RSSYahoo Opens Up Mail Source Code
By Ed Oswald | Published October 2, 2006, 11:00 AM
Yahoo said over the weekend that it was opening up its market-leading mail service technology in order to allow developers to innovate on top of the service and build new applications. The move is called one of the largest code giveaways ever.
By doing so, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company hopes to spur a host of applications built around Yahoo Mail. The service is accessed by more than a quarter of a billion Internet users worldwide, Yahoo says.
What is being given way is the browser-based authentication scheme for Yahoo Mail. This would allow developers to build new user interfaces or methods to display a user's incoming mail. Yahoo says it cannot create all the applications users want; thus, opening up the code was a logical move.
The code will be made available to developers by the end of the year, and Yahoo executives hoped that other e-mail providers would do the same. Other companies have opened up their code, including Amazon.com, eBay and Google, but for uses other than e-mail.
The announcement came as part of the company's "Yahoo Hack Day," a 24-hour long event where more than 500 young programmers were invited to the company's headquarters. There, the programmers were asked to build new applications based on Yahoo technologies.
Outstanding....this now motivate us to work more innovatively..................
cherrs for the OPEN SOURCE.............
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|Seems BetaNews MISSED the real story!
http://www.infoworld.com...HNyahooopensdata_1.html
Yahoo opens up members' data to external developers
Company claims that providing such access will enable the use of applications in ways not possible before
By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
October 02, 2006
Yahoo Inc. has introduced a mechanism for external developers to give their Web applications access to data that Yahoo members have stored in Yahoo services.
Yahoo made available the protocol that provides this bridge, called Browser Based Authentication, on Friday, and works with two Yahoo services -- Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Photos -- with support for other services planned for the next few months.
The protocol requires that users give their authorization prior to giving third-party Web applications access to their Yahoo data. Developers also need to register their applications with Yahoo.
The idea behind Browser Based Authentication is to extend the popular "mashups" of Yahoo Web services with external applications by bringing personal user data, like stored e-mail messages and photos, into the mix.
Providing access to this data will allow Yahoo members to use external Web applications in ways that haven't been possible yet. Until now, this data has been kept out of the reach of non-Yahoo developers.
For example, external developers now can write applications that let Yahoo users perform actions on their e-mail messages or photos that Yahoo hasn't come up with. Yahoo wants to tap into the creativity of external developers who can broaden the scope of tools, applications and features available for its online services.
More information can be found here.
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