Posted February 8th, 2010 at 5:22 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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Photo courtesy of saferinternet.org
The nature of the online and mobile environments is rapidly changing and so are the challenges for parents and children – from empowering kids to be safe and responsible online, to digital-reputation management to cyber-bullying.
On February 9th, people and organizations around the world are taking a moment to recognize the importance of safety on the web. Safer Internet Day is organized by Insafe each year to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and teens. This year, the focus is on “Think B4 U post,” with the goal of empowering kids to manage their digital reputation (e.g. how people are viewed based on what they post and share online) in a world where photos and videos can be broadly shared within minutes, and result in serious consequences.
At Yahoo!, we have been committed to fostering safer internet for many years, and today we are helping to amplify what people can do to create a safer online experience. As a long time leader in child safety, we have been working closely with national child safety advocates, law enforcement agencies, educational leaders, and parents to help coach youth about protecting their online personas. In addition we build child safety tools into our products, and encourage youth to take advantage of these tools.
For many teens around the world, mobile devices are the primary way teens stay in touch with friends and family and engage with the web. Given this role mobile devices play in youths’ lives, we recognize the need for mobile safety tips, and are helping to educate kids and parents with Yahoo!’s Mobile Safety Tips.
To celebrate Safer Internet Day, Yahoo! is sharing top 5 tips:
- Think before you send. Stop, and think before you share a thought or forward a photo. Imagine your grandmother or principal on the receiving end. The best filter is the one between your ears — use it to your advantage.
- Protect your personal information. When you send email, texts, photos or instant messages to people who are not trusted friends or family, don’t give out personal information they could use to find your physical location or exploit you. Guard your password like a hawk.
- Control negativity. Think carefully about who you want to communicate with and who you should ignore. Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger have features that allow you to block people. If you receive abusive or harassing messages online, report the abuse where and when you see it.
- Use Safe Search. Yahoo! offers a default Safe Search filter to help keep inappropriate content out of your search results. While no filter can guarantee 100% removal of all inappropriate content, using a filter like Safe Search will make a big difference in keeping unwanted material out of your search results.
- Download applications from trusted sources only! If you download software from a third party, be sure to only download applications from developers you trust. And, read their Terms of Service and privacy policies to really understand what you’re giving them permission to do when you download their app.
Catherine Teitelbaum, Yahoo!’s Director of Child Safety and Product Policy
Tagged: Children, cyber bullying, Insafe, Safer Internet Day, yahoo! mobile
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Posted February 8th, 2010 at 3:47 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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Last week marked the official kickoff of Yahoo!’s two-year sponsorship of the new Yahoo! Cycling Team. And this past weekend, rider Dirk Copeland defeated 50+ other cyclists to win first place in the Cherry Pie Criterium. What a fast start for the team!
The Yahoo! Cycling Team was formed by Ikeman Cycling, Inc. who’s mission is to promote young cycling talent in the U.S. and to grow the sport of cycling worldwide. The team is comprised of a mix of young talent and seasoned cycling veterans. Based in Northern California, the team plans to race the majority of its season on the West Coast as well as a portion of the National Racing Calendar. Dependent upon its success in the U.S. circuit in 2010, the team plans to move on to Continental Status in 2011.
“We’re excited to launch this team in a community that is as enthusiastic about cycling as we are,” says Kevin Klein, Ikeman Cycling Owner and Yahoo! Cycling Team General Manager. “Both our young riders and experienced cyclists are eager to get our season under way and establish ourselves as a dominant elite team. “
For more information about the team and the 2010 racing schedule go to the Yahoo! Cycling Team Website (www.cyclingteam.yahoo.com) or follow the team on Facebook [facebook.com/YCyclingTeam] and Twitter [twitter.com/YCyclingTeam]
Tagged: cycling, dirk copeland, ikeman cycling, kevin klein, yahoo
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Posted February 8th, 2010 at 2:16 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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Data, Data Everywhere, but How to Keep it Safe:
Key Scientific Challenges, Entry #2: Privacy & Security
On January 27 we announced the kick-off of our 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program. Earlier this week we launched what we hope will be a thought-provoking series of guest blog posts here on Yodel Anecdotal that offer a quick overview of these scientific challenge areas. Check out our first post on green computing.
Today’s entry is another incredibly important issue and difficult challenge posed by the Web – privacy and security. We’ve recruited Ashwin Machanavajjhala from Yahoo! Labs to share his point of view on why privacy and security are Key Scientific Challenges.
As a popular destination on the Web, millions of users interact with Yahoo! every day. They search for information online, read the news, click on ads, upload, tag and share photos, and so on. Each of these billions of individual actions sheds some light on a particular user’s interests – what they like, what they want to know more about, buy or do in their spare time. They are all valuable cues that can be used to customize someone’s Web experience in a way that’s personally relevant to them.
Ultimately, a personally relevant experience is at the root of what we’re trying to deliver with all of Yahoo!’s products. The information that comes our way is a prime asset for making our users happy. But at the same time, with all that information comes a huge responsibility. We need to take extreme care to make sure people’s privacy is not breached. This responsibility to earn and keep our users’ trust is not just a matter of Yahoo! policy (although that is critical too), it’s also a technical challenge that requires scientific innovation to continuously improve and maintain.
When it comes to the trust of our users, we’ve learned lessons on how to approach both the policy and technical elements of privacy and security. On the policy side, we are extremely proud of our Data Anonymization Policy, which has received wide support and affirms our commitment to help protect our users’ privacy. Yahoo!’s policy both dramatically reduces the time we hold personal data and increases the scope of log data covered under the policy. Under the policy, we anonymize user log data, including deletion of total IP address, after 90 days with limited exceptions to fight fraud, secure systems and meet legal obligations. We’re also expanding our commitment to include data on page views, page clicks, ad views, and ad clicks as part of this policy.
On the technical side, we’ve invested in giving our users the ability to understand and shape how we interpret what’s personally relevant to them by launching our Ad Interest Manager, a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising served by the Yahoo! Ad Network.
And our scientists at Yahoo! Labs have also been active in academic privacy research, examining new mathematical definitions of user privacy and developing novel technologies for sharing and utilizing user information to improve Web experiences in a privacy-preserving manner. These experiments and research have been published widely, opening up new avenues of investigation on issues that are critical to Yahoo!, like protecting search log data and dealing with so-called vanity queries, to new privacy frameworks that can be used in any field where making data available broadly is a key objective in overall innovation, as it is with the World Bank, Census Bureau and medical institutions publishing important public health studies, for example.
These efforts are just the beginning, though, which is why privacy and security is a Key Scientific Challenge area, and we can’t wait to see what the word’s aspiring minds have to say on the topic.
Ashwin Machanavajjhala
Research Scientist
Yahoo! Labs
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Posted February 5th, 2010 at 12:10 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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Today, Yahoo! launched the Yahoo! Mobile Blog, which you can find at ymobileblog.com. The blog will provide you with interesting information on what’s been happening in the industry, and behind the scenes at Yahoo! Mobile — from new products and features, to quick tips and tricks to market trends and predictions.
Below, you will find the first post from Irv Henderson, VP of global mobile products for Yahoo!. In it, Irv discusses the purpose of the blog, background on Yahoo! Mobile and his views on what’s to come for 2010.
To add the Yahoo! Mobile Blog to your RSS reader, click here to subscribe:
Tagged: BlackBerry, iphone, yahoo! mail, yahoo! messenger, yahoo! mobile, Yahoo! Mobile Blog
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Posted February 1st, 2010 at 10:05 am by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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On Wednesday we announced the kick off our 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program. It is a thought-provoking competition that encourages top graduate students to help invent the future of the Internet by working with Yahoo! Labs to investigate and test their ideas in the real world.
The Key Scientific Challenges Program focuses on a variety of scientific issues that we believe are central to developing a better understanding of the Web and the foundational technologies that will accelerate innovation. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be offering a series of guest blog posts here on Yodel Anecdotal that offer a quick overview of these scientific challenge areas from a Yahoo! (or Yahoo!s) who have expertise in the field and can explain how their research can have an impact on making the Web more engaging, relevant and powerful.
Today’s our maiden voyage, and the first guest blog post comes from Scott Noteboom. Scott is one of the foremost experts on building data centers that makes it possible for Yahoo! to run some of the fastest, most popular Web sites in the world. He’s also leading the charge to make Yahoo!’s data centers as efficient as possible, and we’ve asked him to talk about a new challenge area we just added to the Key Scientific Challenges Program this year, green computing.
Thanks,
The Key Scientific Challenges Team at Yahoo! Labs
Key Scientific Challenges, Entry #1: Green Computing
By Scott Noteboom
Increasing demand for the Web services and applications that have become such a central part of our lives (like email and Web video, just to name a few) is also causing a steady rise in the need for more and more computing power to make all of theses services work and work well. When we talk about computing power, we’re often talking specifically about data centers, buildings that house thousands and thousands of servers working 24-hours-a-day to make sure that the Web sites you want are there on your screen and on your phone when you want them.
Of course, while the performance of servers is improving almost everyday, making all kinds of new innovations possible, they also require a lot of power. They need so much power that a 2007 joint report by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory revealed that energy consumption from data centers had doubled between 2000 and 2006 and was expected to double again by 2011. The report further calculated that there would be huge energy and money losses without increases in the efficiency of running and cooling these centers (because servers produce a lot of heat).
Recognizing both the problem and the opportunity that this presents, Yahoo! has embraced its role as a leading environmentally sustainable company by addressing efficiency in our data centers head on. We announced in June 2009 that we’d be committing to a significant reduction in the carbon intensity of our data centers by 2014. And to accomplish this goal, we’ve developed several innovations, including a new high-efficiency data center design that reduces our cooling load and increases utilization in our data centers, increasing the productivity of our servers, and squeezing as much productivity as possible out of every last kilowatt-hour. These efforts have gotten us some recognition and hopefully will inspire more innovation because making the world’s data centers more efficient is also an important element to tackling global warming.
Everyone wants to see innovation on the Web and what it makes possible for us in our everyday lives continue to flourish, and that’s where innovation behind the scenes in data centers is so important. By making data centers more efficient, we can make sure that future innovations that make the Internet more and more powerful for all of us will also be environmentally sustainable.
This is by no means a pipe dream, which is why we’re so excited to be part of the Key Scientific Challenges team recruiting some of the best young minds in the world to learn from our experiences and accelerate their own research and ideas. A study by The Climate Group entitled Smart 2020 predicts that, while greenhouse gas emissions from the Internet industry will rise to approximately 1.3 gigatons of CO2, the combined impact of smart grid, smart logistics, smart buildings and videoconferencing could reduce emissions by approximately 7.8 tons.
We’re very excited about the next big ideas that will continue to bring radical improvements in energy efficiency and truly green computing. If you’re interested in learning more about the Key Scientific Challenges Program visit the site, and if you’ve got an idea for research into green computing, get working on a proposal. Submissions are due March 5th.
Tagged: Challenges, KSC, Scientific, Series, yahoo, yahoo! labs
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Posted January 27th, 2010 at 9:48 am by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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As many of you are likely already aware, the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, kicked off this week. WEF was created to serve as a catalyst for cooperation across business, government, the media, science, the arts, and civil society to address pressing challenges and future risks as one community. Aligning with this mission, Yahoo! and other industry leaders today announced an initiative called GreenXchange (GX), a program designed to help address sustainability in the digital age.
As a founding member of the GreenXchange, Yahoo! is collaborating with Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Nike and nGenera to create a web-based marketplace for sharing intellectual property which is intended to lead to new sustainability business models and innovation. Businesses are in a unique position to use collaboration and open innovation as powerful tools for combating climate change. The goal is to accelerate the learning curve for energy efficiency and sustainable business practices by making patented technologies for research and licensing available, in a manner that’s good for our individual businesses and the planet.
As an active participant, Yahoo! is planning to license patented technologies that we have developed to improve performance and increase efficiency in our data centers around the world. Today, the members of the GreenXchange are hosting a CEO breakfast at WEF. We are calling on other corporations to join the GlobalXchange commitment to fast track the development of innovative solutions to sustainability challenges.
The GreenXChange is part of Yahoo!’s 360 degree approach to advancing sustainability through internal commitments to drive change in cooperation with other institutions (including the Department of Energy) and work collaboratively with other influencers setting sustainability as a priority.
David Dibble, EVP of Service Engineering & Operations, Yahoo! Inc.
Tagged: Best Buy, Business, creative commons, green, IDEO, marketplace, Mountain Equipment Co-op, nGenera, Nike, World Economic Forum, yahoo
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Posted January 15th, 2010 at 10:36 am by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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When disaster strikes, people want to help, but they often don’t have the resources at their fingertips. At Yahoo!, we’ve implemented a number of ways people can stay up to date in the aftermath of the devastating Haiti earthquake and find ways to help with disaster relief efforts.
I am very fortunate to work in Yahoo! for Good, a team at Yahoo! whose focus is to empower people around the world to make a positive impact. To support relief efforts in Haiti, Yahoo! is collaborating with non-profit organizations, leveraging our global network of services to raise awareness, and offering much-needed funding for the millions of people who have been affected by this natural disaster.
Here are the ways we are helping.
- The homepages of Yahoo.com, Yahoo! UK, Yahoo! Italy, Yahoo! Canada, and Yahoo! Mobile are connecting people to the latest news and ways to donate.
- Yahoo! News is providing ‘How to Help’ links in related stories and created a Topic page about the earthquake with donation resources.
- The Yahoo! Employee Foundation approved a $100,000 emergency grant to UNICEF and Partners in Health.
- US Yahoo!s have donated more than $80,000 to the cause in the last 48 hours, including corporate matches for those donations.
It doesn’t stop there. We are scheduling banner ads across the Yahoo! network to support organizations like the American Red Cross and UNICEF who are providing relief efforts in Haiti. We are also providing prominent placements on Yahoo! Sports and OMG to encourage people to donate. And there is more to come.
In the last 48 hours, I’ve been so inspired and humbled by fellow Yahoos who have stepped up to make all of this happen at lightning speed. It’s times like these that remind me once again of the amazing power of the Yahoo! network to encourage people to take action. Join us in this important cause by making a donation to one of the charities listed here.
By Connie Chan, Yahoo! for Good
Tagged: Disaster, earthquake, Haiti, Help, Homepage, Non-profit, UNICEF, yahoo, yahoo! employee foundation
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Posted January 8th, 2010 at 3:18 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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By Connie Chan, Manager, Yahoo! for Good
In December, Yahoo! launched our You In? program at kindness.yahoo.com to encourage people around the world to spread happiness by doing random acts of kindness. Thanks to you, our big-hearted Yahoo! community who helped spread the word, over 315,000 people from 11 countries updated their Yahoo! status with good deeds, and more than 500 stories were posted to the You In? Flickr Group.
Check out some of our favorites –
![4199884787_47b9568441_b[1]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2685/4254623821_afd14517bd.jpg)
- Padmaja bought books for students in a rural government school in Bangalore, India
Kastle handed out reusable shopping bags and included a handwritten holiday card and $5 bill at a Farmer’s Market in Santa Monica, California
![4190695637_7cbd5bb35b_b[1]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4254623753_ca262dee80.jpg)
- Edgar bought a set of books for a complete stranger in Brooklyn, New York
Inspired by amazing stories like these, Yahoo! also did some of our own random acts of kindness.
When we heard that Bill anonymously paid for a family’s overdue water bills , Yahoo! paid the heating bills for 12 families from a small town in Kentucky who were at risk of having their heat turned off in the winter.
Yahoos hand delivered 50 hot meals to farm labor families who didn’t have transportation to get to the food bank in Quincy, Washington.
And on the busiest travel day of the year, Yahoo! went to the San Jose and San Francisco International Airports to pay for people’s baggage fees.
But the kindness didn’t stop there! We also sent 50 kids from a Boys & Girls Club in Washington D.C. to the Nutcracker Ballet, took low income seniors in elderly care facilities on holiday shopping sprees in San Diego and Miami, gave DVD collections to children’s hospitals in Portland and Cincinnati, and more.
So our new year’s resolution is to keep this warm fuzzy holiday spirit alive by spreading ripples of kindness through our year-round Purple Acts of Kindness program. You In?
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Posted January 7th, 2010 at 7:35 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
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Over the years, Yahoo! Labs has partnered closely with many universities and colleges. As a company, we want to invent the sciences needed for the next-generation Internet. Working with the faculty, researchers, and students of the world’s great universities is one of the best ways to meet that goal.
Looking back, 2009 was our most successful year to date. Through a variety of programs, we brought together a lot of smart folks and important ideas. As we head into 2010, we want to share our excitement about these programs and events.
Hack U:
Our University Hack Day competitions (Hack U) brought Yahoo!’s open technology, top developers, and hack spirit to campuses for technical talks and a 24-hour student programming competition. Students from 11 universities in the U.S., Canada, and India built more than 300 hacks. Winners from each campus participated in the New York Open Hack Day, ultimately winning 6 of the 11 categories.
Yahoo! Big Thinkers Series:
As part of our Big Thinkers distinguished speaker series, Yahoo! brought the brightest minds in the academic community to our campus for talks, and we’ve made those lectures available on the Web for all to see and enjoy. We had talks on
Next year’s Big Thinkers series should be just as captivating — we’ve got a great lineup for 2010.
Webscope:
Our Webscope™ program offers a reference library of 24 interesting and scientifically useful datasets we’ve made available for noncommercial use by academics and other scientists. More than 880 academic researchers have used the datasets, resulting in 28 technical papers, journal articles and theses so far. Very few companies have the resources and global scale to help academics and students interact with the types of real-world datasets it takes to spark innovation, but Yahoo! is one of them and it’s really paid off.
Key Scientific Challenges (KSC):
Our Key Scientific Challenges program partnered with 21 graduate students in 2009. We gave them scholarships, plus the opportunity to work closely with Yahoo!’s scientists on solving some of the biggest challenges the Web offers. The winners attended the KSC Graduate Student Summit, where they presented the fruits of their labor to fellow students and other Yahoo! researchers. It was the first of what will surely be many peer-reviewed conferences for these talented folks.
Cloud Computing Research:
Our M45 Cloud Computing Cluster is a 4,000-processor testbed being used in academia for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. Faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University have written 40 technical publications based on research performed on M45, and the cluster is now being used by three additional universities. Yahoo! is also part of both the Open Cirrus testbed and the Open Cloud Consortium.
Global Impact – Yahoo! Days in Haifa:
In November we held two very successful “Yahoo! Days” at major Israeli universities – Tel Aviv University and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. Yahoo! scientists from around the world joined the event, which featured a keynote by Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo! Labs. Pictures from the Tel Aviv and Technion events are available on Flickr.
Netflix Prize-winner Yehuda Koren’s Campus Tour:
Yehuda Koren, a research scientist with Yahoo! Labs in Israel, was part of a team that spanned countries, time zones, and companies, collaborating over a three-year period to win the Netflix Prize, one of the most well-publicized and interesting machine learning contests ever conceived. It’s a story with surprises, twists and turns, game-playing, late nights, and computational brute force. There’s also deep science behind it all — science that will drive future innovation on the Web. Naturally, Yahoo! thought it was the kind of story that students and faculty at some of the world’s best universities would like to hear in person. Yehuda has visited seven universities since the award was announced in September 2009, including MIT, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, Penn, and GA Tech. And he’ll be back at in 2010.
Purple Footprints:
And, of course, we continued to sponsor our campus seminar series, leaving “purple footprints” at Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All of those seminars have been recorded and are available online. Yahoos also presented more than 100 lectures, seminars, workshops and training sessions at campuses worldwide.
If you want to learn more about Yahoo! Academic Relations programs and how you can participate in 2010, please visit us.
Ron Brachman
Vice President
Yahoo! Labs
Tagged: Academic Relations, Global, hack, Students, Thinkers, yahoo, yahoo! labs
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Posted December 30th, 2009 at 1:56 pm by Lucas Mast, Blog Editor
4 Comments » / Filed in: Uncategorized
By Lisa Karstetter
As part of Yahoo!’s “You in?” program to spread random acts of kindness, we headed out on Christmas Eve to make a positive impact on the Quincy, Washington community. We handed out 50 – (16 piece) boxes of chicken and jojo’s plus a box of fresh baked cookies to those standing in line at the local food bank. Then we loaded back up at the store with more chicken and cookies and went to the labor camps where the real need is. Most of these are located 5-10 miles out of town. We went house to house (trailer to trailer). Two ladies started crying…and one hugged my husband and me over and over. It was very touching.
Then today the guys went out with another van full of food and delivered it to some other areas we couldn’t get to on Christmas Eve. We also took bags of stuff we were told that most request at the food bank. Bread, cereal, peanut butter and beans. So we gave them a box of chicken, jojo’s and a bag with other necessities in it.
What we were so surprised to see is that many don’t have transportation to even get to the food bank in town. I think that is why they were so touched. We are going to go out and do it again tomorrow and target another area.
Also while we were waiting for chicken at Akins Deli we randomly walked around the busy store and eyed people shopping that looked like they could use a little help (monetary wise). We notified the sales clerks to charge their groceries at checkout to our account and hand them a kindness card that encourages them to “pay it forward” by doing something nice for someone else. We weren’t around to see but I heard there were 6 really happy and grateful families.
The surprising part to this whole story is that when I went up for communion on Christmas Eve at our church, our pastor said to me, “Lisa, I saw firsthand the way you and your company touched someone’s life today. Thank you for doing that. God Bless you.” I went back to my seat wondering what he was talking about. After church he told me that he was witness to one of the store charges and could see what a truly unexpected gift it was for a family that he could see desperately needed it and it touched him as well.
I wish my children could have seen the woman cry over being given chicken, jojo’s and cookies. It would have given them perspective as to how well they have it and how sometimes it’s not what or how much you give……it’s just the act of caring about those less fortunate and wanting to make a small difference in other people’s lives.
This was a truly moving experience, and I’m so thankful to be able to participate in this You In? campaign. I have NEVER been more proud to work at Yahoo!
I’m so touched to see that these random acts of kindness really are spreading around the world. Nearly 300,000 people have already added their kind acts to the map at kindness.yahoo.com. To add yours or find more inspiration, check out kindness.yahoo.com.
Tagged: Atkins Deli, christmas, Holidays, Kindness, Quincy, Random acts of kindness, You in?
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