Getting Ready For Hackday

Getting in the mood for Hackday.

Chris&anHeilmann,DundeeUniversityHackDay17/02/2010

We’re here today to tell you quickly about the university hack program and what the heck Hack is.

Hack in Yahoo is our way to play and invent.

By allowing people to build whatever they want we keep them happy.

We also find out flaws about our own products and learn about technologies that are not in the normal stack.

By taking part in this program you get a chance to show what you can do.

To your professors, to us but most of all to yourself.

We will give you some cool building blocks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naelyn/112630649/

The simple plan:

Use blocks - solve problem.

We want to see things that are practical and make a difference to you and/or to other people.

!University

Good hacks have a few ingredients.

1. A problem solved

2. Data

3. Interface

4.Platform

Hack ingredient #1: A problem that needs solving.

(And an audience that needs it solved.)

Find something that is nagging you and use technology to fix it.

Or try to tackle some larger issues.

Politics / Voting

Green / Environment

Accessibility

Hack ingredient #2: Data.

The world is full of data sources.

Some of them get offered to you in very easy to use formats.

Others need to get converted to more useful formats.

(which is a hack in itself that can make a difference)

Some very good data sources:

http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html

http://data.gov.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data

http://programmableweb.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog

The trouble with data:

You need to get access to the data sources (API keys, authentication)

You need to get data in formats that are easy to use for your use case

You need to filter the data down to what you really want to have in the end.

All of the above multiplies in annoyance with the amount APIs you use.

A great workaround:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

YQL turns the web into your database.

select * from {datasource} where {conditions}

select * from flickr.photos.search where text="donkey"

select * from google.news where q="healthcare"

select * from query.multi where queries in ('select * from nyt.article.search where query="healthcare"','select * from microsoft.bing.news where query="healthcare"','select * from google.news where q="healthcare"'

)

select content from html where url="http://www.foxnews.com/" and xpath="//h2/a"

select * from google.translate where q in (select content from html where url="http://www.foxnews.com/" and xpath="//h2/a"

) and target="fr"

Using YQL has a lot of benefits:

No time wasted reading API docsUsing the console makes creating complex queries dead easy.Data filtering down to the least amount necessary.Fast pipes.Caching + converting Server-side JavaScript

Using YQL is easy! (PHP)

Using YQL is easy! (JavaScript)

Hack ingredient #3: Interface.

Interfaces for the web that really work are hard to build.

Therefore the cleverest thing you can do is using libraries.

Libraries.

(...)

Personally, I use YUI and jQuery - depending on what needs to be done.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

Using YQL and YUI:

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/11/video-heilmann-yql/

Hack ingredient #4: Platform.

You can build a hack for any platform you like.

Personally, I like to build web apps.

Using web technologies you can support other platforms, too.

Appcelerator Titanium

http://www.appcelerator.com/

However, everything goes. Surprise us.

Some demos:

GooHooBi

http://icant.co.uk/goohoobi/index.php?researchhttp://github.com/codepo8/GooHooBihttp://vimeo.com/8075850

http://keywordfinder.org

Keywordfinder

GeoMaker

http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/http://github.com/codepo8/GeoMaker

Flickrcollector

http://isithackday.com/hacks/flickrcollector/http://github.com/codepo8/flickrcollector

Mapumental

http://mapumental.channel4.com/

Lack of talent or experience is not a show-stopper.

Collaborate and find some good ideas and then go for it.

Chris&anHeilmannh@p://wait‐&ll‐i.comh@p://developer‐evangelism.comh@p://twi@er.com/codepo8

Thanks!