Jeremy Johnstone

Ok, some would say I have taken my passion for Yahoo! to an unhealthily insane level now, but I disagree completely! Today my car got wrapped finally in Yahoo! branding. It’s something I have talked about doing for a long time, just never fully committed to making a reality. Well, those days are now behind us and you can see the newly transformed car here on Flickr:

My Yahoo! wrapped 2006 Honda Accord

I’m going to repost the Q&A from the Flickr set here as well:

Q: Did you really pay for this to be done?
A: No, Yahoo!’s buzz marketing team paid for this.

Q: Does Yahoo! pay you for this?
A: No. I have no monetary compensation for having my car wrapped.

Q: Why are you doing it then?
A: There are a number of reasons, but the simplest of them is that I truly love Yahoo! this much. You might not agree with my passion and ways to express it, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to spread the word about how awesome Yahoo! is.

Q: Where can I see it?
A: I have my car on campus most days. If you are on campus, ping me and I would be happy to show it to you. Otherwise, check my blog and you can find out about my scheduled public appearances with it (aka conferences, Yahoo! events, etc).

Q: Can this be done to my car?
A: Definitely! Ping me and I will tell you where to find out more information (assuming you are an employee of course).

If anyone has any other questions, please feel free to leave them in a comment or IM/email me. I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone has.

The first scheduled appearance off campus of the car is at the car show which is part of Camp Yahoo! 2007. I’ve heard rumors it might be positioned center stage, but we will wait and see if that becomes a reality or not. Unfortunately that is not open to the general public and I am not sure when the first time it will be out in public yet (other than my normal daily driving). Please keep an eye on my blog as I will post future public appearances of the car here, assuming you are interested in seeing it in person.

Finally, if you see me out and about in public, please be sure and come up and say hello. It just might get you something for free by doing so. =) (no promises, but it should be something cool).

Let me know what you think!!

As anyone who has read my blog knows, it’s been a very long time size I have written a blog post (almost a year to the day). I honestly don’t have a strong excuse for not posting, so I will just blame it on the fact I wanted to switch blog software. Turns out, it was more work than it’s worth to switch and I didn’t find anything else which was perfect for my needs, so I decided to just upgrade to WordPress 2.2 and kick myself back into blogging again. A lot has happened since I last wrote a blog post, so I will try and recap it slowly over the coming weeks. Probably the biggest piece of news is the fact I switched teams within Yahoo! two months ago. I’d finally reached the point where I thought a change was needed and warranted back in April of this year. After doing a little looking around in Yahoo!, I decided to join the Yahoo! Web Messenger team and work with an old friend of mine ([Ben Halsted]) who I had referred into Yahoo! about a year ago and a half ago. We had worked together previously at a company he cofounded (WebGroup Media / [Cerberus Helpdesk]) and I really liked the projects they were working on and thought Flex2 might be a nice break from PHP/HTML/JS work. Since then I have fallen in love with Flex for webdev purposes (will go into more depth why in a later post) and don’t regret the switch for a second. I used to run away from anything Flash based as typically speaking, sites are always slow, bloated, and well just “flashy”, but the new Yahoo! Web Messenger has given me faith that Flash can do cool things and do them fast. Anyway, I’ll be posting a bunch more from now on, so please check back often. Things might be a bit in flux for the next day or so (site design wise), but if you bear with me it will be smooth sailing soon.

Well if you do, come find me at the International PHP Conference - Fall Edition 2005 (http://www.phpconference.com) and I will let you know what you have to do to get some!

Photos of what I brought are here: Yahoo! swag photos

This past week I was distinctly honored to not only have the opportunity to work for a company who truly cares about helping those in need, but to also have the privilege to fly to Houston and work with an AMAZING team of Yahoo’s reconnecting those who have experienced the unfortunate tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina with their loved ones. Yahoo, in partnership w/ SBC, setup computers w/ high speed Internet access and provided the evacuee’s with the ability to post their location + search for loved ones, as well as get email and voicemail accounts so they could be contacted easily by those looking for them. In the few days I was there, I had the good fortune of witnessing numerous people get reunited with their loved ones. It was truly an emotional experience which I think would touch even the most insensitive of person. I feel we positively impacted many people’s lives in a way which will never be forgotten.

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Since I have been lagging on my posting lately, I will just rollup several news items about Yahoo which I found interesting into one post.

1.) Yahoo was recently ranked #1 as the fastest growing company in the US by Fortune magazine. Google wasn’t even in the top 25. (Source: http://www.fortune.com)

2.) Yahoo is collecting 10 terabytes of data per day and that doesn’t include web pages and HTML content, just usage patterns, etc. That’s just an insane amount of user data to collect and store daily, IMHO. (Source: http://www.thestreet.com)

3.) Well, not exactly news, but interesting none the less. Yahoo! definitely knows how to send people off (college interns) in style. Check out these photos of the party. (courtesy of Rasmus Lerdorf)   http://phpics.com/yahoo/aax and http://phpics.com/yahoo/aaw