Editor's note: MyBlogLog API - Q & A with guest blogger Jon Henshaw
Editor's note: Introducing Jon Henshaw, Internet Strategist at Sitening, a Nashville-based Web development and search marketing company, makers of the Raven SEO Tool Set. He's responsible for driving exposure and traffic to his clients' websites via social networks and search engines. He first discovered MyBlogLog last year and has been using it on every blog he manages ever since.
Last month, as soon as he heard about it, Jon signed up for the MyBlogLog API beta. A week ago, we got a tip about this cool WordPress plugin built by the team at Sitening. Please keep in mind that for now these plugins only work if you've got a Yahoo! API key that's been permissioned for the MyBlogLog API beta. If you're interested in trying it out, please apply to the beta at developer.yahoo.com/mybloglog or hang in there just a little longer. The API will be available to everyone in March.
Q: Out of all of the social media APIs that are available, why did you choose to work with the MyBlogLog API?
A: I've always had an affinity for MyBlogLog, because it solves two difficult marketing problems – getting exposure and networking within your niche. Since MyBlogLog already does a good job addressing both of those problems, I was excited when I heard they were coming out with an API and I immediately started thinking about ways we could extend their service.
Q: Is the WordPress plugin the first thing you made with the MyBlogLog API?
A: No, initially we used their API to build some custom pages for our blog. We wanted to implement the API to give us a way to promote and thank our Raven MyBlogLog members. During the process, we wrote our own PHP Wrapper for the MyBlogLog API and turned it into an open source project. The wrapper makes it much easier for PHP developers to quickly build Web applications with the MyBlogLog API. Then we decided to take it further and used our wrapper to create the WordPress plugin.
Q: How does the MyBlogLog WordPress plugin extend or benefit your blog?
A: We believe that Raven's community is essential to the success of our blog. So we used the MyBlogLog WordPress plugin to celebrate and thank the readers and customers who contribute most to the conversation. Our plugin displays a widget with the most active MyBlogLog members, creates a members' list page, and also creates a detailed member profile page. The profile page was especially fun to make, because we took several of the social networks that members belonged to – all stored in their MyBlogLog profile – and retrieved and displayed their recent posts and social bookmarks on it. We also listed their blogs and other related information. So far, the response from our members has been very positive.
Popularity: 26% [?]
Jon Henshaw, February 14th, 2008 on 11:00 pm
Built for the most recent Yahoo! Hack Day, NewsGlobe is a fun new way to browse Yahoo! News Top Stories. It pulls together two existing Yahoo! services and takes advantage of the performance enhancements in the latest Adobe Flash Player.
The NewsGlobe consists of three basic pieces: a Yahoo! News Top Stories RSS feed, a geo-encoding web service from Yahoo! Maps, and a free, open-source library of 3D classes for ActionScript 3 called Papervision3D. The application loads the Yahoo! News RSS feed every few minutes and extracts the dateline for each story. It sends this descriptive textual information to the Maps service to find a matching location and thereby return a latitude/longitude coordinate. Then it's simply a matter of using the 3D classes in ActionScript to create a visually engaging experience that's either automated or interactive.
Papervision3D makes it incredibly easy to create a 3D scene, add 3D objects to it, and specify where the camera (i.e., the user's viewpoint) should be located. For each story location where we could discern a lat-long coordinate, we draw a marker object and place it in the proper position on a sphere representing the Earth. The display is calculated and drawn in real time. This allows us to animate the view over time and even let the user change the view by interacting with the objects in the scene.
Since the final product itself is a SWF file, NewsGlobe works online as a web application or off -network as a scaled-down, embedded customizable badge. It could easily be integrated into a Yahoo! Widget or packaged as an Adobe AIR application to run locally on the desktop. By passing in different RSS feeds or search terms, it'd be possible to filter the news and watch stories occurring in a specific part of the world, from a particular category, or matching other keywords.
Who built it
Popularity: 27% [?]
As an engineer for Yahoo!'s Media Innovation Group, I'm lucky to get to use the latest tools available to develop engaging and interactive ActionScript applications. So, I'm surprised that a lot of people still think Flash is best used for screensavers and banner ads. For last month's Yahoo! Hack Day, I decided to show off some of the impressive capabilities of the latest Adobe Flash Player and ActionScript 3 by building a visually interesting new way to browse Yahoo! News top stories. In a surprisingly short amount of time, I was able to mash up two existing Yahoo! services, and then represent the information in a virtual environment I call the NewsGlobe.
The NewsGlobe consists of three basic pieces: a Yahoo! News Top Stories RSS feed, a geo-encoding web service from Yahoo! Maps, and a free, open-source library of 3D classes for ActionScript 3 called Papervision3D. The application loads the Y! News RSS feed every few minutes and extracts the dateline for each story. It sends this descriptive textual information off to the Yahoo! Maps service to find a matching location, and return latitude and longitude coordinates for it. The rest is simply a matter of using the 3D classes in ActionScript to create a visually engaging experience that's either automated or interactive.
Papervision3D makes it incredibly easy to create a 3D scene, add 3D objects to it, and specify where the camera (i.e., the user's viewpoint) should be located. For each story location where we are able to discern a lat-long coordinate, we draw a marker object and place it in the proper position on a sphere representing the Earth. The display is calculated and drawn in real time. This allows us to animate the view over time and even lets the user change the view by interacting with the objects in the scene.
Since the final product itself is a SWF (Shockwave Flash) file, NewsGlobe can live online as a web application or be embedded off-network as a scaled-down customizable badge. It could also be integrated into a Yahoo! Widget or packaged as an Adobe AIR application to run locally on the desktop. By passing in different RSS feeds or search terms, it could be possible to watch stories occurring in a specific part of the world, from a particular category, or matching other keywords.
In all, NewsGlobe was a fun project to test a simple idea and see if I could achieve the desired result within a short amount of time with relatively little difficulty. Is it perfect? No. Could we add a lot of additional features to make it something more useful and accurate? Absolutely. However, I would certainly consider this a successful proof of concept and viable prototype for similar future interactive 3D visualizations.
If you want to learn more about the individual pieces used to create the NewsGlobe, follow the links below:
Popularity: 30% [?]
Lucas J. Shuman, February 12th, 2008 on 6:23 pm
We’re excited to share with you Yahoo! Live, a new experiment in live video from the Advanced Products team at Yahoo!. Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience. Broadcast the concert you’re at. Webcast your own live DJ set. Lifecast. Build your own live video speed dating application. We’ve created a website and an API that lets you do all these things and many more.
On Y! Live, you can use your webcam to broadcast your own live video channel. Or just tune in to other people’s channels. The video and audio are in real time, and as you watch someone’s channel or broadcast your own, you can interact chat-room style with other viewers.
There are limitless channels and anyone can be a star. Even if you don’t want to broadcast your own channel, you can still activate your webcam to broadcast while you’re viewing someone else’s channel.
If you're a developer, check out the developer preview of our API and embeddable components, as well as a sample app and quick tutorial.
We’re looking for your feedback, and we'll be incorporating it as we get to version 1.0 of our API in the coming months. Let us know what you think. We’re always interested in seeing what you’ve built, and we’ll feature cool stuff you build on our site.
Who built it
How do I get it
Keep in mind that Y! Live is an experimental release. The Advanced Products team is a small incubation team at Yahoo! – Y! Live is currently a limited capacity release, so bear with us as and we may reach our limits in periods of high traffic. Our top priority now is to hear your feedback – send your comments to ylive@yahoogroups.com, and follow our twitter feed to hear about headline broadcasts and notable things happening live.
For more information on getting started, Click here.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Today we’re happy to share with you Yahoo! Live, a new experiment in live video from the Advanced Products team at Yahoo!. Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience. Want to broadcast your life? DJ a live set to a remote audience? Broadcast a nightclub vibe to the Web? Build a video speed dating application? We’ve created a website and an API that lets you do all these things and many more.
For viewers: How is Y! Live different from other online video sites? That’s simple: it’s live. What you’re watching, right now, is what other people are watching, right now. We wanted to create an experience that takes us back to live television, where things are happening now, in real time.
For broadcasters: You’ve been posting your stuff to MySpace and YouTube. Now, connect with your fans in real time on Y! Live. There is something intangible about a live performance – an excitement that you can’t replicate in pre-recorded format. Broadcast a performance, interact with your fans with video and chat, embed your broadcast anywhere - it’s all possible on Y! Live.
For developers: Check out the developer preview of our API and embeddable components, as well as a sample app and tutorial we threw together.
We’re looking for your feedback at this point, and will be incorporating it as we get to version 1.0 of our API in the coming months. Play around with it and let us know what you think. We’re always interested in seeing what you’ve built, and we’ll feature cool stuff you build on our site.
Keep in mind that Y! Live is an experimental release. The Advanced Products team is a small incubation team at Yahoo! – our mission is to build stuff and launch it quickly, and respond to market feedback. Y! Live is a limited capacity release, so bear with us as and we may reach our limits in periods of high traffic. Our top priority now is to hear your feedback – send your comments to ylive@yahoogroups.com , follow our twitter feed, and check out the blog to stay with the conversation.
Special thanks to JT the Bigga Figga of Mandatory Business and Ricky Montalvo putting that Y! Live intro video together. And big props to the Y! Live team: Eric, Matt, Keith, David, and Premshree - these guys seriously cranked to get this thing built and launched in six months.
Michael Quoc
Director, Advanced Products
Popularity: 12% [?]
Michael Quoc, February 7th, 2008 on 5:45 am
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