{"id":550358,"date":"2006-10-02T07:46:17","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T07:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/550358-creative-mayhem-at-yahoo-hack-a-thon.html"},"modified":"2006-10-02T07:46:17","modified_gmt":"2006-10-02T07:46:17","slug":"creative-mayhem-at-yahoo-hack-a-thon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/550358-creative-mayhem-at-yahoo-hack-a-thon.html","title":{"rendered":"Creative mayhem at Yahoo hack-a-thon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Software rebels travelled from as far as Australia and Canada to tear-apart, reconstruct and "mashup" the Internet search giant’s applications at a 24-hour "hackfest" that ended Saturday. "This is the centre of the Internet universe," Jason Barnes said as he and two other "Web2.0 Specialists" from the western Canadian city of Vancouver hacked on laptops in a booth in a Yahoo cafeteria dubbed "URL Cafe." <\/font><\/p>\n

"All the energy and innovation that is here. If you loved the idea of space travel and had the chance to get aboard a space ship, wouldn’t you go?," he said <\/font><\/p>\n

A tent village formed on lush grass in the Yahoo courtyard by sundown on Friday as some 500 hackers broke into clusters and cadres in nooks, corners, booths, and rooms in the cafeteria building. <\/font><\/p>\n

Yahoo’s "Hack Day" launched with an outdoor performance by rock singer Beck, who got the throng bouncing with a brash collage of songs and genres that eventually triggered a body-bashing "mosh pit." <\/font><\/p>\n

"The greatest hack of all was to get this artist, Beck," Yahoo co-founder David Filo chimed while introducing the singer. <\/font><\/p>\n

Hansen lingered afterward for a glimpse of what hackers were working on, telling Diana Eng her "Blogging in Motion" team project was "cool" and autographing a hacker’s laptop with the message "MTV makes me want to hack." <\/font><\/p>\n

Eng was using a sewing machine to make a handbag designed to conceal a mobile telephone camera being modified by teammate Emily Albinski to chronicle a user’s day in images. <\/font><\/p>\n

Pictures would be automatically taken at chosen distance intervals and then posted almost instantly on weblogs via Yahoo’s photo-sharing website Flickr. <\/font><\/p>\n

"It’s a whole lot of fun," said Eng, whose team came from New York City. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Where else would we have a chance to build an application with Yahoo’s help, and all these guys," she added with a wave at two engineers who whipped pulled up chairs and began to pitch in. <\/font><\/p>\n

A short distance away, Jesse Zbikowski sat wearing oversized white-rim eyeglasses, a stained blue dress shirt, a tie, wrinkled pants and high-top Converse sneakers, one pink and the other yellow. <\/font><\/p>\n

He sipped whiskey from a Styrofoam cup as he sat on a hallway couch and eyed the computer on his lap. <\/font><\/p>\n

"I’m thinking of a Yahoo Maps hack that will show where all the hot chicks are at," Zbikowski said with a grin. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Hacking is about taking what is out there and putting it together in interesting new ways," Zbikowski said. <\/font><\/p>\n

In the high-ceiling cafe some hackers shot at each other with foam pellet rifles as their more industrious peers pecked at laptop keyboards. <\/font><\/p>\n

Rock music riffs wailed as hackers and Yahoo workers played the game "Guitar Hero," in which points are scored for keeping up with the chords on mock guitars while animated band members rocked on a huge screen. <\/font><\/p>\n

Mabel Liang, Josh Dewald and Taylor Dondich intently hunched together honing a "Gutentag" mashup that let users learn what kindred spirits anywhere in the world did for entertainment and where they went to socialise. "You may be visiting New York City for the first time," explained Dondich, "but you can see what people like you do there." <\/font><\/p>\n

Qingfen Huang and Kristopher Tate, hacked Yahoo Messenger to automatically translate Asian language messages to English or vice versa. <\/font><\/p>\n

The Canadian team worked through the night to mash Yahoo calendar, map and Flickr software with original photos and video. <\/font><\/p>\n

"It’s amazing what people are doing," Mor Naaman of Yahoo’s research lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said as he crawled sleepily from a tent late Saturday morning. "I don’t even know what time I collapsed asleep." <\/font><\/p>\n

Yahoo engineers spent the night chaperoning and assisting visiting hackers. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Hack Day is all about getting people together, working for 24 hours and seeing what people come up with," Filo said in URL Cafe. <\/font><\/p>\n

"We thought the idea was great from the moment it came up." <\/font><\/p>\n

The only onus Yahoo put on hackers was that they demonstrate their creations for all to see when the deadline arrived on Saturday. A panel of judges rated the hacks, looking for potential Internet service stars. <\/font><\/p>\n

"The story is simple," Yahoo strategies vice president Bradley Horowitz said amid a sea of bleary-eyed hackers. "A bunch of people had a great time hacking stuff." <\/font><\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Computer coding savants fuelled by pizza, beer and rock music turned Yahoo’s campus into a zany warren of online creativity at the Internet giant’s first-ever all night hack-a-thon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}