We’ve had quite a few questions lately about the use of AOL/Yahoo/Google/MSN IDs to log into Swapper. Some of you don’t have such accounts, others wonder what the advantages are as a user… So let me tell you a little more about it:

When you login, you have 4 options:
- You can login with “AIM”, which means you can use your AOL email OR you AIM login and password
- You can login with “MSN” and enter the email address and password associated with your MSN/Hotmail account.
- You can login with Yahoo and provide your Yahoo ID and password
- You can login with Google using you Google/Gmail email address and password

So how does that make Swapper so much better? Come on, you know us… we just want to make it easier and safer for you guys! Here’s why:

1/ Better privacy: all your communications are protected with your own email or IM account. As a result, nobody can access the private messages and media files you sent and received within Swapper. Nobody. Not even the Wambo staff, since we do not store user account information.

2/ No need to create an account: we know you guys want privacy, but we also know how annoying it is to go through a long registration process. This is the reason why we do not ask you to create a Swapper login and password. By using your existing email or IM account information, you can start using Swapper right away! And this way, you don’t risk forgetting your login or password.

3/ And… you have the option to automatically import your address book! This way, whenever you want to send a media file to your friends, you do not have to look for all email addresses and enter them one by one!

Now, what happens if you don’t have an AOL/Yahoo/Google/MSN account? Well, your situation is not that desperate . Just click on “New User?” in the login window and we’ll guide you through this step by step.

It’s that easy! So now that you know everything, tell your friends~~~!@@@!@

Today, we got many new users from Germany. Here’s the reason why:

So we just want to say: “Ein hertzliches Willkommen allen deutschen Swapper-Benutzern”!

Wambo live. May 2nd.

<div style="width:176px;text-align:center"><embed src="http://twitter.com/flash/twitter_badge.swf" flashvars="color1=255&type=user&id=5690252" quality="high" width="176" height="176" name="twitter_badge" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /><br>swapper countdown</div>

Welcome back to the Sunnyvale office Hooman - it’s great to have you back!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been a while, but since I’m now officially in LA (yeehaaaa), I thought it would be a good time to catch up and share some of my adventures on our blog.

It all started for me last night back in Sunnyvale at 6:10pm sharp. After a good half hour loading heavy boxes (GC knows what I mean by heavy) into the “full-size” Enterprise rental car, I was finally ready to go. Or so I thought…
6:10pm exiting 530 Lakeside Dr, on my way J
6:11pm entering 101 at Lawrence expwy, heading south
6:15pm passing Bowers avenue on 101…. Now that’s a start….
So after an hour and a half of bumper to bumper traffic I was finally on 152 on my way to Hwy 5… at last. The rest was easy, I set the cruise control to an “undisclosed” speed and at 10:55pm I was parking the car (and the driver) at the Hotel Angeleno near UCLA (top notch by the way!)

Just a few minutes later I was joining Arnaud, Anne-Laure and Xavier in the Lounge for some well deserved wine. Scott joined us a bit later and we all spent the rest of the evening exchanging stories until it was time for everyone to call it a night.

Today was the big day, we were off to UCLA for the job fair. We first stopped at Scott’s place to pick up flyers, stickers, pens and T-shirts. At noon sharp we were all setup and ready to go with our famous UCLA team (Scott, Kristi and Joel)!

The “Grand Ballroom” quickly filled up with students of all backgrounds, mostly future engineers but some finance and business people as well. A lot of them were really excited and curious about Wambo, asking all sorts of questions and pressing to try it out “on site” on one of our “war” laptops. A few intrigued persons even asked some “very” technical questions, much to Arnaud’s delight (he just loves to chat about PFS and “impossible” features!). Ok, ok, I enjoyed that too… there… you have it.

At 4pm everything was wrapped up and we headed back to Scott’s place were we had parked the car, poor Anne-Laure was in agony, having to walk back over a mile with high heels. On our way, we stopped for a quick lunch (at 4pm!).

All in all a very exciting day, it was good to finally get out of the office and join the rest of the team on campus! I sure wish I could do this more often.
Well that’s it for me, so until next time… have fun on Wambo!

GT (alias Guillaume)

We need more laptops!

Hey everyone it’s Hooman - I’m the Wambo Virtuoso (that’s my funny nickname here at Wambo). We had the job fair today on campus, and Wambo was invited to participate. I thought we had prepared the event well… we got our table between Wells Fargo and UCSD, hung our Wambo banner and had a few tee-shirts and pens to give-away. I also thought it’d be a good idea to bring my laptop with me to show Wambo.

Xavier arrived at 9:30, and it’s been quiet till 11 or so. Kyle, Livia and Scott also came in.

As soon as the career fair got started, the campus became very crowded. I spent the whole day with Scott, Livia, Kyle and Anne-Laure, giving demos to students. Surprinsly, we got quite a few engineering questions, so we had to call up Arnaud and Xavier for help! (I assumed it was better than going “Uhhhh…” everytime I was asked a tricky question).

Many students were very curious about the product; and some seemed to be very interested in joining us for this adventure. Overall, it was very positive for all of us. Only thing is… we didn’t have enough laptops! Good thing we had two, this way we could at least run one of them while the other one was charging.

What’s more, there were so many people gravitating around our stand, that I didn’t get any chance to take a break! Anne-Laure and didn’t even get to try these delicious lunch packs that UCSD was handing out to recruiters for free

Towards the end of the day, Arnaud, Xavier and Guillaume left for LA. From what I heard they got stuck in the traffic jams. If only they had listened to me… Anyway, I hope they’ll be able to come back to San Diego, cuz we had hella good time

-Hooman

Sharing my entrepreneurial experiences with Stanford students

Busy day for me today. I flew in to San Jose for the day to give a class on Entrepreneurship to Electrical Engineering students at Stanford.

The day really started last night. Anne-Laure, Arnaud and I worked till about 1AM on the Wambo tutorial, a new Wambo feature UCSD students have asked for (more on that later). On my side, I prepared a few slides for my Stanford presentation. Before going to bed, I called the doorbell for a wake up call, “Front desk, what can I do for you”. “Hi, I’d like to get a wake up call for 6AM”. “You’re all set” (hang). The phone did ring in the morning, around 5:50AM. On a typical day, I would have extended my night 10 more minutes since they were early. But I didn’t want to take any chances - and jumped in the shower.

The car ride to the San Diego airport reminded me of my own college days. Loud music and light chat with your buddy to stay awake. We finally got to the airport. Arnaud dropped me off and heads back to the hotel - I checked-in, went through security, got a cup of Joe and boarded on my plane to San Jose. Luckily for me, the middle seat was empty on the plane - unluckily, Joe Schmock the early morning humorist couldn’t stop cracking up loud jokes in the back of the plane.

The plane wheels finally hit the ground in San Jose. Pretty cold, but no worse than San Diego. I go to the rental car counter, jump into my white Alero and soon enough I’m on 280 North. Arrhhhhh, highway 280 - the San Francisco-San Jose road that drives across some of the most scenic places in the Bay area… I get off Page Mill, drive around the hills, see my horses again on the right side, then make a left on El Camino. I decided to make a quick detour by Sierra, to see Escondido village - Hoskins 6D - where I lived for 2 years. Finally get to Tresidder Union, park my car - then get another cup of coffee, at Peet’s inside the cafeteria.

The campus is nearly indentical to what is was late 90’s. The CoHo (coffee house) was closed but still there, and the buildings of course had not change a bit. Even faces looked familiar for some reason. Finding the Terman Auditorium was easy. This is where as a student, I met Milton Chang after a conference. Milton is a Silicon Valley angel investor who help me get things started with Fireclick, my first company. In some ways going back to Terman was like rewinding back to 1998 - this time however I was the speaker.

I had a lot of fun giving my presentation. Students were genuinely interested in Wambo, and asked me lots of questions on the technology - which was great because we never publicly discuss the hugely complex file transfer mechanics that make media sharing so fast and efficient in Wambo. But I must confess I had even more fun answering questions on my entrepreneurial experiences. These were great questions on how to form a startup, how to choose your co-founders, how to raise capital, etc. I answered all these questions straight from the gutt. I felt truly connected to the students and was pleased to get so much interest.

After the conference, I quickly stopped by Wambo in Sunnyvale to say hi to the team, then went home to wash my clothes and take a short nap. Then, back to the airport for my flight back to San Diego. Got there at 11PM, went for some drinks with the team, and back to bed around 1AM. What a day!

-Xavier

Room 609

It’s MLK day here in America, and the UCSD campus is empty. Which is a great opportunity to give you a tour of the Wambo headquarters in La Jolla, California.

So here’s our designated office… room 609! As you can see, the Radisson staff has been extremely patient with Arnaud and Xavier’s bad habit of putting stickers everywhere: on the front door, on the lamp, on the “Kandisky painting” (and on vacuum cleaners, for those who followed the whole story).

Other than that, we have been working very late in the past couple of days. Believe me or not, but for the second night in a row, we didn’t realize it was dinner time until 10pm. Yep… no holiday for Wambo! Luckily our efforts are paying off: we have more users and we got many things accomplished over the weekend.

We even talk about Wambo for dinner, and sometimes - tonight for example - our brainstorming sessions turn to silly jokes. No comment

Last but not least, I would like to say a special thank you to TGI Friday La Jolla, the restaurant that saved our lives twice by serving us dinner after 10pm.

-Anne-Laure

Random notes from San Diego

It’s Sunday and tomorrow is a day off on campus. We are relaxing a bit here in La Jolla, Anne-Laure left a few hours earlier to go visit her cousin she had not seen since she was 5. Xavier and I are chilling here at the hotel, making a few trips to Peet’s and Whole Foods. The workload’s been lighter today, we have 2 nasty bugs we’re working on that should be fixed by tomorrow. We’re also working on a neat idea we heard on the UCSD campus Thursday, that’ll be a nice surprise hopefully mid next week.

Now random notes.

- Learning to write IM like anyone else here in SoCal (or anyone below 25 y.o. for that matter).
- people = ppl
- what’s = whats = wats
- what’s up = sup
- it’s = its
- conversation = convo
- rules = rlZ (like “Wambo rlZ”, thanks Daniel from Argentina)

- The Pats-Chargers game. Apparently an employee at Whole Foods was shocked to see us shopping at 2PM today (shouldn’t you guys be watching football?). Looks like the Chargers lost in the last quarter.

- Bandar is an excellent Persian restaurant in downtown San Diego. Hooman tooks us there last night and it was incredible. We also spent some time with his roomate Larry, a smart and fun SDSU student who was born and raised in the bay area.

- The hotel’s vaccum cleaner still has the Wambo sticker. The cleaning people here at the Radisson are GREAT and very funny.

- Orange banana. Anne-Laure gave us a good laugh yesterday. Apparently some people went off on a forum post she wrote to get people to help out.

- It’s cold There is plenty of sunshine here during the day but nights are chilly.

Arnaud

BUSY day at UCSD today!

Xavier, Arnaud and I arrived on campus at 10 am, where we joined Hooman and Scott.We installed our table at the same spot as yesterday, next to what seemed to be a smaller version of a car show (basically 2 cars, with a bunch of people listening to R&B). There are so many things going on in this part of campus!

Compared to yesterday, we got a LOT of feedback from students, which gave Arnaud a substantial amount work in the afternoon. We even handed out a few Wambo T-shirts, to reward some of the people who stayed a while talking to us about their impressions and ideas. All the remarks were very positive.

Yeahhhhh!!

We are NOT in “alpha” yet

Today was our first day on the UCSD campus. We drove to UCSD at around 10AM. First impression: finding a parking spot in UCSD is a real adventure! After turning around with our pick-up filled with boxes, we eventually found a place to park the car near the Peterson hall, and joined Hooman and Kyle there.

It was great to get to know Kyle. He’s such a great guy. He has interned for a US Senator, participated in multiple nation and international organizations, promoted and coordinated events and parties for Washington D.C.’s premier night club production company, and is a current employee of Best Buy for the past 4 years. He is a fun loving easy going person - always willing to help when needed and is always excited when he is working.

Thanks to Hooman The Negotiator , we managed to get a table for 7 dollars and 50 cents in the main driveway. We got very helpful feedback from the UCSD crowd. As always, Xavier asked all of is to “think long term in everything you do”, adding “today, we’re here to listen.” Wambo is not an alpha yet, so we want to be connect with people, understand their needs and try to design the messenger of their dream! Anyway, the afternoon went by pretty fast - even though it was freezing in San Diego today. Xavier and Arnaud would tell you that it’s not that cold (translation: “stop whining Anne-Laure!”), but I noticed that Arnaud was wearing a sweater over his Wambo T-shirt. After two hours freezing our asses off, we headed back to the hotel and started to work on the new features proposed by our dedicated supporters.

A Life saver: vitamin C

Valerie had complained earlier IM conversations were often hard to decipher, Arnaud feverishly worked on that all afternoon, and it’ll be live tomorrow. Thanks Valerie!!

Anne-Laure

Happy new year - may this year bring lots of joy and happiness to everyone.

The Wambo team

I’m spending a few days in San Diego, in La Jolla to be exact. The weather here is just fantastic, better than the Bay Area for this time of the year. Whenever I travel, I take my running shoes with me and explore the surroundings. It’s so cool. I’ve discovered places like Tampa, New York, Boston - or Taormina (Silicy) or Paris (France) on the more exotic side.

This morning I went on a run to explore UCSD (University of California, San Diego). I used Google Earth to prepare a bit, this is a big campus, so there is lots to see and it should be fun.

For those of you familiar with the UCSD campus (my hotel is about half mile away from UCSD), I started my run on Gilman Dr, on the south end of the campus, and heading towards the medical center. After a mild climb, I made a run to the left and took a campus loop road, which took me to the north end of the campus after a few turns. There, I tried to do a few loops on the track, but it was closed. I therefore decided to head south east.

Then it got pretty confusing. Ater 35 minutes of jogging, I was hoping to get back tot he hotel quickly and followed signs to the UCSD Medical Center. Unfortunately, I realized a little late that it’s a HUGE medical center, with lots of buildings everywhere - far, very far from my entry point on campus earlier. I crossed the Emercengy admissions, then landed on the Miramar housing complex. Not sure what happened at that point (I was totally lost), but I was lucky and got back on the La Jolla Village Drive, and a few minutes later I was at the South entry again. All in all, it was a fun 55-minute run. I’ll see if I can find a better route around campus tomorrow.

-xavier

Don’t know about you guys, but here at Wambo we’ve been using Skype for all conference calls between the different college campuses. It’s working out great. Calls drop off from time to time, but as they say, you can’t beat “free”. Go Skype!