
The news is, I have left PayPal last week, and joined ThoughtWorks as an UI developer.

I have been associated with PayPal for almost 3 years (with 3 months break in between) and without a doubt, that experience had taught me some valuable lessons. But, lately, I have started focusing heavily on JavaScript and I decided to part ways with PayPal to get myself into a work that has scope for JavaScript development.

So, I picked ThoughtWorks (err, they picked me!).

ThoughtWorks is a well known software development company amongst the developer community here, known for their contribution to **Agile practice, Selenium & CruiseControl**. Having heard good feedback about ThoughtWorks from the community & my ex-colleagues at PayPal, I was really looking forward to join the company.

Now, it's been 2 days (just) and the kind of culture I see at ThoughtWorks is something that I have never seen at my previous work places. To start, there are no cubicles. Everyone sit around tables (including Managers, GMs) and one can move to any place as their project demands. There's no fixed location, as such. As someone who alyways had a _cubicle number_ given to him, the cubicle-less arrangement is a new experience to me.

![ThoughtWorks Chennai Office](http://i.imgur.com/45ZOa7f.jpg)

I think I'll cut out here, as it's been just 2 days since I started working at ThoughtWorks. I'll try to write more as the time goes by.

The last time when I wrote a similar post was when I [moved from Infosys to CSC](https://veerasundar.com/blog/moved-to-chennai-india/). In that post, I have added a photo of [IT Highway](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x201/talktoveera/Tidel_Park_junction_panorama.jpg) (OMR, Chennai), even though my previous workplace was not near to that place pictured in that photo. But now, that photo makes more sense as the ThoughtWorks campus is located very near to that road. So, as an end note, here's that photo for you.

![IT Highway, OMR, Chennai](http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x201/talktoveera/Tidel_Park_junction_panorama.jpg)


Joined ThoughtWorks


Just now reached the x.com conference that is happening @ San Francisco. eBay is going to announce its new commerce platform. Will try to update the news as soon as it happens (kinda live blogging!).. wait for the updates.

**9:45 AM **Recently eBay acquired Magento - the eCommerce platform. One of the key point of this new platform launch is integrating Magento APIs with existing eBay and PayPal API.  Two developers from Megento team are now demonstrating how easy is to use Megento even for a common man. Publishing inventory to multiple marketplaces is just a click away in Magento.

Magento demo is going on full swing. The commerce platform has full suite of tools including analytics.

Okay.. Magento got a nice interface with graphs and data points. Something similar to Google Analytics. The analytics module is integrated with Adobe.

Running ad campaign from Magento is just a click away (actually 2). Select the products you want to run ads and then choose the platform (Google / Facebook). Your ad will be online. No doubt that Magento makes the merchants lazy. ![:)][1]

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

**10:00 AM** Magento supports automated localization. A chinese developers demoed how he used Magento to build a site that is automatically translated to French and Chinese.

**10:07 AM **[Magento Connect][2] has over 4000 extension which are downloaed over 4 million times. Its the market place for the Magento extension that enable the users to extend the power of Magento.

[2]: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect "Magento Connect"

**10:10 AM **Launching **PayPal Access** - The commerce identity. Looks like the open ID for commerce. Now going for a demo. PayPal has around 100 million active users. With so much of data, it is a no brainer to introduce such a identity provider service.

Cut and Paste JavaScript and you get the PayPal access button in your webpage that enables your users to login with PayPal account. Makes sense, if your eCommerce website users logs in with an account that has bank account and credit card connected to it.

**10:20 AM **Betsy from ToysRus demoed the product shopping right from a mobile phone using [RedLaser][3] another eBay acquisition. Its a mobile app for scanning bar/qr codes. It also shows the related products from local places when you scan the product code. From there, it is easy to buy the product using PayPal.

[3]: http://redlaser.com/

**10:30 AM **Facebook platform marketing director (eBay) is talking about social design and how friends and social web influence our decision to buy. There's a huge scope for innovating new shopping experience using Facebook *Open Graph *API and *eBay and PayPal *APIs.

**10:40 AM **the keynote is over. The real action starts now. Heading to sessions.

**11 AM **Photos from the break.

![][4]
The X

![][5]
eBay PayPal booth

![][6]
a booth @ innovate conference

![][7]
one of the delicious session, Lunch

![][8]
colorful entrance @ innovate

**12:30 Introduction to X.Commerce platform **- session by _Neal Sample (CTO of X.Commerce)_. Talked mostly about integrating Magento and its capabilities to publish to multiple channels. Lots of information about the [Fabric][9] which connects the eBay product APIs with your application. The news from CTO is the Fabric is already ready and can be downloaded right away from x.com

[4]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/10/1.jpg "1"
[5]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/10/2.jpg "2"
[6]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/10/4.jpg "4"
[7]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/10/6.jpg "6"
[8]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/10/5.jpg "5"
[9]: https://www.x.com/developers/x.commerce/products/x.commerce-developer-package-overview "X.Com Fabric"

**1:45 PM The future of real web applications** - speaker differentiate the difference between native apps and web apps in mobile. As we all know, web apps has the advantage of silent update and wins the race.

**2:00 PM** Use HTML5 CSS3 in mobile development rather than native code. CSS3 can be used to design the attractive animations. Adobe is coming up with [Edge][10] to achieve that. Now all the HTML5 features are demonstrated and recommended to be used. For example, instead of using Cookies, use local storage. Because cookies are insecure and enables the data to be theft with little effort. Local storage don't have this problem.

[10]: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/

**2:15 PM **Wow! cool demo about syncing HTML5 video and your article navigation. Using *data-start *and *data-end* attributes you can mention which part of the video associated with the article so that when the user navigates through articles, the video is synced automatically. Here's an related article  - [Syncing content with Video][11]. Here's the presenter's home page: [Christian Heilmann][12] and the [presentation][13]

[11]: http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/11/syncing-content-with-html5-video/
[12]: http://www.wait-till-i.com/
[13]: http://icant.co.uk/talks/xinnovate/

**4:00 PM** Obviously, the conference saved the best part for the last. The day ended with the key note speech from *Blake Mycoskie *who's the founder of Tom Shoes. Blake narrated his companies story, the cause behind founding such an organization. For the ones who hadn't known about Tom, it's the shoe selling company with a social cause behind it - _every pair of shoe they sell, they give one pair to the children in need'_. The way Blake narrated his story so inspiring that at least some percentage of audiences would have definitely decided to found something similar to what Blake had done.

**6:00 PM **And the day ends with a rocking party @ Moscone. Unfortunately, as we had to travel back to San Jose, we left the party in the midway half-heartedly.

## Day 2 - Oct 13

**10:00 AM **Thanks to the one long hour commute, we reached the place a bit later than we anticipated. The panel were already discussing about the consumer trends. Now looking forward to the afternoon sessions.

**11:00 AM **The end note is **PayPal is absolutely committed to investing more in x.commerce. **

**11:15 AM \***Chris Bangle\* - the Automobile designer is on stage now. And, he says anybody can be a car designer. Download some cool car photos from internet, user photoshop to combine them and your are done!  Never knew that even automobile engineers use the Cut & Paste technique. :)

**11:30 AM **Chris has done with his speech. The main take away from his talk was that you should always answer three questions why, how and what before doing anything.


x.com innovate conference 2011 - Live


Yes. At least that is what we got - an **iPad** - for creating a product within 24 hours during the Hackathon event held @ PayPal.

To give you the context, **Hackathon** is an event organized internally at PayPal to bring up new products developed around [PayPal APIs][1]. If you can develop a useful application within 24 hours, then you'll get amazing prizes including iPads, Kindles, iPods and lots of recognition with in the company.

[1]: https://www.x.com/community/ppx/dev-tools

In the last event, I was part of the team **FooBar **who came at the first place to win the amazing iPads! We developed a consumer focused solution to enable mobile digital meal coupons/vouchers. I developed the mobile app to download/scan the digital coupons, using [Zxing][2] in Android platform. Rest of my team took care of the PHP website that will be used to acquire merchants/users, carry out PayPal transactions and distribute digital coupons to users.

[2]: http://code.google.com/p/zxing/

Overall, it was amazing experience. One day before the event, we were at zero, having only the idea in our hand. But, at the end of the event, we were having a product running on the server and a mobile application ready for the demo. We couldn't believe ourselves, when our team name was announced on the stage!

And, btw, if you are an Android developer and wants to get **$25,000**, then don't miss to participate in [PayPal X Developer Challenge!][4]

[4]: https://www.x.com/people/BaldGeek/blog/third-paypal-x-developer-challenge-google-android-apps

Here are some photographs taken during the event.

_FooBar team:_(from left) Sam, Elankeeran, Koushik, Veera and Venkatesh.
![][5]

[5]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/03/hackathon-1.jpg

Our team, explaining our product to PayPal VP _Nik Sathe_.
![][7]

[7]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/03/hackathon-2.jpg

and finally, the winners are:
![][8]

[8]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/03/hackathon-3.jpg


#paypal (3)