If you need me on Friday…
…now you know where to find me. At 10am I’ll be sweating bullets giving my talk on the new Yahoo! Mail web service. This has been a long time in coming. When I joined Yahoo! almost 2 years ago, I was hired specifically to work on the web service. I’ve always wanted to see a mail web service made public and now it’s finally happening.
On Friday, we’re pushing a prerelease of the web service out the door just in time for Open Hack Day and I’m…totally freaking out. I’ve never given a talk this big before and I still have a bunch of stuff to do (writing some sample code and documentation, getting my slides together, etc). But I’ll make it. 
I know this post is short on details, but be patient. I’m hoping we can get more information out after all the craziness of hack day subsides (September has been a very long, busy month). I’ll see if they will let me publish the slides from my talk here. I can’t say for sure when we’ll go from prerelease to official release, yet…but hopefully it won’t take too long. Most of the details are finished. Think of this as the “invite only” period of the web service.
If you’re lucky enough to be coming to Yahoo! on Friday to hack, then you already have an invitation to use the web service. So come to my session, learn all about the Yahoo! Mail web service and then “shock and awe” us all with a “technically sweet” mail hack.
September 26th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
This seems to be an interesting idea. Now I am wondering what kind of services could be developped around Yahoo! Mail. Do you have any expectations?
In the Yahoo! Group you said:
“The web service allows programmers to access Yahoo! Mail
accounts so they can build new and exciting (we hope) mail-related applications.”
Now apart from notifiers or desktop clients (which already exist) I don’t really see what else could come out.
or maybe would it be plug-ins to Yahoo! Mail (?)
September 27th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Guillaume, my expectations are for people to come up with things we never imagined. Completely new ways of working with your mail and entirely new mashups of mail with whatever other service you can get your hands on.
Surprise us, that’s my expectation.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Ryan, good luck with the demo! I just had my big product launch at DEMO today. It didn’t exactly go smooth (tech difficulty followed by a confused camera man), but the good news is everyone woke up, and they all remembered my demo afterwards..
so the moral is, even if you mess up, it’s not the end of the world. Just do it with a smile, and people will be happy.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Yeah, fortunately most of what I have planned is a talk, not a demo. So unless Keynote dies on me, I *should* be okay.
Now that I’ve just said that, I’ve doomed myself.
September 28th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I guess this wouldn’t count as things Yahoo! never imagined, but I wonder if the web services could include a new interface for Yahoo! Briefcase. Wrap it into the Mail Beta functions somewhere.