Tim is down at Think Visibility today, blowing things up and pretending he is a mad scientist but in reality is simply “white coat bloke” however he has promised to add more content and his presentation notes including how bucket analogy for page rank to his blog Think Visibility 2009

The Venture Skills blog made it’s first post one year today, the post stamps are incorrect by the way I was fiddling with them when testing the posts but this is the opening lines…

This Blog has been set up to record how we have gone about starting up the company, the technology and products we use and the success and failures we have gone through.
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2006/10/03/hello-world/

It took about a week for that statement to go out of the window.

The past year has seen a massive change on the emphasis of this blog from a journey by a startup company to a primary teaching and educational blog in the early days we planned on using the blog to sell our services this lasted for a little while but today other then the occasional plug this is a hard sell free area.

The other changes have been more subtle the writing I think has become more refined at least I hope so and no longer blogging for bloging sake where once we would have been proud of having 7 posts a week now the standard is 1 a fortnight but I think that the 1 post is more useful well researched and generally of a decent standard.

So what has been the proudest moments?
Well we have had a couple of extremely popular posts including,

• Want to create a site like Digg? – A look at using Drupal as a Digg clone
• Top 5 CSS Layouts – Hugely popular look at some excellent layout resources
• CCK & Views combination – Another Drupal based post which went down well with Drupalers

But for me our proudest posts have been our experimentation and research posts and in particular the recent Stumbleupon mathematics post which has sparked of numerous conversations around the web and if you have been talking and we haven’t got to you to say thanks yet thankyou!

Breaking the news
We haven’t rely done much of this but we had some great fun at Hackday earlier in the year and in particular were one of the first people outside of Yahoo to play with the Mybloglog API, We also have covered some major and minor Google events such as the U turn on Cloaking.

New friends and faces
On a personal note I have made many new contacts through the blog and can count on many people as personal friends even those I have never met in person. I would be here all week if I started to list you all but thank you without your comments, stumble thumbs ups and general encouragement this blog would have died ages ago a huge thanks to those who during some health problems took the time to write to find out if I was ok and to offer help. You guys are great and thankyou for reading this small blog. Join us for the next year as we move ever onwards.

Tim Nash
on behalf of the Venture Skills Team

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Sorry I’m a day late guys darn sleep thing caught up with me, just a few things to say on Hackday in london this year and then the blog will return back to normal. Hackday was fantastic and a big big thankyou to the BBC and Yahoo teams, all those people in red tshirts (quick not to the organisers “red tshirts” have you not watched any scifi?) indeed thanks to BT and CISCO for providing the network well most of the time…

While Hackday is not the first of these style events I have been to it has been one of the most enjoyable, I don’t think I met anyone who wasn’t engaging with people and getting the most out of it and lets face it not even the rain could stop it. So I thought I would finish with my favourite bits (their will be one more post on something I’m still playing with) to finish.

Favourite Game – Yahoo bowling though the funny triangle game did look interesting…

Favourite Quote – We don’t have a TV aerial…

Favourite technology – FireEagle my session write up doesn’t do this technology justice so expect a full write up soon

So their you have it Hack day was great nearly 100 hacks were presented including Top Gun though with a far greater API this time with mobiles? To all those who were their I hope to see you soon and once more to the BBC and Yahoo thanks for a great couple of days.

Normal posting shall resume now…

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After showing you our amazing non computer hack it is only fair we allow you explore it fully via our very nifty API (Pipes version might come soon)

This is quite a complicated process so pay attention,

to request data collect a sheet of paper and write your request the following methods are supported.

• topgun.user_info
• topgun.image_level
• topgun.image_location

Once written please fold as follows…

Next to transfer via ATA (arm to air) protocol please throw the packet as shown.


Application will repeat process, note catching packets will help dropped packets will be resent!

Final thoughts on hackday to come along with some serious stuff…

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Hackday has not quite gone as well as I suspect some had planned, in case you hadn’t noticed
the UK has been suffering rather nasty weather and this descended on Alexander palace with a series of lightning strikes, now you might think a large building with a really large aerial on top of a hill would be use to such strange activity but you would be wrong. An interesting side effect of the strike was the opening of the fire vents in the roof can you tell what happened next?

Evacuation

-
In a orderly manner which could only happen in the UK all the rather unphased developers left the main hall and camped in the foyer, but what would we do while waiting out the storm?

Top Gun

Forget web 2.0 this mash-up world has a fundamental problem it requires the internet, and power supplies so with some little thought from me, artistic talent of Peter Cooper and some great muses we bring you Web 0.0, paper based page view system, human powered backend, voice activated User interface.

Full beta style interface, note blog cloud, social bookmarking and sponsored ads

Voice activated system zooms into a unique panoramic scene

While we still have a few privacy options, personal level views can be zoomed in

eye scanning level can be reached
We immediately took the system into a closed beta…

Now any venture capitalists out there we need at least two million Peter doesn’t come cheap after all he has a Ruby book to promote so would need to take time out of his schedule.

UPDATE: New API is now available for top gun please visit its blog entry for details.
UPDATE 2: We won! well they had to create a new category but we did win so I bet you want to see our prize….

Thanks Yahoo and Jaime who did our presentation after some of us went home early…

Not all work

Well after all that hard work and development a need to chill so what’s better then a good game of small bottle bowling!
http://flickr.com/photos/andypiper/557479994/
Even with all the problems hackday day 1 has been great now it’s time to code through the night…


Thanks to Peter, John, Jamie

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So the blow by blow commentary went out of the window about the time of the Lightning strike on the building…
But we are back up and the Internet is going well and the code is going well so its time to introduce something that’s being demoed here at Hackday.

I have been having fun playing around with the new API the documentation which is using the same style and layout of Flickr is sketchy but still allows plenty of experimentation some of the basic methods include:

• community_getinfo
• community_find_bytag
• community_members_list
• member_getinfo

Authentication is like most API’s token based, and certain methods can only be evoked based on permissions these include…

• community.add
• member.messages.add
• member.messages.list
• member.messages.remove
• member.messages.reportspam

Obviously the various functions require some third party (i.e beyond your API code authentication) I’m sure some nefarious users will find a way round temporarily but the API is based on Flickr and I’m sure any holes will be plugged.

Basic test console is provided allowing you to test methods and call backs, I will post my little test app in the next few hours, as I begin the graveyard shift.

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Creating a BBC News widget Session 1

Kent Brewster
http://www.kentbrewster.com/bbc-widget/

Free stickers being handed for people who keep up and complete the code. Note I’m blogging so not coding so you guys owe me a sticker!
Using Yahoo API and BBCs search information to make a neat site widget, this session is fast paced demonstrating AJAX CSS as well as the search API, I’m not going to go step by step as Kent has kindly already given the tutorial online. The second part of the session expanded the working widget to include bookmarking via del.icio.us and status indicators or as the speaker put it making the nice “twirly thing” and loading message, the twily thing comes directly from Yahoo, who don’t seem to mind you borrowing and using their bandwidth worth baring in mind.

http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/mw/anim_loading_sm.gif

The Wireless internet access is provided by BT and oddly enough 500 Geeks in a building has caused you guessed it network going down.

The question of the session will Doctor Who be on the big screen tonight?

Yahoo declined to comment on such an important issue, while the BBC suggested it would depend on getting a TV signal into the building .

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So its now 8:20 AM I have been on a high speed train (wireless internet!) nearly an hour heading for Hackday 2007, I’m really looking forward to the event which is being hosted by the BBC at Alexander palace. With the wireless internet at the event and through the power of power blogging hopefully I will be able to bring you the various sessions I attend, along with a mystery guest who will also be in attendance so what am I looking forward to?

• Yahoo – Geo tools is high on my list
• BBC web team – these guys totally rock and the various Aunty sessions are what I’m most looking forward to though I won’t be able to attend all of them.
• Meeting loads of highly geeky people, both old friends and people who I haven’t even met yet.

So this is Venture Skills roving reporter signing out for now…

[update] Must be the London effect the internet has gone just as well I synched Google reader so I have something to read for the last few minutes.

[update]Have just arrived and logged on.

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New Geo Services
Yahoo development team,

Mor Naaman
http://developer.yahoo.com/yrb

Geo Api mobile
Demonstration of Yahoo maps and flickr but unlike the previous session this is not pulling the pictures but mearly the number of times a location is mentioned. The name of the locations on the map font sizes was based on the number of times its been photoed, he then went on to demo the same technique in London integrated with photomontage which changed based on location.

Zone tag

Nokia mobile app, that adds location information via tags (automatically) using the same system as Flickr, also integrates into upcoming, and indeed any data sources you can think of!

The API allows various location methods from mobile phone mast strengths to post codes,

Geo RSS qas once again suggested as the easiest method when it comes to mashups

http://shaneahern.com/sfexplorer.html

Was demoed as a great Mashup

Furfer

Flickr + mobile + location

New Geo Service

FireEagle – brand new service in its prototype stage and only on its second outing, works on the premise if you can provide a location you can

rahulnair.net

plazes = a service to identify locations however its only based on wifi access to determine your location

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Session 2 is on the sofa’s as opposed to the main stage, lots of apologetic people in red T-Shirts sheepishly avoiding the lack of internet (though to be fair I’m up) the sofa are somewhat dark but comfy!

Yahoo! APIs: Maps, Local & Answers

Maps API

Mirek Grymuza

Is providing a top down overview of the Yahoo maps API,

http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/ajax/index.html

GEORSS is the primary way to develop mashups as it provides a data overlay method to Google Maps, a simple example of Yahoo map Mashup using Flickr is shown (not surprising I keep forgetting its Yahoo owned)

http://api.aps.yahoo.com/ajax/examples/xml/rss2.xml

is the location of the examples GeoRSS information, not to different from normal rss except for the geo data of course!
Maps 3.7 is available several fixes over 3.4

Various alternate data sources are using GeoRSS more are being added, yahoo local is now encoding using GeoRSS

Member audience asked if their will be a geocoder tool?

Yahoo – yes and a new coder will be released soon (hackers may get a preview) version 1 is available from Developer network

Why should people use Yahoo Maps?

Being developed as part of a universal strategy, being aimed now at developers as much as users. Because Yahoo asks you to!

Yahoo Answers

answers.yahoo.com

Available in 26 Global locations

Sorry Answers guys nature called….

Internet is now back up after a power failure, was it a failure of communication about who turn it was to put the 50p in the metre?

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