onfocus

Last week a copy of Yahoo! Hacks arrived at my door, and I was finally able to flip through the pages. It's very satisfying to see months of work in Word and Photoshop become a solid object that you can pick up, throw on a table, or use to prop open a door. It's really a novel feeling for someone who usually writes in the virtual world. Today the book is available at Amazon without any of that pre-order nonsense. ;)

Yahoo! continues to release new features (and hire people I know) at lightning speed. Just in the past few weeks we've seen Yahoo! Podcasts, Yahoo! Blog Search, Yahoo! Site Explorer, and Yahoo! Instant Search. The public perception of Yahoo! has definitely changed over the course of my writing, and I think the fact that Yahoo! Hacks even exists will be surprising to people who haven't been keeping up with Yahoo! lately.

When I started working on Yahoo! Hacks, I thought I knew the site fairly well and that I'd mainly be focusing on hacks related to new offerings like Yahoo! Web Services, Yahoo! 360, Flickr, and Y!Q Contextual Search. After a while though I came to view Yahoo! as a big city with hidden alleyways and entire neighborhoods that had always been there but were new to me. Of course there are plenty of hacks related to the new services, and I think the book is a good way to get up to speed with what Yahoo! has been up to technically. But I also hope people pick up Yahoo! Hacks and learn something new about perennial Yahoo! features like My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Groups. And maybe you'll even discover some new Yahoo! neighborhoods.

That's my pitch. ;) I'm very proud of the book, and I want to thank everyone who contributed hacks, hack ideas, and general encouragement. You can order Yahoo! Hacks at Amazon, read some sample hacks, or flip through it before you buy at bookstores everywhere. It also makes a great door-stopper.