Looking for that next job on your career path to success? Starting to think about an internship next summer? Looking for your first job when you graduate? Look no further — gain an inside track to some of the best tech companies around.

All you have to do is complete this online form. Upon submission, you will receive an email notification to confirm receipt and posting of your resume. The email will also include all the contents entered in the form for your record. The resumes will be available to GHC2008 sponsors through December. Submit early so you will have a chance to interview at GHC2008! They are waiting to hear from you! More info…

TITLE: Volunteer Web Developer/Webmaster for Gracehopper.org.

SUMMARY: The Web Developer/Webmaster will help the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology update and maintain the conference web site for the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, held in October. This is a virtual volunteer opportunity. Hours vary from one hour a month to several hours a week as the conference draws closer.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Website Maintenance
• Work with internal technical, program, and marketing teams to update content and resolve Wordpress issues.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• Two years Wordpress experience (running on Apache/MySQL on FreeBSD)
• Experience with SSH and FTP and Unix command line
• Hands on experience with PHP, HTML and CSS
• Hands on experience with Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks, or any other image editing software
• Familiar with Flickr
• Experience with social networking-based community web sites a definite plus
• Experience with RSS and blogging preferred
• Experience with installation and maintenance of wiki and message board software preferred
• Extensive knowledge of web standards and technologies
• Familiarity with basic networking and system infrastructure platforms
• Understand and practice website design principles and best practices
• Understand and practice content management principles and applications
• Ability to work independently
• Ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing
• Ability to meet deadlines.
• Positive attitude and ability to work in a team setting

UPDATED June 15, 2008

Is it still possible to find cheap airfares? With prices rising — the average cost of an airline ticket in the United States was up 10.2 percent in March, compared with a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and with airlines raising fees on everything from ticket changes to checked bags, it’s no wonder that a lot of travelers are talking about just staying home this summer.

But it’s still possible to score cheap airline tickets. Here are some strategies to help keep your costs down.

This page will be updated as more dates become available so please check back here often!

ABI in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon and Sun would like to announce the opening of the GHC2008 Scholarship Application Site. Full and partial travel scholarships for GHC2008 will be awarded to students and junior faculty. For complete details, visit the scholarship page. The deadline to submit a scholarship application is June 15th. Notification will be made on or before August 1st.

One of our favorite parts of the Grace Hopper Conference is the opening night Poster Sessions. Students and researchers are eager to talk about their work. The just-arrived crowds are happy to listen, and the promise of the week ahead animates the room. Fortified with cocktail shrimp and sensible shoes, we set out to tour row after row of fascinating presentations at GHC 2007. And we spot one that is, well, different. It’s called “The Algorithms of Love.” Love—at GHC? Really?

Four Temple University CIS students—Alanna Burke, Rebecca Mackin, Pauline Romas and Michelle Rufe — decided to explore online dating and the impact of computer technology on the business of love. Choosing four popular dating services: eHarmony.com, Match.com, Yahoo Personals and eChemistry, they examined strategies and technologies the services use to accomplish three principal processes: data gathering, matching and communication. They also determined hardware configurations, market demographics, trends and emerging technologies impacting the growing use of the computer to find that someone special.

The findings of the Temple study are indeed fascinating. In the U.S., spending for online dating will reach $642 million in 2008, with growth to nearly $1 billion forecast by 2011. About 40 million single Americans—40 percent of the country’s total single population—use online dating services. Dating service businesses employ one of two basic search strategies: scientific research, applied to complex matching algorithms based on extensive psychological profiling; or database search algorithms based on users preferred and prioritized criteria. Within those search strategies are a number of additional matching technologies to compare commonalities, weighted priorities or complementary traits. See Algorithms of Love poster. PDF 2MB

So it would seem that love and technology are, if not exactly a match made in heaven, at least soul mates in today’s Internet world.

In an informal roundtable discussion, we asked the women about their unconventional project.

What inspired you to undertake a study on this particular topic?

Rebecca: “The inspiration…was the accessibility and relevance of online dating in the U.S. today. I wanted to know why people thought that a computer, which lacks the ability to feel, could tell someone who they should love.”

Pauline: “…it represents a widely-known application of advanced networking and database technology, as well as a social tool for exploring human interactions.”

Alanna: “I saw an article online about online dating companies filing patents for their matching systems, and I wondered how this could be possible – how can you patent the way you match people?”

Michelle: “I was not particularly thrilled with the idea. After we began research, however, the topic became much more fascinating.

What difficulties did you encounter in gathering information or data for the project?

Michelle: The biggest problem was the relative newness of online dating…not many long-term studies have been done regarding the success rates of dating sites. [It caused us to] modify our research goals…”

Rebecca: “…the lack of support from the companies we were researching. Other than the patents we had found, there was very little information regarding how the companies went about matching people and how confident they were in their results.”

Pauline: “It was difficult to obtain the actual matching algorithms for the major websites, so instead we focused on gathering an understanding of these algorithms through the user-end interactions. The companies protect their actual code, but we managed to gain understanding of their basic functionality by posing as a customer, and also by reading documentation on their methods and success rates.”

Alanna: “We tried to get numbers from every source…whether it be a news article or the sites themselves.”

What was the most surprising or unexpected finding of your study?

Pauline: “The large amount of online dating sites catering to specific dating interests, such as “Sugar daddies looking for sugar babes!”… the steady increase in and large number of online dating subscribers.”

Rebecca: “How different the tactics of matching individuals on each site were. Going into the project I thought there was one basic way online dating sites went about matching users, but instead there are very different ways of finding matches, depending on the expectations of the user.”

Alanna: “I didn’t think the matching systems, especially the scientific ones, would be so complicated. I was also surprised by the statistics–I didn’t think so many people used online dating. A few years ago it seemed pretty taboo to meet someone online, and now everyone does it.”

Michelle: “The most surprising finding to me wasn’t so much a finding as it was a response from the people at the conference. Many of the people we spoke with had their own stories and opinions about the benefits and success of online dating sites. I was also surprised by the volume of data stored and processed by these sites.”

According to Faculty Advisors Wendy Urban and Claudia Pine-Simon, the concept for the project was intriguing and fascinating, but there was a little concern that it wasn’t technical or scientific enough. “I was concerned that there wasn’t enough substance,” said Wendy. “But the students achieved wonderful things with this project.”

In addition to honing research and analysis skills, the students gained a great deal of self-confidence and learned the value of teamwork. According to Claudia, “All these women have very different interests, but they learned to capitalize on each other’s strengths. Their hard work culminated in a project in which both they and Temple can be proud.”

To view the GHC 2007 conference please visit our archives.