Barbara

Attachment Icons for Gmail - Original name, eh? haha It does exactly what it says. It’ll replace the generic “paperclip” attachment icon in Gmail with a more appropriate icon. Ie. Picture files will have an image icon, pdfs will have a pdf icon etc.

Makes scanning your inbox for a type of attachment really simple!

Thanks to Lifehacker for bringing the extension to my attention!

Beats VS. Ear > Moguai feat. Fiora - Oxygen (Original...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:00:05 -0400

Beats VS. Ear > Moguai feat. Fiora - Oxygen (Original Mix)

Thoughts: Video is kooky and boring, but the song is super melodic and calming.

New Series: Beats Vs. Ear

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:00:06 -0400

Music is an integral part of anything I do. When I’m at home, the radio is never off. When I’m at work, headphones are always on. I have a song for every moment in my life.

It’s interesting to analyze one’s music progression through life, starting around age 14 when researchers believe that you begin to express yourself through music and identify more with songs.

As a kid, I listened to country, big band, 40’s, 50’s, 80’s, and pop - exactly what my parents were listening to. In high school, I found an immersive, real-time flash game called Banja that changed my musical life. One day, the game hosted a live beach party with a variety of Djs spinning mixes. It was in this game that I heard Wagon Christ (Plug & Luke Vibert) for the first time. Put simply, I fell in love.

I quickly hopped onto NinjaTune and Amon Tobin, Coldcut, DJ Food, Funki Porchini, Hexstatic, Kid Koala, Mr. Scruff, Plug, and Wagon Christ became my life. Who knew you could fit so many disparate sounds into a song and still have a semblance of cohesion?! Through Banja (made in France), I learned about French Acid and Nu Jazz. Through Wagon Christ, I learned about Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Glitch, Experimental Jungle, Ambient/Illbient, and D&B. Let’s just say my mind had been blown open and there was no going back to the radio’s popfest.

More often than not in my teenage days, my parents thought I was listening to random streams of sounds from alien warships - the more sounds and the less mainstream-sounding it was, the more I loved getting lost in it. You could listen to the same “song” on repeat for hours and find something new in each playthrough.

In university, I went two ways. Death Cab and Postal Service became studying music and Tecktonik, a French movement of dance and music, became my coding tuneZ. For the first time in years, the music I listened to had VOICES - what the what what?! I transitioned into mainstream Trance, House, Dance, and Electro, as disappointing as this may be to the hardcore hipsters out there. The music is good and it pumps you up. Great to program to!

And the mainstream adventure continues. I fell in love with Tyler C’s VinylSlut mixes (check out Mixtape Pornos), A State of Trance, and Morgan Page’s In the Air podcasts. Hipsters, please don’t be disappoint. Right now, I’m listening to a lot of Morgan Page and that’s it. I’m starting to miss my experimental days when Tom Jenkinson was less jazzy-jazz. Happy to hear he’s releasing a new album akin to his earlier work.

Anyways, I’ve fallen into a musical ‘rut’ and would like to get out! So, I’m starting this new blog series, Beats Vs. Ear, to introduce you to the best songs I’m listening to right now and the best tracks of yesteryear. I’m hoping that you’ll share your top favs back!

Stay tuned for posts of great music in a variety of genres.

Bonus: BTW, looking to explore various subgenres of “techno”/”electronic” music? Check out this old, but fantastic Flash site.

G&M: Women - Y U No in Tech Startups?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Last week, I was interviewed by the Globe and Mail about the lack of women in technical startups. Want to know why I think there are fewer women in tech startups? Guess what - there are fewer women in tech. Groundbreaking revelation, eh?

If I was not technical, I find it hard to believe that I’d wake up one day with aspirations for leaving my chosen career and starting a high tech company. I wouldn’t know where to start. Or I might know where to start, but not how to execute.

I’ve been asked countless times how to fix the “lack of technical women” problem. In 2010, I wrote an essay for Google and you can read it here. It’s dated, but the main point still stands. We have to let girls know from a young age that technical fields are acceptable careers for both genders.

Anyways, the Globe and Mail’s article isn’t bad and you can read it here.

The Blackest of Sheep

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:22:00 -0500

See that sheep? Yeah, that’s me right now. Not the state the obvious (since I was already the black sheep - being a female tech lead) but now I’m an even blacker sheep! Two weeks ago, I left my position as CTO/VP Eng/Tech Lead/Whatever-you-want-to-call-it at Willet and now I’ve probably been blacklisted from stepping foot inside the Hub! Egads, eh?

I’d prefer to not go into details about my reasons for leaving. Willet simply wasn’t a good fit for me. I know there are rumours floating about stating I left due to external friend and family pressure - the heck!? Don’t know where this came from, but let’s assume I’m grown up enough to make my own decisions. </rage>

This past year has been insane. Let’s take a look at Willet’s journey since I joined: raised a seed round, failed a YC interview, failed to hit market with a major product launch, navigated a substantial pivot, rode a top HN post, lost a cofounder, participated in an intense accelerator program, spoke at an international conference, built 7+ major products in 1 year, and survived a crippling install rate that brought down our site. Throughout this process, I’ve learned a ton and have created a list of 20-odd blogposts to help disseminate my knowledge. Let the bloggin’ commence! Stay tuned, sportsfans!

As for right now, I am currently “self-unemployed” (credit to a Mr. D. Collens for this great term)! I am working on side projects (ie. the Internet’s next 1B$+ business), starting to read a massive list of business/startup books (most recommended by a Mr. T. Livingston), and non-intentionally interviewing with some stellar companies. Ha! It’s so interesting to see the variety of jobs that are available to a UW CS grad! I’m hoping to stay in Startupville and continue learning at this rapid rate.

I appreciate all the support I’ve had while at Willet. Thanks muchly to our investors, mentors, advisors, co-workers, and friends. Who knows where the company would be without you! I’m excited to figure out what’s next.

No, Your Screen Isn't Dirty.

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:12:00 -0500

That’s just my blog’s background. If I haven’t pointed it out already, I’m a programmer. As my mother says, I deal in 1’s and 0’s. Making things look pretty is not my forte. However, it’s a skill I want to learn so I can prevent my projects from looking like this blog.

But I wonder if it’s already too late. 6 years of my CS degree has finely honed my brain into dealing with nitty-gritty code specs. The UI/UX of a project has always been the least of my worries. I care much more about the eloquence of the code under the surface - how are the models structured? How efficient are the servlet handlers? Have we optimized the heck out of memcache?!

Even when working on the business side of Willet, I found myself leaning towards the more technical aspects. Every email I send has had :wq entered into it at some point.

I worry that I’ve lost my artsy side and am doomed to forever make ugly websites. Even the designs I copy from other websites end up wonky. So, any advice? Reading design books or taking photography courses?

Future of Web Apps UK 2011: To Catch a Virus

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:47:00 -0400

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/becmacdo/actual-fowa

Description: Finished building your awesome new app and ready to take your market by storm? Get ready for the real hard part: getting users. It’s a challenge that engineering can’t solve but with the right planning, user growth can be incorporated directly into your core product. How? Viral loops.

How To Hire The Best Coding Interns

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:57:00 -0400

The University of Waterloo has been consistently ranked the top university in Canada over the past 7ish years and is known for innovation and technology. The school’s math and coding teams compete nationally and normally place among top 10. All in all, uWaterloo produces among the top coding graduates, who normally start out at companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft or kill it at YC / start their own startups!

The Program

Here’s how the co-op program works: Students attend classes for 2 semesters (Fall, Winter) in first-year. During the second semester, students find jobs and then work during the Summer (technically “Spring” semester). Afterwards, they alternate between school and work terms. Some programs are flexible and let students take 8-month school/work term blocks if they choose.

The Process

During the first week of classes, students prepare their resumes and upload them to Jobmine (more on Jobmine in next section). During the second week, students start applying for jobs. Interviews happen around midterms. After interviews, you’ll rank students based on how much you want to hire them. Didn’t get anyone you want? No worries, wait for the next round - you are not obligated to hire. After your rankings are submitted, Jobmine will run an “intelligent matching algorithm” to assign students to jobs.

PROTip: There are various rounds of “apply, interview, match” throughout a term. The best students get snagged fast. Make sure you’re in the first round.

The Website

Jobmine is used by both students and employers. As an employer, you’ll use this site to upload your job description(s), browse resumes, select students for interviews, schedule interviews, rank students, and get interns!

PROTip: Yes, the site is pretty much unusable. It has been a “work in progress” since before I started as a student in 2005. We just have to deal with it.

The Job Posting

At the beginning of the term, you can post a description for the students to look at.

Every term, there are thousands of job postings. From 2006 - 2010, I would regularly have to sort through 2000+ job postings for every version of “Computer Programmer”. It is hard to attract top students since you’ll be competing with large companies, such as EA, Google, Amazon, FB, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

PROTip 1: Many students are subconsciously competing with their friends to see who can have the “best” co-op term. For students, “best” is 1. highest paying 2. most prestigious company. Oftentimes, startups don’t measure up because they can’t compete on either.

PROTip 2: Want the best students? Follow these tips:

Make the job sound interesting! Make it sound like it’s going to be bucketful’s of fun at your office!
Students don’t want to be doing bug fixing for 4 months. Let them know they they will have real projects, can interact with customers, will be pushing code to live servers, full ownership over projects, independent & collab work, etc.
Hype up your perks - free beer? Students love that! Do lots of team bonding activities? Students love doing things.
It is prestigious for a student to be anywhere except Ontario for a co-op term. It’s especially prestigious for students to be in the Valley. Hype up your office’s location. What other cool places are near it?
Say random facts to make your posting stand out! (ie. WATCH OUT FOR NERF BULLETS!)
The more interactions you have with students, the better. There is a startup “meet & greet” that we run with free beer and poutine. Student come with resumes in hand! Many larger companies will hold information sessions with free food and swag to meet students before deciding who to give interviews to. Some students like hackathons too.

The Applicants

Students will browse your stellar job posting and if they like it, you’ll get a resume from them. Some students will write cover letters.

PROTip: Most of these cover letters are all copied/pasted with a company name change. If it seems at all customized to what you’re doing, pay more attention to that student!

If you are hiring for a coding position, keep these tips in mind:

List Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering as programs from which students may apply.
Mechatronics, Math, and Combinatorics & Optimization are also decent options for coding interns.
The Engineering curriculum tends to be more strict than Math (CS is in Math at UW). CS students will have higher averages and Engineers will have many failed courses. That’s just how it is.
We, at Willet, tend to hire students who do programming for fun outside of school.

The Interviews

After reading resumes, you will rank students and then interview the top students. It is common to receive over 100 applicants for 1 posting. Just be happy you’re not Google and don’t have to read 5000+ packages/term. Interviews can last anywhere from 30mins - 90mins. 45mins is typical.

Interviews may be held:

On Campus: You’ll have an entire day blocked out and the students you select will pick their timeslots. On the day, you’ll be directed to a room and students will come to you. You will get a snazzy nametag and free coffee.
By Phone: The co-op building on campus has phone interview rooms that students will use for phone interviews. They will book these interviews in the same way that they’ll book in-person interviews.
By Computer: Not sure if this is officially supported. Wish I could tell you more.

PROTip 1: You’re given free reign to interview them as you see fit. Just know that it’s common for a student to have 20+ interviews every term and they are interviewing YOU just as much as you are interviewing them. Top students prefer being challenged in an interview because they’ll think the job will challenge them and they’ll near a lot. Top students also love meeting very technical interviewers.

PROTip 2: Programming students expect technical interviews, not HR interviews. 99% of my interviews were “Solve this problem on the white board/paper in pseudo code. Talk through your thought process.” I was often unimpressed when companies asked me “Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a manager. How did you react?”-type questions.

PROTip 3: Some employers send students home with programming assignments to complete overnight and submit. Interviews are held during midterms. Students don’t have time for this. If a company asked me to do one, I wouldn’t bother and wrote off the employer.

The Match

After interviewing all of your students, you’ll be expected to rank them. Only offer jobs to students who you would actually employ. After you’ve submitted your offers, students will rank all of their offers. Then a “magical matching algorithm” will run and match students to employers.

PROTip: CECS (part of UW who runs co-op) will forbid you from contacting students outside of Jobmine. Who cares. All the big companies will email students who they want to try to convince them to rank them higher. You should do this too.

General Tips

Here are some general tips if you are not familiar with uWaterloo’s system.

Pay: Coding students are expected to be paid for their work. Their pay is usually determined by the term they are in. Students in 4th year are paid higher than those in 1st. Pay also varies by employer. FB, Google, and Amazon tend to be the highest payers. They will average $30-$40 US / hour. Some startups try to compete for students on salary. I know a 4th-year student who was earning $7k/month in SF.

Here is a Weekly Salary chart for 2010.

VeloCity: VeloCity is a residence for students who want to start their own companies. Assume students from VeloCity are actually interested in learning about how startups actually work. These will be great students for you!

Students Talk: Students will often ask around about a company that they are unsure of. Keep this in mind during all interactions with (potential) students.

First-Year Students: It has been described as a “community service” to hire first-year students. They have often never worked a “real job” before and often won’t have much programming experience. Use your best judgment.

The Links

Here are some useful links:

Prospective Employers

Current Employers

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please ask away!

I dated 80 people in 1 day.

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:28:00 -0400

No no no! Not what you think! It was speed dating startup style: FounderFuel’s inaugural Mentor Day. Starting at 8:00am and lasting well into the evening, the day was jam-packed with networking and, most importantly, drilling into our business.

The Event

To kick off the event, each FounderFuel (FF) company pitched our vision and enticed mentors to advise us. Afterwards, we got into the nitty-gritty of it all! The 80+ mentors were divided into small groups and rotated around each FF company for 45min in-depth sessions. We demoed, dissected, and divulged until we were blue in the face - literally! Our CEO lost his voice!

Finally, the day ended with networking and an open bar. Suffice to say, we’re keeping tight-lipped about the evening’s activities!

Our Goals

We entered FF with 3 key goals in mind:

Define the scope of our business.
Determine a product/market fit and gain users & traction.
Increase our network.

Luckily enough, Mentor Day addressed all 3 goals - IN A SINGLE DAY! Who knew we’d get so much value out of just one day?

The Value

Let’s dive into each goal and discuss how Mentor Day tackled it.

During each 45min session, every little portion of our business was dissected under a microscope by other entrepreneurs, investors, VCs, and top tech execs. They offered key insights, advice, and and new ideas that we would have never considered ourselves. It’s amazing how much an outsider’s perspective can benefit your business!
Fortunately, our core product will have value for many different types of companies, despite our initial ecommerce focus. We were able to meet with other companies who will actually USE our product. We MET and TALKED TO our first customers. Isn’t this exactly what every startup is trying to do?
Finally, I only personally knew 3 of the mentors before the event started. This meant I had around 77 new people with which to meet and mingle! And due to the roundtable, speed dating nature of the day, I met every single invited mentor personally.

Et, fini?

The day was useful; there’s no debating this fact. In terms of how useful the mentors will be over the long term, it still stands to be proven. Now, we’re following up, booking coffee dates, and assembling advisors to work with our business over the next 3 months.

From my perspective, Mentor Day explosively kicked off the FF program! If you weren’t there, you’re totally … yeah, I’ll say it, square. We’re only going up from here!

Quickfire Demo & Pitch Advice

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:32:59 -0400

Here is the best advice we’ve received so far from the Founder Fuel program. Keep this post bookmarked and these tips in mind when creating your next demo presentation or pitch deck.

Overall

Keep it simple, stupid - Make your points as clear and simple as possible.
Conciseness is key - Every word you say costs you $$.
Explain all acronyms - Your audience has difference backgrounds and areas of expertise. Make no assumptions that they know what a ‘MVEMJSUNP” is!
Slow down - Leave pauses between your key points. It’ll heighten the emphasis and increase memorability.
Don’t fidget - It’ll distract your audience. Film yourself and watch your pitch to notice funny twitches. You are your worst critic!
Match it up - Either say what is displayed on the screen (ie. read quotes) OR only show a picture. Think about where your audience should be looking for each slide.
Say it with a picture - Pictures speak volumes over words.
Practice makes it better - Practice, practice, practice. Be able to pitch in your sleep.
Tell a story - Stories give a great sense about who you are.
Generics are for dummies - Ground your story in specifics. Why exactly are you building your product and why exactly should people care?
Start with a bang - Your first slide should say who your company is and entice the audience with flashy tag line.
Concrete is rock-solid, man - Speak in concrete terms. Don’t “think” you know something, KNOW it!
No one likes a Debbie Downer - Avoid all negativity.

About Your Team

Keep is simple, stupid - People don’t care about every employee detail.
Make it relevant - What is the most relevant for your audience to learn? Why should they care about you? What makes you different? Stick with only these key points.
Suzy Whatsherface - Surnames are irrelevant. People will forget them.
And, who are you again? - Your last slide should reiterate who you are (as individuals and as a company).
Role call - Give a brief sense about who does what: codes, hustles, etc.
Experts fall hard - Never claim to be an expert about something. Talk about what you’ve done and let your audience come to their own conclusions.

Looking for Help / Mentors

Broad is best - Don’t ask for narrow areas of expertise. You’ll be cutting out a large portion of your audience!

Hope this helps!

Sweet Landing Page, Man

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:21:00 -0400

Fraser spent a large chunk of his afternoon making a new, surprise landing page. Let’s check it out!

User != Member != Customer

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:05:00 -0400

Who are the people who visit and use your website / web service? There are subtle differences between the terms ‘user’, ‘member’, and ‘customer’ and understanding the subtleties can be insightful when developing your product / service.

The Definitions

The User - A person who is able to take advantage of something you are offering, while not remunerating you for it.
The Member - A person who makes long-term financial commitment to something you are offering.
The Customer - A person who remunerates you for something you are offering on a (potentially one-off) transactional basis.

The Insights

All of the above people take advantage of something you are offering. How they choose to take advantage of it differs based on their relationship to you (ie. how you view them), their perception of the relationship to you (ie. how you treat them), and your pricing scheme. Let’s start backwards:

The Pricing - Much of the ‘on-the-surface’ differences between the definitions can be reduced to how a person spends money for your service. Do you want to create a community of members who pay on a recurring basis? Or, are you fine with independent, singleton customers?
The Upwards Perception - Members feel like they are part of a community, both with other members and the company. Due to this, they commit to you on a longer-term basis than a customer does. Customers interact with your service on a transaction basis. It’ll happen at least once with no guarantee of future interactions. Users may potentially be less committed since they are not remunerating you, but don’t stereotype the whole class in this manner.
The Downwards Perception - How much to you care for the people who are using your site? Do you want to have lasting relationships with them on a recurring basis? How long of a time interval should this ‘touching base’ be? Do you need to accept funds directly from your users in order for them to be valuable to your product/service?

The Finality of it All

There is no class of an ‘enduser’ that is necessarily better than any other. When building and marketing your product / service, think about who you audience is and how you want them to interact with your company, your product, and other endusers.

Fueled By a Fire

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:52:00 -0400

Oh hello there, Montreal. Nice to see you again. Oh, what’s that? You’re going to start kicking my butt? We need that.

It’s time to officially announce that Willet is in Founder Fuel. Running from August 15 until November 8, we’ll be in pounding away on our product, hacking up a storm, networking until we meet everyone in Montreal, and pitching until we’re blue in the face. Yes, this is what we signed up for!

Both the CEO and myself realized that we needed a ‘swift kick in the drawers’ to boost us to where we need to be!

For those of you interested in starting your own business or joining an accelerator program, I’m going to be blogging about the things we learn, our progress, the program, the mentors, tips and tricks etc etc both here and on Willet’s official blog. Everyone loves reality tv and being a fly on the wall - I’m bringing that to you, startup style!

Stay tuned, sports fans, for more exciting updates!

TGIF's Techno of the Week: Tomcraft

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:05:00 -0400

On Why The Dalai Lama Never Founded a Company

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:05:00 -0400

A wise quote* to start off your Thursday:

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said:

“Man.
Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

Seems quite fitting that entrepreneurs put their lives on hold in the pursuit of success, money, fame, whatever. Will we settle down and live in the moment? Be content with what we have?

(*: Quote credit goes to Matt Woo.)

Why I'm Leaving That 'Test' Post Up

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:00:00 -0400

As I embark on this “bloggin” endeavour, I really want to make sure that who I am comes across in these posts. Ideally, the posts will be a mixture of startup tips, development quirks/insights, and my struggles as I work through this crazy startup life. I’ve just started and I already have a gigantic list of things to post about, which is great in my mind.

But first, a bit about me. I’m calling myself a ‘female entreprenerd’. I found this term ‘entreprenerd’ on another female coder’s blog and I loved it! Really conveys the best of both worlds, eh? I can entrepreneur with the best of them, but also settle down and have a lively debate about the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe ALL NIGHT. It’s happened way too many times and, clearly, the answer is Franklin Richards OR Scarlet Witch. Let the flame war commence as it always does!

Anyhow, I’m a Computer Science graduate from uWaterloo, I’ve worked at Google, and now I’m cofounding a stealth startup. I drink tea like it’s going out of style and can’t help but buy more every time I’m in a David’s Tea. I own more much makeup than a non-professional makeup artist should and rarely use it since I run out the door late for work every day! I’m incessant about running everyday, love colour, and am never without techno (electro, euro, trance, d&b, dance).

Back to the title, my first blog post is simply “test”. That’s it and that’s all it will ever be on any site I use. I come from a Computer Science background. Whenever I try a new a product, the first thing I do is always called “test”, always uses a “foobar”, and I’m always trying to break it. I believe this is the behaviour that 5-6 long years at uWaterloo has given me. Test-driven development couldn’t be more important since users are more savvy and determined than ever to prove they are smarter than the average developer.

So, if you want to know the real me, this is it. I ‘test’ first and try later. Here’s to not simply ‘testing’ this bloggin thing out!

Test

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:53:33 -0400

first