The Dish Stanford people on the move and in the spotlight

Following the release of Google Instant, computer science major FEROSS ABOUKHADIJEH, a member of the Class of 2012, spent three hours programming a creative application of the search engine YouTube Instant.

The website uses Google Instant’s search capabilities to find and immediately begin to play YouTube videos relating to what users type into the search field. As the user types, new videos begin to play.

On Thursday evening, Aboukhadijeh posted the site to his blog, Twitter and Facebook—and went to bed. Friday morning, he awoke to find that the world had taken notice.

As an example, check out this story from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Aboukhadijeh received interview requests, congratulatory emails, a Wikipedia entry in his name and a traffic-flooded server. Originally, YouTube Instant was hosted at Aboukhadijeh’s own website, feross.net, but it was quickly overwhelmed by visitors.

“I just upgraded my server,” he said on Monday. “For a while it was getting a bit slow.”

According to Aboukhadijeh, the site garnered a quarter-million views in three days. The site was so popular that Chad Hurley, the CEO of YouTube, actually tweeted Aboukhadijeh asking him if he’d like a job. On Monday afternoon, Aboukhadijeh had lunch at YouTube headquarters, where he discussed the future of YouTube Instant with Hurley.

“All the employees are getting a kick out of it,” said Aboukhadijeh. “They’re thinking about making it part of the site permanently, which I think would be really cool.”

Other imitators have appeared in the wake of YouTube Instant’s breakout success, including a GoogleMaps Instant and a Google Images Instant. But YouTube Instant has a simple yet attractive design that Aboukhadijeh thinks adds to the appeal.

“I think it’s perfect for Internet users who are looking for a TV-like, channel-surfing experience,” he said. “A lot of the other sites just show you search results, whereas YouTube Instant starts playing videos as you type, which can lead to moments of spontaneous delight.”

Now Aboukhadijeh is working on an improved version of the site with navigation and volume controls and other features based on feedback he has received.

“I have a lot of plans to improve it, but I want to keep it simple,” he said.

Aboukhadijeh is finishing up an internship at Facebook, where he says that everyone has been very happy and supportive. Then, it’s probably back to school, at least for now.

Visit his website to learn more about his recent experiences, which he calls “amazing, insane, sleepless and humbling!”

—Sam Julian

Drew Storen

Major League Baseball has another month left in its schedule. But Minor League Baseball has concluded, and Stanford Athletics reports that a majority of Stanford’s 34 professional players have entered their off season.

Among the former Cardinal stars who made their big league debuts this year were DREW STOREN, reliever for the Washington Nationals, and JASON CASTRO, catcher for the Houston Astros.

Storen spent just 41 games in the minors before being called up. Castro was called up to the Astros in June. As a result, Stanford Athletics says Stanford has boasted 86 Major League Baseball players since 1904.

Among the fan favorites is current Boston Red Sox infielder JED LOWRIE. Lowrie was on the 60-day disabled list, but returned to the Sox on July 21.

Learn more about former Cardinal players in the major leagues from the Stanford Athletics story.

The reigning NCAA champion Stanford men’s volleyball and women’s tennis teams will be visiting President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, Sept. 13. The Cardinal teams are among a variety of NCAA championship teams from the 2009-10 academic year that will be honored in a ceremony hosted by the president.

In a press release about the visit, Stanford Athletics notes that the occasion will reunite CHRIS McLACHLIN, volleyball assistant coach, with the president, a player he coached on the 1979 Hawaii state championship basketball team at Honolulu’s Punahou School.

McLachlin returned to Stanford last season. He served as a player-coach during the program’s infancy in the 1960s. Since then, he has had a storied career in his native Hawaii, winning a combined 14 state championships in boy’s volleyball and basketball. His son, SPENCER, is a volleyball outside hitter for the Cardinal.

Structured Liberal Education lecturers GREG WATKINS and JEREMY SABOL have combined to create hilarious feature-length educational DVDs designed to portray Macbeth and Hamlet in a way teachers, students and Shakespeare enthusiasts have never seen them before.

Watkins, who also serves as resident fellow in Florence Moore Hall, and Sabol designed the DVDs to make Shakespeare approachable and to encourage others to explore his works more deeply.

This is Macbeth, which was produced first, features a TV-style interview format with Sabol cast as fictional host Ralph Holinshed. As Holinshed, Sabol interviews, for instance, Lady Macbeth, to ask about her lack of scruples on the night of Duncan’s murder. As another example, he asks Duncan why he promoted Malcolm over Macbeth as heir to the throne. Interspersed with the interviews are scenes from the play performed by Shakespearean actors in a black box theater and irreverent commercial spoofs and songs composed by one of Watkins’ former resident assistants. One commercial break features deals from Dead Dave’s Medieval Weapons.

A clip from This is Macbeth on YouTube features an interview with the inebriated porter while he drinks at a bar. He tells Holinshed, “You’d drink too if you worked for Macbeth,” before burping into the camera and passing out at the end of the interview.

Bay Area culture correspondent Chloe Veltman wrote about This is Macbeth in her blog, calling it a “powerful and highly entertaining educational tool to help teachers turn elementary and high school kids as well as undergraduates onto Macbeth.”

She said, “This is Macbeth is an unstuffy, entertaining and highly useful educational tool. I’m not in school and I got a kick out of it. Ultimately, This is Macbeth is fun viewing for anyone who’s interested in theater or Shakespeare.”

The reviews among Amazon.com purchasers are equally glowing:

Wrote one, “This video is hilarious and very inventive. I learned more about Macbeth from this video than any cliff-notes. Awesome!”

Another commented, “Having performed and directed Shakespeare since the early 70s, including teaching at the high school level, I have had a chance to see a number of attempts to make Shakespeare understandable to the younger audience—and most of them were just so-so. This Is Macbeth, thankfully, is superb. The makers of this combine a spot-on understanding of the issues and concepts in Macbeth with a highly entertaining and contemporary vehicle to convey them.”

Watkins, who holds a joint PhD in religious studies and humanities from Stanford and an MFA in film production from UCLA, wrote and directed This is Macbeth and co-produced it with Sabol, who also teaches philosophy and literature in the Continuing Studies Program. The two are next hoping to tackle Romeo and Juliet.

Visit the websites of This is Macbeth and This is Hamlet.

David Lobell

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has awarded a 2010 James B. Macelwane Medal to DAVID LOBELL, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science and a center fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

Established in 1961, the Macelwane Medal is awarded annually to as many as five individuals “for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding young scientist (less than 36 years of age),” according to the AGU website.

Lobell’s research focuses on identifying opportunities to raise crop yields in major agricultural regions, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change around the globe, including Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States. He earned a PhD in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford in 2005 and a ScB in applied mathematics from Brown University in 2000.

Lobell and two other medalists will receive the award in December at the AGU annual meeting in San Francisco. Previous Stanford medalists include Azadeh Tabazadeh, Steven Gorelick, Paul Segall, Norman Sleep and Amos Nur – all from the School of Earth Sciences.

—Mark Shwartz

The Volvo Environment Foundation has awarded its annual environment prize to HAROLD MOONEY, the Paul S. Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology and senior fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

The foundation noted that 2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity. Mooney, it said on its website, “is a leading voice in the biology of global change and has been widely recognized for scientific excellence and outstanding accomplishment. He has championed the idea that biodiversity is a key piece in ecosystem functioning, contributing to the shift in perspective from a species-centered approach to one based on ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity.”

The foundation added, “During this International Year of Biodiversity, recognition of the work of Professor Mooney is appropriate and timely. He has truly engaged in performing leading science in a broad spectrum of critical areas, connecting the scientific community into performing major syntheses and scientific assessments. In all of his work, Professor Mooney has involved diverse stakeholders from all parts of the world with the aim of informing policy making to bring about lasting development that is positive for present and future generations as well as for the ecosystems that support them.”

Mooney will be recognized during a November ceremony in Stockholm.

The Tuesday edition of SLAC Today, the daily enews of the SLAC NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY, features a delightfully funny article by Calla Cofield about efforts 50 years ago to name the newly conceived, 2-mile-long accelerator. It originally bore the ominous name Project M.

Among the proposed names? STanford ELectron Linear Accelerator, or STELLA; Stanford Linear Accelerator Project, or SLAP; and our personal favorite, by Nobel Prize winner Felix Bloch: Stanford’s New Acquisition For Ulcers, or SNAFU.

Read more in the Aug. 31 edition of SLAC Today.