Pimp Yahoo! Mail
Mar 29th
Yahoo! Mail now has a publicly accessible API! Check it out at: http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2007/03/mail.html
Not only that, Yahoo! is actually offering a monetary incentive for developers who manage to sell their premium accounts.
The following is taken from the official announcement on Yahoo Developer Network:
Yahoo! Mail Web Service developers can earn referral commissions by building compelling applications targeted at our premium email users. For a trial period, Yahoo! Mail is offering an incentive for developers to build applications using the full functionality available for premium Yahoo! Mail accounts. Specifically, Yahoo! Mail is currently providing a commission of $10.00 for every new Yahoo! Mail Plus account referred by approved developers
What it DU? (WebDU report back)
Mar 29th
Recently, I was fortunate enough to speak at WebDU (Web Down Under), “A rock concert for geeks”. WebDU is an Australian based web conference which boasts the highest speaker to attendee ratio of any major RIA/Web 2.0 conference. The conference itself was exceptional. I had the pleasure of speaking alongside some of the most recognized and inspirational personalities in the industry, including Jesse Warden, Mike Chambers, Mike Downey, and Ted Patrick, to name a few of my American counterparts who attended. Of course, I also had an opportunity to meet some awesome Aussie developers. I was most impressed by Scott Barnes, Lachlan Hardy, Collis Ta’eed, the guys from Nectarine, and the entire team from Daemon (whom also happen to be the conference organizers). It was also nice to see and meet Brandy Fortune, the first woman that I’ve ever seen speak at a conference (I’m excluding Lynda Weinman, the woman behind FlashForward because she is in a class of her own 
). Brandy gave a great presentation on usability for designers and developers, you can read a great review of it here at flashmagazine.com.
I spoke on using Yahoo! APIs in Flash. I ran through the latest and greatest offerings from the Yahoo! Developer Network, including the recently revamped search SDK , the awesome AS3 additions by Alaric Cole (Alaric, if you have a blog please let me know, I couldn’t find it), and the latest book to make it to press by Yahoo’s Charles Freedman. I also covered security, best practices, and some real-world implementations of using web services. I also made mention of VUVOX, an awesome startup I have been working with for the past few months alongside a slew of other media & web rock stars. I’ll be blogging in greater detail about VUVOX later.
The conference was freakin’ amazing. The food was spectacular, the accommodations were immaculate, and the general vibe of the community was electric. It was fun (re)connecting with familiar (and some not so familiar) faces from Adobe. The guys from Nectarine sort of took me in and we hung out like we’ve known each other for years. Lachlan and I also spent quite a long time just conversing and sharing ideas… what a blast. After the show I hung out with an engineer from Yahoo! AU, which was cool. We conversed on ways to help Yahoo! embrace and harness the power of Flash and related platforms, which hopefully he can succeed in achieving or at least influencing. My flights to and from Sydney also stopped over in Honolulu, so I had to spend a few nights in Waikiki (hey, it’s a tough job … but somebody’s got to do it 
)
I’ll be posting my WebDU presentation materials and code shortly, and writing the blog posts that my audience demanded soon … so stay tuned. Sorry for dropping off of the blog thing for a while, I was just too busy to have time to think. However, I’m back and better than ever, and look forward to sharing my ideas and humble perspective with the community for a long time to come.
Peace.
!Adios, Yahoo!
Dec 6th
I haven’t blogged in a while, with good reason – I have more things going on than I care to mention. But let’s just say I’ve been terribly busy
This past Monday was my last day at Yahoo!
I really can’t say enough about Yahoo!, the people there have made my time there one of the most interesting and fun time periods of my life. I’ve met some of the most brilliant minds, worked on some interesting products, got some perspective on how a gargantuan company operates, and walked through doors that only a large company can open. I will forever be grateful for the opportunities that Yahoo! has provided me, and for the privilege of working with such talented people.
Thank you to all my friends at Yahoo! and other Yahoo! Alumni who have supported me and my ideas, tolerated my craziness, and most importantly, been my friend. It has been an honor working with you, and I am looking forward to remaining friends and colleagues.
I’ve had a great at Yahoo!, and now I’m excited about the opportunities my new career path is providing me. If you happen to be a Yahoo! employee reading this or someone I met while at Yahoo!, by all means send me a linkedIn request and make note of my personal email address (me at caleb.org). Also, if you happen to be a Flash/ActionScript engineer or designer, please join my Flash Peers mailing list too
I can’t exactly say where I’m going to be working next, as we are still in stealth mode, but I can tell you that it is a San Francisco Bay Area startup with awesome potential. Not only that, but the team itself is comprised of some of the most talented people I have ever met, including every Flash coders hero: Quasimondo – Mario Klingemann. If you’re really interested, check out the demo conference in January/Feb, we’ll be there.
Yahoo! APIs now on yahooapis.com – Flash developers: Immediate action required
Nov 6th
Dan Theurer, one of the technical Yahoos who runs the Yahoo Developer Center recently released the following info:
When we launched our first APIs for Search, they were all located on api.search.yahoo.com. With an API offer that is growing every month, we have to separate APIs and our consumer offerings to make both easier to manage. All services that we offered on api.-property-.yahoo.com are now available at .yahooapis.com as well. Please refer to the documentation for details. Starting today, new APIs, updates and bug fixes will only be available on the yahooapis.com and in the mid-term we are planning to turn off the old endpoints so please update your applications as soon as possible.
Important for Flash developers: You need to update your applications with the new endpoints by December 11th because api.-property-.yahoo.com will no longer support Flash calls after that date.
We know that this will have a big impact for some of you and we apologize for that. Yahoo APIs infrastructure is still fairly new and we want to optimize the set-up now so that we don’t have to make those changes in the future.
Dan Theurer
FLV Video Remixer – by Yahoo! Research Berkeley
Nov 6th
Yahoo! Research Berkeley recently released an FLV Video Remixer in conjunction with the San Francisco Film Festival.
You can check it out here:
http://mac1.research.mud.yahoo.com/remix/
Also, if you haven’t seen Yahoo! Video (http://video.yahoo.com/) you should check it out, it’s powered by FLV too
See … Yahoo! does Flash
More Yahoo! Search ActionScript Examples
Nov 5th
Firdosh, a developer from the ydn-flash group put together a Yahoo! search demo using the YahooAPI classes I authored, you can check out his example here: http://seas.mgmt.purdue.edu/~firdosh/YahooAPI/bin/CustomItemRendererExample.html
His app totally reminds me of an AS2 Yahoo! Search example i put together a while back when YDN was still forming, you can check it out here: http://caleb.org/yahoosearch-as2.php
Firdosh also created a YahooImageSearchResult class that extends YahooSearchResult and provides access to the thumbnail and filesize properties of the result. Thanks Firdosh! 
I’ve updated the YahooAPI code available here and your class is included.
It reminds me of a conversation Ted Patrick and I had a Yahoo! hackday. Ted mentioned how easy it would be to make ActionScript abstraction layers for all of our web services, and trust me … if it was my job, it would be done by now. However, it is not my job (i work on the Media Innovation Group for Yahoo!, all of the YDN stuff i do is done on my own time, under my own accord).
The YahooAPI code was originally checked in to sourceforge, under the project name ‘actionscript’. I also have SVN available on caleb.org, but I haven’t checked any code in as of yet. If anyone is interested in collaborating and making this code stronger, please let me know and i will set up the repositories. I would just do it now, but i’m moving this weekend, thus i’m too busy packing and whatnot to nerd out too hard.
At any rate, thanks for the contribution Firdosh … holla if you’re looking for a job
Updated AS3 Yahoo! Search API library and CoilGallery Search Mashup premiere
Nov 3rd
The latest flash Beta bits, and a programmer named firdosh both illustrate the fact that my YahooAPI classes had a few problems.
I have addressed those issues, and everything works fine now.
In order to exemplify this, i actually decided to mashup the CoilGallery code senocular released.
The app is definitely a prototype, and there are at least 3 known issues w/ the search implementation:
- i am not properly handling image load failures, so in the event of an image load failure, the app basically stops loading images
- there is some debug output, but ignore that for now
- the search term (“jamaica”) is hard coded
I will address all of these issues when i have time .. for now, just consider it a proof-of-concept.
http://caleb.org/coilgallerysearch.html
The source for the above code may be found here:
Thanks Senocular, your code whips the llama’s ass
As always, any additional feedback is appreciated
Yahoo! Maps @ Silicon Valley Flex Users Group Meeting Tonight
Oct 12th
Yahoo! Maps’ Chuck Freedman (author of Wrox’s Yahoo! Maps Mashups … coming soon) will be speaking at the SILVAFUG meeting tonight in San Jose
The meetings are from 7:00 to 9:30 and alternate each month between SF and San Jose. Last month there was a good presence of Adobe Flex 2 folks on hand to answer questions. Chuck will speaking about maps and other Yahoo! APIs.
Here is a link to the location from the Yahoo! Maps Flash Beta.
Show up and represent!
Want to be a Flickr product manager?
Oct 11th
Yahoo! is looking for a qualified individual to take the reigns of our Flickr product.
Following is a brief job description, contact me for further details.
Company: Yahoo!, Inc.
Job Title: Product Manager, Flickr
Location: San Francisco, CA
Description:
Flickr’s vision is to be the eyes of the world and we are looking for an individual who can share and drive forward our goal by helping grow a key new aspect of the product.
Specifically, we are looking for someone who can harness the potential of Flickr’s large and growing commercial eco-system to drive product richness as well as increased monetization for Flickr, Flickr’s users, and Flickr partners. If you’ve been thinking about these ideas we want to talk to you.
Some key responsibilities of the position:
- Build a strategy and product requirements for next generation Flickr services
- Help communicate the strategy vis-a-vis the Flickr and Yahoo product portfolio
- Develop a strong understanding of specific sub-sector of the existing Flickr user base as well as a new set of incoming users
- Identify and drive key (internal and external) partnerships to execute against the strategy
- Drive product development and project mange the product implementation
- Provide direction to outbound marketing through existing and new channels (virally, via eco system, etc)
Basic Qualifications:
- BS in Computer Science preferred
Preferred Qualifications:
- MBA or strong business/entrepreneurial preferred
- Marketing, journalism, photography, photo acquisition or editorial experience all strong plusses
- Web technology savvy
- Determination to execute
- Strong relationship building skills
- Skilled communicator
- Understanding of online communities
- A proven track record in product management
Yahoo! Hackday Puppetron Video
Oct 4th
Yahoo! really came through with some awesome entertainment, including the Puppetron team which created “Team America”. They gave us a live puppetshow as another element of Beck’s performance.