Chinese version (中文版).

Hello.

You have reached the web page of Niniane Wang. I live in Mountain View, California. I was previously an engineering manager at Google and Microsoft.

My blog.

Projects

Some products I enjoyed working on:

Chartered and led Lively by Google.
Tech lead for Gmail ads.
Google Desktop Search. We laughed, we wept, we banged our heads against the table.
(20% time) Movie Showtimes on google.com.
Cloud rendering, which shipped with "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight". SIGGRAPH sketch, Journal of Graphics Tools paper, etc.
Rendering rain and snow. SIGGRAPH sketch, Game Programming Gems article, etc.

A note to Chinese visitors: 最近我去中国探望个大学同学, 觉得在网络上找可靠的酒店很难。 我们俩做了个网站收集 中国宾馆点评和照片。 中国网友有兴趣可以看看, 给我们 提意见。 谢谢!

Fun

A few photos.

My name "Niniane" is pronounced like "Ninian". It sounds like Vivian, substituting n's for v's. ... I chose the name in 1995. It comes from The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart. Before that, I went by my chinese name 王忻.

My brother Tom is a video game programmer on The Sims for Electronic Arts, in the Bay Area. I'm very happy to be living in the same vicinity as Tom, the most phenomenal little brother.

Writings

While driving down to California, I suddenly figured out what the song "Hotel California" means to me.

A couple career-advice articles I wrote:

An entertaining piece I found on the differences between men and women.

Of Bets and Maps

In the year 2000, three Caltech friends and I embarked on a weekend road trip in eastern Washington state. We stopped at a little diner -- scrambled eggs, apple pie, your standard rural American diner.

On the wall hung a whiteboard with the daily specials. The bottom of the whiteboard was covered by a drawing of an orange crescent half-emerging from blue waves. Dan Egnor, programmer extraordinaire, said the crescent is the moon. I maintained that it was a shark.

"Why on earth would they draw a shark?" asked Dan. "In orange?"

"I'll bet you," I said.

We agreed on the terms: the loser would place the winner's name into their next shipping software. If Dan won, his name would have been hidden into Flight Simulator 2002. If I won, my name would be in Dan's next search engine creation.

We called over the waitress. "What is that on the bottom of the whiteboard?"

"It's the ocean."

"No, the thing coming out of the waves."

"Oh, a shark."

Dan went on to create Google Local Search, and 5 years later: here I am.

E-mail:

If you enjoyed this, let me know.

I leave you with this Simpsons quote:

Judge: Your license is hereby revoked, and I'd like you to attend traffic school and two months of Alc-Anon meetings.
Homer: Your honor, I'd like that stricken from the record.
Judge: No.
463-447-5268