the FAD line. we need to execute, we've left our customers and analysts high and dry. we're working on it, there are many passionate smart folks wanting to build the best services for our customers. but it's a cruise ship as Berkowitz mentioned, maybe we just need to split to rowboats (headed in the same direction) and let our customers see the real passion of the ppl behind the software.  Processes Gone Wildunderstanding windows vista reliability mechanics... listen to the vista reliability team talk about how they re-architected some of the fundamentals of the OS to close the feedback loop for crashes -> error reports -> fixes. all about data collection, watson, error reporting, etc.. pretty interesting stuff. ever wonder what it means when an app is hung? how to detect a hang? what can the OS do about it? wonder about that 'not responding' message on apps? watch this interview. and oh yeah... that's my brother :) GeeK ChiC: TXT SBUXIt's Wendesday morning and you're somewhere in Mountain View on a Biz Trip. Need coffee or even better need Grande Soy Extra Matcha Green Tea Latte. Where is the nearest Starbucks? Need not worry just send a text message with the area's zip code to MYSBUX (or 697289), and a list of nearby Starbucks stores will pop back.
I'm an avid GOOGL SMS user, but this custom starbucks SMS thing has potential especially if they sent store hours and whether they have drive-thru.
 the story behind the interview and tipsA few weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon after a really long week @ work I got a one line meeting invite from the Microsoft PR team asking me that they needed to meet with me on Monday. My first reaction "crap, did I blog about something I wasn't supposed to blog about" :) , I was too tired though and I decided to just wait till Monday.
Fast forwad: Monday - a short conversation on the phone and it turned out they wanted to ask if I was intereted in interviewing with Fast Company per their request. I was flattered and of course said yes. The interview was set for a few days a later, as a phone interview.
Tips for phone interviews: stand up or walk around, don't sit during the interview. It really affects your energy and tone. the downside, it's harder to take notes, but it's better not to take notes unless absolutely necessary.
General interview tips:
- 1. know what you're going to say before you say it. 2. be crisp and to the point. another way to say it: formulate your thoughs, make a point and stop. don't try to fill moments of silence with thought ramblings :)
- If you don't know the answer, just be honest and say you dont know. Don't try to wing it.
The interivew was one hour long, and touched on a varity of topics. Everything from my personal beliefs and principles for software engineering practices, to gadgets to Microsoft and search. David Lidsky interviewed me and the hour felt more like a great conversation than an interview.
A week later it was photo time! :) Where Annie Marie took some photos of me @ work and @ Archie McPhee's (super funky toy store in Ballard).
Long story short - the article is now in the April issue of Fast Company that just hit the newsstands :)
March 11 Talking about ListeningKamran a good friend of mine recently had a post about 'listening'... I'm a strong believer in Kamran's statements. This is something I personally try to follow (I'll be the first to admit I have not mastered this art, but it's definitely a goal of mine) and needless to say I seek friends and co-workers with similiar characteristics. Quote Listening March 09 funny stuffspeech recognition isn't really intended for perl scripting, but this is a good laugh nonetheless :) (thanks omar) March 06 Search: it's just getting startedWe're just scratching the surface with search. Why? Well let me give some examples. I was just going through my site's traffic and searches queries that end up at sanaz.spaces.live.com...
query: what is the highest building?
I really don't think my blog post actually deserves the 2nd spot. the results that have a lower ranking than my site give better more authoritative answers. the ideal answer should be a result page that give the list of tallest building with option to drill down by geographical location. at least that's the ideal answer from an end-user's perspective.
query: cool google talk emoticons
once again my site is the 2nd result, a blog post I did for google talk specifically. well my post is just a review, i don't actually about "google talk emoticons" , here's an example where search engines generally do an elementary job of identifying entities and intention.
query:spaces.live.com
this one is actually just terrible. my space is the top result for the query spaces.live.com! flatterring .. eh, maybe. but, man that's definitely not what most customers are looking for.
these are just some examples. this is the stuff that motivates me. we've got big complicated set of problems to solve as an industry. it's like i'm in college all over againtheme of the week: lack of sleep, actually it was last week too :)
 March 02 sanazified?It's Friday and my whole team is at work cranking on specs! yeah, I have a pretty badass team..
a snippet of our conversation over pizza tonight:
Ajay says: 'oh yeah , my spec is sanazified'
Me: huh. puzzled look.
Jason and Mike: laughing and nodding in agreement.
Cristina says: 'oh yeah mine too'
Betsy says: 'wait what does that mean. is that a good thing?'
5 minutes later and a majority rule of 5 against 1 (me being the 1 - yes I'm a boss that supports democracy :) ) voted for sanaz as a verb and an adjective... we'll see if it sticks :) back to specs.
Check out collections!We were working through some gallery glitches, collections approval process is now cranking and there are lots of awesome collections on gallery already!
Check out my entertainment gossip page :)
update: check out my tech fix collection February 18 I want a pugAs most of my friends know I LOVE cute little dogs, especially pugs. Now my friends will also go out of their way to not let me get a dog as I'm not home all that much. Wouldn't it be cool to have one of these little ones and bring it to work! :) (courtesy of cuteoverload)  |
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