This past week (just in time to beat WWDC), my team released code to integrate Yahoo!’s Social Platform APIs into your Mac OS X and iPhone applications. Announced on the YDN blog and pushed to our GitHub account, the code gives any developer access to the following:

Read the profile of your user (photo, nickname, real [...]

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting “Designing Your Product as a Platform” for BayCHI’s monthly program at Xerox PARC alongside Dan Brodnitz (who presented “20 Conversations About Creativity”).
In the talk, I spoke about what it meant to be “Open.” The word “Open” is pretty packed with meaning, and I rarely find two [...]

In Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix),” featured artist Jay-Z drops a couple of lines that have bothered me for the past 4 years:
Bleek could be one hit away his whole career
As long as I’m alive, he’s a millionaire
And even if I die, he’s in my will somewhere
So he can just kick back [...]

I rarely bring up family issues here as I often assume they’d rather not be sullied by association. However, my parents recently received an award which I believe is worth mentioning.
For those that don’t know, my dad is a Lutheran minister in Omaha, Nebraska (”Hometown of Heroes,” as I’m known to call it). As far [...]

Somehow, I managed to open a debate recently with esteemed colleague and Flash/Flex wünderkind Zach Graves about which was the better flash memory card for digital cameras: the Eye-fi Explore 2GB card (mine) or the Kingston one-trick-pony 8GB card (Zach’s).
I argued (very convincingly) that uploading photos and geotagging them were for suckers. They [...]

Chances are, when you’re out and about surfing the Web, you’re bumping into semantically-enhanced content.* In some cases, you see the benefits; in others, your experience doesn’t change. This fact is one of the great side effects of the Semantic Web movement: if you participate in enhancing your content, none of your users suffer, and [...]

Folks who know me know I’m a fan of Google Reader; to date, I haven’t found a better consumption experience for reading and responding to all types of content that I’m interested in. Not only does it have a lightweight interface, it provides a social lens to see what my friends and colleagues find interesting [...]

My former colleague, Mike Speiser (who’s now over at Sutter Hill Ventures), recently suggested his vision of where Apple TV should be heading.
With the rumored Apple TV-minus-the-box-plus-the-TV unit days from being announced, I wanted to add one more set of thoughts to his before any such unveiling.
Mike was one of the folks behind Yahoo! [...]

The Apple TV and the iPhone will (at some point) converge as a single development platform to complement the Mac computer platform.
Or so my theory goes.
Why is that? Apple dropped the Apple TV on consumers in January 2007 as a “hobby.” Since then, it has released several software updates, including a major on-demand kiosk [...]

Last year, I posted a list of my favorite Mac software I used and recommended to others. 18 months have passed, and its time to provide an update for folks.
Inquisitor
Download Inquisitor | Previous recommendation that must be recommended again
Aside from far-faster page-loading performance, Inquisitor makes Safari the one-and-only browser choice on the Mac. (Don’t get [...]

Amazon apparently rolled out a quiet, but important, feature in the past couple of weeks: the Universal Wish List. By “universal,” Amazon’s simply referring to its ability to snag non-Amazon products and track them alongside its own inventory in its existing Wish List system.
I’ve been trying to get my extended family to use Amazon’s Wish [...]

The Wednesday morning before last, I was excited to see that WordPress released an official iPhone application to the world.
I instantly downloaded it, and added several of my WordPress blogs to the app. Aside from the annoying Twitter Tools glitch (which sent an empty tweet on blog setup), I was surprised to see some big [...]

I’m not sure how I initially found the news, but when I saw the headline (I Ain’t Got Nothing Against Ice T Or Nobody For That Matter But I Gotta Ride With Soulja Boy..) on Kanye West’s blog, I had to click. And, I had to click for two reasons.
First, why would Kanye be defending [...]

Nobody Wants to Hear Lloyd, originally uploaded by mlaaker.

Shortly before I left the halls of Island Def Jam to come to Yahoo!, the company began promoting little-known Atlanta artist Lloyd on their Murder Inc. sub-label. After one spin, I smelled a stinker, and said so.
“No, no, no. Lloyd’s gonna be hot,” I heard.
Today, at [...]

I recently offered to pre-screen O’Reilly’s first graphic novel, “Hackerteen: Volume 1: Internet Blackout,” under the caveat that I’d post a review afterwards.
Quick review: I wish I hadn’t committed to write this review. I find Internet Blackout to be offensive to those who enjoy comics, the Internet, and learning.
Full review: I’m a fan of [...]