5+ Big/Cool Things Built with PHP

This is not a technical analysis of PHP but more a narrative concluding that PHP still has a spot in modern development, and isn't going away soon. If you are already a PHP developer or getting started, you can seek out the sexy side of the moon and get on with modern PHP frameworks, Content Management tools like WordPress, and global e-commerce blockbuster like Alibaba.

Facebook was once built with PHP and so is WordPress

Alibaba Taobao.com uses PHP

While not the sexiest, Alibaba and its Taobao.com are the defacto industry standard for  e-commerce in China. Wanting to customize your e-commerce template? You will have to do a bit of HTML CSS JavaScript (not jQuery) and PHP.

Php language is commonly seen in chinese internet apps, including taobao.com 

WordPress is a PHP site

Writing that journal entry, press release, or even build a fully functional Content Management Site or just a powerful website, you can use PHP. WordPress built itself and its Content Management tool with PHP. May be PHP is a bit more poetic than we think.  

Beautiful Frameworks like Laravel

Laravel beautiful modern frameworks almost too good to be PHP

Laravel is the beautiful modern framework that actually uses PHP

Laravel is a modern, beautiful framework that actually uses PHP! It wants beautiful documentations too! GitHub deployment, hip conferences, minimalistic documentations, dependency manager, and rails like command line boiler plates, build-in database and rails-like authentication APIs... this is possibly the sexiest form of modern PHP possible.

MailChimp uses PHP for its blog and production environment

MailChimp crunched 30 million emails daily with PHP production environment

MailChimp team used PHP for almost everything development, even their blog, and definitely the production environment. 30 million emails were handled daily by the production environment programmed with advanced PHP frameworks and optimized with modern architecture. (2010 Source)

Accessible personal sites in a splash via cPanel and SQL database

Getting started with coding, just bought a domain and ready to set up your own site? Outsource the back-end to Parse for mobile or something fancy... or go old school and subscribe to a hosting service: generate a SQL database in the cPanel and connect it easily with the old and good connection.php with a bit of help of Filezilla and get your back-end in seconds. Unless your site goes viral... this may be just enough for your personal blog app, hackathon demo... etc.

Though not necessarily sexy, PHP is here to stay

Of course, popular APIs like MailChimp's API provides wrappers in many modern languages, not just PHP. Facebook was at first built with PHP, and of course still provides API access via PHP and other wrappers. The battle about how effective, efficient or NOT modern PHP is as a programming language is on-going, and often PHP is on the lower side of the balance, but it's definitely here to stay, it's supported in many cases. And yes being a PHP developer will not be out of a job ... yet. 

Getting started with programming? May be start with PHP and then Ruby / Python to appreciate the more modern languages a whole lot better. 

Hotel at Home : W Hotel Lifestyle

Once a consultant, always a consultant. On the many nights spent in hotels, consultants have learned to accept brand hotels as their homes. It's a must to ensure sanity. Starwoods hotels and their loyalty program SPG are particularly popular among posh technology and business strategy consultants with shiny suits and a bit of tech savy modern twist. 

#SPGLife W Hotels really stand out in modern hotel culture. The brand like many other hotels offer merchandise for sale online for customers to "take the hotel home". Today I came across three interesting pieces of merchandise on a specialty W Hotel sales

Modern Tech Savy Lifestyle: W Hotel Take Home Merchandise that Really WOWs

W Hotel Room Scent Perfume / Home Fragrance

Marketing now employs scent to invoke memory and longing. W Hotel defines the scent of modern taste with this perfume like Westin defines its SPA like hotels with the scent of white tea.

W Hotel Room Accent - Pillow, Cushion and Throws

W Hotels strive to invoke a sense of youth, sexuality, modern urban lifestyle, this tiara beauty queen must have inspires a sense of wild youth and adventure - party life as the #SPGLife ?

Even for the symbol of modernism, this throw has too much of an electric blue for a bandana / bed throw.
But it really shines brilliant design when you take a close look at the pattern.

This brilliant throw has a unique W HOTEL Dallas pattern spelling out silhouette of oil drills, longhorns and hardcore machinery. It shines light on the life of the American south, the trucks, fields and the people, making this a unique piece worth a second look.

W Hotel Room Lifestyle Accessories - Tote

Just like the pillow, this "princess" beauty queen tiara tote is designed to shout we need "pampering", a bit modern sexy and the City? Urban cinderella? Such a rich kid of instagram tote #RKOI

How to get a job at Square? - Girl Geek Dinner Edition Part 1

This post includes my notes and researches on how to get a job at Square, the credit card reader and e-commerce company. Attending Girl Geek Dinner at Square tonight. Doing some due diligence and brushing up on programming skills. While I am not interested in a job at Square, I am a Square Market merchant and eBay store owner At Lotus Boutique, so e-commerce and tech topic of interests, tech career counseling - also topic of interest.

Having raised more than $300 Million dollars in funding (introductory read: how to get a job at square by +Mashable ), and having been founded by Twitter founders, Square hardly needs to convince people to join. Intersecting hardware, software, mobile, financial payment processing, and pushing the frontier of use of new frameworks (Ember.js D3 for its Seller's Dashboard), Square is hardly a easy pick for any dazzling ambitious souls. You can read about the development and wireframing process here. And engineer Allen Cheung decided to explain it in more details on Quora (why the framework?).

If you are applying for an engineering job, it's best to know the stack and mobile dev environment, here's Quora's take by the Engineering Manager, Zack Rock. And why not read the company's own words on how to get in? The Square Engineering Corner blog provides some insights into the nature of the job and how to get one here. You can learn about the pair programming interview, or the code challenges. What's on a company's website, is really a fair game to ask in any interviews.

In the Mashable article, Seth claims that Square engineering interviews start with a Skype call with a code problem to be worked out with a real engineer (read, this takes time and energy, submit a good solid application. These interviews aren't cheap to come by).  And if all goes well, then the candidate proceeds to a full day problem solving oriented interview to get a taste of what working here is really like.

Perks? You can have faith this place has amazing perks, so all the more reasons to beef up your raw talent or do lots of homework.

I will do a part 2 after the girl geek dinner, which usually provides valuable insights of what the process really is like and how to get into the door faster. Stay tuned. 

Last but not least, Square hires for plenty of business, finance related roles. With some due diligence, good talents and a strong professional background, really, any one has a chance. You don't have to code, but if you can, super. There's a strong engineering culture here

Bulletin:
Mashable article How to get a job at Square http://mashable.com/2013/02/17/square-jobs/
Square Engineering Corner blog Ember.js and D3 for dashboard http://corner.squareup.com/2012/04/building-analytics.html
Square Engineering Corner blog http://corner.squareup.com
Glassdoor talks about Square interviews http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Square-Interview-Questions-E422050.htm
(Quora links are embedded in the article)

Announcement: At-Lotus Top Brand Hosting Beijing International Design Week

One of the top brands that we carry at At-Lotus Boutique
At-Lotus Boutique eBay
At-Lotus Boutique Square
At-Lotus Boutique Shopify
is now hosting competitions in Beijing for the International Design Week.
This is exciting news for us, considering that China is our next market.

We are excited that Chinese designers will be featured in this competition.
We are also excited to continue to deliver the best products to all corners of the United States. Will be posting more Kikkerland products soon!

At-Lotus Boutique store banner

A Day in Life of Technology Consultant

Tis an exciting that I announce I am offering +Helpouts by Google  on how to interview and plan for a career in consulting, specifically technology consulting. I will be able to review your resume, and cover letter, walk you through details of how to prepare for cases and win that opportunity to start an amazing career. Prior to joining two YCombinator companies in the Silicon Valley, I was a Technology Consultant at a top consultancy. I have won 7 awards including a national award, led recruiting efforts and reviewed resumes. When I was still a student at Stanford University, I already worked at the Stanford Career Development Center as a Student Business Advisor (and I love it). I am comfortable tutoring and mentoring younger folks too, for those who are interested in planning a business career before or during college.

You can now book Dilys Sun on Google Help Out

MailChimp Update Plain Text Editing is Gone

Got a reply from MailChimp newsletter support to confirm that indeed plain text editing (see our conversation trail and the full reply below), which used to be a part of the workflow of composing a newsletter is removed. Only 1% of MailChimp users take advantage of the feature. The company I work for AirPair - instant access to world's best developers via pair programming on video chats takes quality control seriously, and always devotes time to editing the plain text edition (some developers may prefer this version, as it is similar and non-cluster like many other news, group, digests and news/releases of development tools they subscribe to).  We are "MailChimp 1%"!

MailChimp used to have an option allowing editing plain text form of a newsletter. It's the ultimate plain form (possibly the most readable, definitely the most light-weight), the next is probably with images disabled (with the alts displayed), then there's the full multimedia versions, some even with GIF embedded (like General Assembly ones).

During our weekly newsletter sprint, I noticed that the feature is missing and tweeted +MailChimp @mailchimphttp://www.twitter.com/mailchimp

Gasp @mailchimp took away the Plain Text editing option? Where can I find a blog post/ release about this? What's the deal behind it
— Sun (@i_stanford) March 11, 2014

Thankfully the reply came quickly with a full reply!
Read the full-length MailChimp support reply regarding plain text editing being removed or see the screenshot below.

@i_stanford Hello Sun, the Plain Text step of the campaign editing process has indeed been removed from ... https://t.co/ZQX9HAtCKm
— MailChimp (@MailChimp) March 11, 2014

Meat of the reply:

"after a great deal of research, our UX team discovered that only about 1% of active users were actually altering the content on the Plain Text step. As a result, the decision was made to elimate the separate Plain Text step and the Campaign Builder will now automatically package the content contained within the HTML portion of the campaign with the plain text content when the campaign is sent." - MailChimp

MailChimp support eased my mind instantly that I am not going insane when discovered that the Plain Text Editing is missing. It turns out to be a deliberate design decision in MailChimp's v9.0 release.

Thank you awesome growth boss +Igor Lebovic showing me how to be a +MailChimp super user one step at a time. Of course we are a startup, and our newsletter is not perfect each time, but just proud that we spend a lot of time on quality control, iteration, and really think about testing and deploying newsletters rather than just publishing.

10 Surprises at YCombinator's First Female Founders Conference

March 1, 2014 is a game changing day: for the first time ever, YCombinator's usual demo day spot (the Computer Science museum in Mountain View) has a room full of wonderful women, and not just women, FemEngineers and extraordinary #femalefounders! Everyone at the conference is optimistic that 2014 is the pivoting year when female founders rise to the occasion and take leadership posts in advancing product innovation and entrepreneurship. Here are some highlights, surprises and unusually touching, shocking, and inspiring moments.

1. Adora Cheung (co-founder of Homejoy) gave an unusual speech about the ups and downs of entrepreneurs, who are "sprinting a marathon" full of surprises and hurdles. Her rise to success took maxing out her credit card, becoming nearly homeless, brushing teeth at McDonald's and becoming a "cleaning lady" and had to justify why she wanted to clean with a college degree. (I personally think she's the best speaker. YC alumni seem to all agree that her speech was inspirational).
2. Jessica Livingston (partner at Y Combinator) recalling having to do everything that was non-technical at the founding of Y Combinator: from doing tax to carrying air conditioners. And working hard with her baby boy on the desk, next to her work station. 
3. Jessica Livingston (partner at Y Combinator) announced the Female Founder conference on the YC blog, yet Paul Graham was the cover of Inc.'s press. 
4. More than 50% of the room raised their hands when asked if she is an engineer!
5. More than 50% of the room raised their hands when asked if she is a founder!
6. Kathryn Minshew (co-founder at The Muse) and her team were rejected by more than 10 accelerators in NYC before getting accepted into Y Combinator.  Kathryn is also a super fast talking ex-McKinsey consultant (yay, consultants! Disclaimer: I am an ex-consultant too). Her team all left their glamorous job to found their dream startup.
7. Jessica Mah (co-founder at inDinero.com) went from poster startup child on newspapers and the president of UC Berkeley's Computer Science club to getting five-star office spaces with Jacuzzi hot tub, to nearly broke, had to let go of everyone, went through a lot of self doubt, to land in the typical startup in the living room/garage situation. She and her co-founder each had a room in a house, and hack with the entire team in the living room. Some say she's the very best speaker.
8. The audience is super amazing! Among the audience, there are serial entrepreneurs, startup 1st employees, engineers, PhD's and graduates of all kinds of bootcamps including Dev Bootcamp, Hackbright, and Coding Dojo (lolz myself?). There's NatashatheRobot, Michelle Sun a Hackbright graduate and a Buffer engineer who went to found the First Code Academy in Hong Kong, China, Vanessa Hurst who co-founded Girls Develop It and Code Montage. Jessica Greenwalt, a Y Combinator crowdsourced medical info startup co-founder, Vivian Xue the founder of The Box Noir and Soothie in Los Angeles. The list goes on and on and is nothing short of being inspiring.
9. 34.5 % of women founders have started companies with their spouse/ significant other. It is still unfortunately true that women may have trouble finding co-founders at time. Founding a company with a significant other can be potentially a hack.  PG and Jessica have been co-founders at YCombinator when they got married.
10. Last but not least, women have founded or co-founded extraordinary startups. It's still a "surprise" though already a fact because there isn't enough coverage yet. Homejoy, The Muse, Eventbrite, InDinero, YCombinator, HireArt, VMWare, Science Exchange, and many more!!

If there's a take away from Female Founders and the annual Startup School : found a startup now, it's not easy, there will be ups and downs, yet it is extremely rewarding! There's a huge network of founders already, ready to share their experiences.

While not a founder yet, Dilys has been blogging about technology and startup life in the Silicon Valley. She was previously the Codecademy Girl at the Crunchies 2012 award ceremony, and has been writing about learn-to-code, women in technology and web development bootcamps ever since. Her passion is to share the Silicon Valley busy daily moments with her readers via her CodeSumBlog. Dilys currently works at a YC-backed startup - AirPair.com, and previously worked at codecademy.com, another YC-backed startup.  Press about Dilys Sun