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Google Android @ Cal State L.A. ACM

Published

Grady

on October 9, 2008

in ACM, Android and Google

. 0 Comments

I’m a Google Ambassador and a President for the ACM Student Chapter at Cal State L.A. I called an officer meeting for about a week ago to discuss ACM business matters, and we came to the point for planning the topic that we want to bring for the first ACM general meeting for Fall 2008.

We’ve had several topic suggestions. Jimmy suggested if we could have the Microsoft Student Partners (who’s in fact are the Vice-President and the Secretary) to talk about Windows 7, but they were not ready. So since the Google Android first cell phone will be released on October 22, 2008, so I suggested if we could talk about the Google Android. We agreed.

I was about to prepare the presentation, and was looking for a Google-ish templates, and wondering if I could find it from the Google Docs. It was the first time I created a presentation using the Google Docs. From my first experience, there’s one thing that I really like about Google Docs is the ability to search and attach a video from YouTube into the presentation without having to upload it.

Today, we have the first ACM general meeting for Fall 2008. After waiting for a couple of minutes, I realized that the class is packed with about 30+ students!

I started the presentation by introducing myself, and then I showed the Android demonstrations videos. The first two videos were the demo by Steven Horowitz at Google I/O, and the last one is the advertisement video on the T-Mobile G1.

After the presentation, I briefly explained about Google Android and the way to get involved. I also mentioned the Android Developer Challenge, showed sample applications, and mentioned the application Market Place.

And then we had an open forum and sharing session. Someone asked on the languages that is used to create an application in Android. Steven shared about the Microsoft Imagine Cup, and I shared about the Google Code Jam. We also discussed about various competitions such as the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contests (ACM ICPC), Google Ideas, and ProgFest.

Free pizzas and sodas were served. Thank you Steven and Sassja for bringing them to the meeting.. Thank you Jimmy and Irvin for helping me taking pictures..

{ Rahul (Left) can’t wait any longer, and Dapo (Middle) is excited about Android }

{ Desai is also excited about Android }

{ The Android Presentation }

{ I was showing the Android videos }

{ I was explaining on how to contribute to Android }

Android

Published

Grady

on October 3, 2008

in Android and Google

. 0 Comments

Multitasking

Customization

Full Web Experience

Google Campus Ambassador @ Cal State L.A.

Published

Grady

on October 2, 2008

in Google

. 0 Comments

It’s my third year at Cal State L.A. (I’ll be graduating at the end of this year though..) and I feel that there is so much of the Microsoft dominance on campus. Why not offering something new? I had known about the Google Ambassador program at the beginning of last year, but I didn’t have the chance to apply because the application was closed by the time I knew about the program. It says on the application page that I have to wait for the next school year to apply. I’ve always been the fans of Google. People around me have known me to talk so much about Google’s cultures, philosophies, products, etc.

So, while I was waiting.. I looked around on what things that I could do on campus to offer something different, and to let people know that there’s more than the Microsoft products..!! So I decided to contribute to the Fedora Project by becoming the Los Angeles Fedora Ambassador for a while. When I was a Fedora Ambassador, I did the Fedora 9 release party for Los Angeles area, and it turned out to be really successful! In fact, we were the winner for the release party competition!

I also remembered when I’ve been told to apply for becoming the Microsoft Student Partner at Cal State L.A.. I think that it had been the tradition where the ACM President is generally become the one who is also the Microsoft Student Partner, and I was holding the President position for the ACM Student Chapter at Cal State L.A.

I discussed my plans with the Computer Science Department Chair, Dr. Pamula, who is also my adviser, that I’ve been always thinking if we’re able to offer more than the Microsoft products because I see that our campus seems to be very Microsoft-ish.. I also told him about my plan on applying for the Google Campus Ambassador, and he supports me.

In summer 2008, I had several job offers, and I decided to join the Google Summer of Code 2008 with the Moodle project. It was amazing experience! I also had the chance to visit Google office at Santa Monica with other Student Developers in the Google Summer of Code program. It was fun! We also had the chance to present the project that we were working on, exchange ideas, and got to know the work culture at Google. Afterward, I kept on checking the Google’s website for the Google Campus Ambassador application.. And finally, it’s opened! So I applied..

After waiting for the couple of weeks, I just received an email notification from one of the employee at Google that I’ve been selected as the 2008 - 2009 Google Campus Ambassador for Cal State L.A..!!

I’ve tons of ideas, and I’m really excited about this. By the way, I’m the first Google Campus Ambassador at Cal State L.A.

As a Google Ambassador, I will be working closely with the Google University Programs teams, host and organize campus events for recruiting and/or product-focused initiatives, helping Google to better understand the campus’ culture, making friends, expert on Google’s products, promoting Google’s products, spread “Google it”, and “Don’t be evil”.

HTC Dream & Android

Published

Grady

on September 17, 2008

in Google and HTC

. 0 Comments

The Story Behind Google Chrome

Published

Grady

on September 3, 2008

in Google

. 0 Comments

Proposal 2.0

Published

Grady

on August 26, 2008

in Google and Life

. 0 Comments

View Larger Map

What’s a grand way of proposing when you are a geek and work for Google?? Michael Weiss-Malik, a Google employee just showed us that if you are a Google employee you can use Google’s Street View to propose to your girlfriend. You can look below at the Street View where Google employees have all stood in line and co-ordinated their timings with the Street View car that takes pictures around the streets.

@ Google Santa Monica

Published

Grady

on August 5, 2008

in Google and Life

. 1 Comment

Friday, July 25, 2008, I went to the Google Santa Monica office for meet up with other student developers and mentors who participated in the Google Summer of Code 2008. The meeting was hosted by Maarten Lankhorst, a Software Engineer Intern, and Dominic Mazzoni, a Software Engineer at Google.

I was really excited when I drove to the Google Santa Monica office for the meet up, not only because I’ve heard a lot of great things about Google, the company, and their working culture, but also I was really excited to meet with the Google engineers, other student developers, and mentors, to exchange ideas, experience, and overall project.

I looked around for parking space around the office, but I wasn’t being able to find one, so I parked my car on the parking lot right beside the office. I went to the reception, signed in, and then asked whether it’s okay for me to park my car there, but receptionist said that it’s not ok and suggested me to park either on the visitors parking lot in the basement, or park at the library’s parking lot. I tried to go to basement and waited for about 10 minutes for the door, but it didn’t open. So I just decided to park on the library’s parking lot. I forgot on how much is the fee to park on that parking lot, but I think it was about $10 for one day parking. Yes, it’s covered by Google.

I went to the lobby, there were lava lamps, Google surf board, and projectors that display computer desktop, and the keywords that is being typed into Google, where each keyword have a country flag. You’ll be surprised on what people typed :P. This is where I first met Ian, a student developer for Vim. We had a discussion about our overall project completion and experiences. Not too long, we met Jesus, and Maarten who were with Austin. Maarten gave us a little tour around the office to find Dominic, and then we planned to find Dominic by walking some blocks from the office. Right before we walked across the street, Dominic arrived in front of the Google office with his Toyota Prius.

It was about a lunch time, so we went for lunch at the office’s cafetaria. I’m surprised that the food is not only delicious, but they’re also really healthy! I see there are a lot of options for vegan. I like it that they had steam green beans! At lunch, we had a little ice breaker to introduce ourselves, where are we from, and what school do we go to, Ian is from San Diego, studying at San Diego State University, I forgot where Austin came from, Irvine area..? He graduated, and he worked at some company. Jesus is from Mexico, studying at Autonomous National University of Mexico, who went to vacation in the United States during the Summer of Code, and I’m international student from Indonesia, where I live around Los Angeles area and studying at California State University, Los Angeles. Maarten is from Netherland. Dominic was studying at Harvey Mudd College, and Carnegie Mellon University.

After lunch, we had a little tour around the office. After the little tour, we went to the game room to play the XBOX 360 “Rock Band”. Yes, they got the whole set! It’s a really fun game! I played the guitar! I like it that they also have the classic Pac Man arcade machine, there’s also fozz ball, and some other classic console games. There’s a huge LCD TV that they use to play console game and a cool sponge sofa to sit down. There’s also a pool table, but it’s not in the game room.

After playing for a while, we had a meeting with other Google engineers in their meeting room, I forgot what was the code name for it. I think it was like “Laguna” or something.. The meeting room has 2 huge projector displays and a lot of laptop connectors.. At the meeting, each of us were presenting our projects:

Dan Kegel - Wine

Austin Appel (Summer of Code guest) - Rockbox administrator/committer, OLPC volunteer

Brief overview of OLPC and Rockbox as a project.
Brief summary of how code gets on a device/porting efforts as well as some hardware aspects of certain devices.
Future of Rockbox with the current trend of embedded devices and “Rockbox as an app”.

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/TowerOfRockbox

Michael Harrison (Google employee) - Google Web Toolkit
Showcase of some capabilities of GWT.
Demo of how simple it is to use and create various widgets and pages.

Ian Kelling (Summer of Code guest) - Vim
How the age of Vim both helps and hinders the project.
Display of a few obscure Vim bugs.

Darren Creutz (Google intern) - Eclipse, Guice

Jesus Mager (Summer of Code guest) - educational software for kids: TuxPaint, TuxType

Grady Laksmono (Summer of Code guest) - Moodle IDE

Dominic Mazzoni (Google employee) - Android

Alex Perry (Google employee)

At the meeting Dominic also invited Linh Phan, a Google recruiter. We got her business card. At the end of the meeting we got Google swags. I like their shirt! Dominic had to leave early, and then we had discussions with Alex. I really enjoyed the discussions that we had. He also give a lot of good career advices. Around the evening, there’s pizza!! It’s really huge pizza!! And delicious!! I also forgot to say that they had many kinds of drinks (many types of sodas, energy drinks, apple juices, etc), they also had ice creams, and all that everyone had to do is just open the fridge and grab it. I like the apple juice and water

We finished about 6:00 PM or so, it was a lot of fun. I would like to thank Maarten and Dominic for organizing our visit. Thank you Alex, Googlers, and all others who’re also involved in this event.

Top: {Austin Appel, Mentor, Rockbox administrator/committer, OLPC volunteer}, {Ian Kelling, Student Developer, Vim}, {Jesus Mager, Student Developer, Tux4Kids}, {Grady Laksmono, Student Developer, Moodle}

Bottom: {Maarten Lankhorst, Software Engineer Intern, Wine}, {Dominic Mazzoni, Software Engineer, Audacity Lead Developer}