Open in Asia
Where Sunnyvale hosts a 24-hour hack-a-thon, the Yahoo! Taiwan office hosts an entire week to celebrate the new open vision of Yahoo!. Of course, they develop a bunch of great hacks while they’re at it - because what YDN event would be complete without some hardcore hacking.
The first part of Asia Open Week was an internal application development contest for Yahoo! engineers, where developers from the Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Australia offices worked diligently to create apps that consumed our public APIs, services, and platforms, including, but not limited to, YAP, Open Mail, and Blueprint. Before the hacks began, presentations were delivered on topics such as an introduction to Y!OS, a deep technical dive into YAP, and overviews of Open Mail and Blueprint. Developers then had about a day or so of development time to get everything completed and ready for judging. We saw impressive applications from the different offices, with winners in different categories for the different platforms. Here are some of the app highlights:
Stockr
Built on open mail, as a mobile space app using Blueprint, and as an open application on YAP, Stockr took high marks from the judges. This is a social stock-trading game allowing you to make virtual trades using real data. Tying in calculations for stock ratios, portfolio graphs, live stock news, and profile and connection information so that you’re fully integrated in the social experience with your friends, this application was incredibly feature-rich.
Paper Visualizer
I must admit, this was an impressive Flash application built on top of the YAP platform. Using your social connection information, this app rendered your friends in an interactive 3D environment where they are displayed as "paper human" cutouts with the nice Yahoo! default image smiley. You can then view your connections by categories such as gender, birthday, name, etc. This is a unique interpretation of the social connection data, and aside from a few “paper people” nightmares it provoked, this was definitely a top app.
Next Auction View
I didn’t realize how prevalent auctions were in Taiwan until I saw all of the auction hacks that were developed. Next Auction View was one of the ones that really stood out. Another Flash application built on top of YAP, this app took raw auction feeds and displayed an interactive visualization reminiscent of the iTunes CD art display.
Primetime TV Guide
An Open Mail hack, this application displayed primetime TV guide information for shows in different countries. This app included features to let you save favorite shows to your list to keep track of what you want to watch, as well as a social dimension that let you share your lists with friends.
Below are a few photos of the internal hack event at the Yahoo! offices in Taipei, Taiwan:
After the Yahoo! offices celebrated the spirit of openness with a wonderful awards ceremony, it was time to turn our attention to the external community. On Saturday, December 20 at the Agora Club hotel in Taipei, YDN hosted another round of presentations on Y!OS, YAP, and how to develop open and OAuth applications. Developers, who had previously submitted their applications for judging, were then presented with awards for the top applications.
Below are a few photos of the external event, including pictures of the speakers and award winners:
The notion of “Open” that is being fostered in Yahoo! is one that I have become very impressed with. I see a change happening within the company where a unified idea is being integrated into all products being developed for the community. This same idea of open is one that gives back to the development community as a whole, where our products become even more of a freely available service to extend any application or website.
You can view my Y!OS presentation from Asia Open Week on slideshare, or click through it here for a closer look at developing apps on the Yahoo! Application Platform.
Jonathan LeBlanc
Senior Software Engineer / Technology Evangelist
Yahoo! Developer Network
