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As you can tell things have been quiet around here. The ink is barely dry on Yahoo! Hacks and I'm already working on my next project: Flickr Hacks! (Note to parents: Flickr is a photo-sharing application on the surface, but it's much more than that.) I'm especially excited about this book because I'm going to be working with the amazingly talented Jim Bumgardner. Jim started the Flickr Hacks group, put together some beautiful collaborative posters with Flickr images, and generally knows Flickr and the Flickr API inside and out. Check out Jim's Photostream to get a sense of his work.

If you've written a Flickr extension or found a novel way to use Flickr, don't be surprised if Jim or I contact you about including it in the book. (But feel free to contact me as well!) The book is part of the Hacks series, and Flickr Hacks is meant to be a gallery featuring many voices and many different technologies that enhance or build upon Flickrspace. I already have my head down trying to meet writing deadlines, but part of my time will be devoted to finding what's out there—and I've been playing with a lot of fun Flickr toys over the past couple of weeks. I'd love to hear about your favorites.

So once again this weblog will probably be dormant while I'm working on the book, but I'll still be here working away behind the scenes. I've been a member of Flickr since it was a chat-based application, and it's been fun watching it grow. I'm continually amazed at the creativity Flickr has inspired in both photography and application design, and I'm excited to be able to work around and with the incredible Flickr community. I'm hoping I can help translate some of that energy into book form. See ya on Flickr!

ps. here are my photos at Flickr.

According to this MSNBC/Forbes article—Safety first: The best places to live in the U.S., "Every location in the country is exposed to one disaster or another..." But Corvallis, Oregon came in at #8 on the safest places list. A quake topped the list of dangers here, and there is a fault off the coast. Honolulu, Hawaii was at the top of the list. Of course now that Corvallis is on the safe list something is bound to happen. [via Chuggnutt]

O'Reilly put up eight Beta Hacks from Yahoo! Hacks. Find out how you can use Yahoo! to translate pages, monitor your commute, visualize your music collection, search your web site, program with the Yahoo! API, and other fun hackery. And that's only eight hacks—imagine what you can do with 100. ;) The book isn't out yet, but you can pre-order from Amazon: Yahoo! Hacks. (I'll get a little kickback if you order through a link here on my site.)

Update: Matt McAlister tried out the Visualize Your Music Collection Hack and wrote about the results on his blog: Downloading podcasts with Yahoo! Music Engine.

A friend emailed to let me know that a lot of animals have been displaced by the hurricane. People should be the first priority, but you may want to contribute to organizations like the ASPCA or the Humane Society of the US as well as the Red Cross.

I do a fair bit of complaining about companies here, so I should post something positive once in a while. Here's a recent exchange I had with Keen.

Hi Keen, How can I order a replacement black and yellow bungee style lace for one of my Keen Newport sandals? My dog ate it, and I'm not sure where to get that kind of shoelace. Thanks!

And the response:

Thank you for contacting Keen Footwear! No worries on the laces, we'll gladly put a replacement system in the mail to you.

Pretty human-sounding for a big company. Plus, I'll get to start wearing my favorite sandals again if it works out. Now if they could solve my dog's chewing problems they'd really have a customer for life. ;)

You probably already know where to go to donate to hurricane relief, but if not you can go here:

It somehow makes sense that the high prophet of pastafarianism is from right here in Corvallis, Oregon: Corvallis man's parody is Internet 'monster'. You can read his original letter at his website.

I was chatting with Brian Sawyer (Hacks Series editor) earlier today about writing Hacks and the process I use, and he encouraged me to share the way I work. I think it's a bit like making sausage, you don't necessarily want to know what an author uses to put something together. But hopefully sharing my process will help other tech writers, or may encourage others to share the way they work. So here's a quick look at how I write a Hack.

Everyone has their own methods and process for writing, and here are the methods I used for Yahoo! Hacks. I printed out and taped the following numbered lists to my monitor, and reading over them helped me come up with supporting material for each Hack. I view a Hack as a project the reader can accomplish. The reader also needs to know why they might want to accomplish the project and have an idea of what the project should look like when they're finished. Here's my template:

1. Why this hack is needed (story, build desire)
2. Describe the relevant features
3. Hack prerequisites
4. Hack code/procedure
5. Example of the Hack in action
6. Brief summary (why the reader rocks!)
7. If possible, Hack alternatives

Whenever possible I use the conventional Hack headings of The Code and Running the Code to separate parts 4 and 5. And the heading Hacking the Hack for part 7. If the Hack is going to be centered on a piece of code, I like to write that first and get it working smoothly. Once the code is ready to go, parts 3, 4, and 5 are fairly easy to put together. If the Hack is more basic/explanatory, I'll often start at part 1. Part 1 is always the hardest for me, so my other lists revolve around how to frame a Hack for a reader. I've found that William Zinsser's On Writing Well has been a big help to me, and some of these ideas are straight from the book. Zinsser talks about a central transaction for any piece of writing, and the one I came up with for Hacks is: Hacker's love affair with technology. I felt like I wanted to convey excitement about technology throughout the book, and I always kept this phrase in mind. I only wrote in first person using I once or twice in Yahoo! Hacks. I was more comfortable writing in third person. I still tried to keep the idea of telling a story in mind, and I found this list helpful:

1. How was I drawn into the Hack?
2. What emotional baggage did I bring?
3. How has the Hack changed my life?
4. Tell with humanity and warmth.

Of course not every Hack is a life-changing experience, but the Hack probably did affect me in some small way: made something more convenient, helped me see something in a different way, let me share something with my friends, etc. I've found that it's not always easy to explain why someone should be interested in a particular Hack, but I think it's crucial. Here's the list of potential motivations that I tack up:

1. aesthetic (appreciation of beauty or good taste)
2. competitive (giving an advantage or keeping up)
3. gregarious (enjoying the company of others)
4. snobbish (regarding social inferiority)
5. exhibitionist (attract attention, show-off)
6. maternal (protect, warm and nurturing)

For Yahoo! Hacks I found that there are two basic varieties of Hack: Visualization and Productivity. Visualization Hacks let you see data in a new or unusual way and Productivity Hacks let you do something you already do more efficiently. So the motivations that I found most compatible were aesthetic for visualization hacks, and competitive for productivity hacks. Although gregarious and exhibitionist motivations worked well for community-oriented hacks. I don't use these exact words in the hack, but I might say something like, "this hack has a minimalist charm," that appeals to the aesthetic desire. Once I find how I'm going to frame the Hack by showing the reader why it's great, the words flow for me from there. Part 2 of the template is important because it's a chance to describe the service in detail. I always assume that the reader only has a passing knowledge of whatever I'm writing about, so I like to describe the details of basic features of a service in part 2. For example, if I have a Hack that shows how to scrape a site for movie times and create a custom email with listings in their area, I first want to show someone how to get movie times the standard way through the website, along with any tips and tricks for using the site. Then I'll go into taking those features a step further with the Hack. I feel that without understanding a feature as it was intended to be used first, the Hack won't make as much sense. I'm not very good at this, but I try to add a sentence or two at the end of the Hack that taps into the motivation from the beginning of the Hack. I think it gives the Hack a sense of completeness.

That's it! Of course much of this process is tied to the conventions established in the excellent Hacks series, and I hope sharing this will encourage others to take a stab at writing for the series. You'll have to see if you can spot these methods in action when Yahoo! Hacks is out in a month or so.

We cracked open one of the watermelons from our garden today and it was sweet and delicious!



It was heavy too, probably around 20 lbs. We're going to let the others grow just a bit longer, but I'm ready to call our watermelon experiment a success based on this first one.

Half-baked idea of the day: mammoth call centers should let people in the hold queue talk with each other. So say you have a > ten minute wait, the system randomly pairs you with someone else who's waiting on hold. You could talk about the weather, your respective locations, or just complain about the company you're contacting. When the system is ready a gentle voice could break in and say, "A representive is ready, would you like to speak with them now or continue holding?" Seems like it would be more entertaining than hold music.

I've enjoyed reading the conversation philosophical exhibitionism going on in the Amazon Reviewers post from last Tuesday. In trying to find latent motivations for the 1,282nd book review on Amazon, I missed a bunch of overt motivations and they've been covered well in the comments. The most obvious motivation is knowledge sharing, as in, "hey, this cajun cookbook doesn't have a recipe for gumbo!" I still don't think this adequately explains thousands of reviews for a single product, because not every review is adding a new data point about the product.

sk and I just got back from a weekend in Bend, Oregon. It was our first time there and we had a blast. Our first night in town, we met up with Jake and his wife and heard about Bend through the years. Other highlights included visiting several Cascade Lakes for canoing and hiking, dinner at the Blacksmith, a quick hike at the Lava Lands Visitor Center, a noisy thunderstorm, and some time at the High Desert Museum. This morning we drove to the top of Pilot Butte and got a sense of how Bend is laid out, and saw a 360 degree view of the mountains around Bend.

The top highlight for me was an early morning canoe trip around glassy Elk Lake.


The top photographic highlight for me was Sparks Lake, and I took quite a few photos there including this shot of Mt. Bachelor and some lava formations:


We also rode the ski lift to the top of Mt. Bachelor for an overview of the Cascades. Here's a look at the Three Sisters and Sparks Lake from above:


I put up a gallery of 13 more Bend photos if you want to see more scenery from the trip. There's so much to explore around Bend, I feel like we've just scratched the surface. I'm already looking forward to my next trip there.