tasty morsels of goodness on open platforms, developer relations and motherhood 2.0

Saturday, June 28, 2008

euro 2008: the beautiful semi-final game

san francisco is a great town to gather with fellow soccer aficionados and watch some good football go down.

the euro cup 2008 has been some of the most exciting soccer i've witnessed -- with 3 of the 4 favorites going down in the quarterfinals. i know that purists will tell me that the spain v italy quarterfinal was a mesmerizing display of tactical defense. but to me, italy just looked like a bunch of thugs fouling in the penalty box taking advantage of the referee's reluctance to call fouls in that zone. and don't even get me started on luca toni, the most overrated striker/primadonna in the tournament.

to me, the germany v turkey semi-final game was the best match of soccer i've ever witnessed. keep in mind that i watched this game 1) at home, 2) hours delayed on TiVo (not live), 3) I had already heard the outcome of the match, and 4) there were 3 blackouts that caused the international TV feed to go down and caused all the stations covering this game around the world to miss 2 of the 5 exciting goals.

germany going in were the heavy favorites; turkey, the cinderella team that had come from behind 3 times in the tournament, had nearly all of their key players out due to yellow card accumulation or injury.

but turkey played their hearts out, like they had nothing to lose. the turks tied it up with a beautiful goal at 86 minutes (4 minutes left in regulation) and the crowds went nuts. then, the experienced germans answered back with a give & go up the left side with a defensive fullback who took it and drilled it "like a $40 million dollar striker" into the back of the net. at 89 minutes. with less than 30 seconds in regulation left to go (not accounting for injury time). by a defensive player who hadn't scored a goal since a qualifying match in 2006. sure, the team with the experience and poise under pressure won out, but the turks deserve a ton of credit for going on the attack with a bunch of upstarts who collectively had 20% of the international major game experience of the germans. they played audaciously, with heart.

sure the right team won. but turkey made them fight for it up until the very end. this game would turn anyone into a soccer fan for life. there's a reason the brazilians call this "the beautiful game", and it was reinforced to me on my TiVo on Wednesday night, @ home with my 2 sleeping kids, cheering silently and jumping up and down in my living room with a smile as big as philipp lahm's here.

ps. does anyone else think that schweinstieger looks like the bad guy in rocky 4? he gives me the willies.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

highlights from ebay devcon in chicago

Boy I'm pooped. Ever since I returned from maternity leave back in March, I've been working non-stop on a little developer event we call the eBay Developers Conference in Chicago, from June 16-18. If you are friends or family who haven't heard from me in 3 months, here's why. :)

On Monday, the major buzz for the show and the blogosphere was around Project Echo and the opening keynote demo showcasing the ability for developers to embed their applications built on the eBay platform where hundreds of thousands of sellers manage their businesses on eBay.com. On Tuesday, Mike Shaver, Chief Evangelist for Mozilla spoke to developers on the same day that Firefox 3.0 browser launched, celebrating Download Day 2008 right here at eBay DevCon and giving a shoutout to the Firefox Companion for eBay. woot woot!Mike Shaver, Chief Evangelist for Mozilla

eBay also honored ten members of our developer community, who are building applications on the eBay platform for achievements in improving user experience and customer service, increasing platform engagement and extending eBay in exciting new directions:

eBay Star Developer Award winners:

• DSR Rockstar: ShipRush by Z-Firm (USA)
• Most Innovative Application: Jaast for Wii by Scendix Software (Germany)
• Early Adopter: iRibbit by Aduci (USA)
• Service to the Developer Community: Joe Fox (elzorro) of BD Network (UK)
• Best Design: Kyozou Widget by Kyozou (Canada)

Runners-up:

• DSR Rockstar: ezSupport for eBay by HostedSupport (USA)
• Most Innovative Application: Mobile Alerts for Sellers by ahTXT (USA)
• Early Adopter: GarageBuy by iwascoding (Germany)
• Service to the Developer Community: Anthony Sukow of Terapeak (Canada)
• Best Design: Video advertisements for eBay listings by Vzaar (UK)

For those of you keeping count, we've got winners represented across 4 countries from our global e-commerce platform. Congratulations to our 2008 winners!!

For full coverage of all the news out of eBay Developers Conference 2008, you can check out the eBay Developer blog.

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developers got social at ebay devcon

Rajiv Dutta, President of eBay Marketplaces

We all know that sometimes the best part of conferences is what happens outside of the sessions. Developers got social this year at eBay Developers Conference on our eBay DevCon Twitter. Chicago is a fun town and so was looking into the thought cloud surrounding all of the ideas and conversations happening in the hallways of our DevCon event. Blogging, photo sharing and adding friends from our Facebook event were also popular ways to spend time in our Developer Lounge.

Of course there were also offline ways to network as well, including our Beer Bash and PayPal Party at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Online or in person, the eBay developer community is a social bunch.

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Monday, June 16, 2008

eBay devcon 2008 in chicago

I'm here in Chicago for the eBay Developers Conference. I challenge you to name a better city for kick ass public art. Check out my favorite below, called Cloud Gate.

See you all for the keynote tomorrow @ 9:30AM, McCormick Place West!

Make sure all of you blogging and taking photos are tagging them ebaydevcon and ebaydevcon08, and follow the devcon twitter at ebaydevcon08 to jump in on the microblogging.

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