My title will be Software Engineering Intern, and I’ve been placed on a team that works on web applications for Google’s intranet. I won’t be able to discuss any specifics of what I’m working on once I begin, but I’m expecting it will relate to primarily front-end work (user interfaces and such using HTML/CSS and JavaScript/AJAX) as well as some PHP.

I’ll be out in the San Francisco Bay area again (6/5/07 – 8/10/07), most likely living near downtown San Jose. I’m definitely looking forward to reconnecting with many of the people I met last year there and meeting many more.

Lastly, some people have asked me about Yahoo!, and why I’m not returning there for another summer. I had an incredible experience at Yahoo! last summer; it is a leading web company and I learned a lot by being there. However, I feel like my summer would be better spent at Google for a few reasons. First of all, this is the one time in my life where I’m able to easily check out multiple competing companies in a relatively short period of time. Secondly, while Yahoo! is doing great things, Google is behind more products that I currently use on a daily basis and I have a strong appreciation for their simple but powerful interfaces such as Gmail and Google Calendar. I’m not putting Yahoo! out of the question in terms of future employment, but I also don’t feel an obligation to go back.

I’m looking forward to this summer at Google. I expect to learn a lot and will hopefully have another great, eye-opening experience.

The event was a lot of fun – we “made media” for the Time Capsule. We had a big mobile scavenger hunt by The Go Game and ended up with some funny video (it’s long) and pictures (full photoset). Go team super6 (we won)! We then had some great food and a workshop on Flickr and Jumpcut. It is clear that Yahoo! is about social media.

Next up was some unscheduled fun with Bre from Make who set up his balloon aerial photography unit (here’s a great photo). It was crazy letting loose a digital camera attached only to a big bunch of balloons and a line of 1000 feet of string.

Monday night was a dinner, thanks to Paul, with David Ulevitch and Allison Rhodes from OpenDNS. We had a great dinner and conversation as well. If you haven’t already, go set up OpenDNS now (it will only take 1 minute) for a better, safer, and faster internet. OpenDNS protects users from phishing scams, and if I type example.cmo, I will automatically be redirected to my intended domain.

Overall it was a great trip. It is always good to catch up with friends from Yahoo! and hang out with fellow previous interns like Paul, Richard, Doreen, and Britta. (And can’t forget some good In and Out burger with Jason Katzer)

I also got to work with talented engineers at Yahoo! and learn a lot. I was able to take a half dozen courses on various front-end engineering topics to either refine my skills or teach me new stuff while I was there. I was able to see what the workflow in a large organization (a company of 12,000 people) is like – the good and the bad – and work on projects for a company which impacts half of the world’s internet users every month. Yes, they are still more popular than MySpace.

Having intern events with nearly 200 other interns was fun too. It was great being able to meet and become good friends with a bunch of talented young people. Thanks to this crazy new toy called the “internet,” hopefully we will be able to stay in contact.

What now? Back to school and doing freelance work. I’ve got a decent school schedule this semester: Differential Equations honors, Applications of Discrete Structures, Circuits I, Java II, and Technical Writing for Engineers. I’ll be moving in my Gainesville apartment in about a week and will be building a loft for my tiny bedroom…. more on that later hopefully.

Freelance work is starting to come back on strong with a few programming projects starting up for designer friends. I just launched a new dynamic website for UF Campus Crusade. The site is a redesign of an aged site, now written with CSS and web standards in mind. While building upon the existing PHP backend, I have also added some new features and increased usability. I did not have time to do everything I wanted to on it this summer, but hopefully it will still serve as a great resource and advertising for the UF ministry of 300+ students.

No, I won’t tell you what it is, you’ll have to wait and find out =).  Without plugging Yahoo! too much, this blog is exactly what I wish existed in March when I was trying to decide whether or not to accept the internship.  There is a great video tour as the first post which shows most of what I see on a day to day basis at work.   Don’t tell anyone, but since I don’t drink coffee, I’ve been ordering chocolate milk every morning at the free coffee bars.

Updates to the previously beta versions of:

1. An event utility
2. DOM collection manager
3. Connection manager (for AJAX / XHR calls to the server, now with file upload)
4. Drag & Drop utility
5. Animation Library (now includes color animation support!)

Additionally, the release of improves upon:

1. AutoComplete
2. Calendar
3. Container (including Module, Overlay, Panel, Tooltip, Dialog, SimpleDialog)
4. Menu
5. Slider
6. TreeView

And adds a new control: the Logger (beta).

My name is … and I’m a recruiter with Yahoo. When you have a free moment I would like to discuss Front End Engineering positions we have open. When might be a good time to speak?

Many phone calls and emails later, I got a (generous) offer letter packet in the mail and accepted it, but it had not been an easy decision. I already had several opportunities to stay in Jacksonville with family and friends, to work on a project of my own, do freelance, or possibly repeat my internship from last year. However, this was an opportunity I decided would be foolish to pass up. A job at the headquarters of the world’s most popular website doing what I love, while gaining great experience for myself, my resume, and picking up a good bit of cash.

PS – thanks to everyone who helped show me that this was an opportunity not to miss. And thanks to Chris Dawson who reminded me to check for cheap Kappa Sigma housing in CA, so that I’m not actually losing money by working out here. Photos of “my crib” are available.

So here goes. Expect semi-frequent ramblings about my life, web development, college, interning at Yahoo!, entrepreneurship, and anything else I feel like.