Taking “over the hill” to new trivial heights, “Jeopardy”! turns 43. We’ll take “Product News” for $1,000.

• Beyond world news: From in-depth perspectives to regional expertise and daily blog reports, Yahoo! News will soon bring you “Trusted Voices” from McClatchy foreign correspondents around the globe to give you personalized and on-the-ground view. Keep a look out for the “Inside Iraq” blog written by native Iraqi staffers and other contributed stories from various regions starting in the coming months. More here.
• Road trip buddies: Check out the new Custom Friends feature at Yahoo! Autos Custom to meet and do some car talk with fellow motorheads. You can upload a photo of your ride, make a direct “connection,” post comments, and interact with other members in a whole new way. Who said you can’t “roll with the homies?”
• Taking it to the small screen: Reaching out to your customers wherever they are just got simpler with the new Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services. Across 19 countries, publishers now have tools to get their content into Yahoo! oneSearch and can access Yahoo!’s vast mobile ad network. What does that mean for the rest of us? More instant answers and relevant information (think ringtones, games, videos, real estate listings) right at our fingertips.

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Like Yahoo!, McClatchy is a company with California roots. Ours run a little deeper, though, having been planted in the gold fields around Sacramento in 1857. Just last February, we threw a party in our hometown to celebrate 150 years in the news business.

Which might lead you to ask, “Why is Yahoo! announcing a deal with some company that was founded before the advent of electric lights?” For us, however, it seems like an obvious next step in the continued evolution of the way people get their news.

The press release outlines the basics: McClatchy, the country’s third largest newspaper publisher with 31 daily and 50 weekly newspapers and a big Internet portfolio, is going to start providing next-generation international news for some of the Yahoo! News pages. To start, we’ll be looking especially to our foreign bureaus: Baghdad, Cairo, Jerusalem and Beijing are first in line to contribute, scheduled to begin early in the second quarter.

They won’t just be sending news stories, though that’s a foundation for the plan. In addition, they’ll produce blogs available only at Yahoo! and McClatchy that take readers deeper — “behind the headlines” is the applicable cliché. Called “Trusted Voices,” we’ll encourage them to color outside the lines of traditional journalism in their blogs, offering readers a boots-on-the-ground perspective from the Arab street in Egypt or the increasingly crowded slopes of Everest (to name two of their recent datelines). Maybe Hannah Allam will provide a list of the Egyptian websites or blogs she finds most useful in understanding politics there; Dion Nissenbaum might help you unravel the political connections of those Israeli newspapers you always hear quoted. Tim Johnson, who covers China and Asia from Beijing, could offer insight into obstacles facing people thinking about going for the Olympics in 2008.

Some of these will be new efforts launched especially for this Yahoo! partnership; others are already under way. Tim’s been blogging from China for years at China Rises. The Iraqi employees at our Baghdad bureau offer a gritty, street-level view of the war no non-native reporter could duplicate at their group blog Inside Iraq.

Their English isn’t always perfect; their authenticity is beyond question. A recent post began like this: “Now and while I’m writing these words, the American troops are attacking a part of my neighborhood west Baghdad. At the same time, I got a call from my nephew that some insurgents are attacking her neighborhood south west Baghdad.” Another one included this chilling, understated opening: “Every time I tell myself that my next blog will be a pleasant story of days of old, I am confronted with a different story that needs to be told. A friend of mine called me to tell me the bad news. Her brother had been kidnapped, and the ransom set at $100,000. For any Iraqi, such an amount spells disaster.”

When the trans-continental telegraph started delivering same-day news from the East Coast to Sacramento in 1861, McClatchy’s Sacramento Bee newspaper had to start doing things differently. Same with commercial radio, and then television, and then this browser-thingie that showed up in the early 1990s. (McClatchy’s Raleigh News & Observer newspaper started Nando Times,widely credited as one of the first Internet news sites.)

Adaptation, change and competition are part of our DNA at McClatchy — and have been for 150 years. We’re excited about this chance to join the folks with the world’s biggest news audience in exploring the next phase of the adventure. Keep an eye out for our “Trusted Voices” in Yahoo! News, and please let me know what you think, what else you’d like, and what we could do better.

Howard Weaver
Vice President, News
The McClatchy Co.
hweaver at mcclatchy dot com

As Yahoo! Mail approaches its 10-year anniversary, I’m the lucky one who gets to announce that we will begin offering everyone unlimited email storage starting in May 2007. To mark the occasion, I checked in with David Nakayama, our group vice president of engineering, for some perspective on this milestone. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the developer of RocketMail, one of the world’s first webmail products, which Yahoo! acquired and relaunched as Yahoo! Mail in 1997.

Dave reminisced: “I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2MB quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4MB per account! It’s ironic that I routinely send and receive individual mail attachments bigger than that now. Our total capacity for mail accounts back then was 200GB for all of our customers. At Yahoo!, we’re now receiving more inbound mail than that every 10 minutes.”

When Yahoo! Mail launched 10 years ago, users got a whopping 4MB of storage for their entire mailbox. Today, you would fill that up with a single picture from your weekend.

This got me thinking about how the storage capacity of other popular technology products has changed. A quick snapshot:

1997: Yahoo! Mail launches with 4MB of storage

• SanDisk introduces 2MB flash card for the Canon PowerShot.
• Compaq announces “high capacity memory upgrades” in four capacities, including 16MB, 32MB, 64MB and 128MB capacities.
• Caleb introduces the Ultra High Density floppy disk drive that stores up to 144MB on a single disk.
• The first iPod is still a gleam in someone’s eye. It’s not introduced until 2001 and comes with 5GB of storage.

2004/2005: Yahoo! Mail upgrades in 2004 to 100MB of storage, followed by a jump to 1GB in 2005

• Olympus upgrades to 1GB flash memory card.
• HP announces 160GB storage upgrade for its Media Center PCs.
• Corsair in 2005 announces a USB flash drive with 4GB of storage.
• Apple announces the Fifth Generation iPod with 30GB capacity.

2007: Yahoo! Mail announces unlimited email storage

• SanDisk launches 8GB flash card for photo storage.
• Alienware introduces a desktop computer with 1 terabyte of storage.
• Apple currently ships the newest 80GB iPod, launched in 2006 and holds up to 100 hours of video.

We’re psyched to be breaking new ground in the digital storage frontier by giving our users the freedom to never worry about deleting old messages again. And, like any responsible webmail service, we have anti-abuse limits in place to protect our users. BTW: As much as we’d like to just flip a switch and “unlimit” everyone on the same day, we’ll be rolling this out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition — we know there’s virtually nothing more precious than your inbox.

We hope we’re setting a precedent for the future. Someday, can you imagine a hard drive that you can never fill? Never having to empty your photo card on your camera to get space back? Enough storage to fit the world’s music, and then some, on your iPod? Sounds like a future without limits.

Beats a slice of birthday cake, eh?

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

“Looooove, love me do. You know I love youuu…” Sing it with me! Forty-six years ago today, the Beatles brought music genius to our ears. Read on for more reasons to burst into song.

• Widge-a lot!: That’s 4,300 Yahoo! Widgets and counting. Without even opening up a browser, Yahoo! Widgets 4 brings your fave things like Flickr photos, sports scores, and real-time weather updates to your desktop. There’s also a new Widgets Dock that provides an at-a-glance view of your Widgets - it’s like a speed dial to your darling Widgets. Watch how it works and go try them all! Grab some coffee - there’s a lot.
• Think before you click: Teach your kids to look both ways before crossing the “streets” of the Web. Offering cyber-safety games, weekly polls, educational videos, and expert advice from Yahoo! Tech bloggers, Yahoo! Safely is your child’s guide to exploring the Net safely.
• Noticias, noticias, noticas: Whether it’s reading up on “Tu Dinero,” your health, or your personal finances, you’ll want to check out the specially edited Wall Street Journal news content at Yahoo! Telemundo. Oh yeah, did I mention it’s already translated into Spanish?

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Is mobile search the same as PC search? This is the question we are daring everyone to answer. Today we are launching Yahoo! oneSearch on our Yahoo! Mobile Web service, which is accessible to the more than 85 percent of you in the US who can use a browser on your mobile phones.

If you ever tried using mobile search before today, you’re familiar with the list of links you get as your search result, just like those you’re used to getting on your PC. But is that what you really want on your phone, where networks are not yet DSL-fast and some of you have to pay to load every page? All the consumers we’ve talked to back us up on this: You want instant answers, right on the results page — not a list of links. That’s just what Yahoo! oneSearch does — we give you the answers you want in just one search.

Let’s say you’re walking around New York City and are hungry for a slice. Just pull up oneSearch and type in “pizza” and boom — we give you all the information you need on one results page. We give you a list of local places to get a pie (with ratings from Yahoo! users), Flickr images, web sites, related news articles, products, and even information on “Pizza, The Movie.” It’s like getting a customized micro-site dedicated to your keyword. And if you click on one of the local pizza places, you’ll get a page that gives you the address, phone number (one click places the call), ability to get driving directions and even see full user reviews to help you decide if that’s where you want to eat.

We believe that 2007 will be the tipping point for mobile Internet services. The mobile networks are ready, the devices are advanced enough and services like ours are innovative enough to give you the great experience you have been asking for. We have seen that once people try services like Yahoo! oneSearch and Yahoo! Go 2.0, they keep coming back and using them again and again. Go ahead, give it a try and find the answer to our question for yourself.

When I joined Yahoo! through the acquisition of my company, Verdisoft, more than two years ago, it was the mobile opportunity that got me excited. Mobile is the future of the Internet — just look at the numbers! In 2005, there were 896 million PC’s and 2.14 billion mobile phones, and that gap is projected to only increase. By 2010, there will be 1.35 billion PC’s and 4 billion mobile phones. We just need to think differently about how to translate desktop content to the small screen.

To learn more about Yahoo! oneSearch, go to our mobile site on your PC, check out this review on Read/WriteWeb, watch this screencast, or try it for yourself on your mobile phone at m.yahoo.com.

Marco Boerries
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Connected Life

I always get asked to gaze into the future. As I review the top searches on Yahoo! day after day, week after week, year after year, people think I’ve developed some magic soothsaying powers. Sadly, it just isn’t so.

When people ask about using search as a predictor, I have to tell them past search behavior isn’t always indicative of future performance. Although it makes me sound like a mutual fund manager, it helps to illustrate that search behavior is often reactive. Reactions to scandal, shock, and surprise fuel scads of searches. To wit — if searches were the only gauge, Antonella Barba would be your next “American Idol.” Raw searches illustrate, but they can’t connect all the dots.

That’s where the Bix team fills in the picture. They’ve created a dream tool for all Idol fans — a true prediction market for Idol contestants.

In talking to Mike Speiser and John Hayes from Bix, it’s obvious they love Idol’s premise. Hey, the voting process is what makes Bix so awesome. The entire team is curious about what happens when we come to decisions collectively. With that concept firmly in mind, the Idol market was born.

Mike calls it a “really cool research experiment,” but the usefulness of the Idol contestant market is immediately apparent to fans of the show. Who wouldn’t want to buy 10 shares of Lakisha or Melinda right now? However, the key to success is buying low and selling high. So if you think Stephanie Edwards is an undervalued asset, put up the virtual dough and dive in. I’ve signed up as erikg and although I can’t share my investment strategy with you, I doubt you’ll find me on the leaderboard… yet.

The more Idol players we get, the more efficiently the market operates. And if the Idol market works, just imagine other concepts you can extend it to. I can assure you the smart folks at Bix are already letting their imaginations run wild…

BTW: For the geeks out there, this isn’t Yahoo!’s first foray into prediction markets or automated market makers. Our own research scientist Dave Pennock launched the Tech Buzz Game in 2005 and is organizing an academic workshop on these markets in June. In fact, Dave lent sage advice and theory to the Bix team in developing their game.

Erik Gunther
Senior Editor|Writer, Yahoo! Buzz

Do a jig for bottomless green beer and Gaelic cheer, because everyone wants to be Irish on St. Paddy’s Day. And make sure to check out our weekly roundup before you start imbibing.

• A golden bucket of popcorn: Aspiring filmmakers, it’s show time. Starting April 23, show us your twisted genius by submitting a short original movie at Yahoo! Movies that spoofs a classic or an unknown. Fans will vote to see who walks the red carpet at the MTV Movie Awards on June 3, and the winner of the first-ever Best Spoof MTV Movie Award crown. More details to come. Quiet on the set!
• Courtside view?: March Madness’ brackets are closed, but don’t let that stop you from getting the courtside view of the NCAA Tournament. We’ve got all your college b-ball needs covered, from the latest news to smack talking, Flickr photos, stats and scores, and Yahoo! Avatar fan gear. Just want the scores? Search “NCAA Basketball” on Yahoo! Search and get the real-time scoreboard.
• Your personal gadget geek: Now get personalized recommendations for your gadget interests on Yahoo! Tech. You’ll see relevant suggestions on the latest TVs, camera, and cell phones, along with user reviews, how-to guides, and price comparisons — all based on your previous activities and searches. Now you can skip all those trips to the store!

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If you’re like me, sometimes you feel like you’ve heard enough yodeling. Gwen Stefani, apparently on a “Sound Of Music” binge, stuck some on a single a few months ago, and a smash it wasn’t. Jewel used to yodel for kicks during her live shows, but the novelty wore thin in record time, believe me. Need I mention that working in a Yahoo! office guarantees you’ll be hearing a yodel emanating from someone’s squawkbox for the remainder of your natural days? Didn’t think so.

So what’s up with this yodel business?

Some facts: First of all, the best known of all yodels — you know, the one that sounds like “Yo-du-LAY-hee-hoo” — isn’t the only yodel in the book. A yodel can be just about anything a yodeler decides to yodel — if indeed, he or she is in fact yodeling. Not to get too technical about it — because, like, what do I know? I just looked here — but someone yodels when, in the course of vocalizing, they switch between what’s referred to as their “head” and “chest” voice. It’s that little abrupt change in between, and the skillfulness with which it’s done, that’s the arty part of the yodel. Though the Western stereotype of a yodeler usually involves sheep, hot chocolate and the Matterhorn in the background, yodeling isn’t exclusive to any continent or Sunnyvale-based Internet company, and the world is clearly better for it.

In the early days of Yahoo!, when budgets were small and marketing departments thought big, someone from Black Rocket, the company’s first ad agency, had a bright idea. What better way to get across the sheer fun of the Yahoo! brand than encapsulate it all within an easy-to-remember, good old fashioned yodel? And thus came yodeling cowboy Wylie Gustafson, leaving his mark on Yahoo!’s very first television commercial in April 1996 and all humanity thereafter.

That said, it wouldn’t be professionally responsible to let pass the recent release of “The Rough Guide to Yodel” without some comment. A collection of yodeling music recorded in every territory from here to — not quite, but almost — Timbuktu, this CD manages to do the unthinkable and removed the yodel from its hicks/sticks environs and position it as the art you perhaps never thought it was. Compiled by Bart Plantenga, a radio producer who’s also penned “Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World,” the disc features 18 tracks of the hardcore stuff, all of which goes down surprisingly easily. Recognizable names like Gillian Welch and the Fugs’ Ed Sanders sit next to an international cast including Cameroon native Francis Bebey — whose “Pygmy Divorce” borders on the ultra-surreal — Switzerland’s Christine Lauterberg, and Hawaii’s Ho’op’i Brothers, creators of the truly multi-culti “Hawaiian Cowboy.”

If it all sounds like a freak show, the surprise is: it isn’t. It’s a neatly sequenced array of music that, despite its unavoidable air of NPR programming — and you know that’s true — is completely listenable from beginning to end, and the perfect soundtrack for waiting for the cows to come home.

Which, oddly, they always do. Have you noticed?

Dave DiMartino
Executive Editor, Yahoo! Music

John McCain, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Tommy Thompson, Chris Dodd, Joseph Biden, Mike Huckabee… Election Day 2008 is still more than 20 months away, but the campaign is already in full swing. The Internet is predicted to play a larger role than ever before, and Yahoo! in particular intends to be at the forefront.

In the last presidential campaign, 75 million Americans used the Internet to get news, email people about candidates, and participate directly in the political process (according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project). A little-known governor from Vermont got remarkably far in his long-shot bid thanks to his campaign manager’s Net savvy. Bloggers were provided official press passes to the national conventions. Both Senator Kerry and President Bush used email lists as part of their grassroots and fundraising efforts. And even the likes of JibJab illustrated how effective online video could be on the campaign trail.

Fast-forward to today, a time when social media is changing the face of citizen engagement, how news is reported, how people connect with one another, and virtually all expectations of transparency. You can bet that campaigns will adjust their tactics to respond to this growing phenomenon. For example, already six candidates are using Flickr to post photos from their campaign — kissing babies, making speeches, rallying supporters, having quiet moments. We’ve also seen Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton ask questions on Yahoo! Answers. (Incidentally, the 38,000 responses to Hillary’s question on health care helped her beat Oprah Winfrey for most answers to any question.) Campaigns are quickly becoming wise to social media tools, and we intend to lead the way.

At Yahoo! News, we’ve pulled together an über-site to help you engage in the 2008 campaign. In addition to the latest news videos, headlines, and political commentary, you’ll find dedicated pages for each candidate. If you catch a campaign event, upload your photos or video to Flickr, Yahoo! Video or You Witness News — or all three. Feeling like a pundit? Look for a Yahoo! Answers question to weigh in on. Want to find birds of a feather? Join a Yahoo! Group related to your party or candidate. This early version of the site is just a start — tools like MyBlogLog and Upcoming.org will be incorporated soon. Look for it to evolve with even more bells and whistles as we approach game day.

Our goal is to make Yahoo! the town hall for voters across America. We look at it this way: There are red states and blue states, but the 20% of voters in the middle normally decide campaigns. Since red and blue make purple, who better than Yahoo! to help these voters engage and connect with the issues and personalities?

I encourage all of you to not only pay attention, but get involved in this important election. There are more tools to do so than ever before. Help us prove that the Internet has the power to make ours a government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Scott Moore
Head of News & Information

Photo from * Toshio *

I’m a Barbie girl, in my Barbie world. She’s 48 years old and still looking great! OK, so she’s plastic. Here are some “real” goods, minus the synthetic parts.

• Oh me, oh my: My Yahoo! has a new look, and we’re taking sign-ups for the (sneak) sneak peek. The beta will be widely available in the near future. From pre-built personalized pages and drag-and-drop modules to content suggestions for keeping your page fresh, we’ve packed a bunch of tricks for you to try. Preview it here.
• Giving green love: What do you get when you combine green videos, the San Francisco International Film Festival, and green prizes ($1,000 for the winner)? A whole lotta short films tackling the question, “What does it mean to be green?” Edit, mix, and submit your film on Jumpcut (until April 22) for your chance to get discovered or to get your issue on the map. (And if you’re not up for channeling your inner Fellini, at least drop by and “give love” to the entries you dig.)
• Clamoring for more: More of Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, that is. Over 75 Windows Mobile devices from major manufacturers will be compatible. Check here to see if your phone supports it now. Or keep a look out for HTC’s Microsoft Windows Mobile-based smart devices that will come pre-loaded with Yahoo! services like Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 and Yahoo! Mail.

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