Beta Labs - Yellowpages.com

2010 AT&T Developer Summit Recap

Chris Padilla, Director of Industry Marketing at AT&T Interactive, gives a short recap of this week’s AT&T DevSummit.

I just got back from Las Vegas and can honestly say the 2010 AT&T Developer Summit was a blast! The AT&T Developer Summit is an annual one day event hosted by the AT&T Developer Program. This year the DevSummit was on January 6 and held at the Palms Casino and Resort, one day before the International CES show.  It was a full day event giving attendees access to information about recent AT&T technology announcements and tools for developing applications on the AT&T Network and mobile devices.

Highlights from this year’s DevSummit include:

• Among others, keynotes and remarks by; Ralph De La Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, and Dr. Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm.
• AT&T Interactive’s VP of Mobile Engineering Srinivas Mandyam giving a presentation on “Creating Apps with Plusmo”, and explaining how the Plusmo acquisition will benefit the AT&T Developer Program.
• AT&T Interactive’s SVP and GM of Mobile Krishna Vedati sitting on an Executive Panel, answering questions from the audience.
• Late night “Code Camp” at Ghostbar, where developers coded and ran demos with the glow of the Las Vegas Strip in the background.

Calling All Mobile App Developers
The Widget Beta Program was also announced this year at the DevSummit. The AT&T Developer Program is looking for 50 developers who want to create innovative widgets using technology from Plusmo, a recent AT&T acquisition. If your idea is selected for the program, you’ll receive development support, access to new technology and more. Go to developer.att.com/widgetbeta for more information and to sign-up.

More detailed information on the event will follow, so stay tuned.

Chris Padilla
Director, Industry Marketing

New hotel widget on YELLOWPAGES.COM – just in time for holiday travel!

With over 39% of all travel bookings being made on the web*, consumers have high expectations of online travel resources. We believe we can meet these expectations and deliver a more satisfying travel planning experience with the new hotel rates and availability search widget, which will launch on YELLOWPAGES.COM and YP.com in November and December 2009 respectively.

With the widget consumers can easily check hotel rates and availability, and book a room. If users find their favorite hotel completely booked for their vacation dates, they can also search for other options through the widget.

Traveling during the holidays can be stressful, so relax while you’re planning: slip into your favorite flannel jammies, get a cup of hot cocoa and use the YELLOWPAGES.COM hotel rates and availability search widget to help plan your trip. Afterwards, drop us a note and let us know how it worked (the widget, not the cocoa). This is just our first phase, so stay tuned for more from your Hotels Vertical Team.

Steven Lee
Sr. Product Manager for Hotels Vertical

* PhoCusWright’s U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition

Embeddable Search Widget

It may not come as a great surprise to learn that here at yellowpages.com, we’re constantly looking for new ways to extend our ability to connect consumers with businesses.

In the past, we have inked lots of deals with big-name sites in order to “further our reach” on the web —basically, to make sure that if you’re a business who does business with us, you appear on more top-tier web sites than just yellowpages.com.

But we’re getting ready to try a new approach. In the near future we hope to launch a new self-service initiative that allows individual publishers, no matter how large or small, to embed yellowpages.com business search functionality into their sites.

The best part is that it requires a truly miniscule investment of effort. (And no contracts! Unless you count the EULA )

All you have to do is pick the size, color and (optionally) default search region for your search widget, and our handy-dandy tool will generate a snippet of HTML code that you can easily insert into your web pages.

Want to try it out? Get started right now—it’s fast and free.