3/4″ styrofoam: $15
Precisely color-matched purple paint: $10
Small dowel-like strips of wood: $5
Tape: $3

Seeing your co-workers’ faces when you dress up as a 6′ x 5′ version of the company logo for Halloween: priceless

Jeremy Johnstone
Technical Yahoo, Platform Engineering

Over the last few days more than 1,000 images were submitted to the Yahoo! Time Capsule from within the user-created 3D virtual world of Second Life. The Electric Sheep Company created a virtual environment based on Jemez, New Mexico — the site of a real-world Time Capsule event (read more here) — accessible to people, er, avatars from around the world.

For four hours on Thursday and Friday night, people were invited to build and arrange 3D scenes and submit pictures from the virtual world to the Time Capsule. The Yahoo! Time Capsule sim will remain open in Second Life until November 6th, 2006 (so grab a free account at secondlife.com if you don’t have one). You can view images from the online Time Capsule and video from Jemez on screens and in an evolving 3D image sphere. (Note: You can still submit text and photos in Second Life until November 6.)

In true user-created metaverse fashion, where almost anything goes, almost anything went. In addition to noting humanoid visitors, I saw a giant lumbering teddy bear that would have given the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man a run for his virtual currency, dancing smurfs and turkeys, giant robots, and a young musician named Mel Cheeky, who logged in from Wales and sat on top of the Time Capsule drop box, serenading everyone for several hours on Friday night while streaming her live tunes inworld.

I’m the futurist on the Electric Sheep team (this is Jerry, co-blogging this with Jonah), helping guide the way to the 3D Web we see coming together between web-connected virtual world, video game, and geo-spatial technologies. For everyone in Second Life, the Time Capsule focused our thinking on the future of the kind of space we were in. How funny I’m sure we’ll look in 2020. (And no laughing about how funny we may look to you now! This is serious business :)).

We also sent an avatar from our very beta side project, playfully named Destroy Television, to the event to aid in the documentation. In many ways, Destroy *is* a time capsule, an avatar lifelog streaming live images from Second Life to the Web at destroytv.com and automagically posting tagged pics of everything she sees to Flickr (quite possibly the best photo service in the world ;)). You can watch a slideshow of Destroy’s most recent pics, for the moment cued to the Time Capsule event, here.

We’re really excited to have contributed to the Time Capsule project and doubly excited that Yahoo! would be aware enough to include the exciting frontier of virtual worlds like Second Life in the Time Capsule. This is a crucial time to capture the state of people’s virtual lives. We believe that Second Life’s current one million accounts are a drop in the bucket compared to the usage of these technologies in the future. Things can only get bigger for the metaverse in the next 14 years.

So, see you in 2020! Or in Second Life any time you want to look us up.

Jerry Paffendorf/SNOOPYbrown Zamboni &
Jonah Gold/Hank Hoodoo (Second Life Time Capsule chaperones),
and The Electric Sheep Company team

Wannabes, pack rats and chatterers – we’ve got something for everyone in this week’s product roundup.

• Born to be a web-celeb?: We’ve already announced the Yahoo! Talent Show open call, but here’s a reminder for you die-hard thespians and Mariah Carey wannabes. Jig, yodel, rant, strum or hum, if you’ve got talent, we want to see it.
• Hunt and peck no more. A one-stop publisher shop: We have gathered all our little Yahoo! publisher gee-gaws (badges for Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Finance, Upcoming, and del.icio.us; action buttons for your blog; Yahoo! Search Builder search functionality; podcast tutorials; and more) into one convenient place for your publishing needs. It’s all part of the revamp of the Yahoo! Publisher Network home page self-serve. Ain’t it great? Read more here.
• Attention pack rats and chronic organizers: Saving, sharing and organizing your favorites has never been this easy with the new Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! Bookmarks. Thumbnails make it easy to find, drag and drop saved bookmarks, and share your favorite web sites via IM or email. Into the nitty-gritty? Read more here.
• Cut the fat. Shedding unwanted IM seconds: Yahoo! Messenger version 8.1 plays nice with IE7 and makes photo sharing, PC-to-PC phone calls, and personalized avatars a quicker click away. Faster load times mean more time to chit and chat.
• Have we got a deal for you: Yahoo! Travel just got a bit more personal, offering deal recommendations that read like your personal vacation wish list. It’s based on where you live and what you check out on Yahoo!. Better start packing.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

In early July, I received a call from Yahoo!, asking me to help create a time capsule. It was to be a single simple space where users from around the world could converge to share impressions about their lives. The nature, scale and purity of the idea struck a deep chord with me. In my past work, I have been very interested in finding ways to better understand human nature through the things people leave behind on the Web. I have made a number of projects in this realm, including 10×10, which uses news photography to encapsulate single moments in time; We Feel Fine, which uses large scale blog analysis to explore human emotion; and WordCount, which explores the way we use language. All of these projects use passive observation to draw conclusions about people, whereas the Time Capsule was a chance to ask the world directly: “What matters to you?”

When the Time Capsule opened, I had no idea how the world would respond. Would they write it off as an anachronistic anomaly? Would they dismiss it as a Yahoo! publicity stunt? Or would they embrace it, and rush to leave their mark? Sixteen days after it opened, the Time Capsule has gathered over 80,000 submissions from over 200 countries, and has been seen by over 2.2 million people.

The rules of the Time Capsule are simple: You can add five types of things (words, pictures, videos, sounds, and drawings) in response to ten universal questions (What do you love? What makes you sad? What makes you angry? What do you believe in? What’s beautiful? What’s fun? What do you remember? What is your wish? Describe your world. Who are you?). The questions are intentionally open-ended, chosen for their ability to resonate in any culture. One might expect such broad questions to inspire reflection upon the world at large. But instead, I have found that, overwhelmingly, people have used the ten questions to reflect upon themselves, making quiet personal statements about their own lives.

I am writing this from New Mexico, in the desert outside Albuquerque, where just Wednesday night content from the Time Capsule was projected onto the side of the canyon wall at the Pueblo of Jemez. Huge light beams (each two miles tall) formed a glowing pyramid in the sky overhead, while a laser shot the capsule contents off a mirror and into space. All the while, the Jemez tribe was conducting a drum circle and performing tribal dances. (You can catch some of the highlights in the video below.) Several hours into the event, it started raining torrentially, with crazy desert winds, which only made it seem even more surreal. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and also one of the most humbling. I realized that my role in this project was minimal, simply creating the conditions for this to occur. The real creators of the Time Capsule are the tens of thousands of people who chose to share a little corner of their lives with the world.

Watching thousands of images stream across the massive rock walls, I was struck by how similar they all seemed, in some very basic way. Superficially, the images were amazingly diverse, depicting people of different races, ages, colors, religions, and backgrounds, in all sorts of locales. On this level, the world seems incredibly stratified. But on some deeper level, a clear common thread ran through those images. No matter what the culture, birthdays are still birthdays, breakfast is breakfast, marriage is marriage, babies are babies. We all love something. We all have something that makes us sad. As I gazed up at those rock walls, the Time Capsule seemed to underscore the great promise of the Internet — that there can exist a single space where we all come together and share our stories, where we start to see common ground instead of distance and difference, and we start to think as one world.

Jonathan Harris
Creator of Yahoo! Time Capsule

There’s been just a little bit of attention lately on web video. Seems video hounds just can’t get enough; last month more than 40 million people tuned in to video content on Yahoo! alone. You’ve probably read about the trend — the abundance of broadband and the proliferation of cheap video equipment has spawned videographers everywhere.

The consequence: a lot of great videos… and a whole lot more bad videos. Don’t get me wrong — there’s always room for things like Bob’s retirement speech, Bob the cat chasing a ball, and Bob the video clerk. But I know there’s a lot of hidden talent out there waiting for just the right encouragement.

Today, in our quest to discover the next great Web celeb, we launched the Yahoo! Talent Show. Entries could be traditional filmmaking, animation, stand-up comedy, performance art, or whatever. Even bad can be good, if it’s compelling. But the key here, people, is sustainability, because the winner takes home not only a $50,000 prize, but also a deal to star in or produce his or her own online video show on Yahoo!. So if stupid pet tricks are your thing, just make sure they’re interesting, funny, or outrageous enough to entertain a discerning web audience day after day.

You can submit up to 50 videos (tip: the more you submit, the better your chances) until November 27. Beginning November 13, tune in daily to watch our host Mayleen Ramey (recognizable from MTV and E!) run through the submission highlights and cast your vote to help a panel of judges select five finalists.

After our five finalists are chosen on December 4, they will complete a series of creative video challenges. We’ll even send field producers to their homes to help. The final challenge will take place in New York City, where the finalists will put together their own pilots. Ultimately, like all good social media ecosystems, users and their votes will decide which talent reigns supreme.

So, if you think you can be the next Ninja, submit your video today and maybe we’ll see you in New York in December!

Geraldine Martin-Coppola
Executive Producer, Yahoo! Studios

Rounding up the week, we’ve got new platforms for you and a story that’ll give every developer the warm fuzzies.

• Buh-bye old platform. Hello new sponsored search!: If you haven’t heard yet, Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform is live for current users and lovers of sponsored search! What does this mean for you? Your ads go up online within minutes, and you hold the power to control your campaign from testing your ads to budgeting for clicks to targeting the right geographic audience. Sponsored search newbies don’t fret. The platform will be available for you soon. Power to the peeps!
• (Local) News you can use: Whether they’re looking for the latest report on rising rent prices or the most recent high-society scandals, residents of 16 major cities can now catch local CBS news videos in Yahoo! News. Just click the local news tab, enter a ZIP code and voila! From New York to Baltimore, Salt Lake City to Green Bay, local dirt at your fingertips.
• Have you upgraded yet?: Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware of Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 7 upgrade. Well, you don’t have to wait to carry over your Yahoo! settings, IE6 favorites, and bookmarks. Get a head start and go get your Yahoo! on.
• Q&A on the go: A few months ago, we launched the Yahoo! Answers API on the Yahoo! Developer Network. Well, a Colorado soccer dad snagged it to feed Yahoo! Answers to his mobile phone so he could brush up on his soccer lingo. Read more here. Thanks to him, you can find out what a chip shot is (or anything else, for that matter) while on the road.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

If you watch “THE 9,” you’re probably addicted. Either because you can’t wait to check out the countdown of the weirdest, funniest, or most interesting items unearthed on the Internet — or because you’re dying to see what Maria’s going to wear that day.

“THE 9″ is our weekday video blog that delivers a report of nine groovy online things — photos, sites, stories, videos, and more. Viewers tune in to catch up on everything from the premiere online camel hub to inflatable human foosball tables to tips on creating LEGO Halloween costumes to slang from the 1920s (it’s the bee’s knees). Such fun stuff that Time Magazine counted it among its “50 Coolest Web Sites” just one month after the program launched.

There’s a good chance that host Maria Sansone has something to do with that. They say she’s got nice teeth. And she’s developed quite a loyal following, particularly among those with the Y chromosome. (We hope this guy eventually got his headshot).

Maria’s no stranger to the camera. She was the youngest TV reporter in the history of network television, covering the Little League World Series for ABC at age 11. In addition to hosting “THE 9,” Maria also contributes to ESPN, MTVU, and NESN (New England Sports Network), covering the Boston Red Sox. (More Y-chromosome attraction).

Well, boys, here’s your chance to get up close and personal with Maria. We’ve assembled two videos. Below we take you behind-the-scenes on “THE 9″’s sausage factory (our post title will make more sense after you watch it). And here’s a video of nine things you’ve always wanted to know about Maria. As an added bonus, here’s a roster of nine random questions we made her answer.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my sister to her breast-cancer chemotherapy treatment at the Stanford Cancer Center. As we pulled up to the hospital, I was thankful to see that they offered patient valet parking as it’s not easy for post-chemo patients to get around. However, after helping my sister out of the car, I was disappointed to learn that budget limitations force the hospital to charge for this seeming necessity. I had one of those “life isn’t fair” moments. Certainly, if you have to go through chemo for four months and lose all your hair, you shouldn’t have to add rummaging through your coin purse to your list of worries.

When I got back to the office, we fired up our Yahoo! Purple Acts of Kindness engine. (A Purple Act is an unexpected act that delights the recipient and supports our local communities — more here). Yahoo! has a modest monthly budget for these types of occasions — when a small gesture puts a smile on someone’s face for at least a day. So, this past week, Yahoo! furtively picked up the parking tab for nearly 1,500 cancer patients at Stanford. After all, it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We figured it was the least we could do.

BTW: Here’s a photo of my brother, Yahoo! SVP Brad Garlinghouse, who shaved his head in solidarity. (He asked his barber to spare a few hairs, but don’t worry — the “Y” only lasted a day.)

Meg Garlinghouse
Director, Yahoo! for Good

It’s Friday the 13th. All you paraskavedekatriaphobics, take cover. For the rest of you, here’s your weekly product roundup:

• History in the making: We already posted on this , but it bears repeating. If you want to immortalize your daughter’s first steps or that quirky saying from Grandpa, make your mark in the Yahoo! Time Capsule. We want it all — your personal photos, stories, thoughts, poems, prayers, home movies, music, scribbles, whatever. Check out the blog for inspiration. You’ve got until November 8 — make it good.
• Cashing in your chips: That guy eating all your Cool Ranch Doritos during Monday night football? He just might produce the most talked-about ad to air during the next Super Bowl. Yahoo! Video and Doritos invite you to create and upload your best shot at a Doritos ad. We’ll throw in Jumpcut video-editing tools to make it easy, $10,000 each for the top five finalists, and a trip to Miami for a private game-viewing party. Not too cheesy, eh?
• Prefer it en Español?: Yahoo! Telemundo has added CNN en Español to its news site, making 24-hour breaking news video in your native tongue just a click away. That’s real-time noticias!

And don’t forget to subscribe to an RSS feed to get this Product Pulse every week.

That’s not gum stuck in my keyboard. Those words you’re stumbling over are two of the fun board games played on Game Night at Yahoo!.

Every Monday evening, dozens of Yahoos and non-Yahoos gather at URL’s café on our Sunnyvale campus to do battle over strategic games, drink caffeine, socialize, and generally plot ways to conquer territories like Catan and Neuland (yikes, that smell is my spellchecker). Cofounded by Yahoo! Strategic Analyst Randy Farmer, the Silicon Valley Boardgamers (check ’em out in Yahoo! Groups) play a range of games, but they lean towards “Euro-style” strategy board games. “I especially love playing German board games because they’re the best,” Randy explained. “But I have to use Yahoo! Search to find English versions of the rules since I can’t read German.”

The makeup of the group runs from young to not-so-young and male to female – but it’s mostly engineers. People come from all over the Bay Area, and quite a few international players stop by when they’re in town. Players include current, former, and aspiring Yahoos (yes, several job offers have resulted from these weekly interactions).

According to Randy, although group members also enjoy computer-based games, they relish the chance to master the social and intellectual challenges of board games. He particularly loves sharpening his reasoning and influencing skills (which sure comes in handy here at Yahoo!). Game playing lasts at least three hours, though some games have gone well past midnight. “Most of the players are in committed relationships and come to play after work. It’s amazing how many phones pop out at 10:00 p.m. with people saying, ‘Just about to leave…’”

Randy owns 30-plus board games himself, but has played more than 100 (each week players bring their own, teaching others how to play), with names like Settlers of Catan, Tigris & Euphrates, and Age of Steam. These games are fairly easy to learn and play, but they do reward solid, strategic thinking. Yet if someone wants to play a quick game of Liar’s Dice, that’s OK too.

Reps from board game companies even show up regularly to test new concepts. The just-released Seismic was road-tested at Yahoo!, as are several by Locust Games, a publisher of strategy, family board, and card games run by Yahoo! Interaction Designer Matt Leacock.

If you’re new to gaming, don’t worry, the group is all about having fun. For finishing last, Randy’s 19-year-old daughter was once sentenced to walking around URL’s while performing “I’m A Little Teapot.” Plus, the “Hosedown Rule” (which fortunately has yet to be enforced) requires that game owners be sprayed with water in the courtyard when the newbies they teach score low.

On Tuesday morning, members get an emailed recap of games played, winners and losers (especially when they’ve been defeated by a newbie), notable quotes overheard, and a wry observation or two. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, since I tend to lose these games pretty spectacularly,” says Randy.

Needless to say, it’s a good time had by one and all. So if you’re ever in the neighborhood and game for a round of Nexus Ops (with translucent pieces), Randy and the gang would love to see you.

Darrell Jones
Copywriter