We’ll keep it short, so you can take a moment to pay tribute to the Princess of Wales.

• Friendly rivalry: If you missed the memo in June, Rivals.com is now part of the Yahoo! Sports family, now with new, deeper college and high school sports content integration. Not only can you find links to Rivals.com in Yahoo! Sports’ navigation bar and read what their experts have to say on the NCAA league pages, also find Rivals team pages in our catalog of college teams as well as team news (including stats and schedules), recruiting news, and message boards. And don’t miss exclusive video of Ashley Russell and her Rivals Minute clips. Read more here.

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As part of our internal Hack Speaker Series, sponsored by our Advanced Development Division (you with me still?), Yahoos were recently treated to an hour of satire and cynicism by Peter Koechley, managing editor of America’s finest news source, The Onion. Peter (known also as brother of Nate Koechley, one of our YUI gurus and this blog’s technical muse) offered first-hand stories of newsgathering, adver-newsgathering, news manipulation, and flat-out news falsifying.

Peter kicked things off with a little overview of The Onion’s media empire. I was surprised to learn that they’re read in 752 countries, have news bureaus in 412 countries, are broadcast on 14,800 radio stations, offer a 24-hour news network, have a multinational intelligence agency, own 95% of all grocery store circulars, are the proprietors of an upscale haberdashery, offer mercenary embedded journalists for hire, and employ newsboys from an orphanage, which they also run.
We were treated to a view into the decision-making process inside the nation’s No. 1 newsroom, which consists of a 5:00am meeting with all 1,300 reporters, in which they’re (somewhat dictatorially) told what gets published and what lands on the floor. Editors are challenged with decisions such as which gets a full story, a short, a video or radio story, or a one-liner that links to nothing. Peter illuminated us about why “Earthquake Sets Japan Back to 2147” deserved a full story, noting that it wasn’t hard to find a photo of Japan that projects a scene 140 years into the future (they simply added a green orb in the sky). He also explained why a story headlined “Churchgoer Tips God for Excellent Week” required a briefer bit, “Chinese Announce Alliance With The Ants” was ideal as a radio spot, and why “Baby Given Cat’s Room” says it all.

The Onion takes great pride in covering what other news organizations overlook. Take animals, for instance. No other outlet covered the quality-control issues that led to “Dog Breeders Issue Massive Recall of ‘07 Pugs.” And their investigative reporting is unparalleled, as their exclusive on “Congress Threatens to Leave DC Unless New Capitol is Built” underscores. The only other world news organization that covered the story was the Beijing Evening News. (Actually they plagiarized The Onion, then demanded proof that it wasn’t true, and ultimately “apologized” with this deflection, “Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them with the aim of making money.”)

Here are a few Q&A nuggets you Onion diehards might enjoy:

• Why doesn’t The Onion get sued daily for libel? “Because anyone who sues The Onion would look bad. People would say, ‘Oh, you got made fun of by The Onion and now you’re too much of a baby.’ We benefit from broad first amendment laws. We once got a cease-and-desist letter from Harriet Meyer’s office in the middle of the C.I.A. leak investigations — clearly a top priority. They said it was illegal to use the White House seal (a law written by Nixon, of all people) without approval. Our lawyers responded with a legal translation of ‘You’ve gotta be kidding’ and our editor offered a list of other things they could do with taxpayer dollars other than pursuing satirists. We never heard from the White House again.”
• How do you see the Onion News Network as being different from The Daily Show or The Colbert Report? “We love them. They claim to be reporting fake news, but they look at what’s really happened. We actually create fake news and report on it. They can also really comment every day, while we have to do things that are much broader. We definitely have different niches.”
• Have any of the people you’ve satirized become celebrities? “The people we feature in our reporting are generally people we know. People who come to the office, our book signings, live upstairs or downstairs, work at the deli we go to. You can basically reverse-engineer the Onion staff’s life by looking at our photos. The guy who crashed the Web was a design intern. He was just hired by Comedy Central, where he’s continually referred to as his character ‘Eric Tipton.’”
• How does your editorial team know when a story has the potential to go viral? “Things with brands, like Radio Shack, tend to do well, especially if we reverse their image. The Web Crash story did well on the Internet, though we still got some comments like ‘Did that really happen?’”
• How much traffic to you get? “Lots. Millions and millions. Depends on how funny we are.”
• Are you ever surprised by what didn’t work? “We always have something for everyone. The goal is to have at least one thing that’s hilarious to someone.”
• How often do you get comments from your subjects? “Sometimes it annoys us how appreciative people are. There are people we abhor who respond with, ‘Oh, I’m in The Onion! I made it!’ And we’re like, ‘Dude, we hate you.’ After we ran ‘Gen. Tommy Franks Quits Army to Pursue Solo Bombing Projects,’ his aide-de-camp asked us for signed copies. It was our first time being contacted by an aide-de-camp.”
• Does your ad sales team ever have a hard time selling ads to traditional brands? “Not as much as they used to. We have to get fairly cool advertisers, who are ok with having swearing and horrible things near their ads. But that doesn’t seem to hurt us. And we definitely don’t ever want to tone things down because we get more readers if we don’t. It’s death if anyone catches a whiff of us chickening out. We don’t have to answer to anybody — we’re not owned by Viacom.”
• Do you ever run fake ads? “Sometimes, but nobody pays for them.”
• What can you tell me about Doyle Redland, Onion Radio News correspondent? “His photo is actually my dad. We have a very large budget.” Says brother Nate, “It takes a lot of makeup to make him look that mean.”

I’ll leave you with our favorite story: “Yahoo! Launches Soul-Search Engine“

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

As political producer for the Election team at Yahoo!, my job is to help political campaigns and organizations of all sizes and parties understand (and hopefully use) the social media platforms on Yahoo!.

This morning, Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a contest on Jumpcut in which users can create their own Romney campaign commercials. The winning entry will be used as a TV spot by the Romney campaign.

This highly unusual contest shows how much the American political process has been changed by the social networking capabilities of the Web.

Mitt Romney is not the only presidential candidate tapping into the Yahoo! network. In fact, all the major candidates are using Yahoo!’s social platforms to strengthen their relationships with citizens and to find new supporters. Candidates and their teams are actively posting to Flickr, uploading videos, and participating in Answers.

Perhaps more important are the grassroots activities that are thriving across the network. Citizens across the country are participating in the political process by joining Yahoo! Groups (there are thousands of active political groups), uploading photos of candidates to Flickr, or simply stating their political preference with an election-themed Avatar.

In previous elections, Yahoo! has helped millions of people with straightforward tasks such as registering to vote or finding their local polling places. We hope to help even more people during the 2008 election cycle.

With the Jumpcut contest, we’re offering users a new level of participation — taking the promise of the democratic process up a notch. It’s an amazing change from the old-boy networks and smoke-filled rooms of politics past.

Kathie Legg
Political Producer, Yahoo! Elections

My kids, like most, love text messaging. But while their nimble fingers can easily navigate cell phone keypads at lightning speeds, I definitely prefer a full keyboard, and am much more inclined to use email than text messaging.

So I’m doubly excited to announce the launch of the all-new Yahoo! Mail today. Not only are we launching a brand new version of one of the most popular Web mail services in the world, but we’re unveiling a solution to my texting woes, and giving people around the world more ways to connect. With the new Yahoo! Mail, people can send and receive free text messages in their email to and from any mobile phone number in participating markets including the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.

It’s sure to come in handy for people like me who want to keep in touch with text-crazy friends and family. From my Yahoo! Mail window (and using my comfortably full-sized keyboard), I can type a note to my son, letting him know I’m on my way to his soccer practice, and send it straight to his phone. And he can send a text message right back to my email, letting me know where to meet him. The intuitive, chat-like interface makes it super easy, even if you’re a novice at text messaging.

We already have great integrated instant messaging features in Yahoo! Mail, so adding text messaging was a natural next step. It’s an increasingly popular way to keep in touch, especially among younger users. In fact, 69% of US mobile phone users between the ages of 18-39 use text messaging (Harris Interactive, June 2006), and half of Americans age 18-25 say they sent or received a text message over the phone in the past day (Pew Research Center, January 2007).

Today’s news doesn’t stop at text messaging — the all-new Yahoo! Mail also lets users send and receive instant messages in real-time to their friends who are logged into Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, without ever leaving the e-mail experience. You can even switch between emailing, instant messaging, and text messaging as your friends come online or go mobile. We want our users to be able to choose how they communicate with their friends and family, in the most appropriate method for the moment. By adding these new types of real-time communication into Yahoo! Mail, we’re laying the foundation for an even more social experience for our users.

For those of you who love the original Yahoo! Mail interface — not to worry. We’re keeping Yahoo! Mail Classic as well. Our goal is to provide the best email experience for everyone, whether that be familiar and comfortable or new and shiny.

To check out the brand new Yahoo! Mail, go on over to http://mail.yahoo.com. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Clarification that the new Yahoo! Mail will be rolled out globally over the next six weeks. You’ll know you have the new version because you’ll no longer see “beta” under the logo and you’ll find some helpful information within the product explaining the new features. If you’re a Classic user, you’ll be invited to try the new mail when it’s available to you.

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

Can you believe it’s been exactly 12 years since Windows 95 debuted to crush the DOS-compatible operating system? You know, back when java was still coffee and streaming was still water. Sing “Start Me Up” as you read what we’ve released this week:

• For faster search, turn here: Our Search team just unleashed three new Yahoo! Shortcuts to help you say “Eureka!” in just one search. Into drugs? New medical shortcuts draw from content in Yahoo! Health, Groups and Answers to provide narrowing for medications and medical conditions. Shopping for gadgets? Search for consumer electronics keywords and get a shopping result shortcut with brands, popular products (reviews included), and buying guides and tips. And just in time for the first pigskin kickoff, the NFL shortcut serves up an insta-snapshot for all players. Read more here and here.
• Lyrical groupthink: Ok, people, join hands and get busy in the first-ever virtual songwriting project. Now’s your chance to contribute to the next hot track for Def Jam artist Ne-Yo through Yahoo! Music Lyricmakers project. The theme is Love so start feeling romantical. Users vote each week though September 28th on their favorite lines until Ne-Yo has six verses, which he’ll record and perform. Read more here.
• Flashy and new: For all you ever wanted to know about Flash (think mash-up of Yahoo! Maps), check out the newly revamped Flash Developer Center, with tools, articles, tutorials, and information such as ASTRA, the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications (Yahoo!’s collection of Flash and Flex components, libraries and toolkits). The team has even launched a Flash blog so you can keep tabs on what’s next.
• Styling for promotion: A Yahoo! HotJobs and Banana Republic survey says your wardrobe can make or break your chances for advancement. So we’re giving you the styling know-how (fall fashion tips) and some spending money so you’re primed for that promotion. Enter the sweepstakes (one winner every day until Sept. 30) for a $1,000 shopping spree at Banana Republic here.

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Last week saw members of the Yahoo! UK office participating in a cricket tournament of “Internet giants” at the legendary Lords — not only the home of world cricket but also the oldest, most established cricket venue in the world. In the first of a series of annual events, Yahoo!, Google UK, and Lastminute.com played against each other, with the best two teams then competing in a nail-biting final.

First up: Google vs. Yahoo!. Around 100 employees were in the stands, but it was the Yahoo! crowd that really got behind the team, which inspired some great batting — with two Yahoos scoring 30 and one scoring 3 huge 6’s in a row. The Yahoo! team finally finished on 137, which made Google’s job extremely difficult.

The Yahoo! team took to the field knowing that a good bowling and fielding performance was needed. After some excellent aggressive bowling from Yahoo! (one bouncer hit the Google batsman in the chin!), we got the breakthrough we needed and caught their best batter on the boundary. Another plucky Yahoo! then picked up the bravery award for putting his face in the way of a ball to stop it from going for a 4. The bowling attack then dispatched Google for a paltry 120 all out and the celebrations from the Yahoos watching in the stands were reminiscent of what I witnessed at last year’s World Cup.

Next up was the final against Lastminute. The sun was blazing and, by this time, about 200 Yahoos had gathered at Lords in time to lend support. With Yahoo! batting first, there was amazing support from the stands (maybe the free drinks helped!) and every 4 & 6 runs were greeted by a yodel delivered from the Yahoo! bus P.A. system. Many Yahoos joined in with fantastic yodels — something that’s pretty rare for Brits with “stiff upper lips”!

After another good batting performance, Yahoo! finished on 118. With 12 balls remaining and the final very delicately poised, two amazing catches from Yahoos set up a tense finish. On the last ball of the final, Lastminute needed 3 runs to win. They only managed 2, which meant an amazing draw.

After consulting the rules of the mini-tournament, someone pointed out that a player from both teams had to run the length of the wicket and then down a pint! Conveniently, this was one of our sales guy’s party tricks. So, in front of a packed crowd, he raced the Lastminute player. Although he finished his pint just after the Lastminute bloke, he did so without spilling a drop and the impartial (Google) judge awarded the win to Yahoo!!

A huge round of applause for the Yahoo! UK team for its victory and to all the supporters from the London office who really helped the team to focus and beat the competition!

Andrew Cocker
Yahoo! UK Cricket Team Captain
Senior Marketing Manager, Yahoo! UK & Ireland

Yahoo! Women in Tech, an internal stakeholder group for women across Yahoo!’s technology organization, recently partnered with the Society of Women Engineers to host this year’s GetSET Industry Tour Day. Seventy-two teenage girls from high schools all over Santa Clara County (Calif.) spent the day at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale campus for a taste of life and work at Yahoo! HQ.

“Engineering is the way to go!”

GetSET (the SET is for Science, Engineering, and Technology) is an outreach program sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley section of the Society of Women Engineers. This four-year mentoring program serves high-school girls from communities and groups typically under-represented in engineering and computer science — encouraging participants to finish high school, apply for college, and explore careers in math, science, and technology, where there is a growing demand for skilled employees, and a declining trend in numbers of women and minorities who are entering these fields.

“It’s hard work but fun at the same time.”

The day was packed with activities, beginning with a welcome from Mercedes DeLuca, Yahoo! VP of Global IT, and a panel discussion about what it’s like to work at Yahoo!. The girls divided into smaller groups for a campus tour that included a variety of Yahoo! landmarks. Our guests checked email at the purple cow, played foosball, posed at the fountain, window-shopped the Yahoo! Company Store, got in front of the blue screen at Yahoo! Studios, and video-conferenced with our Burbank office.

“I want to work here now!”

After a lunch break, the teams participated in a web design workshop. Yahoo! volunteers (guys, too) stood by as small teams, many of whom had never met before, shared laptops and built web pages inspired by their visit. Quite a few of the girls knew how to create and personalize their MySpace pages, while some were familiar with HTML, and others knew a bit of JavaScript. Some of us non-engineers learned that Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste) go a long way towards implementing a mashup and adding it to a web page, while other teams were fortunate to have Yahoo! hackers, coders and designers standing by to assist.

“In all jobs, you have to work as a group.”

At the close of the day, several teams stepped up to the front of the classroom to present their pages — Hack Day-style. Their energy, enthusiasm, and sense of fun were contagious. We sent the GetSET girls home with gift bags of purple schwag and plenty of good memories.

Havi Hoffman
Influencer Marketing

Almost immediately after watching the devastation and horror of Hurricane Katrina, and later Rita, unfold in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, I began to ask myself, what could we do? These events were in part made worse by human action and inaction — the neglect of the levees, lack of political leadership and will, poverty, and much more. Global warming had also caused the sea levels to rise, making storm surge worse, and increasing sea temperature likely fueled the intensity of the storm. The lumbering response from our government was unacceptable. Global Green could not help but respond to the plight of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast — arguably the first major city in the U.S. affected by climate change.

Today, Brad Pitt and I hosted a “board cutting” ceremony in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward to launch what we hope will become the future of green affordable housing and a cornerstone of New Orleans’ rebuilding efforts. Global Green sponsored an international design competition last summer, with more than 125 firms competing to design a zero-energy affordable housing development. This morning, we offered the first hard-hat tour of the Holy Cross Project site, showcasing the winning design, which was created by Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of Workshop/APD.

Thanks to our friends at Yahoo! Green, you can take a virtual tour of this home, which is being built with green products and energy efficient systems and whose solar panels will generate enough electricity to power the home. You’ll find information about dozens of green products and systems, which fall into the categories of water conservation, energy conservation, natural resource conservation, indoor air quality, and durability. You’ll learn about innovative materials such as eco-friendly termite- and mold-resistant wood, soy-based foam insulation, and wheat boards.

The principles we are applying are simple at their core: if only 50,000 homes in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were rebuilt according to even 40% of the energy and resource standards used in this home, the residents would save up to $56 million in electricity costs and reduce global warming pollution by 550,000 tons each year.

Global Green’s work has always included a focus on communities and addressing those in need. From our work on green schools to green affordable housing, it’s about revitalizing communities from the inside out, while addressing poverty. It is immensely rewarding to be bringing together and mobilizing such a dedicated team of people — from Brad Pitt; our lead funding partner, The Home Depot Foundation (with whom we’ve worked on green affordable housing for several years); Yahoo!; our designers, architects, and developers; and the Holy Cross community — all believing that imbedded in this project is real hope and the opportunity to make New Orleans the first true green city.

Matt Petersen
President and CEO, Global Green

You talkin’ to me? Celebrate the two-time Academy Award and Golden Globe-winning actor’s 64th birthday by doing your best impression. Then screen what we’ve produced this week.

• Location, location, location: Find more hidden treasures in your hood (be it a new restaurant, flower shop, or dry cleaning service) with the new and improved Yahoo! Local. Not only does it have a fresh new look, you can find the best of what’s closest to you through more robust algorithms that incorporate user reviews and your input. You can even share your thoughts on user reviews and see the top search terms from your zipcode in a new search cloud. Read more here.
• Me and you, Sudoku?: Now you can play in real-time and get help from a friend, over Yahoo! Messenger (8.1 version). Install the Pandaf Sudoku plug-in and share your Sudoku smarts with your buddy while chatting over IM about your weekend plans. Read more here or check out other games you can play with your pals over Yahoo! Messenger here.

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On August 7, February Flowers, a lyrical first novel set in southern China was published in the United States, where its author, Fan Wu, makes her home. I know Fan as Cindy, the name she took 10 years ago when she arrived in California for graduate school. After earning a masters from Stanford in Mass Media Studies, Cindy took a job at Yahoo!, and that’s how we met.

In 2000, I was writing and editing Yahoo! Picks and Ask Yahoo!. Cindy wanted to know more about my work. We talked about writing — and reading — in English. Her appetite for literature was wide-ranging and eclectic. I remember a conversation about Raymond Carver’s short stories. At that time, she was attracted to Carver’s lean American prose. We also spoke about Joseph Conrad, the Polish-born storyteller who lived in Britain and wrote brilliant and prolific fiction in English, and Ha Jin, the award-winning contemporary Chinese-American writer.

By 2002, Cindy had begun to write fiction in English. She attended writers’ workshops and found mentors and peers. She read, she wrote — and she kept working. Work at Yahoo! paid the bills, and gave her the freedom to find her own way as a writer.

Fast forward to September 2006. February Flowers by Fan Wu debuts in Asia and Australia, where it receives exultant reviews. The story of two young women students in China in the early nineteen nineties, it explores a friendship that blossoms within the confines of a “restrained” traditional culture during a time of social change. China was beginning to prosper and open up to the west. In the self-reliant, independent-minded characters of the two friends, traditional China is remixed with the new. The girls grow up and drift apart. Years later, Ming, the narrator, recovers memories of their friendship in a new century, on her way to a new continent.

So, where’s Cindy now? Recently Fan Wu left her job at Yahoo! to focus on her second novel. This week, I emailed to ask her about life after Yahoo!. Cindy replied:

“Writing is a lonely pursuit. In my post-Yahoo! life, I, of course, miss getting paid every two weeks, but what I miss the most is not being able to see my Yahoo! friends often, to chat over lunch or coffee…”

In the coming months, you can find her around the Bay Area at a variety of book readings, signings and events. And catch her at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park on Thursday, August 23 at 7:30 pm.

Tell her Yodel Anecdotal sent you!

Havi Hoffman
Influencer Marketing