August 2008 archive - Search Industry News

Are you awesome? Do you like music?

3:20 am - August 26, 2008 in Yahoo! Music Blog

Are you excited about Music? Do you enjoy creating great experiences for users to enjoy? If so, you have the opportunity to be part of the team that builds the top Music site on the internet. Email your resume to ymusic-jobs@yahoo-inc.com.

We are building Music applications such as Music Video, Internet Radio, Music Blogs, Yahoo Media Player and several other exciting applications. We’re hiring for a few positions that go a little something like this:

Build cutting edge applications and mashups to entertain millions of users
Develop scalable applications that services up to thousands of requests per second
Review wireframes, design treatments and business requirements.
Participate in design and code reviews, documentation of design, implementation of methodologies to ensure high quality software
Utilize software engineering best practices such as source control, unit testing and continuous integration

The roles are within our Media Applications Group, working on web applications that power music experiences both on and off the Yahoo! Music site.

Some key attributes of a successful candidate will be:

Extensive experience with PHP (PHP5 and framework experience strongly preferred. i.e. CakePHP, Zend, Symfony, CodeIgniter)
Cross browser compatibility, Search Engine Optimization, regular user of Web Services, XML/XSLT and REST/SOAP style interfaces
Experience using caching layer such as SQUID and Memcached
Strong presentation layer experience (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript frameworks)
Fluency with the LAMP stack
Prior experience with or knowledge of large scale, high volume systems
At least five years software development experience, a large portion of which in a team environment
A familiarity with a wide variety of software development methodologies, tools, languages and approaches

Some responsibilities of the position:

Good clean fast code that thinks a few moves ahead
A disciplined approach to design/architecture, development, documentation and maintainability
Self-management in the code-test-debug cycle
Co-ordination with other team members, partners and external stakeholders through documentation and discussion
Contribute to the continual improvement of our development process

Bonus:

Academic background in computer science (BSc or MSc)
Expertise in Java, Perl, JavaScript, C or C++
Expertise in networking, databases, mail handling, image processing, XUL or OS X development.
Experience in both small start-up and large company environments

Email your resume to ymusic-jobs@yahoo-inc.com.Yahoo! Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. For more information or to search all of our openings, please visit http://careers.yahoo.com.

Search Load Time Bug Fixed

4:09 pm - August 25, 2008 in Eurekster Blog

Per our last post, many swicki builders were experiencing a slow load time with their swickis. This was an identified bug, and is now fixed.

If you still have concerns with the load time of your results pages. Please contact us at swicki.feedback@eurekster.com

More from Alex in 2, Search Firms - Other

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Fixing Slow Search Load Time

12:29 pm - August 25, 2008 in Eurekster Blog

Identified late last week, especially by many of the swicki builders who have written us over the weekend, swicki searches are currently experiencing a very slow load time.

At first glance, it may appear that searches don't load at all, but as of writing this post, searches are indeed loading.

We understand that this is a critical issue that affects the adoption of this technology by your communities. We are working hard to fix this bug as fast as we can.

Sorry for the inconveniences that these circumstances have occurred, and thanks again for writing us with known technology issues.

More from Alex in 2, Search Firms - Other

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Snap is hiring: Wanted Senior Software Engineer, Data Mining / Quantitative Analyst

8:29 pm - August 21, 2008 in blog.snap.com

We are seeking a highly intelligent, innovative, quantitative and technically savvy individual to analyze process complex data sets related to online advertising marketplace. • Are you a pioneer looking to apply your skills to an emerging market? • Are you innovative, driven and enjoy scouring data and a market to come up with better ways of doing things? • Do you [...]

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Back-to-School savings now in session

1:15 pm - August 21, 2008 in Checkout: The Official Google Checkout Blog

Whether you're looking to fill up a backpack or a dorm room, Google Checkout is a fast, easy way to buy what you need this fall. Checkout shoppers can get savings of $5 or more at hundreds of stores for a limited time. And after you take advantage of these exclusive offers, you can use your Google Checkout login for quick, secure shopping throughout the school year at thousands of online stores.

Posted by Christian Yee, Product Marketing Manager

Meet the Team: David Wurtz

11:35 am - August 20, 2008 in Checkout: The Official Google Checkout Blog

From time to time we'll introduce you to a member of the Checkout team. Meet another one now.

Alyssa: How long have you been at Google, and what role do you play on Checkout?

David: I've been an associate product manager on Google Checkout since joining Google last June.

Alyssa: What did you do before coming to Google?

David: I came to Google directly out of college. I attended a very small engineering school in Boston called Olin College of Engineering, where I studied bioengineering. I know, I know. It has nothing to do with my job at Google. But hey -- one of these days, I may find a way to apply my degree to Checkout. In junior year of college, I actually dropped out for a semester to start a web 2.0 company called Flagr. Flagr is a social network based around the places you go and the things you see. Flagr's slogan explains it all: Bookmark the real world. This was a fantastic experience, and offered me incredible insight into the world of Silicon Valley, angel investors, and VCs. I often reference my experiences at Flagr on my day-to-day role on Checkout.

Alyssa: What sorts of things fill your day?

David: One of the best aspects of my job at Google is that each day I face a completely new set of challenges and opportunities. It's such a fast-paced, dynamic environment that it's hard to fall into a routine. This makes a question like this difficult to answer, but let me give it a shot...

In a typical day, here are some things I may do:

Draft a product brief: This is a proposal that outlines a potential new Checkout feature and presents a strong business case for why we should add it to the product. We work hard to ensure our time is spent developing the most effective features.
Mock something up: I'm a fairly visual guy, so I tend to get myself involved in the user interface design of my projects.
Reach out to merchants: Merchant feedback plays a big role in new feature development, so I frequently reach out to merchants to add them as testers.
Learn about other Google initiatives: As you might expect, there's a lot going on at Google. A big part of the product management role here is understanding all the other initiatives that are under way, so you can better grasp a) how your features fit into the bigger picture and b) how your team can collaborate with other Google teams to create even better products.
Try stuff out: I typically sign up for one or two web services in the commerce space each day, just to see what the competitive marketplace looks like.

Alyssa: What has been an incredible moment that you have experienced since joining?

David: A few months ago, I traveled around the world (literally) with 35 of my fellow associate product managers as part of an annual trip. We visited four countries over the span of two weeks: Japan, China, Russia, and Norway. Our schedule was jam-packed! We visited local Google offices, interviewed Google users, met with high-tech startups and venture capitalists, and toured all four cities.

As you may have guessed, the trip was full of incredible moments. But one morning, we woke up early to visit the Tsujiki fish market in Tokyo. The market serves as a central auction place for Japanese fish vendors and merchants. Thousands of merchants line up for their chance to bid on the latest catch -- huge, one-ton tunas that cost thousands of dollars each. Surrounding the auction are hundreds of local vendors, each selling a variety of unidentifiable (but edible) sea creatures. Some of these merchants are bargaining with customers, some are slicing and dicing fish with machetes, and some are transporting their loads at lightening speed on modified go-carts.

A hectic place to be at 5:00 am! As a sushi lover, you can imagine this was an amazing experience. What topped it off was the two pounds of raw fish I had for breakfast that morning. With so much supply, the prices were incredibly low and the fish was really fresh. It certainly reset my expectations for what good sushi should taste like.

Alyssa: What about when you are off duty?

David: When I'm not at Google, I enjoy throwing a Frisbee, exploring new and interesting places around the world with my fiancée, dabbling in some eCommerce ventures of my own, and -- of course -- playing with my Maltese puppy, "Maya." I'm also a big fan of the financial markets, where I like to trade option spreads. How do I spend Friday night? Watching a Netflix DVD, a Lost episode, or perhaps hanging out at Barnes and Noble with a great book.

Posted by Alyssa England, Google Checkout Team

Snap is hiring: Wanted Manager of Product Development

11:01 pm - August 18, 2008 in blog.snap.com

Title: Manager, Product Development Job Description THIS POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED Snap is looking for a hands-on Manager of Product Development to lead its software engineering team in delivering innovative Snap Shots products. Reporting Relationship: Reports to Chief Technology Officer Responsibilities 1) Make Snap successful. 2) Grow and manage a high performance, experienced software engineering team that delivers new Snap Shots products [...]

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Snap & People.com introduce: People Shot

7:09 am - August 18, 2008 in blog.snap.com

Now it’s easier than ever to keep up with your favorite celebrities! Snap has recently launched a test program with Time Inc’s People.com to deliver a customized People celebrity Snap Shot across Snap’s top entertainment/celebrity partner sites. The specialized People Shot will give users headlines, photos and the latest news on top celebrities from the [...]

More from Jay Meydad in Search Firms - Other

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Reminder about My.Live.com Suggestions and Feedback Forum

2:20 am - August 14, 2008 in My.live.com blog

In case you missed it in our last update, we have created a new "My.Live.com Suggestions and Feedback Forum" over in the Forums Community on Microsoft.com. You can access the forum at http://forums.community.microsoft.com/en/MyLiveCom/threads/

Check out what others are saying about the recent updates to My.Live.com, tell us your own opinions, ask questions of our developers, and report problems directly to the team. We've gotten a lot of great feedback and welcome more!

- The My.Live.com Team

More from My.live.com blog in Microsoft News

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SNAP! Stretching the Elastic Computing Cloud

12:48 am - August 14, 2008 in Trexy

Trexy successfully migrated to the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (ec2) a few months ago.

Last month I migrated the much larger Turbo10 cluster (our sister search engine) into the Cloud. Turbo10’s advertising network currently receives over 30 million search hits per day and close to 1 billion searches per month, so its capacity requirements are much higher than Trexy.

We launched over 20 machines in the Cloud to service Turbo10’s incoming load and were alarmed when many of the machines turned red. The load was way too high. “Quick! Launch more machines!!”

Then suddenly we received this message from Amazon, “Sorry - machine quota exceeded.” SNAP!! It seems we’d stretched the ‘elastic’ in elastic computing too far. What followed was an anxious wait until someone from Amazon manually increased our quota.

Things are now running fine and both search engines are now happily situated in the Cloud. Phew!

Now I’d better get back to designing the next version of Trexy …