We recently held a Community Server Hack-A-Thon (HAT) to showcase the extensibility of the platform using the new Web services API.

The challenge: Our developers were given 20 hours to develop and deliver a product.

The result: Magic!

April's HAT demonstrated just how simple it is to utilize non-Community Server applications to interface with the Community Server framework. The developer entries were across the board, ranging from a voice recognition blog reader to a live chat application that converts the dialogue to an "in-site conversation."

A few of the top-ranked submissions included:

• Print/Send to Media Gallery, developed by Ben Tiedt, Lead Software Development Engineer
• CSNotifier, developed by Joe Morel, Program Manager
• Community Chatr, developed by Wyatt Preul, Software Development Engineer

The Print/Send to Media Gallery application supports printing from a Windows application to an image uploaded to the media gallery of the user's choice. Once a file is uploaded, the application opens the default Web browser and shows the file. When uploading multiple files, the media gallery is opened in the default Web browser.

For customers that use Community Server for document management but who don't need to save the actual document, this is huge! Instead, you can File --> Print To --> Media Gallery and convert your document to an image, and then upload it to the media gallery. Additionally, a "Send to Community Server Media Gallery" option is added to the "Send To" list so that one or many files can be uploaded from within Windows Explorer.

Watch a 5-minute demo here: http://www.screencast.com/t/rnHi03StiX

The CSNotifier application solves a common customer challenge: how to keep users coming back to your community site. CSNotifier is a simple tray application that monitors a user's activity messages and throws a notification bubble when a new message is found. The bubbles are small and can be easily ignored. However, if a user decides to click on a bubble, the bubble loads the object being referenced into the user's preferred browser window and draws them back into the site!

See what we saw: http://www.screencast.com/t/bXVEpkg0DX

The CommunityChatr application is an easy-to-use messaging application. You can send messages to mulitple users simultaneously and make comments to user profiles (including several users at once). Easily configurable, Community Chatr helps users identify friends using avatars, allows you to receive notifications when new messages are sent to you, enables wall-to-wall (or profile-to-profile) features for sending comments, and allows you to make announcements to your profile.

Learn more by watching this video: http://screencast.com/t/eOxmD9JQCM

We have more to share, but the three entries above will help you start thinking of what you can do with the Community Server 2008 Web services API in less than 24 hours! As of today, there are no release plans for these applications, but we wanted to demonstrate to you the flexibility of our proven platform.

Big thanks to Scott Watermasyk and the team for such a successful event!

Stay tuned for more as we release additional HAT videos in the near future. . . .