next*

Wow, this place is nice! Everything's so new and shiny, it won't take us long to scuff it up.

Why am I wandering the halls of this fancy new place called Next? Well, I wanted to tell you about this great program I run here, but first, let me tell you a little about my myself.

My name is Arlo Rose , and I came to Yahoo! just over two years ago when my company Pixoria was acquired for its flagship product Konfabulator. And really, by flagship, I mean that it was our only product. But it was an awesome one. So awesome that the concept behind it is now an integral part of both major operating systems (Mac and Windows) and is used all over web pages to convey simple, highly contextual, information to people. Konfabulator ran files called Widgets. Sound familiar? I know, they’re everywhere now! Makes me proud.

I’ve done a bunch of stuff since coming to Yahoo!, but my current project is running this thing called Hack. Hack is a program that's all about letting people who like to tinker with code have a voice outside their day-to-day duties.

The basic concept is this: take 24 hours to try and realize whatever you want to build; show it in a science fair setting and let your peers vote on which they think is the best; take the top 25 of those, show them to some execs and well respected peers and let them choose the top three.

Here’s where the Next piece of the equation fits in--we now have a place where we can share winning hacks. It’s an important piece of what Next is going to be about. When a project that’s able to be publicly consumed has had a little bit of polish applied, we’ll publish it on Next while we work out its place in the big picture. This is great because the developers get their work out to the world, and you guys, you know, get to play with this cool stuff we develop out of passion. You can’t beat that.

(Photo from Chad Dickerson )

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