Product Pulse - November 17, 2006

Posted November 17th, 2006 at 1:19 pm by Julie Han, Blog Team

 9 Comments / Filed in: Product Pulse

Dreading family overload next week? Relax, spend some “me” time and check out the goodies in this week’s round-up.

• Formerly known as…: Yahooligans! just unveiled a new name and a new look: Yahoo! Kids. You’ll find everything from the latest arcade games and seasonal jokes to an interactive study zone there. This means that now your 6-year-old and 12-year-old have a place they can both hang out and get smart online.
• Tag-teaming — who woulda thunk?: In a nutshell, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft have joined forces to make your search experience a better one. We teamed up to provide webmasters with a free tool that helps search engines better index their sites. The result? Better search results for all. Read more here.
• Paula, Simon, and Randy reincarnated?: If winning $50,000 in pocket change, a deal to star or produce your own Yahoo! show, and national stardom aren’t enough motivation, how’s exposure to Tom Green, Ask a Ninja and Maria Sansone? All three just came aboard the Yahoo! Talent Show to judge the hottest and not-so-hot talents on the Web. If you haven’t already submitted your stellar air-guitar sets, now’s the time!
• Addicted to advertising?: A complete rebuild of Yahoo! Advertising now offers you a virtual warehouse of advertising information, including industry news, podcasts and webcasts, an event calendar, a creative gallery for watching award-winning spots, content from the likes of the Association of National Advertisers, and, of course, links to Yahoo! stuff like market research studies and advertising ops on our network. We’ve even got cartoons.
• Be there in a flash: Beta no more! Our new Yahoo! Maps are now de rigueur if you’re logging in via broadband (fear not, dial-uppers — our classic Maps will remain just for you). With an award-winning, Ajax-juiced user interface, the new maps provide multi-point routing, a mini-map to let you see the forest for the trees, satellite and hybrid views, real-time traffic, and full integration with Yahoo! Local.

See you back in two weeks. We plan to spend next Friday enjoying a tryptophan-induced coma.

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9 Comments Add your own

Brinke Guthrie | November 19th, 2006 at 10:44 pm

you missed one! great new ‘pick your own links’ now on the front door.

KathyLitch | November 27th, 2006 at 6:32 am

The new Yahoo! Kids home page -
The kids in my classroom said “wow, this is cool”. My own kids really like it as well.

However, I vainly clicked everywhere looking for the directory that I use for assignments (I’m a teacher). I finally found it through some guesswork. I’m sorry to see that you seem to be dropping the directory (it’s not even linked to the home page anymore).

This is a really valuable resource for homework - I just love it both as a parent and as a teacher. Any chance you’ll consider keeping it? (

If you’re not keeping it, is there anyway that you can transfer it to me and I’ll host it? I just hate to see it gone.

On the off chance that this is a mistake and you plan on keeping the directory, I also noticed that you took off the numbering system - ie where you numbered the web sites. This sounds funny, but kids can’t read on the web as fast as adults do (I teach at an elementary school). Having the numbers make it much easier and faster for them to find a website. If I tell them to look for website #12, they can find that MUCH faster than telling them to look for Enchanted Learning.

I like the new look, too. I was ready for a change after staring at this for a few years on all our screens as school (I use it as our home page).

Colleen | November 27th, 2006 at 9:06 pm

Kathy, how did you find the directory? I’ve just been to the new site and I hate it. I think most teachers are going to feel the same way, What a shame. It WAS such a good site.

Paul Marcum | November 30th, 2006 at 11:43 pm

I’m the GM for Youth content here at Yahoo!. First of all, thanks for sharing your concerns about Yahoo! Kids. We value your loyalty to Yahooligans and appreciate you taking the time to connect with us.

As you’ve noted, some of the content found at Yahooligans! isn’t yet available at the new site. Yahoo! Kids is still under development and we sincerely apologize for the disruption to your use of the site. Yahooligans was first launched in 1996 and as we have updated its infrastructure, we have had to prioritize the relaunch of its content according to its use – a sometimes challenging prioritization but a necessary one. In coming weeks, we will restore most of the content that you found so useful as well as many exciting new features.

The Yahooligans directory and all of our educational content will be available at the Study Zone - http://beta.yahooligans.yahoo.com/learn/index - we hope you will use it as your computers’ default home page as you have done historically with Yahooligans!. Along with its Reference, Science and Animals sections, we plan to expand the Study Zone’s News and Current Events offerings and provide an easy-to-use catalog of our educational videos. And when the Yahooligans! directory relaunches it will be joined by a greatly enhanced kid-safe search.

With your permission, we’d be delighted to send an e-mail when we restore and add educational features to Yahoo! Kids. We are developing a lot of new educational technologies throughout Yahoo! and we can’t wait to share them with you when they are available.

Again, we apologize for the temporary disruption and trust that when the virtual dust settles you will find Yahoo! Kids more valuable than ever.

Colleen | December 1st, 2006 at 7:14 pm

Thank you Paul. I’m impressed! Yes, lplease do email me when the site is completed. There is nothing on the web that remotely compares to the old Yahooligans. Yahoo!

Anomalizer | December 3rd, 2006 at 10:04 am

The directory can be found here: http://kids.yahoo.com/directory

Mary | December 13th, 2006 at 6:27 am

As a fourth grade teacher, I couldn’t be more unimpressed with the new site, as it’s a total disappointment. Our school is even considering taking it OFF as our homepage. The new site is like so many others on the web. . .full of movie and music junk, and not education based at all. Boo to Yahoo! I won’t visit it anymore.

I had numerous lesson plans that intregated technology and core curriculum, but now I see that I have to change everything and use other search engines. What happened to Ranger Rick? That’s what most of my students used to begin research for animal reports!

I can’t believe Yahoo! sold out and turned their site into Disney Site #2. What a disappointment.

Sharon | January 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

I had yahooligans set up as my kids homepage, and since you have decided to “update” it so it looks every other commercialized kids website out there, we will not be using it. Yahooligans was an excellent, easy to use webpage with good links. Now it is just a cluttered website like everyone else out there, whereas, before you stood out from the pack.

Colleen | January 16th, 2007 at 8:11 pm

Any news Paul? Our school is waiting.