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

Do you remember the Wambo trip to UC San Diego in January? They had so much fun over there that I decided to go and share my few cents on the school.

First of all, after visiting two other UC campuses (UCLA and UC Berkeley), I can say that the “pace of life” is something which influences campus life tremendously.

From a student’s perspective, I thought UCSD was a happy medium between UCLA and UC Berkeley in terms of the pace of life. Both UCLA and UC Berkeley are extremely fast paced. UCLA especially is constantly bustling as it is tucked into such a sophisticated city. Similarly, UC Berkeley’s character or charm is set in the rolling hills and urban atmosphere.

But to me, UCSD had its’ own charm in a nestled suburban campus. Everything was pretty tranquil, and though the campus was large, the school still seemed to have character.

I think what people miss at a first glance at UCSD is the fact that its’ charm is more subtle than other UC’s like UC Berkeley and UCLA. San Diego is not roaring with school spirit or anything, but the individual schools within it left me with a sense of intrigue.

There is only one thing I regret from my trip: I didn’t get a chance to say hi to Hooman, alias “Wambo virtuoso”!!!

Mithya

Ummm… Yes and no.

Let me tell you a little more about Xavier’s new “disease”.
First of all, it is chronic. For several days now, we have been working with Gianni “Gidibao”, our Italian blogger friend, to translate Wambo website in Italian (thank you Gianni by the way, awesome job! ). Since Xavier has been reading those Italian translations, he keeps distracting the whole team by repeating over and over again the same sentences in Italian. How exotic would it be if he could actually speak Italian! Unfortunately, the sentences he likes repeating are more like “Cliccare su Finito per terminare l’operazione”, which means “Click on Finish to finish the operation” or “Messaggistica Privata di Gruppo”, which means “Private Group Messaging”.

Here are other information you need to know about this rare disease:

Is the disease contagious?
God no!

Are there secondary effects?
I’ll tell you in a few months. You never know, maybe Xavier will eventually decide to learn Italian.

What type of medication do you need?
Well, I’m not a doctor but I am pretty sure we need to call back our friend Enrique (see previous blog post on Ruby Skye) and ask him to fly back to California. If Enrique was here, Xavier would be speaking Spanish all day long. That would save us!

Hopefully, he’ll recover by himself. Actually, although Xavier is temporarily enduring severe “Italian-aholism” , I’m glad Wambo is becoming so internationally-oriented. Wambo has friends in so many countries now: Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Argentina, Malaysia, Guatemala and others. Starting this week, you can even read our website in English, in French, in Spanish and in Italian. So we’re moving forward with the localization of our software. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Anne-Laure

Last Thursday, a few of us at Wambo enjoyed an evening in the city! Enrique, a friend from out of town, arrived from Spain. We dined at a North Beach restaurant which offered upscale “classic” American food. Both the steak and seafood there were delicious! All of us enjoyed eating out together in a different setting than the workplace. It was really fun, and taking our out of town guest Enrique, provided us with a great opportunity for some fine dining and good conversation in San Francisco.

Initially, we were a little apprehensive because we were seated right next to the piano. There were a lot of instruments and a mini band at the restaurant, and we began to worry that our table would become the center of the musical extravaganza. Luckily, this was not the case. We just had to raise our voices a little to converse, but that was about it.

After dinner, we wanted to take our guest to a club to enjoy the evening. All of us drove over to the “Ruby Skye Club” where we enjoyed cocktails and some great dance music. Arnaud, the wine connoisseur, helped to pick out two bottles of wine. Afterwards, several DJ’s competed to win our approval in a music competition, and by 2 AM, I was completely exhausted and ready to go home! What a fun evening out on the town though!

-Anne-Laure

Let me tell you a little story and you’ll realize that your car can have an accident without you driving it!!

I thought that my car would be safest in a parking lot, but I thought wrong. A few weeks ago on Sunday, I awoke to a rapping on my door at around 6 AM. By the time I got up, no one was there so I figured it must have just been a mistake.

Later, when I went to my car, I was startled to find my car smashed on one side, both the rear door and the bumper. So I went to the leasing office, and they told me there had been an accident earlier (no kidding…).

Of course my next course of action was to go to the Sunnyvale Police Department since I was informed they had been on the scene. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and so the Department was closed. After waiting a day, I went again and was told that they found the police report concerning my accident. However, there had been a problem in the license plate number the Police officer had entered. Just my luck!

Plus, the officer turned out to be a night officer whose duty was from 9 PM to 7 AM, which made correcting the error more of an ordeal. Anyway, believe me or not, but it took over a week and about 10 phone calls to finally receive a police report! And when you think you’re done with the paperwork, there comes the insurance company!!

The verdict: an uninsured driver who was believed to be DUI has wrecked havoc on 5 innocent cars in a parking lot (yes, 5, including mine!). Ultimately, I never thought a parking lot would be a “dangerous” place to park a car, but you know what? I am glad I was not in it

-GT

Max was Wambo’ing this morning and saying weather in Saint Malo (France) was warm and sunny. It’s a little different for us here in Cali… this time of the year it usually rains a lot here in the Bay Area. It’s sort of depressing but most people who’ve lived here for some time know that good weather’s just around the corner.

I don’t know how many of you are into windsurfing or kite surfing (Hi William!), but this place is absolutely phenomenal when it comes to wind. There are many legendary spots all over the Bay area - Coyote Point by the SFO airport, or Third avenue are favs for Silicon Valley workers who want to chill after work in the summer. For San Franciscans, Crissy Field is incredible - strong winds, good jumping and of course, fantastic views of the Golden Gate, the city and Alcatraz.

My preference goes to Waddell Creek and Davenport, 2 spots on the ocean, about 15-20 miles south of Half-Moon bay. Waddell Creek hosts an international kite-surfing competition every-year - it is indeed the place to go for kite surfers. Windsurfers like myself prefer Davenport, windier, beautiful break and a real good windsurfing community down there.

The season typically starts the 3rd week or March and it lasts tills September or so. My favorite months are April and May since you get the big swells. But it’s good all along. Now what do windsurfers in February? The patient ones go do something else (skiing, snowboarding, etc in Tahoe) - and the impatient ones (like me ) go to the Half Moon Bay harbor to practice a few tacks (jibes, jumps, etc) taking advantage of winds from the big storms.

I thought I’d share a little secret we all keep it at Wambo - we have an idol and he’s name is Max. Max was one of the first to try (and… hmmm… share some “feedback”) the chatbox - the coolest, most awesome feature in the entire universe.

OK, that might be a little bit of an “exageration”, but I kid you not when I say that everyone here listens and cares about what Max has to say. Not a day goes by without getting a ping from Max on new ideas. He usually clicks on our chatbox link, right off the Wambo pages, or he IMs us in Wambo.

So what does this expert in telecommunication networks, no non-sense blogger is advocating? I would say a few very simple things - light-weight software applications that install swiftly without consuming too much memory, easy-to-use interfaces without too much clutter, and yes, bug free software - and trust me there, Max is a meticulous software engineer with an eye for quality. Thank you Max so much for your support - here to express our gratitude - and please keep us motivated and sharp!

Wambo T-shirt

We love you Max!

Anne-Laure

Here is a Wambo profile on UCLA junior, Scott Timpe!

Among the Wambo team he is the “Wambo master” and is responsible for marketing for Wambo.

Mithya: So Scott, what are you majoring in?
Scott: I am majoring in Economics with a minor in accounting.

Q: You’re from NorCal right? Where did you go to High School?
A: Yep, although I go to college at UCLA I’m from Northern California. I went to Leland High School in San Jose

Q: What is your role in your fraternity at UCLA and how long have you been a member?
A: Well… I am president of the Zeta Psi fraternity of which I have been a member since my sophomore year. Believe me, being a leader in the fraternity is a huge responsibility.

Q: Apparently you have a busy schedule… What do you like to do during your free time?
A: I dunno… I like to read, dance, listen to music, watch car races AND participate in racing cars, and watch movies.

Q: What are your favorite movies?
A: That’s a tough question! There are so many movies I like. I would say Pulp Fiction, Godfellas, Casino, and the Star Wars Trilogy.

Q: And your favorite books?
A: I like the Harry Potter Series. Also, I like To Kill a Mockingbird, East of Eden, and Freakonomics.

Q: What do you like most about Wambo? What features do you personally use the most?
A: The most exciting part about Wambo is the potential to expand. I use Wambo all the time for messaging my friends and then group file sharing.

Q: OK, my last question is… what are four adjectives your friends would use to describe you?
A: If you knew what they say about me… [laughing] Just kidding! Let’s see… “funny, hardworking, laid-back, and mature.”

and PS: to whom it may concern: Scott also enjoys long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners. =)

-Mithya

Lunches with the Wambo team are quite a ritual. After 45 minutes “wamboing” each other to tell each other how hungry we are, we eventually decide to go. Then comes the difficult decision we have to make every day. Where should we go?
The choice has become a little difficult lately, and I think I should tell you why

The Lebanese restaurant: We all like it. They have very good combo plates with a choice of lamb, chicken, or falafel, lettuce, pita bread and hummus.
The problem: by the end of the meal, Arnaud always has sauce stains on his pants. Eating meat in a pita bread is such an art!

Carl’s Junior: fast food is not very healthy, I admit, but they have a decent selection of hamburgers, so we go there once in a while.
The problem: the jalapeno burger has A LOT of jalapenos. Last time, Xavier was almost crying while eating his hamburger.

Una mas: this is the Mexican restaurant right next to our office. Their burritos are very tasty.
The problem: in the afternoon, you are struggling not to fall asleep at work.

The thai restaurant: if you feel like a good curry, this is THE place to go!
Problem #1: same as Carl’s Junior. Very good, but it can be extremely spicy. I found it a little bit more misleading, though. When you order a jalapeno burger at Carl’s Junior, you kinda know it’s going to be somewhat spicy. But if you order a “mild curry” at a thai restaurant, and specifically asks for “not too spicy”, what a surprise after you take the first bite . That’s what happened to me today, and my stomach is still in pain…
Problem #2: when they bring tofu instead of chicken… and when you’re someone like Xavier, who hates tofu!

But you know what? There no such thing as one of those small incidents when we want to have a good laugh

AL

Wambo’s roadtrip has been quite the adventure!! From UCSD to UCLA back to the bay area, the trip has been both exciting and enterprising. Although, we traveled to UCSD and UCLA with the same motive (meeting and learning about Wambo users), our experiences in both places were slightly different.

At UCSD, the career fair was held outside providing a more laidback atmosphere. The students that came to investigate Wambo and ask questions had a diverse set of majors from business and econ, to history, to engineering. Everyone at the school according to the team were motivated, open minded, and eager to hear about this “new instant messenger.” There was more of a sense of community at UCSD and the pace of life slower allowing for more attention to detail in the questions and concentrated attention to the Wambo presentation.

UCLA also proved to be a beautiful campus to visit. However, a few differences in the environment distinguished it from UCSD. Firstly, the career fair was held inside an auditorium in the company of other large companies. The show was more formal in manner. Also, we collected a more technical crowd, mostly engineering and computer science students who were curious about intricate details about the Wambo software.

Now you know what sports we play, what music we listen to and what cars we drive down here in the San Francisco Bay area

I woke up this morning with a feeling this was going to be a different kind of day. Arnaud and I wrapped up some dev work last night around 11PM and I could not get myself out of bed before 9:30AM or so. Got into my new car (I’ll talk about that later), drove to the big W, and as soon as I opened the door, got my left foot on the floor, my cell phone started to ring.

“Helloooo-ooo”, I sung

“Hey GT - how are you? It’s Xavier”

“I’m doing fantastic. What’s up?”, I said.

“Hmmmm… don’t freak out, but, I think we’re having serious issues with the server”, he said. “I cannot login from home, and I’ve tried to contact people but everyone’s sleeping or something”, Xavier said.

“OK” (voice I think got a little scratchy all of the sudden).

I rush to my computer, see Anne-Laure at the office and start screening all our network status reports, etc. Big traffic surge - ok - but no worse than the last few weeks. We’ve been growing steadily day-over-day. GC gets in. And Arnaud. Ideas fly by. Nothing too promising. What’s going on?

Solution came by around 3PM - in 3 steps, all at once. Like a bug huge hallelujah of sorts. Arnaud nailed the DB, I fixed the app server, GC debugged the network config. WOW - we can login now. WOW - we’re way faster than a few days earlier. WOW - it’s WAMBO BABY!

OK, back to our secret killer project. This product rocks. Love my job

PS: the video up there was shot just a few minutes ago. Pretty’ Fast!!

Today, Xavier and I decided to meet up at 10am. We first went for a coffee at the coffee shop inside the Angeleno hotel, and brainstormed a little bit about our positioning. I seriously think Xavier dreams about Wambo, because he always shows up in the morning with new marketing ideas! Still a mystery to me…

Then we took off and met Scott and Joel at UCLA. The atmosphere on campus was very different from last Friday, when we went to the career fair. The main alley was filled with students associations and charities, all pitching their line and handing out flyers. We took this opportunity to jump in and hand out pens to people. Quite a few people agreed to stop and talked to us. Interestingly, the guys (meaning Xavier, Scott and Joel) were usually more successful approaching girls, while girls – or maybe I should say “The girl” (meaning myself) – were more successful with guys

No matter what, their feedback was as useful as the one we got at UCSD, but in a different way. UCSD students helped us understand which features people like the best, while UCLA students helped us find the right words to define Wambo the way people like to hear it. I was also very pleased to see that many students we didn’t know had heard about Wambo and even knew friends who were using it!

UCLA on January 22nd, 2007

UCLA students

At 3 pm, we came back to the hotel and I spoke a little bit with Mithya on the phone; FYI, she’s our best blog writer . She was very curious about how the week was going, and how UCSD and UCLA campuses were like. In the meantime, Xavier left to join Scott and Kristi for the Sorority Row walk. Here’s how he described it to me: a lot of girls (no kidding…), a lot of things going on and potentially a lot of feedback from them. Now it’s the end of the day and we’re hoping that tomorrow will be as intense as it was today. I’ll talk to u soon!

View of LA and our hotel

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)