An Experiment in Bloggery » yahoo

Yahoo Messenger for OS X

Kevin Ballard — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:24:26 +0000

Earlier today Yahoo! finally released Yahoo! Messenger for OS X 3.0 beta 1, with an incredibly positive reaction from the general public. This is the app that I’ve spent the last 8 months working on, and I’m really proud to have finally released our first public beta. Even if you don’t use the old client, you should check it out. It’s a 100% rewrite in Cocoa, with a brand new spiffy UI, Growl support, avatar support, and more.

Tom Cruise at Yahoo!

Kevin Ballard — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:16:00 +0000

This morning, Tom Cruise flew over (in his private WWII bomber plane) and came on to Yahoo! Campus to give a talk as part of Yahoo!’s Inspirational Speakers program. And let me tell you, it was pretty darn cool. Turns out Tom is a really nice guy, and pretty funny too. Tom and Terry (CEO of Yahoo) talked about Tom’s movie career, and had a few amusing anecdotes about Tom and Terry. Quite enjoyable.

After the event I managed to get a few pictures of Tom with my cameraphone. Click on the picture below to view the set.

A new dawning of work

Kevin Ballard — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:34:51 +0000

Well, yesterday was my first day at my new job. For those of you who don’t know, I’m now working at Yahoo! as a Macintosh programmer. Interestingly, my coworker (co-Macintosh programmer) is a FOAF that I met at WWDC (our mutual friend is Karl Adam, a.k.a. PantherMachina).

Anyway, I flew out here 2 days ago and am staying (for the short-term) with my older brother Rick, who works at Apple. I’m looking into getting an apartment with my coworker (his name is Tristan), but we need to find something appropriate first. In any case, the work here looks to be quite interesting and enjoyable - last night Tristan and I stayed until, I believe, 9:30 PM. Granted, I was just customizing my computer to have all the things I want/need on it, but he was actually doing some work.

For those of you who use the Yahoo! Instant Messenger network, you’ll be happy to learn that the project I’m working on is the Yahoo! Instant Messenger client. However, I think that’s all I can tell you, so don’t bother asking for details.