History of Sci-fi

Da-nant-nant-na-nant!

Exteremely cool robotics application form Grasp...

Traffic in Manhattan

Interesting article on Charles Komanoff and his work on Manhattan traffic. Few data points were extremely interesting: Average vehicle speed in the city from 6am to 8pm changes from 6.78 to 11.68 mph. This with 681K cars, 116K taxis and 72K buses/trucks during the day. Most probably most of these vehicles have only one 'traveler'.

Basically, there is no reason not to make Segway the transportation vehicle for Manhattan, expect some cases where you have luggage or traveling outside of the city. Imagine the savings in space, CO2 emissions, accident and maintenance costs.

The world's only immortal animal | Yahoo! Green

The world's only immortal animal | Yahoo! Green

In one single phrase

This one sums it up for me: 

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal 
principle which put obedience above decent 
behavior toward an innocent human being is evil.

From Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

42 Obamas

33.7 million unique visitors in the Us come to the yahoo.com front page every day.
That's 42 Obamas.

Watch the video for more details on Yahoo!.

Mitch Spolan presenting at Yahoo! @ Yahoo! Video

Yıkın Heykellerimi (Destroy My Statues)!

Poem by Süleyman Apaydın, in Turkish... One more time...

29.80. Shall I gift-wrap it?

No, it's for me.

Memristor -> Terminator

Good article on memristor, from one of the 'inventors'...

Citizenship interview question

We went to San Jose INS office for our citizenship interviews this morning. The whole process took 10-15 minutes; just a few quick questions, and double checking forms.

The question that took the most of my interview time: "When is the Yahoo merger?" [I'm not kidding!]

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock

Yep, rock, paper, scissors, (and now the extension of) lizard and Spock. Let Sheldon explain it:



Btw, for those who will start looking for a pen and paper to double check the logic (c'mon, you know you will :), here it is; each node has two incoming and two outgoing arrows:


ref: Sam Kass

A Script for a Jester's Sense of Purpose?

Two album covers... One from 1984 by Marillion titled Fugazi, the other from 2008 by In Flames, titled 'A Sense of Purpose.' Both favorites of mine...

Since I got the latter album, I had this feeling of 'deja vu', but not exactly... I finally realized that the whole jester theme, cover font and colors were reminding Fugazi... See for yourself:




Here are your links to artists: Mark Wilkinson (b. 1952) and Alex Pardee (b. 1976).

Photo on Valleywag

Valleyvag picked one photo out of 1500 hundred (a?) Yahoo posted on flicker after the Halloween parade.

There were hundreds of children around, but those clever dudes picked the one without children around: Pirates and me. That's my regular work attire btw... :)

The photo is up for caption contest; can't wait to see the comments.

How to get Yahoo Messenger to work on your ATT Blackberry phone

Finally found some info on the web to get Yahoo Messenger to work on my Blackberry 8800.

For AT&T (or Cingular) subscribers, a simple installation does not work. When trying to login, you will receive a message along the lines of 'Service Not Enabled for this Handheld.'

The following worked for me today; here are the steps:

0. This process involves overriding/updating Service Books. My Blackberry is connected to my Windows PC, which has Desktop Manager.

1. Launch your Blackberry Desktop Manager on your PC; connect your Blackberry.

2. Click on Backup and Restore in BB Desktop Manager and backup all the data on your Blackberry.

3. Using your Blackberry, download Yahoo Messenger from http://m.yahoo.com or http://www.blackberry.com/yahoodownload or a similar site, if you don't have it on your phone.

4. Using your PC, download the service book file from http://www.box.net/shared/aetu7mfqip save it to -for example- your desktop.

5. In BB Desktop Manager, open "Backup and Restore".

6. In Backup and Restore dialog, click on 'Advanced' button

7. You will see two lists. The one on the let will be empty, right side will show all the files on your Blackberry.

8. This step will 'override' the service book list on your device. This means services you previously have on your device will be removed. We will restore them later; however check steps 11 and 12 below to make sure you can finish this process.

Drag and drop the service book you downloaded on step 4 to the list on the left, and click the arrow to the right. (Or, directly drag and drop the file into the list on the right.

9. On your Blackberry, go to Settings > Options > Advanced options > Service books

10. Instead of services previously defined, you will see -probably- 3 new service books. I had BBFS2[KEYNEGO], BBFS2[BBIM] and BBFS2[BBIMConfig] definitions.

11. On your PC, go to your BIS at AT&T site using your browser. This page worked for me: http://mycingular.blackberry.com/

12. After logging in, click on the link called 'Service Books' on the left side menu.

13. Then click on "Send Service Books"

14. You will see a message telling you that service books are sent. On your Blackberry, you should receive one message per email account.

15. You can check your Service Book list from Settings > Options > Advanced options > Service books. You should see all your old services listed there.

16. Open Yahoo Messenger on your Blackbbery and login.

Must have poster from O'Reilly

Old, but still good :)

Martian soil appears able to support life

According to Reuters, NASA scientists say that "Martian soil appears able to support life." First water in frozen state, now this?! I guess NASA's Mars mission is on.

Lego Vault

You may be a nerd, if you get goosebumps while watching this.

Gelatiamo

A note from our not-so-recent Seattle trip:

Gelatiamo has probably the best ice cream on this side of Mississippi.

For those who are familiar with Mado ice cream shops in Turkey, it's as good as Mado's. I'm not kidding! :)

Turkish food article with pointers, receipies

For those who landed here looking for 'Turkish food,' here is a nice article from Janet Fletcher of SF Chronicle, with a pointer to an excellent (Turkish) food blog by Cenk Sönmezsoy, and few recipes.

Yahoo! again

It's 'back to Yahoo!' for me...

Now officially part of APPD QA group in Mission College campus. After a lengthy decision process with multiple opportunities inside and outside Yahoo, I decided to join Scoot and SarahH's team.

I am impressed by what I have been told before joining and what I saw after. Is this the correct choice in the middle of all this hoopla? Engineering-wise, heck yes!

LeapTag selected as finalist for Webware 100

This year, CNET's Webware.com selected 30 products in 10 categories as nominees for Webware 100 Awards. Selections are made from a group of nearly 5000 entries.

LeapTag is again selected as a finalist in 'Browsing' category. Browsing category seems to include very different groups of products. Nominees for this category are:

OS/Web Desktop: EyeOS, G.ho.st, Jooce, YouOS, YourMinis, iPhone
Platform: Adobe AIR, AjaxWindows, Silverlight, Yahoo Widgets, Yahoo Mobile
Browsers: Firefox, Flock, IE, Maxthon, Opera, Safari
Portals: Clipmarks, iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Techmeme, Windows Live
Readers: Bloglines, BlogRovR, FeedHub, Google Reader, LeapTag

Very different sets of applications/products. And, I can see iPhone getting the top spot. In any case, it's good to be selected as one of the best news reader, discovery tools on the Web.

You get three votes for each category. You can use one for LeapTag here.

facebook bug #1327

omg! Yes, it's growing fast, too many apps to support, huge database... I get all that. But multiple weeks to figure out the problem? This is the kind of problem that can kill facebook. [Most of our pages are suffering too.]

Yahoo layoffs

Recently, there are way too many articles about layoffs at Yahoo, which is late by a year or two, if you ask me. Based on what I read, heard and saw in the last 3 years, I would bet on the number 1600.

700-800 is almost a given right now, but speaking as a shareholder, 1600 looks like a much better number. Based on my experience at Yahoo, I think 1600/12000 as a good estimate for work force 'correction.'

As a Silicon Valley engineer and ex-Yahoo, I really don't like this news. I hope the cuts are less than 5%.

That wasn't my intention

While working on our Facebook application (seriously, I'm always logged in to Facebook and go on a tangent once in a while), I saw my mom's friend list, which includes my name.

Here is what I saw. This wasn't something I really thought of. Do I really want my mom to see that? Would she know it's work?

The good, bad and ugly of Facebook Apps according to CW

ComputerWorld lists a set of applications on Facebook that are good, bad and ugly. LeapTag is mentioned under news/blog readers... with a positive note :)

You may want to laugh, or cry? Me, not really sure...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;261186

The Great Cosmic Roller-Coaster Ride

Great article, if you want to know about multiverse, branes, and string theory, need an answer to the question 'where our universe is,' or need to find the God. :)

Turks on Facebook: Raki Sofrasi, etc

Few weeks ago, while working on our Facebook app, I ended up on 'newest' tab of Facebook application directory. To my surprise, there were 4 (four) application that were listed on the first page -which means they were submitted in the last 2 hours or so-. This was around 1:00am Turkish time. [BTW, two of these were implemented by female coders/designers, which is very encouraging, given where the country seems to be moving toward.]

We knew that the Turks on Facebook is growing really fast, but this was my -kinda- wakeup call. I realized that Turks were registering for Facebook, bypassing MySpace and other social networks.

When you look at Adonomics numbers for apps with 100K+ users, Raki Sofrasi is ranking first -was ranking first, still near the top... In 10K+ list, another Turkish app was ranked first last week. If you're Turkish, you already realized why the app is so popular, especially among Turks working abroad; each and every item on that list induces heavy cravings.

Another interesting trend among Turks on Facebook is changing profile images to Turkish flag. The conflict (?) in Northern Iraq is big news in Turkey right now, and people, online or off, are reacting to it. I've never seen so many different pictures of the flag.

LeapTag on Facebook

Facebook port of LeapTag is finally out the door. Not listed in the directory yet [waiting for the 'approval'], but slowly adding users via our friend networks.

Already started fixing bugs (all minor, you wouldn't even see them :), adding new features... Can't wait for user feedback.

Abdullah Gül

Abdullah Gül has been elected as 11th president of the 'Republic of Turkey.' After 84 years (yes, Turkey is one of the oldest -or the oldest?- republics in the region, including Middle East and Europe), he is the first non-secular president.

Not sure how to react to this. Yeah, it's democracy, and majority rules. Everything is according to the law. Still, something doesn't feel right; can't help it...

How much jail time?

Anna Quindlen's articles are always good, but this one's pretty damn good. The question is for pro-life advocates: How much jail time should be required for women who have abortions?

Just in case, the video is here.

Shuffling CDs

Yep, still no IPod... {But, considering it. Pinar already started buying music form Yahoo, or at least attempted to.}

Changed discs in the car changer, after 3 months or so. Current list is:

- ABC Muzikli Alfabe [Musical Alphabet in Turkish]: One slot is always allocated to Duru; surprisingly this one doesn't make you go crazy after the second pass. The songs are very good. Must have for all Turkish American children.

- Disturbed - Believe: No guitar virtuosos here, but still the songs makes you drive faster :)

- Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos: Duh!

- Fight - War of the Words: This is a lot 'heavier' than I remembered. 'Just a little crazy!'

- In Flames - Come Clarity: I think this is now one of my favorite

- Megadeth - The System Has Failed: Still good... 'Scorpion' is a favorite there. Mustaine for President!

Webware 100 Awards

CNET/Webware finalized the list of candidates for Webware 100 awards. Ten categories, 25 finalists in each, from a list of 5000+ nominees.

LeapTag is one of the 25 under Browsing. The list looks very impressive :)

Vote for your favorite browsing tool here.

Sign of the Cross

Black Sabbath, er, I mean Heaven and Hell was at HP Pavillion last night. Opening for them were Diamond Head, and Megadeth.

Once again, Ergin and I figured out that for us, it's Dio, not Ozzy. It was a great show.

Also great, Megadeth... Can't wait for the new album, and the upcoming (?) campaign. "Mustaine for Congress!"

LeapTag Team @ Web2.0 Expo

Renee posted a picture of LeapTag team in her blog. Here is the picture reproduced here:

LeapTag demo

After TechCrunch article we started seeing some traffic and blog posts. Demo Girl has a very nice and short video of the basic functionality for version 0.8.1.

I wish Molly had "drag and drop of URL addresses onto tags" in the demo. I guess we hid it pretty well. [Also, sharing's on the way...]

LeapTag Beta 0.8

Public beta of LeapTag (v0.8.0) is finally out the door. We removed access restriction to the beta download page Saturday morning. Cuneyt will also be carrying the latest version on his laptop while visiting ETech.

On to the new features in our list...

Being embarassed by your search queries (or worse)

Cuneyt posted this today. Everyone in the office kinda freaked out a bit when he mentioned his problem few days ago.

Karen's story is a good case study of the 'bug'. I can imagine more embrassing (do I dare say 'terrible') scenarios.

The part that kills me is fact that you have to ask somebody else: 'what exactly did you saw?' If you deleted your history, you wouldn't remember what you looked for, while the other person may still have all your recent searches listed. You wouldn't know what the other person saw. How would you ask about it, if you see their login id on top of your Google search page? Do you ask Google?

Do you share your laptop with friends, family? Do they login to their Google account while using your Windows account? Do you want to check your browser(s) now? :)

The World According To Delicious

Cuneyt came up with this idea of showcasing LeapTag using del.icio.us few months back. Here is its implementation. It's of course a bit different than the browser plug-in, but still a good demo.

Always a Yahoo!

This is -in part- what I ended up sending in the afternoon. Somewhat a sad day for me, although I am very excited about what I'll be doing next week [actually tomorrow]:

- - -

Colleagues, friends;

So, this is my last day at Yahoo.

HR told me yesterday, while taking my employee card away, that at midnight today my benefits –except health- will be cancelled. That didn’t hit me hard; but when I walked in to MC1 lobby this morning, I had to get an ID printout to be able to get in; that was a bit sad.

[...]

I saw the following item on Entertainment Weekly’s 'big events of 2007' list. It kind of hit home, because I (a) am moving from one Web company to another, (b) know about servers going down –actually a single server taking the whole colo down-, (c) watched kitten videos on YouTube {they’re fun to watch}, (d) think that we work a bit harder than usual (e) got a brain reset while in Turkey, and (f) figured that it’s going to be worse when I saw one of the developers coming in to work at 7.30pm, while picking my new benefit documents at Yoriwa.

[...]

Here is the article:
"On May 16, 2007, a plumber named Sal Perkins will forget to tighten a valve while servicing the restrooms at YouTube’s San Bruno, Calif., headquarters. The resulting flood causes a server to crash, starting a chain reaction that shuts down the entire site shortly after lunch. Without the ability to forward videos of kittens falling asleep, teenagers dancing in their bedrooms, and “D—k in a Box” to their friends, America’s workers get up from their chairs, wander out of their offices, and spend the remainder of the week staring at largest body of water then can find. (Nebraska residents find swimming pools.) Once their brains have been reset, they return to work and discover it doesn’t actually take as long to do their jobs as they originally thought. Everyone soon rallies together and forces employers to authorize a mandatory four weeks of vacation time, like Europeans get. By the fall, the entertainment business is once again a thriving, vibrant, and creative cultural force –both on- and offline. Also, there is world piece. And free cookies for everyone."

Speaking of cookies, can’t actually promise cookies, but Yoriwa has tea and chocolate at its current location on Saratoga Avenue.
[...]

CD Changer update

New CDs on the changer:

- Almora 1945
- Cem Koksal "...Just Set Me Free!!"
- System of a Down Hypnotize
- Taylan Ayik Yalniz Hayal
- Vega Hafif Muzik
- Yuksek Sadakat

First four are on the heavy side, not sure about the last two [yet]. All are Turkish, except Hypnotize {which is Armenian American... Ehh, somewhat close :}. Amost all are from 2005 {I just can't keep up with new bands.}

Yahoo Autos Green Center

New 'green center' from Yahoo! Autos definitely looks 'fresh'. Videos too... The articles are surprisingly informative. :)

723

After two weeks of carefully removing myself from some of the -intranet- mailing lists, I still found that I received 723 e-mail messages between 8:30pm Wednesday and 9:00am Thursday. This means I still receive 1000 or more messages every weekday.

Plus, I have 300+ 'red flagged' msgs in my mailbox, which means I have to follow up on them.

Something's just not right...

LeapTag

Cuneyt and Ulas had a great demo at DemoFall06.
Gotta love the names; both the company and the product. :)

From a daily status meeting

"Lots of bugs that haven't even been found have already been fixed."
- Nimit Maru, 18 September 2006

Yahoo Real Estate

Latest version of Yahoo Real Estate is looking good. Gotta love those maps...

Freakonomics

Finished the book 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything' by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner last month. {Yeah, I'm slow.}

Apparently, there is a lot more in the web site (and blog).

Public Acceptance of Evolution

The paper titled 'Public Acceptance of Evolution', published in Science [11 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 765 - 766] gives percentage distribution of responses to a question about evolution in 33 countries.

Surveys were conducted in 2005. Acording to NYT, people were asked whether to respond “true,” “false” or “not sure” to this statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.”

The results are not very encouraging for US, which had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement was true. [See image for distributions for different countries.]

I was, maybe not shocked, but saddened by these numbers. {What was I expecting honestly? Evolution _and global warming_ are myths, as we all know.} Then, there was the kicker:

"Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution."

Ouch! OK, Turkey is the only Muslim country on the list, and Koran is 600+ years younger than New testament. {Remember what you learned about Europe in 13 or 14th century?} But, still...

While discussing this study with friends, somebody said the following. I've also received an e-mail from a friend with the almost exact same content:

Although Turkey is worse then US in her response to evolution {that's my take on the numbers; if you think US is actually in a good shape 'saying no to evolution,' good luck to you.}, other issues usually mentioned alongside evolution do not exist for Turks. {That's the view from Bay Area :}

First of all, current trend is fundemantalist, the goverment too; but I don't think people are trying to push 'intelligent design' into science courses {apparently, there is no need.} Plus, issues such as abortion, prostitution, stem cell research, cloning, topless beaches are not discussed and currently accepted in the country.

Maybe Turks don't care, maybe they don't have time to discuss these issues {Because, you have to feed yourself first, than comes the discussion on things not directly related to survival?}. But, the fact that US is 'spending too much time' on issues such as abortion and stem cell, compared to countries accepting these as de facto standards, or those who simply don't care -even tough they seem to be significantly more fundamentalist- just doesn't look right. We should have better things to discuss.

I am terribly sorry for us all.

Penalty shootouts in World Cup

A bit late :), but here is an idea on how to fix the 'penalty shoutout' problem in important games.

The problem? It's the 'did they relaly have to win with a penalty kick?' problem. You're watching this great game, both team play well; the ball is round, and the score is 2-2 at the end of the extra time. Then, we go to shoutouts; somebody makes a mistake and one of the teams end of with the greatest wins in football history. You feel somewhat cheated, even if you're not fan whose team lost.

A friend of mine had an idea while we were watching the France-Italy final.

At least for important games {which one isn't btw?}, have the teams complete the penalty shoutout _before_ the game. This will practically force all players to play till the final whistle.

Just an idea... I think it's a great idea.

Aciphex

Drug of the month... My otolaryngologist tells me I have to take these for six weeks to take care of LPR. Can you spell 'stress'? :) Started eating a bit more carefully...

Mermerize

System of a Down's Mermerize (2005) is -not so surprisingly- very good. Returned to its top position in my car changer after few months. Not listenning a bit more carefully, and some of these songs, no, actually the whole album is a "classic" (or will be in 20 years :).
Explicit lyrics? Oh yes. Original lyrics and music? Hell yes!

Sultana: Awesome Turkish food

Visited Sultana in Menlo Park twice now. Food is just perfect. One of the best Turkish restuarants in the country (not county, country!).

Visit when you can:
Sultana Mediterranean Restaurant
1149 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA

Are you aware of the danger?

Cumhuriyet (Republic, a daily newspaper) have been running this ad for the last few months.

In the light of recent events in Ankara, it sounds just a bit more ominous:





The green text, written from right to left -literally- says "Are you aware of the danger?" Then, at the bottom, 'Take care of/claim your republic'