Roaming the show floor at Web 2.0 Expo recently, I was surprised to hear that Yahoo has a story to tell developers every bit as good as Google's. That's the message that came through loud and clear -- and with a British accent -- in my video conversation with Sophie Major, international program manager for the Yahoo Developer Network.
Catching up with Sophie was just one of the interesting occurrences at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. That conference prompted me to opine that Mobile Is The New Desktop. Ms. Major's insight into what Yahoo's up to only reinforced that view.
For example, did you know that Yahoo offers a growing selection of mobile widgets, which you can use to build out great Internet apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry? I had a vague sense that Yahoo was a player in this arena, but mostly my thinking has been "Google, Google, Google." (Check out the middle of the video, below, where I include a little visual humor along this theme.)
If you develop your own widget, you can put it up on Yahoo's gallery. That's great exposure to help build user adoption.
Yahoo's also got an interesting location-aware service, called Fire Eagle, which will enable you to share where you're at with other social-networking apps.
Anyway, there's not much more to say in terms of specifics, other than to point you to the Yahoo Developer Network blog, which serves as a community portal to all the resources and support you'll need to get going.
Truly, the current crop of mobile and social-networking tools, and the apps these things enable, is the most exciting development to come along since the Web itself began. Can you afford not to get on board this bandwagon? Definitely not! (How's that for a double negative that's a positive?)
OK, here's the video, where Sophie explains some of Yahoo's developer resources:
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