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April 7, 2008
Last Friday and Saturday I went to the Over The Air conference which was a lot of fun. When a hack event or conference focuses on a narrow section of technology it can really be a sign of how vibrant a community is. With over 250 participants Over the Air showed that the London mobile scene is really happening right now.
It seems like we are starting to set a trend. Whenever we bring Fire Eagle to a hack event the fire alarms go off. Talk about a hot product! Like London Hack Day, Over the Air had to be evacuated for a while. Happily it was a nice day and everyone chilled out on the lawn to chat about ideas.
On Friday night Yahoo threw a little bash to celebrate the hacking going on, with lots of hackers staying overnight there was plenty of activity. The DJ cut a pretty tune late into the night while the hacking started upstairs.
There were more talks on Saturday including Steve Marshall talking about Fire Eagle. Steve wrote the Fire Eagle Python API wrapper and was well versed to give the attendees an understanding of what Fire Eagle is about and how to use it. Steve is going to be at the Fire Eagle developer evening in London later this month.
Ricardo Varela presented the latest Yahoo! Go open platform. His tutorial on our Blueprint language and how to use the
And finally, the hacks. At the end of the conference the hackers were asked to present what they had worked on. The imagination and creativity was plain. There were hardware hacks from a bluetooth, accelerometer controlled robot (called 'Octobastard' for the 8+ computers strung together to control it) to a virtual sword fighting game requiring you to wave your phone around like a loony.
There were also software hacks a plenty with Twittering from your windows mobile, a 21st century version of the fridge door accepting post it notes over SMS and browser sync to load whatever web site you are reading on your computer to your phone and vice versa and many more winners. Not to forget my personal favourite for a pedestrian city like London, location based capture the flag game using Fire Eagle. It's probably good for me to get away from the computer every now and again for a little exercise.
A big thanks to the BBC and University College London for hosting such a great event in an technology area which isn't always in the limelight. And thanks to all the other sponsors who made it such a great event. Thanks to Alex Lee and Daniel Appelquist for the photos used in the post.
Tom Hughes-Croucher
Y! Developer Network
Posted at April 7, 2008 11:58 PM
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