Wappwolf and ifttt are a bit like the chocolate and peanut butter in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Separate, they're pretty good. Together, though, is when the magic happens.

For folks new to the services, Wappwolf is an application that performs actions when you drop a file into your Dropbox. ifttt, on the other hand, can interact with websites and services and then do things like send an email or save a file in Dropbox.

Let's take a look at a several ways to combine the services for maximum effect:

For example, Wappwolf can watch Dropbox and convert files to Kindle format and then send them to your Kindle. You could use this to save company documents for later reading on your ebook.

ifttt might watch Instagram or Flickr for photos, and save them to your Dropbox when they appear. You could use that to make sure you never miss a polar bear picture again.

Separately, they're pretty handy. Together, you can do some really interesting things.

(If you haven't tried Wappwolf or ifttt before, don't worry. They're dead easy to use. See the How to use Wappwolf Automator page, and/or the About ifttt page.)

1. Send a Text Message When Files Are Saved to Dropbox

Say you share a Dropbox folder with co-workers, and you want to be notified when there's a new file in the shared folder. ifttt only has triggers for new files in the public folder for Dropbox, while Wappwolf can take action based on pretty much any folder you give it access to.

Start with Wappwolf and create an action for the appropriate folder. Choose the "email it" action and set up an email to go to trigger@ifttt.com (be sure to set up your email address with ifttt). Set the Subject to #Dropbox Notify, and the body to the filename (or whatever you like). You can add whatever you like to the body, but you probably want to uncheck the "Add file as attachment" box.

Next, go to ifttt and choose the Email channel. Choose "Send ifttt an email tagged and use #Dropbox as the tag. Create the trigger and then go choose your action channel, in this case SMS. Choose "Send me a text message," and complete the task. Now when a file is saved in the Dropbox folder, you should get a text message.

Don't care for text messages? You could also use ifttt to send Boxcar notifications if you prefer that app to texts.

2. From Google Reader to Kindle

iPads are great for reading, especially with the Reeder app. But for reading longer text, nothing beats the Kindle. What we'll do here is save an article from Google Reader to a PDF, then convert that and send it to your Kindle. This one should be very easy, because ifttt already has a recipe for it, so you're halfway there. Just visit the recipe and create the task.

Next, head over to Wappwolf and pick the folder you specified, then tell Wappwolf to "Send it to your Kindle." Add the action, save, and you're ready to go.

3. Copy Files from ifttt to FTP Servers, Box or SkyDrive

ifttt supports saving files to Dropbox, but it doesn't support the breadth of services that Wappwolf does. If you want to copy files over to Microsoft SkyDrive, Box, or upload them to an FTP server, you'll need to combine ifttt and Wappwolf.

Create any action in ifttt that saves a file to Dropbox in ifttt, then select the folder you're saving to in Dropbox to create the Wappwolf action for saving to the appropriate service.

Of course, you're not limited merely to uploading files from one service to the other. Wappwolf lets you combine actions, so you can save a file to Dropbox, use Wappwolf actions on the file, and then upload it to its destination.

4. Process Files via Email

Wappwolf works on files only when they're saved to Dropbox. Usually that's not a problem, since Dropbox clients are available on just about every popular platform. But what if you want to use Wappwolf with files coming in via email? No problem. You can use ifttt to save to a Dropbox folder, then create the appropriate Wappwolf action.

This might be useful if you want, for instance, to email yourself a file using a chron job on a server. Just attach the file to the email, mail it to ifttt and have it saved to Dropbox, then use Wappwolf to perform whatever actions you like.

Patience Is a Virtue

Note that some patience is required in setting up tasks with Wappwolf and ifttt. It can take a few minutes for each service to perform its tasks. For example, the chain required to save a file to PDF via Google Reader and ifttt, then convert and send to Kindle, then for Amazon to ready it for the Kindle took about five to seven minutes. That's not a long time, but it's slower than some folks might be used to with most modern Web services.

Have any cool tips that you want to share with the rest of the ReadWriteWeb audience? We'd love to hear about any cool hacks that use ifttt and/or Wappwolf. Share and enjoy!

The software giant is working with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Electronic Payments Association as well as vulnerability research firm Kyrus Tech. Kyrus reverse engineered seventy different binary files that were associated with Zeus activities and according to their blog entry today contained the following features:

• HTTP and VNC-like servers.
• Remote Process Injection. Uses WriteProcessMemory to inject executable code into a remote process. Generally this is either used by debuggers or malware. Since this binary has no debugger functionality, we assume the reason for its inclusion is malicious.
• Screenshot Capability. Allows this application to save and send back screenshots to the server. This allows an attacker to see what exactly is showing on the victim's screen.
• Keyboard Logging Capabilities. Allows the attacker to send keystrokes to a server to get victim's passwords that are typed into the keyboard.
• Browser Logging and HTTP injection capability. Hooks nspr4.dll to allow logging and injection of HTTP and HTTPS data.
• Windows mail download. Allows the attacker to view the victim's email if the user uses Windows Mail or Outlook Express.

After it has done all of this nasty business, it then runs a batch file to delete itself.

Zeus is highly pernicious and a very active piece of malware, infecting millions of computers around the world. What makes it nastier is that the source code is freely available online, and there are several ways to purchase turnkey implementation kits as well. This is Microsoft's fourth anti-Zeus raid, showing that civil litigation against malware operators is becoming more commonplace.

Nevertheless, this is a small step forward towards fighting cybercriminals. As the Kyrus blog states, "Fighting the discrete activities launched from such a platform is like shooting down a plane launched from an aircraft carrier: they're just going to send more planes. If you want to have an impact you need to negatively impact the carrier."

But it may not be enough."Ultimately, the most important thing will be to bring those who write the malware, sell the malware, buy the malware, or profit from its use to justice. Taking over web servers is one thing, but unless the people behind the Zeus and other malware operations are brought to book, the crime is just going to continue." says Graham Cluley, writing today in the Sophos Naked Security blog.

The company decided to give SendHub.com a facelift because "the site looked a bit dated, and it just didn't feel as snappy as we wanted it to. All pages were rendered almost entirely on the server, and only a couple of places used Ajax to pull in data asynchronously." The company also wanted to test out its developer API>.

Because Backbone.js has a dependency on Underscore.js, they decided to use it over Mustache, Handlebars and other rendering libraries. This turned out to be a good choice because it not only saved them from having to load an additional library, they also didn't need the extra features provided by the other libraries.

Killing Zombies

Another "big learning opportunity" in building the new front-end, was "in understanding the importance of killing zombies." In this case, we're talking about objects that "you can't access directly, but live inside the application and take up memory resources." Basically, SendHub says these crop up "when you forget to clean up event listeners after objects are removed from the page (usually they are view objects)."

The best zombie-killing resource, according to SendHub, is Derick Bailey's "Zombies! Run! (Managing Page Transitions In Backbone Apps)", which explains how to use a close method to avoid zombies.

SendHub also talks about how to use a global dispatch object to get Backbone.js views talking to one another, "without tightly coupling them to each other."

If you're new to Backbone.js, SendHub's post is worth reading.

There are several challenges being put forth on their website, including developing hand-held hardware for upcoming space missions, determining the size of the Earth itself, access to a variety of NASA datasets and observations, and design a consistent open data API for NASA. Other challenges will be added as we get closer to launch time. The event is being held as partly to demonstrate NASA's efforts towards open government initiatives, as well as to capture the attention of people who may not have any prior interest in space exploration.

The Earth measurement app will accomplish several things, for example, including how to take a noontime solar location fix, share that observation with others, and demonstrate how far off the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes was in his measurement thousands of years ago.

Medical students around the country are finishing up their studies and have spent the last several months trying to figure out where they will next spend their residency years: going to interviews, studying the online reputations of their schools, and filing out applications. The program is administered by the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) out of Washington DC, part of the American Association of Medical Colleges that represent the 150 North American accredited academic medical schools. To give you an idea of the numbers involved, there are 38,000 applicants, 27,000 positions to be filled in 4,000 residency programs. Each school has several specialty programs, such as internal medicine or surgery, for example.

Future physicians in both the U.S. and Canada must decide what program to apply to and rank their top five choices of residency programs they desire according to a rigid schedule. The tens of thousands of students all submit their preferences and hear about where they have been chosen next week, and as you imagine it is a nail-biting sleepless night for many of them.

There are actually, two pieces of software behind the matching process, according to Mona Signer, the Executive Director of NRMP. The first is the outward-facing registration software that is used by both schools and students to specify their preferences. Once everyone registers this information, the data is then downloaded into a separate PC that sits behind NRMP's firewall. This runs the actual matching algorithm itself. As you might imagine, this PC isn't connected to the Internet for security reasons.

"The matching algorithm is unique," said Signer. "It handles couples as participants and links their lists to the requests of both partners, and it also matches applicants simultaneously to both of their first and second year training requests. Plus, program directors can donate unfilled positions in one program to other programs. There are a lot of subtleties." She told me that the actual software run takes about 10 minutes, but that is the easy part. "We have to verify everyone's credentials for each applicant, and do other clean ups of the data. That is what takes some time. Once we processed the algorithm, we have to create individualized emails and Web pages and prepare a lot of reports that we post on our Web site. All of that is done before Match Day begins."

The results are available electronically for all concerned parties. The schools receive a special secure file with the consolidated results, which they then download and print out and mail to their prospective students. Many schools plan Match Day events so everyone can open their envelope together. "I like the fact that you still get to open an envelope, at least for your residencies," said Dr. Jeff Lowell, a Professor of Surgery at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. "The old school touch is still nice and has more drama than just logging into a website and you get to do it with classmates and family."

Fortran and Visual Basic

This is actually the second version of the matching algorithm. The original one was written in Fortran, it was rewritten a few years in Visual Basic, and this was done for maintenance reasons: "Few people know Fortran anymore." NRMP is in the process of looking for a new outsourcing partner for its IT and operations. Currently, they are using the services of the medical college association but haven't been happy with the service disruptions. Plus, the outward-facing software is a decade old and in need of refreshing. They will make the decision later this year.

As Signer said, one of the interesting factors of the algorithm is the way it matches couples who want to have their matches considered together as well as singles, and she is proud of the fact that the success factor on couples is close to what it is for the single students. Dr. Karl Weyrauch is a former family practice physician who met his wife in medical school. She is also a family practice doctor. "We had a lot harder time because we were trying to match as a couple to go to the same program. It wasn't as stressful as initially applying to med school because we had both applied under an early decision program, but it was still a bit tricky to understand the process and make sure that we both filled out our matches exactly the same. While we were both attractive as potential residents, it could have been a problem if my wife and I weren't close in terms of our rankings."

The residency matching program is just one of 25 other matches that NRMP runs all year, including matching for fellowships and other medical programs. We hope all the students get their first choice next week!

Visit Acko.net using a current release of Firefox, and you'll see a nice clean site with a nice header image that demonstrates two-point perspective nicely. But hit the site using a WebKit browser, and you're in for a real treat.

Viewed in a WebKit browser like Chrome or Safari, the page text is skewed as if it's going off into the distance at the same angle as some of the lines in the header. As you scroll down, the text rights itself and the header changes perspective until you "pass under" the header to the page. The images on the side of this post give the general impression, but it's really worth the time to visit the site and see for yourself.

How and Why

Wittens says the redesign started with an accidental discovery: "if you put a CSS perspective on a scrollable <DIV>, then 3D elements inside that <DIV> will retain their perspective while you scroll." Wittens says that raised "the obvious question: how far can you take it?" Pretty far, apparently.

Why not WebGL? Wittens says "WebGL is its own sandbox: you can't put DOM elements in there, or use native interaction. And any amount of WebGL rendering in response to e.g. scrolling is going to involve some amount of lag."

Instead of trying to do the whole thing in CSS 3D, though, he also turned to Three.js. Three.js is a JavaScript 3D engine that can render to WebGL, SVG or a 2D <canvas>. Lest you worry that three.js is all work and no play, it's also used for the 3D interactive Nyan Cat.

Wittens also built a minimal 3D editor for creating the header, and has embedded it on the post about the site redesign. He also has sketches of the initial design, so you can see the original inspiration. (Do I detect a hint of old-school Tron?) The final header consists of 307 objects, and not a single image. It's not perfect, but as Wittens says "CSS 3D was never meant to do this."

I guess I'm now the proud owner of the first unofficial CSS 3D "ACID" test. I'm eager to see how the next browser handles it. If it ends up being a silly idea in the long run, I can always just switch the output to WebGL, but for now I'm willing to run with it. I put in a universal CSS 3D detector and prefixes for all the major browsers.

Looking to create some 3D of your own? Check out the three.js Getting Started Guide and read Wittens' full post. No doubt, many of you are interested in getting hands on all the code used for the site. Wittens says that he'll be putting the custom build of three.js and his minified JavaScript and CSS code up on GitHub "soon enough."

Games will be judged by a panel of game development managers on the basis of gameplay, appeal, polish and overall graphics and sound. Besides the first prize mentioned above, there is a second and third prizes (but no trip) of $13,000 and $7,000. Here is where you can learn more about the contest and enter. Good luck! (We aren't affiliated with Pokki, but happy to promote other contests if you hear of them.)

Kalyani writes "with the advent of HTML5 <canvas> element and jQuery, I felt it was now possible to implement this in a way that with a little bit of effort, anyone who knows HTML can easily create a subway map. I felt a jQuery plugin was the way to go as I had never created one before and also it seemed like the most well-suited for the task."

The markup for the elements on the map requires a div with attributes specifying the number of rows and columns for the map, the size of the cells and to describe other elements of the map. (For instance, whether the grid and grid numbers are shown on the map.) The data labels and colors are specified with ul elements, and the coordinates for the lines and locations are specified with li elements. It might take a little bit to play with the markup, but Kalyani has done a great job of explaining the markup and providing a reference. It shouldn't take long at all to produce an attractive map.

If you want to check out the handywork, there's a example that lays out the DotNetNuke ecosystem using Kalyani's plugin. Note that the map on the page (also shown here in a screen grab) is not an image, but a map rendered with the plugin. You can select any of the text on the page, and some of the text has hyperlinks, which makes this a much nicer format for the Web. (Also probably more pleasant than doing an imagemap.) The plugin is available under an MIT type license, so you should be able to use it on any project your heart desires.

Many of the tasks were to first understand the various latencies introduced by the code and to try to cut these down, as well as to produce a real-time dashboard to track particular performance-related issues. That is a great idea, and the more insight you can give your dev team into these things the better coders they will become. One team member "tested several different machine and Java VM configurations to identify the best performance in terms of throughput, latency and footprint." I wondered why this wasn't done at the beginning of their project, but still, better now than never.

Certainly, it helped that the coders were fed and watered during the exercise, and the camaraderie was a good motivator too.

The company told me, "Whether this was the use of open-source tools to speed testing and monitoring, or addressing latency and caching methods, each member of the entire team leveraged their Java and open source chops to contribute to the effort." Nice. They plan on making this a regular part of their coding cycles.

All in all, what the BrightTag sharks did is worth reviewing, and considering for your own Shark Week exercise at your shop.

Kaggle hosts cash prize competitions for people to play with data and come up with various solutions. The contests are calls for hacks that jailbreak fundamental models professionals currently use to monitor finances, write code to analyze shopping behavior, improve space exploration, and a wide variety of other topics.

Their latest is the Gesture Recognition Challenge. It is organized by CHALEARN and is sponsored in part by Microsoft. The object of this contest is to produce an improved gesture algorithm that will analyze a series of Kinect video streams. Samples of actual Kinect video clips are supplied, similar to other Kaggle contests that are used to develop other algorithms.

The winning team of data scientists will take home $10,000. Along with several others, they will have an opportunity for Microsoft to license the winning solutions from a pool of $200,000 for this purpose. The contest starts today and ends April 10.

Judges are done algorithmically, like other Kaggle contests, by calculating and comparing the actual and predicted outcomes. You don't need to use any particular tool to enter, either.

Unlike most Kaggle contests, with this one the potential entrants are working towards improving a device that is used by millions of people, but in a different context. The idea is to push the boundaries and see how well new algorithms can be built to identify more subtle gestures.

Many of the popular Kaggle competitions have 800 entries, according to the company.

One day his VMFusion crashed and trashed his shared file system, losing several days' worth of coding. Thus began his search for a better development environment and hardware platform. In addition to buying an iPad and Apple BT keyboard, he also uses Linode's cloud-based Linux and Zingersoft's iSSH terminal emulator.

Here is a screen shot from his blog:

His code compiles are actually faster on Linode's cloud than on his MacBook desktop running a Linux VM.

One drawback? "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wished for Bluetooth mouse support some days." Apple's BT keyboard omits this, although you can purchase a separate track pad. He also has some choice words for Google Apps, and how "pathetic" they are compared to the usual desktop office apps.

Still, all in all, he is happy with his decision to move to the iPad and the cloud. "I don't miss the weight. I don't miss the keyboard getting warm when I'm compiling. I don't miss its fragility, both physically and virtually. I don't miss running out of power. To my surprise, I find I am happy. Coding in the cloud isn't for everybody, but for my workflow it's a perfect fit and I love it."

O'Connor sees this as the natural evolution for coders. "Sooner or later, almost everyone will work like this and I wanted a taste of what that might feel like. I expected to find something that didn't work, but as the days turned into weeks and the weeks gathered into a month, I found I hadn't returned to my laptop even once."

I have been on the road a lot in the past several months, and one thing I keep seeing is that folks are over-sharing. I am not talking about putting up those ribald pictures on your Facebook account, or forwarding those questionable email "jokes." But literally sharing your computer's data files across the hotel (and some airports too). Here is what my Mac Finder looks like at a Hilton that I was at earlier in the week (you can see that I am connected to several of my fellow travelers' PCs):

The problem is that many hotels and other public spaces use a flat network for their Wifi (or even wired) service, so that once you connect up to it, you are on the same network as everyone else. In some places, there are dozens of computers visible that have sharing turned on.

So here is a short security tip: when you get ready to leave for your next trip, take the two minutes and turn off your file sharing before you leave your office or home. Granted, most people aren't so nosy, or even know how to probe your computer, but why take the chance? Thanks to many of my fellow travelers, I have downloaded some great stuff over the years. Memos, music, and more.

How to turn off file sharing

For those that don't remember, on the Mac it is System Preferences/ File Sharing. On Windows 7 you can set up different kinds of networks and permanently disable file sharing: go to Control Panel/Network and Internet/Network Sharing Center/Advanced sharing settings and then turn off the various options for network discovery, file and print sharing, and public folder sharing for public networks. This way, you can keep sharing on your corporate network and not have to fool with this setting when you travel. On earlier versions of Windows, you will have to turn it off when you travel just like the Mac. You can also go into the wireless network connection property sheet and uncheck the file and printer sharing and Microsoft networking client boxes too.

I know I have been guilty of this myself, and usually am reminded of this when I see the long list of open file servers in my Mac's Finder window.

There are lots of other steps you can take to make your wireless computing safer, including using a strong firewall (the Win7 built-in one is better than earlier built-in versions) and don't automatically connect to any available hotspot. And use encryption on your own hotspots at home and in the office, to keep others out.

For more commentary about wireless security issues, check out this piece by Lisa Phifer here from 2008. While old, it is still relevant.

The Rube Goldbergish process goes something like this. Siri is used to text the words "pour me a beer" to Beeri's Twitter account. Meanwhile, the onboard Arduino Uno processor (which we have written about here) is polling this account, and when it sees the command pop up in the Beeri Twitter feed, it sends the remote controlled vehicle crashing into the wall in RedPepper's lab and the beer can is opened and beer collected in the glass. Of course, Beeri 2.0 will figure out a way to do this with a refrigerated can, or to be able to refill the contraption.

Beeri from redpepper on Vimeo.

Beeri is just the latest in a long line of Internet-connected devices that quench thirsty nerds. Of course, back in the day we didn't know from Twitter or use any wimpy Wi-Fi, but had RS-232 serial cables and standard Ethernet over coax. Back in the 1970s, the grad computer science students at Carnegie Mellon connected their department's Coke machine to the Internet so they could "finger" (in the protocol sense, for those of you thinking nasty thoughts) the machine and determine the location of the coldest soda cans. And then there were the grad students at the University of Cambridge UK who connected their coffee pot to the Internet .

The team calls what they found Duqu, and it is quite a vile and complex piece of work, as you can see from just one of its components diagrammed by Symantec. They state that its creators must have had access to the Stuxnet source code, not just the binary files. They theorize that its purpose is to find weaknesses in particular industrial process control equipment, although they have not found any specific code to tie it to a particular piece of hardware. The reason they propose this is because the code has been found in organizations that have been involved in the manufacture of industrial control systems. "The attackers are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility," say the report.

Included in the exploit are the following items:

• Keystroke recorder to pick off any passwords,
  
• remote access Trojan to gain control over any PCs that could be connected to the control equipment,
  
• Misleading digital signatures: The exploit contains a valid digital signature on one of the driver files, once again calling the need for better signature notaries.
  

Reading the report is interesting and scary at the same time. Clearly, the team who gained expertise with the creation of Stuxnet continues to learn how to make it better. This, coupled with an upcoming survey that shows that most US small business owners don't have any Internet security policies or procedures, should give you all some food for thought. That circle of trust seems a bit smaller now.

1. Late last year, Kelly Osborne (of Dancing With the Stars fame, no further comment) had her email account hacked. The hacker, wanting to not only look at all of her past emails new ones as well, had Kelly's emails forwarded to his own, personal email account. This seemed like a pretty easy trail to follow.

2. Self proclaimed hacktivist Shahee Mirza and several associates defaced a Bangladesh government military website, Rapid Action Battalion, with the following message:
   
   "GOVERNMENT DOES NOT TAKE ANY STEP FOR ICT DEVELOPMENT. BUT PASSED A LAW ABOUT ANTI-CYBER CRIME. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS THE CYBER SECURITY OR HOW TO PROTECT OWNSELF. LISTEN. HACKERS R NOT CRIMINAL. THEY R 10 TIME BETTER THAN YOUR EXPERT. WE ARE GINIOUS THAN YOU CAN'T THINK. DEFACED FROM BANGLADESH."
   
   Unfortunately 21-year old Mirza also left the banner that clearly stated, "HACKED BY SHAHEE_MIRZA." Obviously not the "GINIOUS" indicated in his hack, Mirza may end up with 10 years in a Bangladesh federal prison. One can only imagine what the prisons are like in one of the poorest countries in the world.

3. Famous for his Samy Worm, Samy Kamkar was responsible for a virus-like attack that infected over 1 million MySpace accounts in 2006. Amongst other malicious effects was the 'Samy is my hero' addition to the MySpace homepage of each of the million victims. As part of his obvious ego addition, Samy went on to boast of his hacking feat in a blog post.

   Unfortunately for Samy, the blog contained a picture of him with a license plate in the background, which was then used to find Samy.

4. 20-year old Sayaka Fukuda had her iPhone stolen on the streets of New York City. The thief, Daquan Mathis, while enjoying his new iPhone took a picture of himself (dressed in the same clothes he wore during the mugging), which he then sent to his own email address. Unfortunately for Mathis, Fukuda's iPhone email account could be accessed on the Internet (like almost every such account). Given his email address it was a simple matter to track Mathis down, made even simpler by the fact the police had his picture. There are many stories about people tracking down their smartphones.

5. By all accounts, Eduard Lucian Mandru is a very clever hacker. His 2006 hack of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) computer system went undetected for years, with the authorities only having Mandru's email address (wolfenstein_ingrid@yahoo.com) as their single clue. Mandru's downfall and arrest in 2009, however, came about when he used the same wolfenstein_ingrid@yahoo.com email address on the résumé that he posted on numerous job boards. Sometimes it pays to use different email addresses for different tasks, don't you think?

6. Alan was not sure if this hack is dumb or just really fun. One clever hacker realized that recent speed traps use cameras that automatically register your speed, take a picture of you license plate, and then use character recognition to translate you license plate number into something they can use as a lookup within the DMV database. With this in mind, he changed his license plate number to ('ZU 0666', 0, 0); Drop Database Table.

   If the DMV uses this string of characters in their database lookup it has a good chance of deleting all of the database records containing his actual license plate number, ZU 0666. This has got to be 10 out of 10 on the creativity scale, and once again showing the importance of knowing what SQL injection and little Bobby tables is all about.
   

Teams of up to three developers can band together. Apps will be scored on utility, appearance, user experience, and quality. There are three prize purses: first place wins $30,000, second wins $13,000 and third wins $7,000.

You can read the details, the judging panel, sample Pokki apps and other information here. Good luck!

The weekend hacking is Foursquare's second attempt. Last year when they released their API they had 150 developers building apps. This year they have expanded their platform with new APIs.

Some samples include:

• Accessible NYC, is web app to facilitate people who want to roam around NYC in wheelchairs. The app shows, the nearest train stations that have wheelchair access, the nearest parks that have accessible bathrooms, and also other parks/playgrounds that are accessible.

• Flight Graph looks at your airport-related check-ins, graph your travel, and give you a snapshot of where your whirlwind travel has taken you.

• CheckEat, which finds restaurants near your location and looks up their menu.
  
• The Magic Muggle Clock, showing location similar to the clock described in the Potterworld books.

Prizes are mostly bragging rights, but there are some cool ones, including having your app output to the giant curved NASDAQ video wall near Times Square.

The contest, held in New York City, brought back nearly 40 previous winners of earlier hack challenges. In addition to the cash, the winning team might also get a chance to receive more mentoring from Yahoo developers and possible office space and technical support too.

The judging panel included Mike Smith, Chief Digital Officer for Forbes; Shana Fisher from Highline Capital; Raymie Stata, Yahoo's Chief Technology Officer; Kevin Doerr, Yahoo's Vice President of Innovation; and Steve Douty, Yahoo's Vice President of Applications and mobile product development.

There is an amusing infographic on the Yahoo hacks down through the years reproduced above (click to enlarge) that shows the number of pizzas and beverages consumed (nothing unusual in Red Bull beating out beer, given the marathon nature of these events). The youngest hacker was a 14 year old Indian teen, and the oldest was a 64 year old from London, both from the 2009 contest.

"By tapping into Viadeo's social graph, third party developers can create more compelling applications--opening up new markets and delivering enhanced business capabilities. Some examples of applications that can be socially enhanced are collaborative workspace tools, CRM, email clients and social aggregators to name a few," according to the announcement. There are lots of examples on Viadeo's developer site.

Submissions will be reviewed by the judging panel from October 15-20 with the winners announced on October 24.

There are separate iPad and iPhone apps, you'll need iOS v3.1.3 or later to run it.

Obviously, this little project isn't going to replace a $5000 lab instrument, but for checking small signal frequencies (Turner says less than 5MHz is fine) it is a peach. The kit costs $300 and you can download the app from iTunes store to check out its UI before you pony up your cash.