Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day

Well, looks like we're finally joining in the ranks of the rest of the net and opening up our Addressbook API. This is the same API that sites like Plaxo and LinkedIn have been using to magically get your data, and now you can too. It's currently using the old bbAuth access controls instead of the newer, shinier oAuth APIs that all the other cool kids love, but that's coming very soon.

The docs have all the details, so feel free to dig into them.

There are times when you just want to play with something and not have to worry about how it works. Maybe it's just to figure out if something makes sense or just to mock up a new page to see if someone else likes it.

Well, if you ever have that need, now there's a batch of YUI Wireframes you can use to do just that. The stencils are available in a slew of different formats and are all published under Creative Commons (naturally).

While browsing over the Yahoo! News site reading articles about Sen. Barack Obama clinching the Democratic candidacy, I was reminded that Yahoo! Shortcuts are really pretty cool. I think that they've upgraded the content since I last paid attention to them, such that you can click on Barack Obama's name and see photos, videos, biographical blurbs, search results and so on in a really slick visual presentation. One thing that I did note as a minor annoyance, though, was that it could be somewhat distracting to have a little preview popup appearing if you scanned the article and left your cursor sitting in the wrong place. Not terrible, mind you, but a little distracting. However, if you want to turn that off: Yes You Can! Click on the Help icon in the upper right corner of the maximized Y! Shortcuts box, and you'll see a link to disable preview popups (not the Y! Shortcut itself, just the mouseover popup) for as long as your cookie sticks around. I haven't decided whether I really mind them, but it's nice to have the option.

Ok, so maybe this isn't necessarily 100% Yahoo! related, but as I've been reminded recently, if you've got AT&T Yahoo! as your network provider, you can hop on the wireless network for free at any Starbucks or hundreds of other AT&T Wireless networks. Of course, given the general proliferation of Starbucks about, that may well be one and the same thing.

I think it was good Ms. Fake who once said the best blog post is under 100 words. Well, since i don't have real net access and i'm typing this into my phone, I may just hit that mark.

So aside from me hoping that the mobile net holds out, I should also point out that there's a new version of YUI out that includes support for Firefox 3 and the latest version of Opera. YUIBlog.com has all the details. And I'm off to find a slightly more reliable network connection.

Apologies for the perpetually late posts! It's a bit busy at work!

I find that I use emoticons more and more in online communication, because there are so many nuances of expression that otherwise get lost in plain text. It's somewhat lazy, really, because it means that I don't have to think about structuring my sentences to convey meaning better, but...well...whatever. (-___-)

So, I naturally think it's really cute that you can embed standard emoticons in your Yahoo! Messenger (9.0 Beta, which just released a new update) status messages and have them show up, miniaturized, in your and others' Y! Messenger buddy lists. When you

or

,

those little faces really start to clear things up.

Supported emoticons that I can find (for the newest version):

When Yahoo! Finance introduced their very cool (and technically interesting) streaming quotes way back when, I noticed a couple of people commenting that it was all well and good, but why bother with quotes that update inline if they're already 15 minutes delayed? One partnership with BATS Trading later, and problem solved! Streaming quotes are now available in realtime across presumably the majority of US stocks.

(except after hours, when stocks are apparently NaN% adjusted. :D I'm sure that bug'll get sorted out soon)

We've mentioned BrowserPlus before, but now it's official -- BrowserPlus...er, exists! And does stuff!

The general idea is that BrowserPlus extends the capability of your browser to do an ever-growing set of cool interactive stuff (through seamless updates) that developers can easily leverage when they're putting together their sites. Of course, I don't know much about the details because I haven't had a chance to develop anything off of it yet, and you can't really yet either. However, you can look at some of the applications that the team has already put together, including a really sweet photo uploader (extending on the ol' Mash PhotoDropper from way back) and a functional in-browser IRC client. This is still very much a limited preview, but it suggests a lot of really cool possibilities.

I'll admit a potential bias, but I have to say that when it comes to dealing with friends feeds, I prefer MyBlogLog. Maybe it's the fact that it's easier to find folks, maybe it's the fact that flickr photos added to the stream actually display photos instead of a broken image. Well, for whatever reason, keeping up-to-date on my friends idle doings is just more pleasurable. That's why I was even happier to see that they've beefed up the search with a far smarter search tool than what they had.

And it's full of nifty.

In what is clearly a move designed to appease our presumptive Windowed overlords, del.icio.us has released a beta version of their toolbar for Internet Explorer. Perhaps they will look favorably upon us for opening up the wonders of easy bookmarking, tagging, tag search, and persistence across computers to the IE masses, and subsequently shower us with stock options or install CDs of Windows Vista.