My experience of Google I/O 2015

5/27

Today is the registration for Google I/O, and one the affiliated organizations invited me for dinner, that I am really looking forward to. I am staying in Park 55 Hilton hotel at San Francisco right next to Union Square and about 5-10 minutes walk away from Moscone center. This year keynote access is assigned based on the time of your registration, which opened at 9AM today, so getting to San Francisco early was definitely a good idea. An awesome coworker drove from Los Gatos to Downtown SF and I snitched a ride. We made it in time to sign up for the keynote, and got a few goodies, a water bottle and a shirt. For some reason registration staff really wanted to take our pictures with the little Android guy and I/O sign, so we let them do that. 

Made it to the hotel, and got an awesome upgrade to a view with spectacular view on San Francisco. After a bit of shopping I am back to catch up on some work. Afterwards Women Techmaker's dinner at a great restaruant with amazing company.

5/28

Keynote day... the line has been standing from 7:30. Keynote access was already assigned the day before but a lot of people went and stood in line to get a good seat. I arrived at 9:20 for the 9:30 kickoff of the keynote. It was the right decision, skipped the line yet got in for a seat (towards the back). Everything was visible in all the N screens around. The overall energy in the room was inspiring, with so many Google enthusiasts in the room. I am really excited about photo sharing update and free unlimited photo storage online.

At the end of the day I got the opportunity to meet with Systers - who were the main reason I ended up attending the Google I/O, and who I am very thankful to for the helpful advice and great-great opportunity to meet like-minded women.

Some of the sessions after the keynote were interesting, but most didn't really apply to me. Some sessions were very high level such as "Monetizing your App", "Material Now". For some of the test sessions I was most excited about there was no way to squeeze in, because of overwhelming number of interested people and very few available bean bugs (and the people who occupied those were never leaving there "rooms").

5/29

The day started with receiving the Nexus 9 - giveaway of the year, that my husband is very excited about. I got a chance to check out Android auto which is soo promising, as well as 360 degree camera.

Yet Another Fitness Tracker review

Few months ago I gathered my courage and signed up for a 5K run in San Francisco. I will be posting more about how it went in about a week. The run is girly and silly, it's not by any means a hardcore competition - up to the point were participants are given tutus to run in with registration. And I am actually planning to run wearing a tutu... So I am by no means a serious runner, here is my official confession that I haven't regularly exercised in nearly two years.

The run was a good motivation to get moving. But what is the point of running if you can't measure it by ten different parameters? As a reasonable geek, the workouts, especially runs seem dull and pointless to me if I can't pinpoint a number.. that being steps run, distance passed, calories burned, maximum hearth rate reached, and some other not entirely accurate information presented in numbers.

Therefore, before even starting to train I went to look for a new fitness tracker. I had previously had an  Up fitness tracker by Jawbone that I was reasonably happy with for a few months. Until the time it started to incorrectly count the steps and shut down sporadically without any warnings. I gave up on it after shutdowns started happening every day, multiple times a day.

When Apple watch was announced I was reasonably excited about it, expecting to fall in love with it from the first glance (the feeling I had for iPad). From the very beginning I was convinced that I was going to by the cheapest model - Sports edition, because Gold edition is for very rich people who I will not understand (no offense if you are reading this post from a over 10K worth iWatch), the intermediate model also seemed really overpriced, paying extra few hundred dollars for a strap sounds too much. I also wanted the bigger screen size 42" to give me more real estate for watching Netflix (kidding, kidding). But I really wanted the larger screen. So I finally got to try it, and really didn't like it, especially the Sports edition. The way the band and buckle fit are just awkward (band sort of goes under itself, pinching you every time). The intermediate edition I liked was $700 before tax which seemed like too much.

After some more research I ordered Pulse Ox by Withings from Best Buy. First and foremost because I love their scale and app that comes with it, allowing me to track my weight changes overtime. (I especially enjoy the tracking when the weight chart goes down, not so much when it goes up). Secondly, a coworker who is hardcore runner and backpacker, recommended it, especially stressing that the battery only needs to be charge once every 2 weeks. Online reviews warned that it is very sensitive to water, if you happen to get some sweat during the workout or even few drops when washing your hands it gets fried. Therefore, I got Best Buy's incidental insurance ($29) and ordered the band for $120.


So far, I have had it for 3 days and absolutely I hate it! The band appeared nice until it broke within first half an hour of wearing. It broke irreversibly second time later that day. I am down to wearing it with the clip. One of the features it is advertised for is sleep tracking if you sleep with it around your wrist. Well that is a dangerous plan and you are sure to scratch your face and other body parts if you move your arm when you sleep, I took it off after first 5 minutes in bed. The band also has hearth rate monitor, for which to work you need to take if out of the clip/strap navigate to correct menu item and old hold against your finger. Something you are not going to do when running.

I haven't returned O2 yet, but I will soon. Please share your experience if you have better luck with other products.

Update 5/31
The run was a great experience. I survived it at 40 minutes, with about 12 minutes per mile. And here is the self-incriminating photo promise.

Microsoft girl going to Google I/O

Wow, it has been over a year since my last post. I hereby promise to post *much* more frequently. My life has changed dramatically in this time, and I constantly felt the need to blog about so many things, the difficulty of choosing the most pressing topic to write about and the time to write about them. In one sentence summary of the changes: today I am proud mom of 11 moths old Ella, trying my best to best split my time between my family and the job I love – building things and breaking things.

Now focusing on my upcoming trip to Google I/O... 

I have been a Microsoft girl for a very long time. Even when I complained about not planning to use Visual Studio few years ago, I ended up going back to it (I know), and building the test infrastructure and automation frameworks of Netflix on Windows phone 8.1 in C#. In the last few months I am focused on building test framework (from scratch again!) for Netflix app on Windows X coming this summer. Since Microsoft is changing directions, and the native apps don't have to be written in .Net anymore, and they also promise easy conversion from Apple and Android apps to Windows, it is tempting to forgo .Net. That is what I am doing and using Javascript and Node for building the framework. In this world I switched away from Visual Studio to Sublime. Have to admit, I miss the debugging utilities of VS.

Back to my excitement, Google I/O (https://events.google.com/io2015/) is one of the most popular developer conferences, that gets sold out in minutes and offered a lottery system this year to buy tickets. A group I am member of, offered me to participate last month. Of course I said yes. I am going to learn a ton about Google products, GO language and maybe their approaches on large scale deployments and designing automation frameworks. Coming up June 28-29, in San Francisco. Any topics or sessions that you think is not to be missed?

Reasons why I will no longer use Visual Studio

Visual Studio has been the favorite tool of very many developers for a long time, especially those coming from background of using Microsoft tools, languages and environments. Realizing that many of my friends and especially ex-colleagues from Microsoft will disagree with this statements, still I want to share how unhappy I am with the "best ever" development environment.

Top reasons go leave Visual Studio as follows:

1. Better open source alternatives are available. 
Try Vim, or Emacs if you are have experience with either of them or if you are feeling adventurous and like exploring. The best ever editor known to mankind for Unix environment was introduced in 1970s, and called Vi. I prefer to a slightly more modern alternative of it, Vim (in most modern Linux systems there is an alias set to default Vi to Vim, so I still type Vi to launch the editor in shell). But if you are feeling ultra edgy, or reluctant to remember the copy-paste, split screen or file switching commands, try also GVim - Vim with visual interface making it easier to copy-paste, open/close files with oh-so familiar mouse operations. Otherwise, take advantage of multiple-tabs offered in Vim, it increased my productivity by at least a double-digit percentage. I don't like the Windows Vim edition, feels very unnatural in Windows environment. Can't really comment on Emacs, since as every Unix developer I have met, I only use and love one of those two brilliant editors and hate the other one.

Try Notepad++ a free and excellent tool for coding, editing in Windows environment, it even does the code coloring and formatting for you. A slightly more advanced alternative is Sublime Text which I have not used enough yet to judge. Those programming in Java environment a great option of Eclipse.

2. Diminishing support for extensions
With every new release and every passing year the extension library seems to have less exciting and useful options. I spent many hours unsuccessfully trying to setup Perforce plugin to work with Visual Studio 2013, which was released over 6 months ago. Perforce is to blame here, since they claim it works when it doesn't, however having a clear understanding of what is supported without spending this much time would have been nice. One extension/tool I really like is ReSharper, it's great like most products from JetBrains.

3. Updates don't work in Visual Studio 2013
Spent over an hour today trying to install Update 1 for Visual Studio 2013, after update is done it keeps reappearing in this list. Developer Tools update never worked either. Microsoft, this shouldn't happen!

4. If you have ever used Microsoft Test Manager, I am sure you can relate to the following
This tools is a joke, it only comes with the Ultimate Edition of Visual Studio, takes forever to load at startup and when switching projects or trying to navigate around. Trying to enter new test case is changeling by itself, because you only can enter one step at a time, and there is no keyboard shorcut to jump to the next step (you can't use Enter key to go to next step!). It may have been introduced to keep the testers busy, ask their product managers.

Imagine, entering a test case like this and saving it:
1. Goto http://www.bing.com
2. Search "Microsoft test manager"
3. Click Search
4. Click first search result

would have taken you at least 5 mouse clicks. Now let's compare time spent by a tester using Testopia by Bugzilla or other free or low-cost alternative versus Test Manager. If the tester enters 40 test cases per week with 10 steps on average, using Test Manager would add up to 400 mouse clicks. Assuming it takes you 15 seconds every time to move your hand off the keyboard, left-click next 'box', move your hand back to keyboard it would take 40 * 10 * 15 = 6000 seconds or 100 minutes more to use Test Manager than a free alternative. This means wasting over 1.5 hours of employee's valuable time per week on average "clicking", and this is excluding the wait times waiting for the product to load and respond.

5. Price
I have used the free Express Edition of Visual Studio though my years in collage, and until recently on my home computer. At my jobs where Visual Studio usage was required or recommended I have have had access to Premium or Ultimate editions, so haven't really paid the $500+ price mark for the tool. However, I purchased the tool as a Microsoft employee at a discounted price as a gift for a friend and myself.

6. You don't have to use it

***

If none of these reasons make sense to you to switch, maybe you need to stay with Visual Studio. Top reasons to stay in opinion are the following:

1. You work at Microsoft
2. You don't work at Microsoft, but it is a job or school requirement
3. You use C#, ASP.NET, etc. with highly integrated Visual Studio components
4. You have used it forever and you hate change

Dos and Don'ts for winning a Hack Day (and how I won it)

One of my greatest accomplishments this year is wining the Hackday at Netflix!!!!

Even thinking of the idea of winning at first sounded a bit too good to be true, since (a) I had worked at the company for just two months at that point (b) it was the first time I was participating in Hackathon or Hack day type of event.

As many people in software industry, I had heard a lot about Hackathons different companies held in Silicon Valley and seen some pictures of many folks staying overnight to finish the most ambitious 24 hour projects ever! So now that I finally moved to Silicon Valley and heard about the initiative my employer was organizing, I couldn't pass on it (although two months is not enough time to learn about the internals of such a large company as Netflix). I devoted a day to this event, learned a lot, met new people, worked on a great idea, and won the Hack day!

Here is the list of dos and don'ts from my limited, yet successful experience.  

1. Come up with idea
• Brainstorm about things you'd like to see added to the product, it really doesn't have to be specific to your project. Rather think as a customer of your own product, what would you like to see? What is the missing feature?
• Another approach is too think from your viewpoint as an engineer, what is it that requires tedious effort? How to make your life easier? Is it maybe your build system? bug filing? IT ticket opening? Chances are others experience the same problems and would be very happy to see your hack implemented 
• Talk to others in your company and team, most people have really interesting ideas. Due to competing priorities not all ideas will get implemented, but it will help evolve initial idea
2. Present your idea and get feedback
• Don't waste too much time on building 20 page Powerpoint presentation. The best way would be to show a prototype, if it's a UI project use Gimp, Paint, or my favorite tool Balsamiq Mockups
• Send your idea to your peers, to any distribution list that is related to hacking, maybe someone else will join you. 
3. Keep it simple
• You have only 24 hours to implement your idea and very short amount of time to present it, so be careful not to be to aggressive with the concept
• It's for the best, and increases the chances to win, if idea is straightforward, and many people including the judges of the competition can relate to it. So keep it simple.
4. Join a team
• If you don't have a killer idea, and you see a team that has one, join it!
• Or better yet work with people you haven't worked with before. It will give you a chance to meet new people and likely work in a team with diverse skills (and maximize your chances to win). I belonged into this category in Spring '13.
• Divide work and stick to deadline. For example, plan to finish implementing web services by 8PM, binding it to UI by 10PM, and adding new feature until the sunrise next morning. Don't start working on features until web services are written, as you may run out of time.
• Be flexible and prepared to let parts of the concept off, the time is short and pressure is on
5. Learn something new
• Volunteer to write a piece of project that requires a skill you haven't used recently
• Or skills you haven't used at all (no extremes although, it's not a good idea to commit to writing objective C component if all you code in is PHP)
6. Have fun!
• The last the the most important point. Enjoy what you are doing and don't make winning your biggest goal
• Give a fun and interesting presentation.

Happy Hacking!

Judge the book from it's cover!

Most of us, growing up, were told to not judge people bases on their looks, we we thought to appreciate the inner beauty of things and people and not make a fast judgement based on appearances.

One day this idea expended on books and material objects, and we learned from our elders and decades after started teaching our children the well-known truth Don't judge the book from it's cover... You have to look inside, you have to read it to be able to understand, and only then make an opinion about it.

Only if the latter argument true, if people were not to judge books by their cover books would come without covers. All the books would have the same font, so people would not be tempted by the cover. The books of the world would have light green jackets, have their Title written in Times New Roman, 14 font bold, and the text maybe in Times New Roman, 10.

****
I have been toying with this idea for a long while and it is something I believe in. Do Judge the book by it's cover!

Most if not all bestseller authors of modern day take the time and spend the resources to get professionally made covers that would particularly appeal to their target audience. As an example, if I am in a bookstore eyeing the bestsellers, after the first glance I know which one of these books I am going to most likely going to buy and read - that is the first one of three I pick up, a decision made entirely based on the cover:

If all these female-friendly titles above do not appeal to you, that simply means the covers were not designed with you in mind, so feel free to skip all the three books.

**
The same principle, only magnified, applies to User Interface (UI) of software, apps, websites, tools, etc.

The customer today has a very short attention span, and does not have much time to spend "learning" your interface, I am sure there is research done that will tell you how much time you have exactly before the attention span is lost -> your app is uninstalled, your website closed, a quick review published "Doesn't work". (Yes, I know how not helpful and painful it feels going through 1 star reviews saying "it crashed", "didn't open". When you know it works).

Few months ago, I called the biggest and most well-known flower delivery store in Yerevan, to order surpise flowers for a birthday. The pleasant lady on the phone, who held an impressive title, like International Customer Relations Manager, told me she can't take the order over the phone, it has to be made online. Guess what, I had been trying to do exactly that for the last 45 minutes. I called only because I couldn't figure out how to operate their site. The steps for making an order ended up being something like

1. Open IE,version 8 or earlier supported
2. Provide your credit card information (Note, I haven't chosen anything yet)
3. Confirm delivery address and gift message
4. Choose the flower bouquet 
5. Click "Buy", then "Deliver" (Note,I haven't seen the final price yet)
6. The final charge appears on your screen

The lady had to walk me through these steps one-by-one and answer my annoying questions, probably thinking why I was so slow and need so much hand-holding  After the bouquet purchase was finally confirmed, I tried to justify my reasons of being "slow" and taking so much of her time, and explained what I expected from an online store, namely

1. Browse and select an item
2. Add to card
3. Provide credit card information and address
4. See and confirm pending charges

Just because that's how online stores work today. Her answer was:
"I know it's tedious the first time, but you learned and will do better next time".

Guess what?
If there is another moderately trusted website available, by the time I plan to send flowers to Armenia again, I won't go through this experience again. Had the answer been "we are planning to redesign" I would think again.

Don't be the guy who provides this experience on his website, people won't return.

****
Judge the book by it's cover, and the website by it's UI.

Google Glass

Recently I had the opportunity to try the Google Glass for myself. The following is some observations noted about the newest tech innovation, that sounds really cool today, and will continue to sound even cooler as it gains more popularity.

The tagline is that Glass is a great concept and is most likely to be a great gadget in near future, and a household accessory within very few years.


To summarize in few bullet points

Pros:

1. Lightweight and comfortable - Looks impressive doesn't it? After few minutes of adjusting the projector at the right position, it felt pretty well fitted
2. Speaks in your skull - Glass uses "bone conduction" and sends sounds directly to your skull unlike the traditional devices. This enables you to hear better in noisy places, and not broadcast the sound to everyone in the building
3. Take videos and photos fast - I have a goPro camera for sports activities, which I recently took to karting. While I wouldn't risk ruining the Google Glass during rafting and surfing, for bike riding, karting and many other sports it would serve better than goPro, since (a) you see through the projector what you are filming, and (b) you can use voice commands to start and stop taking the video
4. Opportunity for innovation - There are not many features available yet, so why not innovate, now is the opportunity to write your own apps and rock the world
5. Coolest new device - Expect to become the "popular kid on the block" as you are one of the first people in you company/school/town to own them. People will try to be friends with you just to try the Glass!

 Cons:

1. Doesn't fit well with glasses - I wear prescription glasses everyday and didn't find it conformable to wear on top of those
2. Not ready for consumer use - Do not expect to get an out of the box solution like your IPad, this is a concept, so expect lots of crashes, draining your phone battery when synced on Bluetooth and brace yourself in public since you are likely to say more than a few times "OK Glass" to activate
3. Not many apps yet - It was just released to lucky few, so it doesn't come with Angry birds on it, wait for innovator to come up with the apps, or better yet design your own
4. Public acceptance - Not surprisingly people have mixed feelings about the futuristic device suddenly brought to reality from SyFy movies. The glass was already banned from number of bars and casinos, management claims that customers should be able to relax and not worry about being secretly filmed. I'd recommend not to take it on a date, unless your date is a dedicated Geek, others won't appreciate you looking like Terminator and communicating through "parallel universe"
5. "OK Glass" command - currently the only way to activate through voice command is saying "OK Glass", in case there is another person in surroundings with Google Glass "speaking" to his glass, or someone decides to say "OK Glass" suddenly, that will affect your Glass as well, and they will be in command of it! Expect this will be fixed soon.

So would I use one? Sure, I would love to. Would I buy one? The only scenario I could justify buying it myself, is committing to writing Glass apps at least part time, otherwise it's too pricy for a conceptual gadget.