February 9, 2010

YQL Open Table for Google Buzz now live

We were seeing a lot of hype around Google Buzz today and we thought YQL would love to chew on the data. Fifteen or so minutes later we had an Open Table (the blog post took a bit longer :P ) wrapping the Google Buzz API. It's now live on GitHub: github.com/yql/google/google.buzz.updates.xml.

You can use it in your queries like this: USE "http://github.com/yql/yql-tables/raw/master/google/google.buzz.updates.xml" AS google.buzz.updates; SELECT * FROM google.buzz.updates WHERE user="sydlawrence".

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Erik Eldridge, Christian Heilmann, Jon LeBlanc
YDN Team

Follow @YDN on Twitter for more from the Yahoo Developer Network.

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February 8, 2010

INSERT INTO twitter.status ...

Want to start building a Twitter application using YQL? We've recently added a number of new tables to the community table list that provide full read/write access to Twitter's APIs using OAuth. These tables allow you as a developer to interact with Twitter as if it were any other YQL table: Not only can you read from and write to Twitter, but you can easily merge data with other Yahoo! and 3rd-party APIs and web services.

For API endpoints requiring authorization, OAuth signing is done automatically via YQL Execute and HTTPS. All you need to pass through is your consumer key / secret and access token key / secret as keys in your YQL query. That means you no longer need to ask your users for their passwords and there's no reason not to start using OAuth in your Twitter applications. Why should I use OAuth for my applications?

To get started with these new tables, we've got some simple examples:

1. First, set up a new Twitter application. (You'll need your own Consumer Key and Secret for some read/write actions from Twitter)

2. Load the YQL Console with the new tables:
https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/?env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys

3. Experiment with the following YQL queries.

a. Get single status:
SELECT * FROM twitter.status WHERE id='8036408424';

b. Get a user:
SELECT * FROM twitter.users WHERE id='mlaaker';

c. Tweet something:
INSERT INTO twitter.status (status, oauth_consumer_key, oauth_consumer_secret, oauth_token, oauth_token_secret)
VALUES ('tweeting from yql!', '@your_consumer_key', '@your_consumer_secret', '@your_access_token', '@your_access_secret');

d. Current weather at a tweet's geo-location:
SELECT * from weather.woeid WHERE w in (select woeid from geo.places WHERE text in (select Placemark.address from google.geocoding WHERE q in (SELECT geo.point FROM twitter.status WHERE id="8098940289") LIMIT 1));

With these new tables, we hope to see more interesting Twitter applications built on top of YQL... especially those that integrate other best-of-breed web services. Don't see an API or web service you want? Check out the existing open tables, build your own, and contribute for others to use in their projects.

Zach Graves
Product Design Developer

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Announcing the Yahoo! Brasil Open Hack Day 2010, 20-21 March

Brasilian developers, start your engines! It’s time again to show off your developer skills at our second Yahoo! Open Hack Day held in São Paulo, Brasil on 20 and 21 March 2010.

This event is the Brasilian version of the already traditional Yahoo! Open Hack Day held in Sunnyvale Campus and other editions in London, Bangalore, New York, and Djakarta. The last Open Hack Brasil in November 2008 was a huge success, with approximately 200 attendees and lots of very cool hacks!

It will be 24 hours non-stop of hacking, learning, fun and the chance to meet fellow hackers from around the region. Yes, 24 hours. But don't worry, we will have food, beverages, and everything you will need to be comfortable, happy and unleash your creativity! There will also be sleeping areas in case you want to take a nap.

In our last Hack Day in Sao Paolo, we had amazing hacks, from mobile applications to hardware hacks. For instance, the winners of the "What the Hack" category used Python, Flickr, Twitter, and open source hardware to build a circuit board with LEDs that flickered more or less intensely depending on how many people tagged photos on Flickr with the official hack day tag.

We also had a very creative non-code hack that made us create a new category - the "Using the environment" hack:

Puff Hacking from fczuardi on Vimeo.

This is the Hack Day spirit!

Join us in creating new applications on top of Yahoo!'s open platforms like YQL, YAP, Meme, YUI3, Pipes, and Flickr. Of course, feel free to use any other open developer tools you like. The best hacks will be recognized with awards, and hackers will win bragging rights until the end of eternity or the next Hack Day, whichever comes first.

While we’d love to have everyone there for the festivities, we do have space limitations at the venue, so book your place now at http://hackday.com.br (in Portuguese)! If you have any questions, please contact us at openhackbrazil@yahoo-inc.com.

The hacking season is now open in Brasil!

Guilherme Chapiewski & Anil Patel
Yahoo! Brasil Open Hack Day Team

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February 7, 2010

Marketing hacks, linchpins, and tech women of valor

I've been unusually busy the last few weeks, so I haven't had much of a chance to sit quietly, read deeply, or sift singlemindedly through the online conversations I care about. Here's a breathless sort of wrap-up.

Jailbreaking the Status Quo

While I've been chipping away at a backlog of work, people I attend to have been reacting to disaster in Haiti; the mystery and mystique of the imminent iPad; the form and future of reading; closed devices and the threat to tinkerers; the form and future of work; and issues of gender, self-assertion, and corporate advancement.

Back on January 15, Internet pundit and author Clay Shirky posted A Rant About Women, which encouraged women to (depending on your point of view and interpretation): adopt the most callow attributes of male braggadocio, promote themselves more boldly in the workplace, use "male" tactics of hyper-confidence and self-inflation to open doors. Not surprisingly, the post unleashed a firestorm of response, ranging from sweaty high-fives to thoughtful rejections.

This topic and recurring experiences in my own professional life always remind me of the Jodie Foster movie Contact, which does such a wonderful job of showing how even the most tough-minded and successful women can be undermined by lying and unscrupulous corporate climbers. It also reminds me to mention one antidote: the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference for women in computing, where the call for participation remains open till March 16.

Linchpins

January 26 marked the publication of "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?," a new title from unstoppable marketeer and prolific author Seth Godin. In a genre pioneered by Daniel Pink and Timothy Ferris, Godin dispenses advise in an appealing new-think business book about releasing your inner artist and letting your creativity ship. Godin describes a familiar landscape, where being a well-greased cog in the machine and following the rules no longer buys you a job for life. It's a world where creativity and daring and getting your lizard brain out of the way trump corporate entropy and make you indispensable as an artist and employee. To me, one of the most interesting things about Linchpin was the highly original marketing strategy Godin is using to pre-launch the book and extend its buzz. His tactics form a brilliant live demo for some of his key principles.

Godin shipped early review copies to anyone who sent a minimal donation to the Acumen Fund, "a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty." The methods and mantras of Acumen are perfectly congruent with the messages of "Linchpin." By aligning a new, entrepreneurial model of philanthropy with a new model of self-marketing, Acumen gained the attention of a potential community of engaged advisors and contributors. Through a short series of incredibly well-crafted "direct marketing" emails about Linchpin and Acumen, Godin, was able to assemble a niche of people who probably self-identify as linchpins, influencers, and communicators, and would jump at the chance to participate and contribute a positive review. Twelve years after selling his pioneering Internet marketing firm Yoyodyne to Yahoo! for millions, Seth Godin remains the kingpin of high-order and successful marketing hacks.

For Godin, it's not about the size of your swagger, it's about finding artful workarounds that cut through the clutter. With Linchpin, Godin cuts a clear trail straight to an ideal audience of social media consultants, corporate innovators, and an assortment of dreamers who have everything to gain by aligning themselves with his message and his brand.

Uppity Like Me

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to She's Geeky, an unconference for "connecting women in tech," which took place last weekend at the Computer History Museum in Moutain View. The event was organized by Kaliya Hamlin, a larger-than-life woman and an artist of the sort that Godin describes -- entrepreneurial, altruistic, courageous, and committed. Kaliya is also an interesting proof of concept and/or counterpoint for some of Clay Shirky's allegations.

As a hired facilitator and volunteer Open Space practitioner, Kaliya has been reinventing tech conferences, meetups, and camps for as long as I've known her. As a speaker and pioneering advocate for OpenID (way ahead of many of the guys!), the Open Web, and gender balance at tech conferences, she's been banging on "men-only" doors, sparking conversation, and igniting opportunity for the rest of us too.

Havi Hoffman
YDN Blog Editor

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February 4, 2010

Yahoo! India invites you to join the first India Hadoop Summit

On Feb 28, 2010, Yahoo! India will taking part in the country's first Hadoop Summit, in Bangalore.

This day-long event will be co-hosted with CloudCamp Bangalore 2010. Hadoop will be a dedicated track in this session.

At this event, you'll hear participants from the Yahoo! India Hadoop team, industry experts, and major universities. The event brings together leaders from the Hadoop developer and user communities.

Speakers will cover a rich variety of topics including the current state of Hadoop development and deployment, Pig, performance optimization of Hadoop Cluster, testing in Hadoop, real-world case studies and Hadoop in academic research.

We'd love it if you could join us. You can find more information, see the schedule, and register at: cloudcamp.org/Bangalore.


Preeti Priyadarshini
Hadoop Team, Yahoo! India

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Tech Thursday - Python evolution, HTML5 image editor and the iPhone as a disk drive

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked.

• Eugene Tsu shows the world how to write a CV
• Shutup.css is a custom CSS to hide comments from famous blogs - in case you like to concentrate on the content.
• A nifty trick using CSS3 allows you to check links on the page for missing hrefs.
• Simon Whatley has a list of free user experience books to read online.
• Want to use your iPhone as a disk drive? iPhone Explorer lets you do that.
• TTF to EOT is a small script to convert font files. Good for @font-face.
• Mozilla has an HTML 5 offline image uploader and editor application hack.
• WideImage is a simple PHP image library.
• Nine things developers want more than money is something to show to your bosses.
• Evolution of a Python programmer - as a python source code.

You can propose links to us on Twitter (@YDN) or try bookmarking them on delicious with the tag "forydntt".

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