Nestoria UK Blog

Nestoristas!

As some of you will know, this coming Saturday will be Yahoo! Hack Day here in London, and a few members of the Nestoria team will be on hand. But rather than just attending, we though it might be a bit of fun if we try to subvert the event and turn it into our own hack contest. As such, we’re delighted to present….

The quasi-official Nestoria Hack contest *
*to be held at Yahoo! Hack Day

One important note, in the true hacker spirit this contest is totally unsanctioned by Yahoo! and the BBC (our two gracious hosts at Hack Day). The prize is nevertheless very real and there for the taking.

The rules: Simple. Whoever creates the best (as judged by the engineering team of Nestoria) mashup at Yahoo! Hack Day that uses the Nestoria API wins the prize.

The prize: a brand new Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS device.

Full product specs available at Kelkoo.
In addition, should you want it, you’ll also get a full profile of you and your darling little hack here on the Nestoria blog. You’ll join the company of such internet grandees and Nestoria interviewees as OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast and digital commentator (and ex-Yahoo!) Prashant Agarwal.

Who’s eligible: anyone at Yahoo! Hack Day including Yahoo! and BBC employees (but not Nestoria employees).

Why you should participate: our API is good, the prize is good, and there’s something spiritually right about the little man hacking Hack Day. Also, your odds of winning are probably much better than your chance of winning one of the corporate prizes.

Some project ideas from the Nestoria team:

• create a bot for Y! messenger that pretends to be an estate agent and serves up relevant search results for queries like “I want to find a flat in foo that costs less than bar”.
• save properties to Y! notepad or del.icio.us.
• mashup local news from BBC with local properties.
• mashup properties with questions about an area from Y! answers.
• Nestoria gives you geocoded properties, flickr gives you geocoded photos. Mix. Serve hot.
• use Y! horoscopes to determine if your potential new home has the right feng shui for you.
• Magically weave together profiles from Y! Music and flatshare listings from Nestoria to find a flatmate you’ll actually like.
• mash up finance news about the “impending housing crash” with property listings (BTW – slap a little Y! search marketing next to that, and you’ve got yourself a business)

Any one of these will be more than acceptable to win the prize. But of course the limit is your own imagination.

Muchas gracias to our amigos over at Yahoo! for hosting this event.

We’ll see you there on Saturday.