onfocus

Last week a copy of Yahoo! Hacks arrived at my door, and I was finally able to flip through the pages. It's very satisfying to see months of work in Word and Photoshop become a solid object that you can pick up, throw on a table, or use to prop open a door. It's really a novel feeling for someone who usually writes in the virtual world. Today the book is available at Amazon without any of that pre-order nonsense. ;)

Yahoo! continues to release new features (and hire people I know) at lightning speed. Just in the past few weeks we've seen Yahoo! Podcasts, Yahoo! Blog Search, Yahoo! Site Explorer, and Yahoo! Instant Search. The public perception of Yahoo! has definitely changed over the course of my writing, and I think the fact that Yahoo! Hacks even exists will be surprising to people who haven't been keeping up with Yahoo! lately.

When I started working on Yahoo! Hacks, I thought I knew the site fairly well and that I'd mainly be focusing on hacks related to new offerings like Yahoo! Web Services, Yahoo! 360, Flickr, and Y!Q Contextual Search. After a while though I came to view Yahoo! as a big city with hidden alleyways and entire neighborhoods that had always been there but were new to me. Of course there are plenty of hacks related to the new services, and I think the book is a good way to get up to speed with what Yahoo! has been up to technically. But I also hope people pick up Yahoo! Hacks and learn something new about perennial Yahoo! features like My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Groups. And maybe you'll even discover some new Yahoo! neighborhoods.

That's my pitch. ;) I'm very proud of the book, and I want to thank everyone who contributed hacks, hack ideas, and general encouragement. You can order Yahoo! Hacks at Amazon, read some sample hacks, or flip through it before you buy at bookstores everywhere. It also makes a great door-stopper.

Word of the day:

procrustean
adj.

Producing or designed to produce strict conformity by ruthless or arbitrary means.

[via]

Word of the day:

echolalia
n.

Psychiatry. The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia.

[via]

Tonight on NPR Robert Siegel did a quick phone interview with Gary Snyder about the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl 50 years ago. At the end of the interview Robert asked, "Where are you actually right now?" And Gary responded, "2,000 ft. level of the Western Sierra Nevada Pine Forest, facing west." For some reason that made me laugh.

There's so much happening that I'd like to comment on right now, but I need to concentrate on some other writing. Here's what I would blog about if I had time:

• Congrats Andy and Leonard and George on selling Upcoming to Yahoo!
• I have high hopes for Ning and I love the idea behind it. Just like weblog tools let people without much technical experience become web publishers, I think Ning could let amateurs build fairly sophisticated social applications. And when lawyers and knitters start building applications, interesting things will happen. I haven't had much time to play with it yet.
• What can be done to save the movie industry? Snakes on a Plane.
• weblogs.com purchased by Verisign for $5 million $2 million. (huh.)
• Weblogs Inc. purchased by AOL for $25 million. (double huh?)
• I'd like to remind the investment community that I run a site with the word "blogs" in the title.

And on that other writing, poking and prodding Flickr has been fun. The book is coming along—and I need to get back to it.

Update: AOL bought 31 blogs. [via Waxy] That's ~$806,451/blog. I hope the weblog authors see some of that money, because they're currently getting around $4/post.

Word of the day:

sartorial
adj.

Of or relating to a tailor, tailoring, or tailored clothing: sartorial elegance.

[via]

Just got back from a week in Nebraska. We spent a couple of days in a cabin at Mahoney State Park where we did some hiking and saw some good sunsets.



On Friday night we went to Omaha to see Portland's hometown favorite Pink Martini play with the Omaha Symphony. The show was fantastic partly because it was in an ornate old building with great acoustics, The Orpheum.



On Saturday my cousin Lisa got married, and it was a beautiful wedding and reception.



On Sunday we got together with my Dad's side of the family. It's always fun to catch up a bit with everyone and argue about politics.

I spent the week offline for the most part and now everything is bold—email is unread, posts in Bloglines are unread. So I have a lot of catching up to do but it's great to take a break once in a while.

As you can tell things have been quiet around here. The ink is barely dry on Yahoo! Hacks and I'm already working on my next project: Flickr Hacks! (Note to parents: Flickr is a photo-sharing application on the surface, but it's much more than that.) I'm especially excited about this book because I'm going to be working with the amazingly talented Jim Bumgardner. Jim started the Flickr Hacks group, put together some beautiful collaborative posters with Flickr images, and generally knows Flickr and the Flickr API inside and out. Check out Jim's Photostream to get a sense of his work.

If you've written a Flickr extension or found a novel way to use Flickr, don't be surprised if Jim or I contact you about including it in the book. (But feel free to contact me as well!) The book is part of the Hacks series, and Flickr Hacks is meant to be a gallery featuring many voices and many different technologies that enhance or build upon Flickrspace. I already have my head down trying to meet writing deadlines, but part of my time will be devoted to finding what's out there—and I've been playing with a lot of fun Flickr toys over the past couple of weeks. I'd love to hear about your favorites.

So once again this weblog will probably be dormant while I'm working on the book, but I'll still be here working away behind the scenes. I've been a member of Flickr since it was a chat-based application, and it's been fun watching it grow. I'm continually amazed at the creativity Flickr has inspired in both photography and application design, and I'm excited to be able to work around and with the incredible Flickr community. I'm hoping I can help translate some of that energy into book form. See ya on Flickr!

ps. here are my photos at Flickr.

According to this MSNBC/Forbes article—Safety first: The best places to live in the U.S., "Every location in the country is exposed to one disaster or another..." But Corvallis, Oregon came in at #8 on the safest places list. A quake topped the list of dangers here, and there is a fault off the coast. Honolulu, Hawaii was at the top of the list. Of course now that Corvallis is on the safe list something is bound to happen. [via Chuggnutt]

O'Reilly put up eight Beta Hacks from Yahoo! Hacks. Find out how you can use Yahoo! to translate pages, monitor your commute, visualize your music collection, search your web site, program with the Yahoo! API, and other fun hackery. And that's only eight hacks—imagine what you can do with 100. ;) The book isn't out yet, but you can pre-order from Amazon: Yahoo! Hacks. (I'll get a little kickback if you order through a link here on my site.)

Update: Matt McAlister tried out the Visualize Your Music Collection Hack and wrote about the results on his blog: Downloading podcasts with Yahoo! Music Engine.

A friend emailed to let me know that a lot of animals have been displaced by the hurricane. People should be the first priority, but you may want to contribute to organizations like the ASPCA or the Humane Society of the US as well as the Red Cross.

I do a fair bit of complaining about companies here, so I should post something positive once in a while. Here's a recent exchange I had with Keen.

Hi Keen, How can I order a replacement black and yellow bungee style lace for one of my Keen Newport sandals? My dog ate it, and I'm not sure where to get that kind of shoelace. Thanks!

And the response:

Thank you for contacting Keen Footwear! No worries on the laces, we'll gladly put a replacement system in the mail to you.

Pretty human-sounding for a big company. Plus, I'll get to start wearing my favorite sandals again if it works out. Now if they could solve my dog's chewing problems they'd really have a customer for life. ;)