Hackathon Episode IV: A New Hack

A long time ago (last Thursday) in a galaxy far, far away (Randolph & Clinton in Chicago)…

It's time for the latest installment in the FeedBurner Hackathon series. At 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, January 18, we put "normal" development on hold, gathered together in our new and improved conference room (now with white-boards and a projector!) and figured out our one-day projects. That's the rule for Hackathon: enter the day with an idea, exit the day with a fully-implemented new feature for FeedBurner. "That's impossible! Even for a computer," you say. Well, this ragged band of rebels was up to the task, and we have the following set of hacks to share with you now:

360 FeedFlares, by Paul Baker

Xbox Gamertag Flare - This dynamic FeedFlare reports your Xbox Live Gamertag name and gamescore. It also links to your profile on Xbox.com. To activate this FeedFlare, add http://paulbaker.net/fb/gamertag.xml?name=YourGamerTag to your list of FeedFlares. And of course you need to replace "YourGamerTag" with your actual Xbox Live Gamertag name.

Xbox Achievement Flare - This dynamic FeedFlare searches your feed's item content for references to games you have played on Xbox 360. If a game is found, this FeedFlare links to your achievement list for that game on Xbox.com. To activate this FeedFlare for your feed, add http://paulbaker.net/fb/xboxgames.xml?name=YourGamerTag to your list of FeedFlares under the "Optimize" tab.

They're wanted FeedFlares. Gamertag has the death sentence on twelve systems.

Email Audible Captcha, by Arun Kannan

An often requested feature on the FeedBurner Email service has been to offer visually-impaired subscribers an option to complete the email subscription form with the aid of an audio captcha. This hack offers a audio captcha that spells out numbers and permits captcha completion by the listener.

Uncle Owen said we needed to get this one into production on the south range by midday or there'd be hell to pay.

Event Feeds, by Eric Lunt

Transform your upcoming.org and Google Calendar feeds into something a little more useful. The Event Feed service will find the events in your feed, change the dates of the items to the dates of the events, and then order your items in ascending order in the feed. Tastes great with BuzzBoost to showcase upcoming events on your blog.

Also, because no hack day would be complete without some gratuitous Google Maps mash-up, we also created the "Map Event" FeedFlare that picks up on the location of the event from the upcoming.org feed.

For more information and examples, please see "Anatomy of a Hack".

Commander tear this feed apart until you've found those plans, and bring me the pubDates, I want them alive!

JSON Lives! by Jon Klem

JSON versus YAML versus XML? Phooey to that we say. We're all about gluttony when it comes to satisfying your craving for having your feed prepared your way.

Please welcome the newest member of the FeedBurner API family, the Feed Format API. There are currently three options available. GET http://api.feedburner.com/format/1.0/JSON for JSON straight-up. GET http://api.feedburner.com/format/1.0/JSONP for JSON wrapped with the near mystical callback function of your choosing - just begging you to apply your JavaScript wizardry to it. And finally, GET http://api.feedburner.com/format/1.0/YAML. Have you your own format? Do you wish your feed could be translated to Gramma Nutt's Markup Language (GRML)? Drop us a note and we'll output it to that too.

In short order there will be a Developers page with a full description of the usages of the Feed Format API. For now, here are a few examples:

BurningQuestions as JSON, BurningQuestions as JSONP, BurningQuestions as YAML

You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the operating system!

My Feeds Facelift, by John Zeratsky

Plenty of FeedBurner publishers visit "My Feeds" for an at-a-glance overview of their latest stats. Now those publishers will see the latest "Visitors" number alongside "Subscribers" if they're using our site stats service. Not-so-secret mini-feature: Click the "Visitors" number to jump directly to your site stats dashboard!

Traveling through stats ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through an aggregator or bounce too close to a subscriber and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

New Blogger Must Mean New FeedBurner Widgets for Blogger, by Matt Shobe

When Blogger recently rolled out a major upgrade to their service, one feature in particular caught our eye: Widget Tags for Layouts. If you use one of Blogger's many default template styles to determine your blog's visual appearance, you can now use the Widget feature of Blogger's Layout section to place other sites' features in your blog without ever having to get your hands dirty in complex HTML code. FeedBurner has now made it possible to use some of our most popular HTML code features (located under the "Publicize" tab of your account), including FeedCount, Headline Animator, Email Subscriptions, and ChickletChooser, with Blogger's new Widget Tags just by clicking a button. Look for the menu shown here beneath the HTML code snippets FeedBurner provides:

…Just choose Blogger from the list and click "Go!" You'll be taken to Blogger and given a chance to preview and position your widget on your blog. (Support for TypePad Widgets was our original "autocopy this code" option for widget lovers everywhere, and it's been expanded as part of this hack. Yee-hah!)

Cut the chatter Red Two.

There were also a number of hacks that couldn't quite be completed in the seven-hour development window. We sense that these new features will go live in…the coming days:

• Creative Commons License Service Update, by Adil Mezghouti
• Custom Headline Animator Gallery, by Alden Almagro
• FeedBurner Ad Live Counters, by Steve Olechowski
• FeedFlare Catalog Redesign, by Rachelle Bowden and Jessie Chavez
• Mobile Feed Management UI, by Joe Kottke

We're glad we could do our small part to restore freedom to the galaxy. The circle is now complete.