Hacking 101
Christian Heilmann | http://wait-till-i.com | http://scriptingenabled.org
Delhi, India, University Hack Day, January 2009

नम#$
Namaste

I’m Chris, hacker
and geek.

I am today here to introduce
you to what hacking means
to us.

To me it means:
“Altering a system to do what
you want it to do using what
is at your disposal.”

It also means having a lot of
fun trying to make things do
what they weren’t made for.

It is unrestrained innovation.

So welcome, innovators!

We want you to show us what
can be built using the systems
we (and others) offer...

...that makes a difference in
your lives and make the
things you care about easier
to achieve.

Find something that always
annoyed you with systems
you use...

...and build a workaround.

You’ll be amazed about the
impact this can have.

To reach hackvana you need
three things:

Access, Data and an Interface.

Access is granted to you via
feeds, web services and SDKs.

Feeds are data in a
predictable format, for
example RSS.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/restaurants

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/restaurants/rss

Web services are quite
similar, only they allow you
to filter down the data you
want.

http://
answers.yahooapis.com/
AnswersService/V1/
questionSearch?
query=delhi+puppies
&region=in&lang=en&
appid=yahoodemo

... lots more...

http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/V1/questionSearch.html

They also allow you to get the
data in other formats to
easily re-use it.

The idea of hacking is to use
this data, mix it up with other
ideas and other data to
provide a better service for
the end user.

This is dead easy these days!

There’s Yahoo Pipes for
mixing, filtering and
matching.

http://pipes.yahoo.com

Or if you like SQL-style data
conversion there’s YQL:

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

Both of these systems allow
you to reach data from Yahoo
and other services and pre-
filter it for use in your own
hacks.

Data however is not enough.

Building *working* web
interfaces is a specialist skill.

I’ve been developing for the
web for 12 years and it still is a
mystery to me why some
things just don’t work.

The technologies are easy
enough:
HTML for structure
CSS for presentation
JavaScript for behaviour

Where it gets truly annoying is
the unknowns.

You have no idea about the
user’s setup, ability or rights
to change their technical
environment.

And then there are the
browsers and all their
wonderful bugs and quirks.

This is why it is a good start to
use libraries or frameworks.

Here are our helpers:
YUI
BluePrint
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ http://mobile.yahoo.com/developers

Using these, you can quickly
build interfaces that work on
the web and mobiles.

What about reach?

The newest way of access that
systems and companies allow
you these days is opening up
their address books.

http://developer.yahoo.com/social/socialdir/
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php

Instead of building it and
waiting till people come, build
where the people are.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yap/

And build with what they use
already.

http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/

How about
some hack
examples?

I use SlideShare – a lot.

http://www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/slideshows

One cool thing is
that SlideShare
automatically
creates
transcripts of
your slides:

So I’ve used this to create a
version that is easily
accessible for blind people or
those who don’t have Flash.

http://icant.co.uk/easy-slideshare/?slides=http://
www.slideshare.net/cheilmann/playing-with-the-web-
presentation

Using YQL, it was also easy to
write a JavaScript wrapper
that allows you to show the
transcripts with your slides.

http://www.wait-till-i.com/2009/01/11/adding-transcripts-to-
presentations-embedded-from-slideshare-using-yql/

I use Twitter – a lot.

I got all this emails from
Twitter telling me about
people following me.

What I didn’t get was it telling
me when people left me.

Or what I was telling the
world before they left me.

So I dug into the API a bit and
built TweetEffect.com

http://tweeteffect.com/?user=codepo8

I put it up, and started testing
edge cases.

One of them was Guy
Kawasaki, whom I knew has a
lot of followers and updates.

One of them was Guy
Kawasaki, whom I knew has a
lot of followers and updates.

And that started a landslide of
visitors, comments and ideas
for it.

Tim O'Reilly
Guy Kawasaki
Ryan Carson

And without knowing it, I
became a startup to watch!

What about reach?
That was me, time for you to
show what you can do!

Innovation is not a matter of
skill or being in the right job
position.

It is a matter of wanting to
change what we have and be
ready to play.

We do this to help you see
your potential.

And we do this to see if we do
a good job in explaining our
offers to the developer world.

The web is yours, go out and
play!

THANKS!
Access happens on several
channels.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nez/378349478/