Introductory talk for the University Hack round in Dundee, Scotland.

1. Getting in the
mood for
Hackday.
Chris&an Heilmann, Dundee University Hack Day 17/02/2010

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

3. Hack in Yahoo is our
way to play and
invent.

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

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

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

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

8. We will give you some
cool building blocks.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/naelyn/112630649/

9. The simple plan:
Use blocks - solve
problem.

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

11. !University

12. Good hacks have a
few ingredients.
1. A problem solved
2. Data
3. Interface
4.Platform

13. Hack ingredient #1:
A problem that needs
solving.
(And an audience that needs it solved.)

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

15. Or try to tackle some
larger issues.

16. Politics / Voting

17. Green / Environment

18. Accessibility

19. Hack ingredient #2:
Data.

20. The world is full of
data sources.

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

22. Others need to get
converted to more
useful formats.
(which is a hack in itself that can make a difference)

23. 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

24. 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.

25. A great workaround:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

26. YQL turns the web
into your database.
select * from {datasource}
where {conditions}

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

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

29. 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"'
)

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

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

32. Using YQL has a lot of
benefits:
No time wasted reading API docs
Using the console makes creating
complex queries dead easy.
Data filtering down to the least
amount necessary.
Fast pipes.
Caching + converting
Server-side JavaScript

33. Using YQL is easy! (PHP)

34. Using YQL is easy! (JavaScript)

35. Hack ingredient #3:
Interface.

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

37. Therefore the
cleverest thing you
can do is using
libraries.

38. Libraries.
(...)

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

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

41. Using YQL and YUI:
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/11/video-
heilmann-yql/

42. Hack ingredient #4:
Platform.

43. You can build a hack
for any platform you
like.

44. Personally, I like to
build web apps.

45. Using web
technologies you can
support other
platforms, too.

47. Appcelerator Titanium
http://www.appcelerator.com/

48. However, everything
goes. Surprise us.

49. Some demos:

50. GooHooBi
http://icant.co.uk/goohoobi/index.php?research
http://github.com/codepo8/GooHooBi
http://vimeo.com/8075850

51. Keywordfinder
http://keywordfinder.org

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

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

54. Mapumental
http://mapumental.channel4.com/

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

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

57. Chris&an Heilmann
h@p://wait‐&ll‐i.com
Thanks!
h@p://developer‐evangelism.com
h@p://twi@er.com/codepo8