Day 5 - Googleplex

Had a great breakfast this morning at Pinecrest Diners - Corned Beef Hash with Scrambled Eggs, served with wheat bread and hot coffee. Sounds nice? It taste even better :)

First up was a Quark Composer Session at WWDC07. Very nifty application. Learned how to create stunning visualization and effects using just simple drag-and-drops and connect the dots techniques. And I think the speaker works on the South Park cartoon.

After lunch - Beef Steak Sandwich, most of us headed to the Levis’ Store. 50% Discount!!!!! Bought a jacket (a Birthday gift for myself).

3pm: Time to head to Googleplex. We walked down from Moscone to the Caltrain (Jumbo size version of the MRT) station in San Francisco. Bought a day pass ticket for USD11.50. The train ride was surprisingly comfortable. Took about 45 mins to reach Mountain View.

Mountain View is the opposite of the Bay Area. It’s slower pace, with fewer people and the locals are extremely, extremely friendly. Mountain View, like Bay Area, is a very charming town. Victorian houses with nicely mowed lawns and blooming flowers.

We waited for 10 mins at the bus stop and realised that there are no bus to Googleplex. Sidenote: To all Singaporeans, please learn to appreciate our public transport system. Appreciate how well connected all the services are to each other (Buses, trains and cabs). Here in USA, the dots aren’t quite joined well together.

So we wonder around, hoping to hail a cab and asking the locals for alternate mode of transportation. We came across this retired couple, asking for directions. We told them we are from Singapore yada yada and we’re trying to get to Googpleplex; without hesitation, Don, offered to drive us there. There were 6 of us, he even risked having a ticket to take us there. Thumbs Up.

Googleplex is about 10mins drive from the train station. Sadir, an employee of Google, was our host for the day. No cameras are allowed inside the main compound. However, I somehow managed to use my K750i to take some shots of the cafeteria. Google is an amazing place. It’s incredibly casual, feels more like a resort than a company. There’s a life-size mock-up of the SpaceShipOne craft in one of the halls. Each employee has 2 22” LCD displays, large enough to show their millions of lines of codes. Employees are also provided with a electric mini scooter to commute between workplace and home.

Mini cafes are everywhere, and the staffs can help themselves with a wide selection of snacks and beverages.The food at the cafeteria, is as good as it can get - Restaurant standard. If you have read or seen reports about how good the standard of the food at Google is, it’s that good.

This is what I had for dinner: Roasted Beef, Roasted Lamb, Ham with Cheese and Zucchini cold side, Hoi Sin Pork Ribs, Egg salad and Nachos with salsa. (that’s first round)

My second round from the BBQ section: Hamburger patty, 6 inch hot dog, marinated Portobello Mushroom and some greens.

D E L I C I C I O U S! One of the best Birthday treats so far!

Had loads of fun taking pictures while waiting for the train back to San Francisco. We were like crazy over the sunset, trying to take as many photos of us with the sunset as possible. Did some star gazing too.

What a great day.

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Search queries on Google.com. This is not as cool as the one they have inside the building. It’s called GeoDisplay. Basically it’s a 3D rotating Earth with dots streaming from different parts of the world. Each dot represents about 1000 search queries made by that country; each dot has a different colour which represents different language; and it’s Live.

Day 4 - Sessions All Day

Sessions, sessions and more sessions! 7 in total!!! Out of the 7, only the Widgets Creation with DashCode, Designing Web Contents for iPhone and Building Animated Cocoa Interfaces were useful and interesting..not forgetting the Apple Design Awards, not bad. The rest of the sessions sucked, really sucked…Boring.

Managed to sneak out during lunch time. Went over to (where else) Apple Store to check if they were selling a particular iPod dock I wanted. And just nice they were having a Live event - James Morrison. He totally rock. Really cool guy.

Not much pictures today. All of the stuffs during the sessions are confidential; so no pictures or videos. Below are 2 videos. One taken after the Building Animated Cocoa Interfaces session, where the Speaker sang a song at the end of his presentation. It’s quite funny if you understand geek talk, if not, just enjoy the music. The other one is taken during Apple Design Awards, it shows the Best Mac OS X Game winner - World of Warcraft by Blizzard.

Going to Googleplex tomorrow, hope it will be be much more fun day.

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Day 3 - First day of WWDC07

Today was a jam-packed day. Went to a total of 4 sessions.

First up was Steve Jobs’ keynote address. Nothing much new, half of what he demo-ed was already shown at last year’s MacWorld. Those who haven’t watch the keynote, please download and watch it. It’s kinda funny towards the end, where they joked about their “best” friend, Microsoft. One of the major new things announced is the availability of Mac OSX’s Safari on the Windows platform. For the uninitiated, Safari beats the leading Internet browsers hands down. Go download it if you haven’t.

Next up was the IT State Of the Union. Pretty boring for the most part, except for the iPhone demo. I REALLY MUST GET THAT PHONE!!

Following that was a Student only seminar. Basically a short session on how to get the most our of the Conference.

Lastly, it was the Graphics and Media State of the Union. This is where they demo Mac OS X Leopard latest in graphics and media technology, including Core Image, Core Audio, Core Animation, Image kit, Webkit. etc. Lotsa eye Candy. One of the coolest demo was the one where they record a World of Warcraft gameplay movie and encode it in H.264 in realtime, without affecting the gameplay performance. The iPhone demo was another cool one. Playing Quicktime media contents using Safari on the iPhone is.. wow.. I MUST GET THAT PHONE!

Going to so many sessions can be very tiring for anyone. I really have to applaud Apple for their efforts in ensuring that everyone is as comfortable and well-fed as possible. Breakfast, lunch, tea and even dinner are provided. In between each session, there will be cookies, gourmet coffee, chocolate snacks, a cart stacked with fruits, chips and free-flow of fresh fruit juice (Odwalla). What’s more, they serve alcohol for dinner, beer, white wine and red wine included! All free flow!

Can’t wait for Day 2 of the conference! Good night all :)

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Day 2 - Coach Tour + WWDC07 Registration

Breakfast was simple: Homemade Waffles with maple syrup and hot coffee. After that, it was a mad rush down to Union Square to catch the Coach.

Today we have a new friend joining us, Fabio from Italy. Currently a doctorate student in Switzerland.

First stop was at Stanford University. 2 words: Big, Beautiful. How I wish I could study there.. Being the alumni of the Google founders, Google memorabilia are everywhere, I found a Google frisbee! Hahaha

We then came along this group of students writing the scripts of a supposedly very well known Italian play on the basketball court, word for word. You’ll never see this kind of thing happening in Singapore. Police will be kicking your butts before you know it.

Next stop was Twin Peaks. It’s the highest point in San Francisco (I think). SUPER SUPER Windy! Spectacular view nonetheless.

Lunch was at Fisherman’s Wharfs, guess what? Burger King again. BBQ Bacon Chicken Crisp rocks!

Golden Gate Bridge was our last stop for the coach tour. 2 words: Big, Beautiful. I shall let the photos do the talking.

Last in the itinerary for today is Moscone West - WWDC07 Registration. FINALLY!!

Apple hosted a reception for the attendees at Hilton hotel. Good food :) Met a guy from Club 21, he’s sort of a Right Hand Man for the Managing Director of Club 21. Really nice guy. Met Uncle Tan there too. He actually knows me! He called my name first. Very pleasant guy. Here’s a piece of advice from me: Come to WWDC07, if you have a chance. It’s a great opportunity to meet many talented people and your potential employers or venture capitalist.

That’s the end of Day 2. Steve Jobs keynote speech tomorrow! YAY! Good night!

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Updated.

Flight to San Francisco (SF) was painstakingly long.. Fortunately, the air stewardess that was serving my side of the aisle bears a close resemblance to Miss Japan 2006, Kurara Chibana! No Kid! She just made the flight that much more enjoyable! Ate lots of plane food.. And all of them sucked, except for the Narita - SFO leg, slightly better.

Made a brief stopover at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. As advertised, Japanese are really polite (and cute :P ).

SF’s a charming city, the weather rocks too. Though it’s summer time over here, they have chilly winds, day time temperatures goes between 11 degrees to 18 degrees. We ran up and down the SF hills; and not a single drop of sweat. Perfect!

Fisherman’s Wharf is like our very own Clarke Quay, just that their’s is more beautiful.

Lunch (+ Dinner) was at Burger King. Want to know why Americans are so big? Go to their Burger Kings.

Our last stop was Lombard Street -America’s crookedest street. The steep, hilly street was created with sharp curves to switchback down the one-way hill past beautiful Victorian mansions. If not for the crazy curves, easing out this treacherous slope, people would be killed rolling down. Some of the classiest and most expensive Real Estate in the city, exists on Lombard Street.

That’s all for Day 1!

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