shellen dot com | Sincerely, Jason Shellen

Best Daddy Ever

It's weird to have a picture of your kids show up on the front page of Digg. It's weirder to have the resulting conversation on the web make it the actual top result (even if it was just for a day). I contend it's a hyper local search result - have your kids try it and I'll bet the most relevant result depends a lot on location.

Labels: digg, google, personal

Google Docs Presentation tool is out

Just go to http://docs.google.com and under 'New' create a presentation. Pretty slick, nice work Google.

Labels: google, microsoft

Last day at Google

The response to my last post has been fantastic. I've had a ton of really nice email and an abundance of comments. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and just a few quick follow-ups to provide a bit more clarity:

Where are you *really* going? I see you Twittering a lot, you're going to Twitter aren't you? No. I'm really going to take about 6 weeks off before I dive into the next thing. I've been approached about a few exec/CEO type positions at some smaller companies and I have a lot to think about. If I were betting on me (?), I would say odds are good that I'm going to start my own company in the fall/winter and will pick up on some great discussions I've had with VCs and angels in September. You never know though, there might be something awesome that might be a perfect fit.
Did you leave Google yet? I work here and I saw you lurking in a hallway, should I call Security? My last day is today. In fact, I'm planning to go to my favorite cafe (Charlie's) tomorrow at Noon on the main campus. If you are reading this blog, and are a Google employee and want to have lunch together one last time - let's meet up there, that would be fun. Please don't call Security, yet.
I have an idea and would like to buy you breakfast/lunch/coffee/dinner/iPhone, when is good for you? That's awesome. I love eating things but let's do it in September - I need a break.
My idea is awesome, you're an idiot for not listening to it now! Yes, I probably am.
Now that you're leaving Google, how can I get my business proposal in from of the right person? As I told the folks at the Dealmaker Media "Partnering with Gorillas" session the other night, the front door is always a good approach.
What will you miss about Google? The friends, the food, and the fun secret projects. Not always in that order.
I want to add you to my address book, how should I keep in touch? I like using LinkedIn for business contacts and here is my profile page. Otherwise, if you are just looking to hear about what's next. This blog is always a good way to go.
Did I see that you did an interview for the Wall Street Journal recently? Yes, as a matter a fact I did. Thanks for asking.

Clearly I'm just sandbagging now so I'll move on.

By the way, I'm going to have to work on being more salacious and print worthy. No splashy Valleywag tidbit on my exit, no Techcrunch blurb? Do I have to say something horrible about Nick Denton or Mike Arrington to get coverage in this town? Here you go, Arrington carouses with tarts and Denton... actually I hear mostly good things about him... wait I can do this... he's a cad and enjoys expensive clothes! I think I blew it. I think the last thing was actually a compliment. I think I know where nice guys finish anyway. I'll keep working on it and I'll see you on the other side of this Google thing.

Labels: google, personal, press

My time at Google, by the numbers

I joined Google as part of the Blogger acquisition in February 2003. There were only six of us on the Pyra Labs team and we were Google's first acquisition*. Google was only about 600 employees strong. There were times when we felt like royalty and other times when we felt like guinea pigs but all-in-all it has been an amazing ride. I'm very grateful that after joining that I was not only able to contribute on Blogger but to start-up my own product (Google Reader) which by most accounts is now the #1 web-based feed reader. When I wanted to get back to business development I found a great home on a fantastic team and even got to work on products I know and love like Picasa, Reader and Blogger.

I've been working with Blogger for a long time. In October 2000, I tracked down the co-founders Ev and Meg. Having become a Blogger user and fan in mid-2000, I asked if they were making any money and if they could use any help. The answers were "No and Yes." Even though I was an unpaid consultant and friend of the company at the time I devoted myself to what I believed would become huge. I'm glad I was right and even more glad that they accepted my help.

Despite the fun I've had at Google and the weird looks I'm going to get from people for turning down the free Google food, massages, excellent benefits and the like - I feel I've got that entrepreneurial/start-up bug deep within me and I can't help but think about the next thing. I'm going to take a little time off while I think about what is next (hopefully while surfing and riding my bike in Santa Cruz) but I've decided to leave Google. I have a few ideas but if you have a better one - let me know. Below is a quick infographic of some stats I've compiled on the things I've worked or transpired during my time here. To all of my co-workers reading this, you still work at an amazing company and I thank you for your friendship, also I'll be stopping by for lunch. ;)

* Google acquired the assets of Deja.com before our acquisition, but not with live humans.

Labels: blogger, google, personal

Labor vs. Capital: Dodgeball style

Last Friday was the Labor vs. Capital 1st Annual Dodgeball tournament put together by Hunter Walk and David Hornik. It was entrepreneurs vs. VC's but this time the entrepreneurs dished out the terms. Labor took home the trophies in the end but Capital put up a valiant fight playing like they were trying to retain two board seats. Michael Bazeley from the Mercury News was there to vidblog the affair (embedded below or here if viewing in a feedreader). Yours truly appears at the 4 minute mark playing it straight. Thanks for a fun time guys.

Labels: google, video

Two barely related things

John Edwards seems like he would make a great president. Unfortunately, so do all of the other Democratic candidates. This is going to be a nail biter.
The Picasa Web Albums team shipped this awesome little slideshow-embed thing that I'm going to try out with some mediocre pictures I took last week. I bet you can do better. (Also I'm guessing this won't show up in a feed reader since it uses the embed tag so I need to go write an email about that for the Reader team right now.)

Labels: google, photos, politics

When burning is a good thing

Sometimes burning is a good thing, for instance when making creme brulée, having a bonfire on the beach, or even better - burning your feeds with FeedBurner. Today Google announced the acquisition of FeedBurner. It's a deal that's been in the making for a while. Anyone who wondered why I was randomly in the Google Chicago office in the dead of winter this December will not be surprised at all that 'attending SES Chicago' was subterfuge for doing due diligence on FeedBurner with a team of folks from Google.

I've been a long-time fan of the people behind FeedBurner, in fact readers of this blog might remember I used to have a 'SpyOnIt' widget in the sidebar that would IM you when the page changed a few years ago. Dick Costolo, Steve Olechowski, Eric Lunt and Matt Shobe over at FeedBurner founded SpyOnIt before starting FeedBurner. They are all old friends and have built an amazing feed service.

FeedBurner originally began by solving the RSS or Atom issue that some feedreaders presented by only supporting one flavor. However support for all feed types is nearly ubiquitous now among feedreaders so they focused on bringing even more value and services to feeds. Some of their features include: in-feed advertising advertising, splicing photo feeds, link feeds and blog feeds into an uber-feed, providing excellent statistics and tracking for items read in feed readers as well as web analytics and much more that I'm not doing justice too. All in all I'm excited to have a passionate team aboard that has been innovating in the space that has built a great company and look forward to the enhancements they will bring to a number of areas of Google. Welcome aboard Burners!

A few more links:

Labels: google

Funny, but it stings a little

Ev has a post up about branding that I like. He calls it pretty well, but sometimes inside the company it's a little more painful when you were pulling for a sub-brand or standalone and end up with 'parent with descriptive name'. My internal joke on that has been, if Google made an MP3 player we would call it the 'Google Hardware Music Player', which is perhaps a little less catchy than iPod. It's hard to pull off the cool names and I think sometimes it feels like Google wants the technology to do the talking rather than the name. That's not the worst thing in the world when you are Google Maps, but is definitely harder when you are in new uncharted territory such as search personalization or social media.

Labels: branding, google

SXSW Blogger party update

"This is Blogger. And we party with scarves on."

Please read the fine print: You have to find a member of the Blogger team beforehand in Austin. Asking now won't help, my invites are in Austin too. See you there.

Track this event on Upcoming.org

Labels: blogger, google, party

LA, Monterey, Las Vegas, Austin...

I've been on the move lately. Last week, I was in Los Angeles visiting the Google office. While I was there I dropped by and talked to Jason Calacanis about Blogger, Google, Twitter and more. Last night, I attended the Google speakers dinner for the TED conference at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. As in years past, I was blown away by the attendee list. This year I met Cameron Diaz, Meg Ryan, Forest Whitaker, and Tracy Chapman. I also had a chance to meet or reconnect with a host of awesome tech and environmental superstars like Pierre Omidyar, Kate Stohr, and Andrew Beebe. Aside from restraining my friend Hunter from making any embarrassing 'I'm bringing sushi back' comments to Cameron Diaz, the night went very well.

Tomorrow I'm off to the PMA show in Las Vegas, back for a day then onward to South by Southwest. Stay tuned to the Blogger Buzz blog for Blogger SXSW Austin party details. Right now, I'm about to talk to 50 French businessmen about innovation at Google! Maybe I am the new Chris Sacca? I just hope the old Sacca doesn't mind. ;)

Labels: celebs, google, travel

Tofu Redux

If things look weird on this site it's because I just switched my blog over to using the new (and excellent) Blogger beta. In testing it out I went through some older posts like my Tofu Rant and made some tweaks. It's one of the oldest posts on this blog and it's originally from July 31, 2000 (over six and a half years ago) - however, some aggregators have picked it up as new, resulting in new comments, confusing re-syndication, and a general feeling of un-ease on my part since I haven't looked at that post in ages. I was just getting comfortable with a blog writing style back then. I always tell people that I started my blog for five friends from back home and the tone has changed over the course of the years as a few more people have started reading my humble little site. Funny thing about blogs, they tell you more about yourself the longer you keep them going.

A side note, if I could find contact information anywhere over at Googlersblogs, I would tell them a few things:

I don't mind folks aggregating my posts, especially if it's a non-profit site. However, don't change the default linking behavior. At least make the headlines link back to the source site. Bloglines and Google Reader do the right thing here.
You have many non-Googlers listed as Googlers. That's a little odd.
Login to post comments? Why not just pull in comment feeds and link to the post for further commenting.
If you ever add advertising to your site and you are still syndicating full posts, I want out or a fair way to participate in the revenue.
Please add contact info for yourself. It's generally creepy to have someone how is so interested in the lives of Googlers stay in the shadows.

Labels: blogging, food, google, personal, retro

Welcome to Google, YouTube!

Google Press Center: Press Release : Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock

Let's do lunch sometime.

Labels: google, tech

Good Charlotte about to take the stage @ Google.

Labels: google

In the interest of full disclosure

Howdy sports fans - I have some non-scandalous confessions and disclosures to make. I hope this post won't get too long but when you are weeks behind in posting then there's nothing like a lightning round post like this one. First up, the geeky stuff:

I accepted an offer to join the RSS Advisory Board two weeks ago. I know what you are asking yourselves, 'Can I get a Friends and Family discount on angle brackets and rel tags?' Some of you might find my joining the board as odd since I'm one of the core folks to start the Atom initiative. However, Atom was originally started to help foster a universal publishing protocol in addition to it's better known feed format. I'm very proud of both and see a future where RSS is improved as a result of Atom.
As a decidedly pro-Atom member of the board, I should mention that I designed (and pay the bandwidth bill) for atomenabled.org. I also designed the Atom logo and the associated buttons and badges currently appearing on blogs everywhere. No thanks necessary. Word on the street is that Mena Trott has an improved design for AtomEnabled.org. If any of you care to retool the logo yourselves here is the original Illustrator file - [Atom Enabled logo in PDF].
Due to a recent minor medical procedure, I was required to stop drinking caffeine and alcohol for a week so it wouldn't thin my blood. I decided it would be a good time to kick the coffee habit for a while and now it's three weeks later and I still haven't had any caffeine. I also took the opportunity to change a few other bad habits and now I'm down 12 pounds and counting. It's pretty much the Eat smaller portions and more healthy food diet, which I recommend. I'm not sure how long the coffee drought can hold out - I have caved before, but for now my new addiction is getting healthy.
I'll be in New York City for the Syndicate Conference next week. I'll be in town Monday through Wednesday, give me a shout at the conference or drop me an email if we should meet up.
Speaking of addictions, I really want to trade in my Toyota Tacoma for one of those new FJ Cruisers. I'm doing my best to resist since I don't often need to cross a downed tree or gushing creek on my way to the Park-n-Ride.
Did you see the new Google Reader module for the Personalized Homepage? Mihai Parparita did a kick ass job of taking a chicken scratch drawing I did on my TabletPC and coding it into existence. It's an excellent way to get a glimpse of your daily reads.
Speaking of Reader, as of last week I switched teams. I'm now working with the New Business Development team at Google which seems to be a much better fit for me. Yes, that once again means I'm the right guy to field business development opportunities for Blogger, Picasa and probably more products over time. There is a new product manager in charge of Reader and there are still a few more features coming out that I worked on but can't talk about yet. Why the switch? It turns out I love doing deals and I felt like it was the right time to make the jump. It's a good thing and I look forward to being out and about a bit more too.

Hopefully that breaks the blog jam and I can get back to smaller bite sized postings now.

Labels: google

Just call me JSON Shellen

Tonight we launched a cool way to share what you read in Google Reader (I posted on the Reader blog about it). One of the cooler things that can be done is to share the stuff you like to read right on your blog as a "clip". For the techies in the crowd this is done with a little JSON code. Here's a sample of all of the web comics and cartoon blogs I read (I thought I would showcase the Pink/HelloKitty style to grab your attention).

Luckily, you don't need to know how to program to use this feature, just how to copy and paste this into any blogging template. Ok, maybe I'll post more about the sharing feature tomorrow, I'm off to bed. Meanwhile, if you want to read something other than my favorite comics, you can also preview my tech list or my starred items.

Labels: google

New template and Syndicate

If you are reading this via feed, then you probably haven't noticed that the layout of shellen dot com has changed. Well... it has. It's more like a half-over rather than a make-over. I'm already sorry I started tweaking it since I made all the On the Side links look as if they are navigation now. If you are viewing the site in IE, the link log still doesn't show up. There are a plethora of issues but since most folks are probably reading this in a reader these days, it probably doesn't matter. Bleh. Apologies to Doug Bowman since I took his Rounders and turned it into Boxers. You can use it as you please on your own site, but I recommend copying the background image to your own site.

Speaking of feeds, I am speaking at the Syndicate conference this week. I'm on a panel called Winning the Trust Battle with Customers on Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps I'll see you there.

I have a bunch of posts queued up for this week so perhaps I'll get back in the swing of things just in time for a long holiday break. :)

Labels: google

Best Daddy Ever

Google Docs Presentation tool is out

Last day at Google

My time at Google, by the numbers

Labor vs. Capital: Dodgeball style

Two barely related things

When burning is a good thing

Funny, but it stings a little

SXSW Blogger party update

LA, Monterey, Las Vegas, Austin...

Tofu Redux

Welcome to Google, YouTube!

Good Charlotte about to take the stage @ Google.

In the interest of full disclosure

Just call me JSON Shellen

New template and Syndicate

I'm all over the web

What am I doing

Subscribe

Link blog

Recent photos

Recent posts

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