We added a twist to our Hackathon (which we'll get to shortly), but traditionally Hackathons are engineering-centric events: 24 sleep-deprived hours in which coders bang out the ones and zeros, and in the end some small glorious innovation transpires.

We hacked on lots of things, but a couple to note:

We Hacked Mobile

We have a reputation for our industry-leading mobile apps, and during the Hackathon we took the opportunity to expand into push notifications and position our platform to better support HTML5. This of course made our mobile initiative more buzzword compliant, but more important, it made our tools more accessible to a wider audience.

We Hacked Maps

Perhaps the highlight of the day was the maps hack. As we've grown, it's been difficult to keep up with all the new employees and where they sit. We'd been managing this with an (albeit impressive) shared spreadsheet. But at our Hackathon, some engineers bested the spreadsheet by integrating Google Maps with our employee Wiki. (Click on the screenshot to get an idea of why we're so excited about it!)

We Hacked Rooms

Yup, the twist was we incorporated the entire company, from accountants to executives—everyone hacked on something, and some hacked rooms. We've got nearly as many conference rooms as there are countries, and if we have an employee contingent from a country, it earns a room name. (Make sense?) Anyway, "Norway" got hacked with minimalistic Scandinavian furniture, painted landscapes and silhouettes of skiers, and, most important, an electric fireplace to make all the other conference rooms jealous.

A Great Success

The whole event was a blast. And although you can't superficially create innovation, Hackathons allow a unique opportunity to celebrate it. Getting the whole company on board was a huge success, and we're looking forward to our next Hackathon soon.

Functional Testing is a key component in any development process. Its main objective is to identify potential issues before they reach production and negatively impact eventual users. These tests tend to be time consuming, and are often described as the ‘bottleneck’ in the development cycle.

At this point, Automated Functional Tests kick in. Several tools are available to generate these UI tests (here at Medallia we use Selenium and HtmlUnit), but in general the test suites based on these frameworks rely entirely on the UI, making them unnecessarily time consuming and flaky. A particular suite that is aimed at testing a specific functionality requires a number of preconditions that are usually fulfilled by creating the various necessary components through the UI. As a result, a test that has the goal of verifying some small case ends up having a lot of boiling code that takes quite some time to execute, and also might fail due to inherent flakiness of the UI test.

About 3 years ago we switched from Subversion to Mercurial which allows us to improve our workflow by keeping all features on separate branches until they are ready to be merged. Each release gets its own integration branch, and these are numbered sequentially; our current release branch is called e55 and the next will be e56. Once a feature has been developed and tested, it is merged to the next release branch.

At Medallia, a key component of our system currently works with an open source relational db. Since this component mainly queries the db entries by key, we want to try to switch to a key-value storage system and take advantage of several benefits provided by such a system, including distributed replication, load balancing, and failover. One of our objectives is to re-architect this component in a way that will allow us to achieve horizontal scalability, that among other things will help us alleviate the high disk storage requirements we currently have.

Recently we took the time to look into this (and other technological improvements too, exciting times at Medallia right now!), and we reviewed several options. To make a long story short, we ended up with two finalists, Apache Cassandra and Project Voldemort.

These two projects seem to be the most mature open source options in their class, and both provide a native decentralized clustering support including partitioning, fault tolerance, and high availability. Both are based on Amazon's Dynamo paper, but the main difference is that Voldemort follows a simple key/value model, while Cassandra uses a persistency model based on BigTable‘s column oriented model. Both provide support for read-consistency where read operations always return latest data, which was a requirement for us.

Medallia is a fast-growing, profitable, privately held technology company located in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Menlo Park, CA. We build great Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based solutions for Global 2000 companies, and we have a 100% client recommendation rate. More than 50,000 businesses and business units use our products to gather, analyze, and act on feedback from customers, partners, and employees, including Fidelity, Four Seasons, Sephora, Hyatt, Gap, and Lego. Our customers delivered more than 400 million survey pages using Medallia in 2009 alone. By adopting Medallia’s products, companies can better understand and adapt to customer needs. More satisfied and loyal customers, in turn, help generate better business results. In fact, measured in terms of market capitalization, publicly-traded Medallia customers have outperformed the S&P 500 10X since 2003 and 4X since 2008.

Medallia is also a great place to work, with an unconventional, creative, collaborative, intellectual, and positive environment. We have an unusually low turnover rate, with less than 10% of employees voluntarily leaving the company, and most of those for reasons unrelated to Medallia — like to join a spouse relocating to Europe. Of the few employees who have left, 30% have actually returned! We are also finalists for the SF Times best workplace award, which will be awarded in the coming weeks. We hire inspiring people you will like working with. To find out more about our company culture, please visit http://medallia.com/careers/opportunity

We actively seek talented people for the following positions:

1) Software Engineers
We are hiring java experts at all levels - entry-level, senior, and lead positions. If you are a passionate programmer who lives and breathes to develop innovative algorithms, please check out our full job descriptions below:
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/software-engineer/
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/senior-software-engineer/

2) Summer Software Engineering Interns
We invite student java experts to spend the summer working on innovative projects with us, including data mining, visualization, and more. We welcome students who are looking for an opportunity to apply their research work to practical problem solving that we can incorporate into our application. Preference is given to students within one year of graduation, but exceptional java developers will be considered at any point in their education. Apply soon, as these positions are filling up quickly!
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/2010-summer-engineering-internships/

3) Operations Engineers
We are looking for both Operations Engineers and IT/Systems Administrators who will enjoy working with our talented software engineers and client services team to keep our application running smoothly.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/operations-engineer1/
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/it-systems-administrator/

4) Web/Graphic Designers
We seek someone with an impressive online portfolio to play a key role in designing our web and print presence through new web site initiatives, as well as the development of marketing materials (both
print and online).
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/web-graphic-designer/

5) Office Assistant/Admin (30 - 40 hours per week)
We seek a smart, friendly office assistant who multi-tasks well and is able to work with minimal guidance. The ideal candidate will have a car available for running errands, and will be available to work 30 or more hours per week, including weekday afternoons until 6:30 pm.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/office-assistant/

6) Client Service Managers and Senior Managers
We are seeking Client Service Managers and Senior Managers who can take ownership of specific Fortune 500 accounts from the first day. Medallia’s Client Services Managers build deep relationships with top management at client companies, leverage those relationships to understand underlying client needs, then channel Medallia’s engineering and management resources to address those needs – often through innovative software solutions.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/client-services-manager-senior-manager/

7) Analyst and senior analysts
We seek quick-learning, articulate, and analytical members of our client services team, where responsibilities include a blend of account management, project management, data analysis, product
development, and business consulting.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/analyst-and-senior-analyst/

8) Product Marketing Manager
Medallia is looking for an enthusiastic and talented product marketer to partner with our product and marketing teams and develop compelling collateral and provide key strategic contributions. The ideal candidate for this position will have demonstrated cross-functional leadership.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/product-marketing-manager/

9) Staff Accountant
We are seeking a Staff Accountant with working knowledge of the general ledger function and US GAAP for internal corporate accounting. This position will support much of the general ledger
activity in our US parent company as well as for two foreign subsidiaries.
http://www.medallia.com/careers/position/staff-accountant/

To apply, please review our hiring process at http://www.medallia.com/careers/hiring-process, and then send your resume and cover letter to jobs@medallia.com, with the job title in the subject of your email.

Being the new kids on the block, Medallia representatives spoke to about 30 students in all over the two days that the fair was held. “The first day was a bit slow,” said Juan Pablo. “Only a few students knew about us attending the fair." As word spread, more and more students became interested in the opportunity of being part of an elite team of developers that is building an actual product - right in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The door has been opened…

Recruiting students at local universities as well as those abroad is something that Medallia strives to do. With the help of Juan Pablo and a few fellow Argentines, Medallia looks forward to returning to ITBA next year to recruit more world class students, and is also hoping to build a lasting relationship with the institution. Juan Pablo concluded, ”I believe this is a great opportunity for us to attract great talent, and for students to gain unique work and cultural experience in the U.S.”

This project started as I explored ways to view lyrics while listening to my music library on the iPod Touch. Ideas kept coming and I added some concepts (and code) from iMovieMash.com plus great content from the multitude of public video, music and search APIs.

The result was iMusicMash.com, an iPhone and Android G1 social web application that takes your music experience to a whole new level of enjoyment and discovery. You can start with the friends' playlists we already have or load your own iTunes music library. The interface is familiar as it mimics the iPhone's iPod. For each artist, we bring photos from Yahoo Boss Image Search, concert dates from Eventful, and live Twitter discussions. Then, for each song, we bring great YouTube videos, lyrics from LyricWiki, similar songs from Last.fm, and friends' songs for the same artist.

I recently added lyrics search and artist/title search.

iMusicMash was a winner in the Yahoo Developer Mashup contest at the recent Mashup Camp in Mt. View, California.

• Make it trivially easy to write good test cases
• Reduce boilerplate code to a minimum
• Avoid static state through dependency injection
• Strict M-V-C separation
• Prefer convention over configuration

Never rent a bad movie again. I created iMoveMash.com after renting one bad movie too many at the local supermarket's DVD rental kiosk. The free-wifi sign near that kiosk and my long time interest in mobile applications sparked an idea to help movie lovers make better rental decisions.

The resulting mobile web application integrates 7 data sources, including DVDPlay's kiosk content, Blockbuster's latest movies, IMDB movie ratings, Kids-In-Mind movie ratings, YouTube, Yahoo Movies, and Google Maps.

iMovieMash lists the kiosk's or Blockbuster's new movies in descending IMDB movie rating order (best movie first). Each movie I list is also a link to Yahoo Movies and search results from YouTube's API. The YouTube search query is biased in a way that is likely to return trailers or videos related to the movie itself. When clicked, the YouTube results launch the native YouTube application in the iPhone or iTouch.

iMovieMash took 2nd place at Mashup Camp 6, where I demo-ed the application dozens of times in 5 minute "speed geeking" sessions. That was a good bit of fun, and re-enforced the concept that successful products have a simple message, solve a real problem, and look good.

The application was developed with Perl for the backend and the IUI iPhone framework for the front end. It looks best on the iPhone or iTouch, but runs fine on a Blackberry or any web browser. Just goto http://imoviemash.com.

    

Also, researchers at Glasgow University have a proof-of-concept video of a creative new use of the motion sensor: Shake the phone and hear "your messages" rattling around inside it.

[updated 9/3: fixed typo]

Those who have followed this blog will know that I like to like to play with unusual input methods (see my earlier posts on , ambient light sensors, and the SmackBook).

As it turns out, the iPhone has a built-in LIS302DL, a tiny 3-axis accelerometer. While some have attempted to use it from within the Safari browser (the Tilt game detects changes to the width of the browser page; it is basically used as a 1-bit input device), its potential is still somewhat untapped.

After a rather lengthy bout of reverse-engineering (I had barely touched ARM assembly before this), I finally figured out how to access the raw data from the accelerometer itself, as can be seen in the video above. Source code will be posted as soon as possible is posted here. (update: yes, it is possible to access the accelerometer directly through UIKit without this hack -- however, you'll be locked to the default sample rate, which is too slow for some of the fun stuff)

Straw poll: What would you like to see on the iPhone?

Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera:

Fast forward a few weeks later: I'm on a plane heading to our headquarters in Menlo Park. Eclipse (and a bunch of other technologies) are serving me our app via localhost--nice! ...that is, until I needed to reference those pesky $.ajax parameters!

With that in mind, and the remainder of the flight, I threw together a jQuery reference widget. It's been of value to us front-end developers at Medallia, and now we're returning some love to the jQuery community with this public release.

The widget provides simple, searchable, offline access to the API. More, we've provided the ability to search older APIs, as well as a few quick-links to online resources.

Per Resig's suggestion (and thanks John for all your help), we're releasing this with an MIT license and have made it available under version control.

We hope you find it of value!

Download the widget, v1.0 (View screenshots)

I've updated the widget to the latest documentation 1.1.3.1.