Introduction to Hacking & Yahoo! APIs

1. HACKING FOR
INNOVATION
Saurabh Sahni
YDN Product Guy, Hacker, Evangelist
Twitter: @saurabhsahni

5. WHAT IS A HACK?
An innovative solution to a real world
problem; quick and dirty workaround,
yet effective.

6. Hacking is nothing new

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11. However, today we are
looking for software
hacks

12. Let’s see some examples!

18. HACKDAY: SIMPLE RULES
• Take something from idea to prototype in a day
• Demo it at the end of day, in three minutes or
less

19. The question is though: where
do I start?

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22. Find a problem that needs
solving and then have a go
at solving it!

23. CHALLENGES
1. Campaign creative developers and designers
! Unique & engaging advertising/brand experience
2. Web & Mobile developers and designers
! Solve a digital media problem

24. How to start building it?

25. To build a typical web
hack you need data,
access and an
interface

26. The web has lot of data around

27. ProgrammableWeb.Com – 3517 APIs

28. http://developer.yahoo.com

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

30. To access the data easily
you can use YQL

31. YQL turns the internet into
a database.

32. YQL LETS YOU FILTER, COMBINE, TWEAK DATA
ACROSS HUNDREDS OF WEB SERVICES.
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console

33. How will you build a
system to calculate
distance between two
places?

34. Use Vincenty's formulae

35. Or use YQL

36. Select miles FROM
geo.distance where
place1=“San Francisco”
AND place2=“New York”

38. There’s also Yahoo!
Pipes to do this visually

39. http://pipes.yahoo.com/

40. Data however is not
enough.

41. You also need working
interfaces

42. Technologies are easy:
HTML
CSS
Javascript

43. Making it work on all
browsers and OS is
tricky

44. So, we have YUI!

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

46. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/

47. You do not want to write
multiple versions of same
app for different devices

48. So, we open sourced
http://developer.yahoo.com/cocktails/mojito/

49. We have the what, the how,
now about the where!

50. http://developer.yahoo.com/geo

51. Placemaker helps you find
locations in content

53. Mapping News

55. http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/

58. Yahoo! has also opened up
Search via BOSS

59. BOSS is Build Your Own
Search Service
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/

60. BOSS allows you to do
web, news, images
and blog search

61. The easiest way to start
with BOSS is to use the
YQL console
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console

62. select * from boss.search
where q=“New York” and
ck=“!” and secret=“!”

63. http//www.flickr.com/photos/friarsbalsam/5736126308/sizes/o/in/photostream/.jpg

64. Get a FREE consumer key
and secret from
http://hackyourworld.org/hacku/

68. You can do much more
with BOSS
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69. And our other APIs & tools
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70. Presenting your hack

71. DO NOT SHOW US SLIDES ABOUT YOUR HACK
Powerpoint = Fail!

74. HAVE A PLAN-B
Record screencast
Do not depend on internet
Keep your stuff ready in browser

75. WHAT ARE JUDGE LOOKING FOR
• Creativity
• Working Prototype
• Built during the hackday
• Solves a real problem
• Great User Experience
• Uses data or technology in a unique and
interesting way

76. AND ONCE YOU ARE DONE
Keep your hack live
Show other WPP hackers what you have
done
Stay in touch with @ydn

79. 2. A good hack doesn’t
need to be a big thing
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83. HACK RESOURCES
http://developer.yahoo.com
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console
http://www.github.com
http://hackyourworld.org/
http://isithackday.com/hackday-toolbox/
http://talks.php.net/show/hacku/
http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann

84. THANKS!
http://slideshare.net/saurabhsahni
http://twitter.com/saurabhsahni
http://github.com/saurabhsahni
http://www.saurabhsahni.com