I would like to be the second Widgeteer to publicly welcome Microsoft Windows Vista into the world. And here comes the shameless plug: Yahoo! Widgets 3.1 (our current version) officially supports Windows Vista, making ours the leading Widget platform for Vista with over 3,700 Widgets available for you early adopters to start using *right now*.
Anyway, per the parenthetical in the post title, there’s also some other news that seemed to get lost in the whole Vista launch hullabaloo. Today, after 2 years, 7 months, and 16 days at Yahoo! and a little over 8 months as a product manager, I shipped my first product. (Can you believe CNET missed that?!) It’s nothing major — in fact, it’s kinda been my side project for the last 6 weeks while we work on some bigger sexier things (coming soon…) — just a Yahoo! Search gadget for the Windows Vista Sidebar and an accompanying page that aggregates downloadable software from Yahoo! available for Vista. (Note: You must have Vista actually installed for all of this to work properly)
This first definitely means a lot to me — it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I came to Yahoo!. And, what means even more to me is all the hard work put in by the people who made it happen. Thanks to Jeff, Billy, and Alfonso at The Skins Factory for your tireless efforts as well as to Brady, Marcus, Ariel, Anne, Shane, John A., Arlo, and Ed for your help. And, an extra special shout-out to Derrick and John H., who burned the midnight oil to get it all live on Vista launch day.
Making this week even better is the very positive response to the blog post Ed and I worked on over the weekend (thanks to Zealous, Brady, and Thi for their help as well). While TechCrunch called the post “surprisingly unbiased,” my favorite analysis came from a French blogger, who said it was (and excuse my rusty Francais) “a superb lesson on the transparency and authenticity of teams at Yahoo!”. It is really gratifying to see an honest and open approach to communicating with our developers and users pay off in this way. All of us on the team are extremely passionate about what we are doing, and I feel that shines through.
Which brings me to the final bright spot of this week, the team. Those of you who know me personally know that the last 8 months haven’t been the easiest. When I came into the group, there was a bit of uncertainty. But, we have continued to work hard — building great products while also building a great team. And even though we’re all working our tails off, it seems like I’m having more fun coming to work everyday because of who I get to work with and what we get to do. Yesterday, one more piece fell into place. But, we’ve got a few more spots left to fill. So, check out the jobs that show up when you do a search for “Widgets” here.
Three things to smile about this week, and it’s only Tuesday. 