Things that made me happy this morning:

• May the fourth be with you – it is Star Wars Day!
• The YQL console now lists community open tables from github
• The Bay Area’s public transport system has a very nice API
• A nice photo series of old game controllers and consoles as X-Rays
• James Broad has a good step by step tutorial how to use iSight for a timelapse video
• PopeyesJokes on YouTube shows that you can create a lot of UGC with a simple video editing suite and a lot of enthusiasm
• What not the crochet tells you exacty that.
• The iSnort is an iPhone app to either make you look properly Hollywood, or to get you kicked out of any club. Also check the disclaimer on the bottom of the page.
• A great list of code comments
• Jacob Kaplan-Moss has info on the worst REST practices to avoid
• Wedesigner Depot praises 1,2,3 as a good usability practice
• Some very dedicated hackers found 48,000 lbs of 70mm tape – the only copy of extremely high-resolution images of the moon in an abandoned McDonald’s and started digitizing them.
• An art student in the UK shows how to make a car disappear. Take that James Bond.

I love flickr to bits and I especially like the copy and paste boxes for embedding photos on my own photo stream when I check photos in different sizes.

What annoyed me is that this is not available on other people’s photos. That’s why I wrote a small GreaseMonkey script that embeds a text box with the a link and the medium sized image of the photo you’re currently checking out:

If you want to have the same comfort, simple Install the GreaseMonkey script flickr embed and save yourself some annoying steps of copy and paste.

I just came back from Paris where I talked apparently very animated to around 50 developers about all the goodies Yahoo offers developers:

• Get the slides without the notes [PDF, 8.6mb]
• Get the slides with notes [PDF, 8.6mb]

I’ve spent the ride on the Eurostar editing the recording of the talk. I simply used Audacity and the built-in microphone of my MacBook Pro so the quality is not stunning but does the trick.

• Listen to the audio recording of the talk [mp3, 41.1mb]

I like being in Paris, developers have very good and challenging questions there, the coffee and food simply rocks and I can be in and out in a matter of hours without having to wait at airports and spend hours in the air being unable to use my laptop. We’re now waiting for feedback what other talks people in Paris want us to give and I am sure I will be back before long.

Yesterday evening I was very happy indeed to go to the National Maritime Museum in London to talk to representatives of several Museums about data distribution, YQL and open tables.

The whole thing was initiated by Jim O’Donnell who had spent quite some time with YQL and NMM’s data.

In my talk Reaching those web folk [PDF, 6.2mb] I covered the switch from a web sites as end points to open data as an opportunity to reach many more users and turn any of your visitors from a receiver to a relay broadcasting your information to their friends, contacts and distribution channels you are not even aware of.

You can download the audio recording of the talk, too: Reaching those web folk [MP3, 76.6mb]

Also thanks to Mia Ridge for taking notes in case you want someone else’s view.

Some days ago (I lost track with all the travelling and time differences) I gave the first talk at Yahoo7’s Open Sessions in their ludicrously beautiful offices in Sydney, Australia.

• You can also download the slides PDF if you don’t want to sign up for SlideShare

In order of appearance I talked about:

• The Yahoo Design Patterns
• The design pattern stencils
• Graded Browser support
• The Yahoo User Interface library
• The YUI CSS grids builder
• YUI widgets
• Information how to skin YUI widgets
• How to extend YUI widgets by subscribing to custom events
• Progressive Enhancement with Autocomplete
• Progressive Enhancement with Data Table
• Yahoo’s exceptional performance information
• YSlow
• Yahoo BOSS and examples I built with it like Keywordfinder and Unsafe Search
• Yahoo! Pipes
• YQL and how to use it to retrieve creative commons licensed photos of Sydney.
• YQL open data tables and how to use them