ajarora^1.0

Man, we just wrapped up Yahoo! Hack Day in Sunnyvale…and the general concensus in the blogosphere is that it was better than anyone could have imagined.

As soon as I got to the Yahoo HQ, I headed down to the café, where I had learned from watching the Yahoo! Company Tour that I could get free gourmet drinks Little did I know that coffee would be the most insignificant of the free stuff I’d be getting this weekend.

The day kicked off with some awesome workshops by some incredible speakers. My favorites included a talk on social networks by the founder of upcoming.org , Andy Baio, and the keynote from Bradley Horowitz .
But even before the workshops had begun, I had already met a lotta cool people, including some Chicagoans that I’ll probably be hanging out with in a couple of weeks. I met a few people at every workshop as well, and by the time the event was officially kicked off by Mike Arrington the kegs were already pouring out great beer .
Oh, and since everyone had already seen the boxes outside labeled Beck , we all knew the night hadn’t even bugun.

The show was amazing. Plain and simple. To be honest, I’d been a huge fan of Beck for a very long time…and even on the plane ride here I probably played Tropicalia three times…but I wasn’t quite as into his most recent album. F* that…Beck is back…and this one one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. His new album is full of great material, and he rocked it out for us Friday night. Maybe he was experimenting with us and trying out a new set, but none of us minded the 4–count ‘em FOUR–encores, and a custom movie made made just for us.
Oh and it got better. I was chillin with a few guys out by the his tour bus, and then I picked up a lonely basketball and started shooting around at the courts. Next thing I know, I’m shootin’ hoops with Beck’s band, and he even sign’s my laptop and hung out with us for a while. I can’t even believe it happened as I’m writing this, yet I was so chilled out while it was happening. The guy was just so easy to talk to.
So then I started my Hack .

The problem: I’m never able to find a good music or NPR radio station on my never ending road-trips. The plan was to use Yahoo! Driving Directions API to get driving directions, and then pull data from a custom datasource to overlay where all the NPR stations near your trip were and when to change to each of them.

The b**ch: was that there is no Yahoo! Driving Directions API…or any DD API for that matter. I guess it’s just to costly on servers and processing power to offer one. But I wasn’t going to give up yet.

The work-around: draw my own version of a Driving Directions path via little line segments on a regular Yahoo Map. But first I had to think of something that occurs only on a highway, every few miles, that I had the exact latitude/longitude of (or address for). I couldn’t use exits, because I guess you can’t type in “I-65, Exit 135, Indiana” and get a map. Bingo…rest areas. There was a bunch of data about the locations of rest areas, so I just drew a line from rest area to rest area and voila, a ghetto Driving Directions API.

So after I had the path (my presentation example was going down I-5 from Sacramento to San Diego), I just created some invisible map points of where all the NPR Stations were (with data from the FCC), and showed the ones that were relevant to the trip.

The app itself isn’t much…but the possibilities with an actual driving directions API could be really great. Imagine the next time you get directions for a road trip from Yahoo! Maps that it could take your hotel, restaurant, and music preferences and tell you where and when it would be best to stop for your favorite food, where to set your radio dial, the cheapest hotels and the cheapest gas stations.

So anyway, I was pretty confident in my Hack (when I finally finished it about 2 minutes before it was time for me to present)…but I knew it wasn’t as cool as some of the awesome stuff other hackers had made. I went up to present, and I figured I’d bust Mike Arrington’s balls a little but to get everyone’s attention (I was the second to last presentation). So I told him that the main reason I flew all the way from Chicago to be there was to meet him (which was true!). But then I followed it by saying I was kind of disappointed. I mean come on, I’d hung out with Beck the night before…Michael Arrington isn’t exactly Michael Jordan.

But then, the most unexpected finish to the event…I was outside grabbing some grub with my new friend Jonathan when they were announcing the winners (since I knew I wasn’t gonna win anything)…and as we’re walking in I hear them say that they’re giving 2 awards (Best Y! Maps Hack and Best Y! Local Hack) to one person. And then they say my name. And then, when all of the regular awards had been given…Mike Arrington stepped up to announce the coveted “special” winners. And, oh yes, that’s right…I won a third (and coolest) award. Worst Kiss-Ass

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