Web Services Archive

August 30, 2006

Answers API now speaks RSS

Starting a few minutes ago, all of our Yahoo! Answers APIs began accepting a new output type, RSS. The API Explorer has also been updated; it will now output XML, JSON, RSS, and PHP. If you don't feel like building an app, or you're just getting started, you can use your RSS reader to subscribe to a search just as if you were on the Answers page itself.

Kent Brewster

Posted by Kent Brewster at 10:56 AM

August 15, 2006

Got Questions? We've got Answers!

Yahoo! Answers today launched four Answers APIs. You can search for questions about anything, narrow your search down by category or user, and see full details of any question, including all the answers.

In addition to XML and serialized PHP, the Answers APIs supply results in JSON format, so you can write proxy-free Web applications. Much more is online at the Developer Network, including our first API Explorer, so you can try things out right there on the site without writing a line of code.

Dan Theurer

Posted by dantheurer at 11:07 AM

August 8, 2006

Site Explorer API Update and Search APIs at SES San Jose

If you've been using our Site Explorer APIs, check out the Update Notification (ping) call that we added today. This coincides with an overall update to Yahoo! Site Explorer.

In addition, this is a big week in the Web Search world. The annual Search Engine Strategies Conference is in town (San Jose) and packed full of search and on-line marketing talks, presentations, and panels. On Thursday morning (at... yawn, 9am), I'll be on a panel simply called "Search APIs." As you'd expect, I'll talk briefly about our Search APIs and answer questions. :-)

Hopefully I'll see some of you there.

Jeremy Zawodny

Posted by jzawodn at 2:56 PM

Introducing the Python Developer Center

We're launching the latest addition to the YDN site today: the Python Developer Center. YDN Developer Centers offer tutorials, links and resources to help you get the most out of YDN using your favourite programming language; PHP and JavaScript are already covered, and more languages are on the way.

Python is a great language for exploring web services, thanks to its handy interactive prompt and extensive range of built-in libraries. If you're new to Python, we have collected some useful links to get you started. If you're already comfortable with the language you can dive straight in to the HOWTOs which discuss techniques for accessing the YDN APIs.

We've also created a new Yahoo! Group: ydn-python. Join up and get help or discuss your favourite API tricks and techniques.

Simon Willison

Posted by ywsblog at 12:07 PM

August 4, 2006

Rollyo relaunches, still powered by Yahoo! Web Search API

Dave Pell and team at Rollyo have relaunched their "roll your own" search engine with lots of new features, and we're proud that Rollyo is powered by the Yahoo! Web Search API. The "roll your own" concept core to Rollyo means that users can easily create search engines that include only the sites they select for the search engine. There are many features beyond the core -- read their About page for all the details.

When presented about Yahoo! APIs at Duke University last spring, I demoed Rollyo and showed everyone the Duke Hoops engine which searches across thirteen different sources chosen by the user -- everything from the local newspaper (Durham Herald-Sun) to major media (Sports Illustrated) to favorite bloggers (http://www.dukeblogger.com/). If Duke basketball isn't your cup of tea, then maybe pop surrealism is what you're looking for -- the possibilities are infinite.

I really love the way Rollyo describes the role of Yahoo! web services in the Rollyo FAQ: "Yahoo provides the engine and Rollyo puts you behind the steering wheel." Nice.

We're not the only ones who love Rollyo. Check out the review from TechCrunch and SearchEngineWatch. Congrats to the Rollyo team on a succesful relaunch!

Chad Dickerson

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 7:00 AM

August 2, 2006

OSCON Wrap-Up: Talks, People, Shirts, and YUI

Last week several members of the YDN team (myself included) spent some time up in Portland at the annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention.

I always enjoy attending OSCON (I've been to all of them--scary!), and this year was no exception. The talks I attended easily held my interest and the people, as always, were top-notch. Lots of good geek-out time was had by all.

Above: Avi Bryant of Smallthought, the folks behind dabble db, sporting one of our shirts. :-)

And giving out YDN t-shirts at the Yahoo! booth meant getting a chance to find out what people do and don't know about the APIs we offer. In fact, I made a point of quizzing booth visitors to see which Yahoo! APIs they knew of. Our Maps and Geocoding APIs were especially popular.

But I surprised people most often with YUI, our BSD Licensed User Interface library. Each time I'd describe some of the cool things you can do with it and someone would say, "that's great... but are you actually using it on Yahoo?"

"Of course we are!" I'd say.

Using the YUI blog it was easy to rattle off Ten Things Yahoo! Is Already Doing with the YUI Library. This isn't just some code we threw over the proverbial wall. It's actually running on Yahoo! and is even heavily documented. Take that, Matt! :-)