Cooper Griggs

i realize that there’s big news coming on prop 8 and such, but can we please stop referring to this as “gay marriage” and get on board with “marriage equality”?

it’s not “gay adopting” and it’s not “gay house hunting”… and it’s not “gay dating” before all that heavy stuff.

it’s marriage, adopting, house hunting and dating. in equality.

full rights, under the law, equally, no qualifiers. period.

please, can we? thanks.

Starry Night using Hubble’s images

brick-balloon:

Wilkinson Residence

moorbay:

Lenticular clouds over Mount Fuji, Japan. These are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, usually perpendicular to the direction of the wind.

http://moorbay.tumblr.com

whoops

via http://www.baeditions.com/bruce-nauman-artwork/bruce-nauman-pay-attention.htm

via http://ineedaguide.blogspot.it/2012/04/cecilia-paredes.html

via http://huebucket.tumblr.com/

If Google Reader were a movie or TV show, at the end of the spectacle the credits would roll and you would get to see who was responsible for what you just saw. But in today's age, software "about box credits" are no longer common.

I thought it might be nice, for the sake of posterity, to list all those who worked on Reader over the years. There's been a lot of discussion about Reader's imminent shutdown, but most of it focused on Google (the corporate entity) and its strategy. However, at the end of the day, Reader was built by people. I and a few others have been lucky enough to be more visible, but everyone involved deserves credit and thanks. This is especially the case since as Chris and Brian have described, Reader faced quite a few internal struggles. As I remember it, nearly everyone on the Reader team explicitly requested to join it, and often had to fight to keep their role.

Coming up with this list was difficult, both technically (can you name all your coworkers going back 8 years?), and because it was tough to decide where to draw the line. Google is a big company, and many people in many supporting roles helped to Reader out. First, here's a list of all full-time Reader team members:

• Chris Wetherell (2005-2008): Software Engineer, now at Avocado.
• Jason Shellen (2005-2006): Product Manager, now at Boxer.
• Ben Darnell (2005-2009): Software Engineer, now at Viewfinder.
• Laurence Gonsalves (2005-2010): Software Engineer
• Steve Goldberg (2005-2011): Engineering Manager, still at Google
• Mihai Parparita (2005-2010): Software Engineer, now at Quip
• Kevin Fox (2005, 2006): User Experience Designer, now at Electric Imp.
• Misha Dynin (2006, 2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Justin Haugh (2006-2008): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Brad Hawkes (summer of 2006, 2007-2010): Software Engineer Intern, Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Nick Baum (2006-2007): Product Manager, now at StoryWorth.
• Dolapo Falola (20% in 2006, 2007-2009): Software Engineer, now eating yogurt and granola at Foursquare.
• Chrix Finne (2007-2008): Product Manager, now at Optimizely.
• Jenna Bilotta (2007-2010): User Experience Designer, now at Avocado.
• Shreyas Desai (2007-2008): Software Engineer in Test, now at Yahoo!.
• Susan Shepard (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Gaurav Jain (2007-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Jason Hall (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Nitin Shantharam (summer of 2007): Software Engineer Intern, now at Swapbox.
• Brian Shih (2008-2010): Product Manager, now at Pocket Gems.
• Mike Knapp (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at Shoes of Prey
• Nick Santaniello (2008-2009): Product Support, now at Robysoft.
• Derek Snyder (2008-2009): Software Engineer, now at a as-of-yet-unnamed startup.
• Matt Steiner (2008-2009): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Beverly Yang (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Derek Mauro (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Garrett Wu (2009-2010): Software Engineer, now at WibiData.
• Ye Zhou (2009-2010): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Devin Kennedy (summer of 2009): Software Engineer Intern, still at Google.
• Arif Siddiquee (2009-2011): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Alan Green (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.
• Mick Hollins (2011-2012): Software Engineer, still at Google.

Additionally, here's others who contributed to Reader in various roles at Google:

• Design: Micheal Lopez
• Executives: Greg Badros, Jeff Huber, Pavni Diwanji
• Legal: Halimah DeLaine
• Localization: Gabriella Laszlo, John Saito, Katsuhiko Momoi, Sasan Banava
• PR: Nate Tyler, Oscar Shine, Sonya Boralv
• Product Management: Bruce Polderman, Sabrina Ellis
• Product Marketing: Kevin Systrom, Louis Gray, Peter Harbison, Robby Stein, Tom Stocky, Zach Yeskel
• Quality Assurance: Amar Amte, Jan Carpenter, Kavitha Venkatesan, Madhuri Kulkarni, Thanh Le
• Site Reliability Engineering: Chen Wang, Christoph Pfisterer, David Parrish, Ed Bardsley, Eric Weigle, Gary Luo, Huaxia Xia, James Long, Jerry Zhiwei Cen, Keith Brady, Lantian Zheng, Liren Chen, Matthew Eastman, Nadav Samet, Niall Sheridan, Olivier Beyssac, Patrick Scott, Paul Chien, Pereira Braga, Petru Paler, Sara Smollett, Scott Lamb, Sebastian Adamczyk, Vladimir Filipović, Wensheng Wang, Yu Liao
• 20% time and additional engineering: Aaron Boodman, Abdulla Kamar, Akshay Patil, Aman Bhargava, Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Bavar, Brett Slatkin, Charles Chen, Ed Ho, John Pongsajapan, Olga Stroilova, Peter Baldwin, Steve Jenson, Steve Lacey, T.V. Raman, Wiktor Gworek
• User Experience Designers: Jonathan Terleski, Sean McBride
• User Experience Research: Anna Avrekh, David Choi, Nika Smith, Theresa Sobczak
• User Support: Graham Waldon, Paul Wilcox, Wen-Ai Yu

I'm sure I'm missing names and got things wrong, so don't hesitate to contact me with corrections. And to everyone that I worked with on Reader, it was a pleasure!

P.S. For another take on the people behind Reader, see Chris's #unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader tweets.

Our photo search for chandeliers revealed a multitude of luxurious fixtures decorating the interiors of architectural marvels across the world.

Explore more of the buildings featured in these photos: Grand Mosque, Muscat, Oman | Metropolitan Theatre, Winnipeg, Canada | Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas | Kocatepe Mosque, Ankara, Turkey | St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, U.K.

See 18 more photos of grand lighting curated today in the Bold Chandeliers gallery, and share your photos of opulent ones you’ve appreciated in the Chandelier group.

Photos from Soobo2010, Garry9600, Eileen F., fisherbray, and Paul Farrell.

Welcome to the Working Week

twentypercentcooler:

the-hero-dies:

Wonder Woman and sassy Batman. This image is based off of a series of tweets by Chris Sims that I included above. I thought it was funny, so I drew it.

Fan. Tastic.

Weird

In a move sure to send ripples through the federal IT community, FCW has learned that the CIA has agreed to a cloud computing contract with electronic commerce giant Amazon, worth up to $600 million over 10 years.

Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure that helps the agency keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA’s previous cloud efforts, sources told FCW.

Amazon officials would not confirm the existence of the contract, and a CIA spokesperson likewise declined to comment on the matter.

“As a general rule, the CIA does not publicly disclose details of our contracts, the identities of our contractors, the contract values, or the scope of work,” a CIA spokesperson told FCW.

In recent speaking engagements, however, CIA officials have hinted at significant upcoming changes to the way the agency procures software, how it uses big-data analytics and the ways in which it incorporates commercial-sector innovation.

This has been circulating again over the last few days:

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.”

It’s a year old, but it appears from the outside that it’s still probably accurate.

∞ Permalink

meme4u:

http://memeblock.com/

A transgender high school student who applied to prestigious, private, all-female Smith College has been rejected because the school only accepts women.

Smith returned Calliope Wong’s application — and application fee — earlier this month, reports The Advocate.

“As you may remember from our previous correspondence, Smith is a women’s college, which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission,” admissions dean Debra Shaver wrote in a letter to Wong, The Advocate says.

Wong has identified as female for several years, according to the Keystone Student Voice. However, on the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) Wong apparently checked the gender box saying male.

According to The Advocate, Smith’s rejection places reliance on the laws of Connecticut, Wong’s home state. The state categorizes Wong as male and would only recognize Wong as a female after expensive, complex sex reassignment surgery.

On August 15, 2012, Wong identified on a Tumblr blog as “a male-to-female transsexual girl.”

“Yes, I was born into a body with typically male parts,” Wong blogged last fall. “But I identify and am living as female. Prevailing scientific and medical opinions support the fact that who I am identity-wise is different from the gender identity typically associated my physical body.”

“I am not a rapist; I am not a criminal, and it is not fair to assume that I am such a person,” Wong also wrote. “Thing is, I’m a girl who wants to just wants [sic] her fair shot at Smith.”

However, the absence of certain required lady parts looks to be an insurmountable problem for Wong, even under Smith’s decidedly progressive policies concerning transgender students.

“As a women’s college, Smith only considers female applicants for undergraduate admission,” Smith proclaims in a statement called “Gender Identity & Expression” on its website. “And like other women’s colleges, Smith is a place where women are able to explore who they are in an environment that is safe and accepting.”

“Smith does not maintain records related to the gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation of its students,” the school also says. “Once admitted, any student who completes the college’s graduation requirements will be awarded a degree.”

Smith is a small private liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts — the American city with the highest percentage of lesbian couples in the nation, according to City-Data.com.

Notable Smith alumnae include Nancy Reagan, Julia Child and a host of professional feminists including Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.

Venus of Cupertino

earthsfinest:

Face to Face by Ahmad Al Maousherji