blog.mattgoyer.com

Microsoft produced a Redfin Virtual Earth Case Study Video. It features our site, our offices, Mike and myself and will give you a flavor of what I work on:

Comments(0)

While PM blogs marketing, PR, dev and legal rock out on a Thursday afternoon evening:

Comments(0)

After staying up almost all night releasing a new version of Redfin last Wednesday a group of us from Redfin headed to Whistler Thursday night. We were hoping to leave early but of course did not leave the city until 6 PM. Fortunately we made great time and got to Whistler in a record setting four hours. The next day we spent a great time on Whistler riding a ridge repeatedly off Peak chair. Of course the only reason some of us ride is for apres ski and at 4 PM we hit Merlins for round one of beers and nachos:

For round two we headed over to Merlins as we had ski in/out accommodations on Blackcomb. There we got round two or beers, nachos, wings and poutine.

Before:

Close to after:

Having sampled nachos across a wide variety of Whistler venues I have to say that GLC has the best quality and that Merlins has the most quantity.

Unfortunately having consumed so many nachos and beers our team was mostly asleep by 9 PM!

The next day was beautiful sunny day and we got some great runs in on Blackcomb. Here’s Brandon who is about to marry our marketing whiz, Ellie (I also happen to play hockey with him):

Later in the day we headed to Whistler where Donald had a nice jump:

And of course afterwards we headed to Merlins for two rounds of nachos:

We then ended the night with Sylvia’s Wii and Settlers of Catan.

A note to our investors: Don’t worry this was an employee paid for trip unlike our competitors Squaw Valley junket :).

Related:

• My photos
• My videos
• Alex’s post
• Rob’s post

Comments(0)

On Saturday a small group of Redfinners headed up to Crystal for a day of skiing. Here’s Alex loving the snow:

More photos from the day.

Saturday was my 9th day of skiing this season.

Comments(2)

Best Redfin bug ever:

Problem Symptoms:
Espresso Machine is full of water and bean but lights indicate that it believes that there is no water.

Result:
Unable to make coffee

Please contact Scott, Allie, or Chris who were on site at the event and discovered the problem for more information

——- Comment #1 From Rob 2007-10-24 11:34:02 [reply] ——-

Donald knows the drill.

Assigning to him.

——- Comment #2 From Rob 2007-10-24 11:56:48 [reply] ——-

Adding contact info in case someone wants to fix it:

If something goes sideways again please take a step back, breathe, count to 10 and call café west at 888-437-8340 and ask for Josh. They are the distributor
for the machine and can walk you through the repair.

——- Comment #3 From Jeff 2007-10-26 16:32:07 [reply] ——-

last time this happened, someone had to fix the water detection by letting out a bunch of steam. Anyone try that yet?

Note: We haven’t actually had 40,000 bugs.. The bug making machine got left on one night and we ended up with ~30,000 bogus bugs.

Comments(0)

I recently bought a couch and was thinking about buying two Eames Plywood Lounge Chairs (walnut, budget allowing) but our office recently got a ton of Love Sac’s and they’re great. Here’s Rob chilling in a very large one:

And here’s a Redfin employee who shall remain nameless passed out in one today:

Unfortunately I don’t think they will fit in with my modern decor.

Comments(2)

Yesterday Microsoft released some new mapping stuff, Microsoft Releases New Search Services for Internet and Mobile Customers.

Immediately, Redfin customers will notice improvements on maps.live.com when they click through a Redfin listing details page for directions to a listing.

Though what we’re most excited about that is that the Virtual Earth team is now supporting Safari as we had to discontinue Safari support when we switched from our Flash map to Virtual Earth last January (Safari was about 5% of our traffic):

Updates in version 6.0 of Virtual Earth include multipoint trip routing; enhanced geocoding that combines results for multiple geocoders; rooftop geocoding, which provides more precise geocoding results; map control support for Safari 2.0; and the release of MapCruncher beta, making it easier to publish maps overlaid in an application using the Virtual Earth map control.

We hope to release a new version of our site later this year to pick up this change.

Comments(0)

Saturday I wrangled an invite to the Microsoft EXG party (so eHome, XBox and Zune) at Pier 30:

EXG Hosted on Zooomr

And it was quite the party. Free valet parking, numerous open bars, ice sculptures, air hockey, foosball tables, photo booths, three large rooms, food and Eagles of Death Metal played:

Eagles of Death Metal Hosted on Zooomr

But of course like the other large Microsoft party I went to two years ago only a few social butterflies from eHome showed up.

Social Butterflies Hosted on Zooomr

Which is sad because the people I ran into at this party are the people I usually either go out with or run into when I’m out. What I’d prefer is to get a chance to socialize with all the people who normally don’t go out but when there’s a big party they seem to all stay at home probably afraid that the space for the party is too large and they won’t bump into the people they work with. And so even though this party was bigger and more extravagant than last year’s eHome only party I don’t think it was nearly as good because it didn’t bring the eHome employees together. Now it did bring the eHome and other groups together in one space which I’m sure the vice presidents believe will create greater ties between their groups but really there was little meaningful interaction between the groups.

(Begin tangent)

After the party we went to a house party at Jeff and Chris’s place where I discovered that Jeff has a serious Lego addiction:

Jeff’s Lego Collection Hosted on Zooomr

Check out this condo he built:

Jeff’s Lego Condo Hosted on Zooomr

(End Tangent)

Compare this to our Redfin company party last night at Glenn’s house where nearly everyone showed up:

A Blurry Redfin Christmas Hosted on Zooomr

And we had a great time eating, drinking and socializing (though we tend to all those things at work too.) I’m sure next year’s party will be much larger and won’t be hosted at Glenn’s house!

Comments(1)

Glenn, as always, has a funny post up announcing, Thursday-Night Chimichangas at the Redmond Azteca. Short version is that from 5 to 7pm Glenn (CEO), Michael (CTO), and myself (lowly IC) will be hanging out and drinking Corona’s at Azteca (it’s no coincidence that we choose a bar very close to Microsoft campus!) by ourselves unless some of you stop by and give us some company.

Feel free to come on by to heckle us on our bad performance, grab a free drink, suggest a feature or two, give us your resume, find out if Glenn really is as funny as his blog persona or find out that I’m really not a hipster.

And today we also updated our jobs page so take a look if you’re looking for SDE/SDET jobs in Seattle or San Francisco.

(Yes, I’m going to keep pimping Redfin job openings because we can’t hire more PMs until we hire more devs :) ).

Update: Apparently this conflicts with the Seahawks vs. 49ers game. Seeing as we’re web geeks we didn’t appreciate this until someone else pointed it out and after some deliberation we concluded that it’s likely you might not care either and if you do, well, you probably have a DVR.

Comments(4)

Today we’re expanding our Seattle blog and have hired a whole bunch of Redfin Mavens to scour the MLS and go visit listings to get the real scoop. The blog is edited by Marie who I’ve meet twice at Redfin focus groups. In her words:

House hunting has made me bi-polar. The high of reading a listing describing my dream home and then the depression that ensues upon getting there and it’s anything but. Meanwhile, I’ve hired a therapist to help me forget about that perfect house I was outbid on, and that one killer deal I just missed. To keep me from losing my mind and for the benefit of everyone in a similar predicament, the Sweet Digs blog now has a group of real estate mavens writing about homes for sale in the Seattle area. They’re scouring the market for the hottest properties, best deals, hidden gems, and white elephants, giving honest opinions and detailed reviews to help people find new digs.

To be honest, I’ve never met someone more real estate obsessed than Marie. Comments like, ‘Some days I get bored of Seattle real estate and find myself searching in San Francisco’ or ‘the feature I want most is to get notifications of new listings on my phone’ or ‘why can’t I browse Redfin using my [insert latest Smartphone model here]’. Hopefully Marie and the mavens now have an outlet for their enthusiasm :).

Comments(1)