Last year, blogger Sarah Bunting of Tomato Nation baited her readers to raise $30,000 for DonorsChoose with an offer to shave her head (see video below). This year, we’re getting in on the game.

DonorsChoose, the ultra-awesome web-based educational philanthropy that lets you play Santa to public school kids by fulfilling teacher wishlists, is hosting the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. Starting Monday, more than 100 bloggers will challenge their readers to fund classroom projects this month. The likes of Engadget, TechCrunch, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, and Anil Dash are rumored to be participating. And Yahoo! is joining Google, SixApart, and Federated Media by upping the ante with awards.

The blogger who motivates the most readers to participate in the Blogger Challenge will get lunch with Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang. And we won’t even make them shave their head. Unless, of course, they want to.

No such thing as a dumb question? Well, frankly there is and today is the day to ask one in honor of “Ask a Stupid Question Day.” Just do us a favor and steer clear of Yahoo! Answers. Here’s an answer to “Whatcha been up to?”

• Carpal thumbs?: Well, give them a rest by downloading the latest Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. Not only can you access Yahoo! Messenger now from any Internet browser, you can send text messages (SMS) to your pals on their mobile phones (just US, India and Canada for now) for free. And don’t worry, if they respond, you’ll get the reply back via Messenger. We’ve even got brand new, local language versions for Thailand, Indonesia, and new languages for India (nine of them in fact!). Read more here.
• Geeks get rewarded: Got all the (best) answers to questions about consumer electronics, computers and the Internet? Yahoo! Answers may have an iPhone for you as part of their Best Answer Sweeps. Give it your best shot here before October 12th. There will be ten winners and even runner-up prizes for top contributors, so it can’t hurt to try (keep in mind the five entry limit per person). Random prize drawings will take place a week after the sweeps end. Check out the tips on how to get a “Best Answer” status before you start dishing your know-how. Read more here.
• Doh! Another 4-year-old: Happy belated to Upcoming. At least we can rely on you to keep good time! Cheers to another event-filled calendar year.

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BusinessWeek just released its annual “Best of the Web” user survey. Among the most beloved sites are some of the properties housed at our Santa Monica operations — Finance, Games, Health, Music, News. Since opening our office here five years ago, we’ve established a center of excellence by having Yahoos in residence in a major media capital. And our users and partners continue to benefit.

Today we’re planning some changes that also have our user and customer experiences in mind. We are streamlining the structure of one portion of our Santa Monica presence — our entertainment division — with a vision of offering a more integrated entertainment experience. That means we’ll be creating more synergies between our music, games, movies, TV, and omg! properties, making them more personal and engaging for entertainment hounds.

Also, rather than staffing entertainment business units around distinct properties, we’re freeing up resources to feed new areas of focus. We’ll be investing in the development of next gen media platforms, applications and services, creating cool new opportunities for third-party publishers and media companies while also harnessing the power of social media and user-generated content. For instance, consider the Yahoo! Music Video application on Facebook. Or bringing big entertainment brands to life online. Or making it effortless for big networks and studios to put their hottest video content in front of all our users, both on network and off.

A consolidated entertainment team also means increased accountability, faster decision-making, better focus, and the ability to staff our engineering, product, and design muscle against our most important priorities. And it allows us to redeploy our talent against big bets in other parts of the company. We’ll continue to look for areas to sharpen our focus.

We think this new approach is not only good for business, it’s better for our users. And we hope that continues to keep our properties in the company of the best.

Vince Broady
Head of Entertainment and Video

Photo from lauradahl.

Blake Jorgensen joined Yahoo! as our chief financial officer in May. A month later, we had a change in management and our new executive team embarked on an exhaustive strategic review of our business.

Was this what the co-founder of Thomas Weisel Partners had signed up for? Find out in this exclusive interview (I have connections), where you’ll also learn about Blake’s love of caffeine, big challenges, steep snowy mountains, the smell of onions, Crackberries, merriment, and good old-fashioned hard work. Oh, and numbers.

Read on, friends…

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

A little more than a week since we launched the first online Presidential debate (or mashup, as we like to call it), it’s time to announce the winner and share some additional “results.”

In our poll, which asked people who they’d vote for after watching the mashup, Barack Obama was the winner with 35% of the votes. Senator Obama squeaked by Hillary Clinton, who received 31% of the votes. To hear what Obama had to say about winning, check out our “People of the Web” story on the results, which includes an interview we conducted this morning.

But the votes don’t tell the entire story. We also looked at which clips the audience was actually watching and came away with some interesting findings:

• Hillary Clinton was by far the most watched candidate. Thirty-five percent of all clips watched were Clinton’s, while Obama came in second with 25%.
• The audience was most interested in the “wildcard” question, in which comedian Bill Maher surprised each candidate with personalized questions on a variety of topics. Forty-two percent of the clips watched were wildcard questions, followed by Iraq (34%), healthcare (15%), and education (9%).
• Women were more interested in education and healthcare, while men preferred the wildcard question.
• Older Americans were more likely to select questions on the topic of healthcare, while younger Americans were more interested in what the candidates had to say on education (that one didn’t surprise us much).
• The most popular clip among women in Iowa was Edwards on healthcare.
• Dennis Kucinich was one of the most viewed candidates in Seattle.

Part of what made the Presidential mashup so interesting to me was that we were putting control in Presidential forum like never before, and it was an exciting experiment to see what our users cared about most.

And speaking of users, you may be asking yourself how many people actually watched this debate. We had more than 1.1 million viewers, who streamed approximately 4.4 million video clips. Thirty-nine percent of the audience represented the 18-35 demographic. That means our debate attracted about 429,000 18- to 35-year-olds. That’s more from this demographic than any debate so far!

If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to check out the debate, you can do so here, or head over to Jumpcut to mash it up for your own site. We’re still in talks with the Republican candidates and hope to have an update on the next debate soon.

Neeraj Khemlani
VP, Programming & Development
Yahoo! News & Info

Hobbits and wizards across Middle Earth are celebrating the debut of Bilbo Baggins 70 years ago. After you’ve enjoyed your pipe-weed, take a look at this week’s wizardry.

• Sorting A-Z: We heard ya loud and clear. For the gregarious Flickr-ites, now sort your many groups on Flickr by recent activity or in alphabetical order. And if you missed out on the Talk Like a Pirate Day pillage, check out some of the photos here to get yer limey fix.
• Looking for a new image?: Not only can you access many Flickr images by using Yahoo! Image Search, you can now do it in more than 25 different countries, regions, and languages (see full list here). And we’re now using Flickr metadata (tags, comments, titles) to surface photos (”public” ones, of course) for Yahoo! Image Search users. We’ve also introduced the Explorer Bar at the bottom of your image results page so you can see what related images others are searching for. For example, type in “Brad Pitt” and you’ll see that others are looking for photos of Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Orlando Bloom, etc. (only available for entertainment and location-related photos for now, but more to come).
• Idling with purpose: No more excuses for idle time checking out friends’ profiles when you should be looking for a job! Now do both (without the guilt). Download the Yahoo! HotJobs application for Facebook here and start searching for jobs, vote someone as the “most likely to quit the corporate world and move to Tibet to become a monk,” see where your friends have worked, and list out your top 3 fave companies. Or just refer your friends!
• Viva los Hispanos!: If you haven’t already heard, it’s Hispanic Heritage Month and Yahoo! Telemundo has unveiled two mini-sites to celebrate the successes and contributions of Hispanics across the U.S. Mosaico Hispano is a tribute site to those living the American dream, featuring video profiles and stories of remarkable individuals. Battle of the Bands will showcase the musical talents of 10 new U.S. Hispanic bands, featuring videos, interviews and an opportunity for you to vote for your favorite. Check them out, the sites go down after Oct. 31.
• The new Fall line: Need a refreshed look for the new season? My Yahoo! has a new background theme to add some autumn-ous spirit to your page. Check it out here or try one of the other seasonal themes on for size.
• Yummy preschooler: A quick shout out to del.icio.us for turning four this week! Cheers to being able to feed yourself, brush your teeth and combing your hair all on your own!

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Avast, me proud beauties. Be not a scurvy dog. ‘Tis International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Get ye smartly to Flickr an’ use yer wee bilge rat to click on th’ Jolly Roger (or “skull and crossbones” for ye lubbers) staked upon th’ Flickr logo or click “Arrrr!” in ye language footer. Then all yer booty be talkin’ pirate. Upload yer treasures, feast yer eyes on booty from yer crew and o’er swabbies, arrrganize, and mark your plunder. An’ th’ Flickr scallywags have dug up th’ best buried treasure here.

Tell all yer mateys. Or walk th’ plank. An’ be quick about it. ‘Twill all be shippin’ out at midnight.

Nicki Dugan
Yer Bloggin’ Cap’n

If you’re a student at Georgia Tech or an employee at Digg or Mozilla.org, you know just how excellent your email and group calendaring experience is. That’s because it’s powered by Zimbra, creator of an innovative Ajax-based mail client that integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, search and VoIP into an incredibly cool browser-based interface. So cool that we’ve just entered an agreement to acquire Zimbra for $350 million.

Zimbra is a global leader in email and collaboration software and its services are aimed at universities, businesses, and ISPs worldwide, which is a major driver of what made the company so attractive to us. We’re constantly being approached by these entities for our expertise in email and communications. Combining the best of Zimbra with what’s made Yahoo! Mail the top dog in web mail will not only allow us to cater to these markets better than anyone, it will allow us to expand our presence to partners and consumers at school, work, and home.

Zimbra, named after a nonsensical Talking Heads song, made its debut at the 2005 Web 2.0 conference, leaving TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington saying: “Zimbra is so damn cool and full of Ajax awesomeness…” Here’s what Zimbra co-founder and CEO Satish Dharmaraj had to say about Zimbra’s raison d’etre in their October 2005 launch press release:

“… e-mail is broken… From overflowing inboxes to the nuisance of organizing correspondence, to the cost of managing storage, viruses, availability, retention and legal discovery and compliance, dealing with corporate e-mail has become a nightmare. Zimbra’s server and application innovations solve these problems for both end-users and administrators.”

Zimbra offers incredible technology. We see great opportunities to incorporate some of their best-of-breed features (I really like their calendaring) into Yahoo!’s industry-leading communications products.

If you’ve never experienced Zimbra, be sure to check out the demo. You’ll really notice the wow-factor when you hover over content in email messages and get pop-up previews. The phrase “tomorrow at 10:00 AM” will display any appointments you have at that time, “701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale CA” will launch a Yahoo! Map, a tracking number gives you package delivery status, a phone number lets you make a VoIP call, a flight number provides status details, and so on. Some of these are mash-ups called Zimlets, which developers can create on Zimbra’s open platform.

Zimbra’s technology, talent and extensive global customer and partner network have received amazing industry recognition, and we’re excited to welcome the entire team, including Satish, Ross Dargahi and Roland Schemers (also co-founders) as well as President and CTO Scott Dietzen, aboard at Yahoo!.

Brad Garlinghouse
Senior Vice President
Communications & Communities

Today marks yet another milestone for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community here at Yahoo!. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) just released their 2008 Corporate Equality Index, which rates major corporations on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers, and investors. I’m very proud to announce that Yahoo! scored 100 percent for the first time, and I’m thrilled that today’s HRC press release features Yahoo!’s Chief Marketing Officer, Cammie Dunaway.

Creating a more inclusive workplace for today’s diverse workforce is not simply about creating a warmer, fuzzier, corporate culture. In a knowledge-driven economy, companies that do not embrace employee diversity are at a significant strategic disadvantage. At Yahoo!, we want to hire and retain the best, brightest, and most passionate employees, period. Furthermore, a diverse employee base can become a strategic asset. Yahoo!’s diverse employee base helps us better understand and serve our hugely diverse ecosystem of consumers, partners, and customers. For example, take a look at the LGBT Pride 2006 and 2007 sites, which were built by a group of gay and lesbian employees to market our products to this valuable customer segment.

Over the past few years, Yahoo! has solidified our position as an employer of choice in the LGBT community:

• Did you know that it is still legal in 31 states to fire someone simply because they are gay or lesbian? In 2004, Yahoo! was among the first public companies to support federal legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This month, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which also includes protection for transgender employees, is expected to reach Congress for a vote. Yahoo! and more than 45 other major corporations have called on Congress to pass this legislation.
• In 2005, I founded Yahoo! Pride, our LGBT employees group. It has grown to include over 150 Yahoo! employees in at least 13 offices worldwide. Similar groups have since sprung up within the company for interest communities including Accessibility, African-American, Latin American and Hispanic, and Women in Technology.
• In 2006, Yahoo! added “gender identity” to our global non-discrimination policy to protect Transgender employees. We also published guidelines for managers of Transgender employees, to help address some delicate issues like, “which bathroom should I use?” or “when can I change the name and photo on my company badge?”
• In 2007, Yahoo! featured a beloved organization, Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) on our LGBT Pride site and we will make a $10,472 donation to the Point Foundation, in the name of our audience, who submitted 10,472 Worldwide Pride photos to our site.
• What’s next? We’ll continue our annual tradition of handing out National Coming Out Day pins on our campuses, this October 11. These pins have become a collectors’ item over the years. We’re also sponsoring the annual Reaching Out LGBT MBA Conference for the 4th consecutive year, this October.

While I’m bursting with pride for my company today, I’m equally excited to acknowledge that we’re joining a large and quickly growing list of major U.S. businesses that scored a perfect 100. In 2002, only 13 companies achieved a perfect score. Last year those companies numbered 138. This year, Yahoo! joins a list of 195 companies who exemplify that embracing diversity is not only the right thing to do, but it’s also good for business.

Brady Wood
Director of Product Marketing and Founder of Yahoo! Pride

It’s hard to imagine a world without our ergonomic keyboards and optical mice, but let’s give a nod to the typewriter ribbon (rest it’s soul) for paving the way 121 years ago. And then check out our inventive updates below.

• Woot woot!: Calling all bargain shoppers to aisle three! Yahoo! Shopping now offers an exclusive “Woot Deal of the Day,” a one-item special that posts at 10 pm PT everyday for 24 hours (it could sell out any time, so don’t dilly dally). You never know what you’re going to get (think gadgets, gizmos, collectibles and more). Already a loyal wooter? Now get two great deals a day since Woot will have a different deal on their site. Read more here.
• Fantasies from the couch: We’ve been offering the fantasy baseball version of Yahoo! Sports for TV for a while now, but now you can also track your fantasy football league while you’re watching the game on the boob tube. The best part? The service is free! So get comfortable! Watch the game, check multiple game stats, and track your league – all without leaving the sofa! One catch: You need a Windows-based PC (with Windows Media Center Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate). Read more here.
• Nissan, Yahoo!, and MTV: Missed your favorite artist on Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music? Make sure to catch them again on MTV Networks’ Music High-Definition channel every month as a 30 minute concert segment (including interviews with fans). First up: Rascall Flatts on Monday, September 17. Check out the full listing here.
• Not your daddy’s cricket: Twenty20, a juiced up version of cricket (each team bats 20 overs a side and the innings last 80 minutes each) is in full swing (ends September 24). So read, see, hear all the action on the tournament microsite powered by Yahoo! India to get the exclusive cricketing news, views, and match updates straight from the ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa.

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