Craig Nevill-Manning address to NZCS

Craig Nevill-Manning is a Kiwi, but also Director of Engineering for Google in New York.

Talking about what Google did to help with aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. They used their mapping tools to identify areas most affected etc. Also they set up a person finder service where people could register people they were looking for, or for people to say they were ok. Had 50,000 entries on it. Needed a lot of translation though.

Quoted Larry Wall who said the three virtues that programmers have are laziness, impatience and hubris 🙂

Craig said the laziness and impatience is good as it means you get things done on time, and don’t try and empire build. And the hubris is the fact you’re willing to let people see what you have created, and are confident it will work.

He’s having problem getting a website in Chrome. A wit yelled out “Try Safari” 🙂

He’s now writing some code  live from the stage. Some in the audience are yelling out suggestions as he fixes bugs. In the end he runs out of time, so we don’t get to see a mash-up for Google Maps to show where boat ramps are.

Just showed off an image recognition service – you hold it up to the webcam, and Google recognises it and searches for info on it. Cool.