Talking to my husband Robert on the phone on October 21st, I noticed he sounded worried. At first I didn’t pay much attention, figuring that it had just been a long day for his crew. After all, when you’re a Los Angeles County firefighter, your days can either be extremely hectic or slow — they’re very rarely anything in between. When he mentioned “all the fires,” it sounded like any other conversation we’d had. But when I turned on the news, I saw that this day was different. Ten fires were being pushed toward homes by Santa Ana winds, gusting to over 100 mph.

In shock that so much was happening all at once, I immediately began to worry for all the firefighters. The week continued with reports of more wildfires, news of evacuations and massive firefighter deployments.

We got lucky. My husband never got sent out. He quite fortunately had the day off when his shift was deployed. He ended up working overtime locally to cover for the missing crews. The days continued and the intense winds kept the firefighters from getting the upper hand. Reports said that it could be a week before firefighters would return home, and I knew, from dealing with my husband, that firefighters only carry 3-4 days of supplies in their bag. The command centers would be stocked with water, food, and firefighting equipment, but items like toiletries, socks, and T-shirts came from each firefighter’s personal supply. It was clear they’d need some help.

I mentioned this to a co-worker, who suggested bringing it up to Yahoo! for Good to see if Yahoo! could help. Working with my husband to figure out what would be needed, I rallied some volunteers and worked with Yahoo! for Good to engineer a “Purple Act of Kindness” to donate the requested supplies. Yahoos from our Burbank and Carlsbad offices traveled to command posts this week to deliver everything directly to the firefighters.

Yahoo! has helped about 3,000 firefighters in just a matter of days. That we could play some part in bringing these brave men and women comfort and words of thanks at a time when they’re so focused on helping other people is amazing. I’m happy to know that I work for a company that was so willing to repay those who always risk their lives to protect others.

Stefania Bisharat Bauer
Senior Revelance Analyst, Marketplace Compliance
Yahoo! Search Marketing

These days, it’s all about personalization and sharing. From your picture on a postage stamp to your Tivo lineup, it’s all about how you like it. From blogging every move to emailing that sneezing panda video, you have a propensity to share (maybe even over-share). You’ll see we kept that in mind with the newest version of Yahoo! Messenger, which I have the honor of unveiling today.

We’re not the only ones addicted to Yahoo! Messenger. With a growing user base of more than 94 million users worldwide, Yahoo! Messenger is often one of the first communication tools that most people see and use when they turn on their computers every day. And, on average, they spend nearly an hour a day on Yahoo! Messenger. Our team appreciates the magnitude there and making Yahoo! Messenger even more indispensable is what gets us out of bed every morning.

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta, designed for Windows, sports not only a new look, it lets you share videos, Flickr photos, and personalize your experience in all new ways. It also recognizes that you do more than IM your contacts and it’s now available in more countries than ever. Here’s a rundown of the new features:

• More contact options. When you hover over a friend in your contact list, you’ll see you can send an instant message, launch a voice call, or text message your friend’s mobile phone with one click. You’ll also note we’ve integrated Yahoo! Address Book so you can view, contact, and edit friends from your contact list. Got a lot of friends? We’ve added a search bar to help you track someone down quickly.
• Monitoring your mood. You can personalize your Messenger windows with the skin of your choice and include emoticons in your status message so that friends and family know your mood – good or bad – all the time.
• Get your media in-line. Sharing images, videos, maps and more is a whole new experience. Just send a link to a video and the in-line player will show it right in the conversation window for both you and your friend to see. So, when your friend asks for directions to the movie theater you’re meeting at that night, send a map that displays right in the IM window.
• More fun with Flickr. If you use Flickr, we know you love to share. So now you can easily share photos from your Flickr photostream right in the IM window.
• Express yourself. Remember our “Emoticontest” from June? Today’s new Messenger features our six attitude-filled emoticon winners: “thumbs up,” “thumbs down,” “rock on,” “it wasn’t me,” “don’t want to see it,” and “hurry up.”
• Global ties. It’s not just the features we’ve enhanced in this newest version of Yahoo! Messenger. We’ve also expanded into six new markets with localized versions for Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and Vietnam..

In case we haven’t met, I’m the new VP for Yahoo! Messenger and I’m psyched to be part of this great team. Before joining the Messenger team, I’d spent six years working on Yahoo! Mail so I’ve been helping users communicate for quite awhile. I’m anxious for your feedback. Try out the new beta and let us know what you think. And head over to the Yahoo! Messenger blog for regular updates from our team.

Sabrina Ellis
VP, Yahoo! Messenger

Go ahead, make an arse of yourself in honor of the 222nd year anniversary of the first mules in the United States. Or just send a free “Mule Day” e-card, and then trot through our updates!

• Mortgages get localized: Tracking down the best rates for home loans just got easier with an improved mortgage rate search feature on Yahoo! Real Estate’s Home Loan section. Just type in the name of your stomping ground, select the loan amount, the type of loan you’re interested in, and your FICO score (that’s your credit score). And presto, a list of local lenders come up, which you can refine based on points, fees, and term parameters. See for yourself.
• Making room: My Yahoo! now offers a “small search box” setting to help minimize the search box up top. It even moves everything up a bit higher, so you have more page to fill with what you want. We’ve also added a time stamp option at the top of the page so you know exactly when you last made an update to the page. One less thing to keep track of. Read more from the team here.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

If someone were to tell you that the only way future generations would know the meaning of poverty would be to visit a poverty museum, would you believe them? If Dr. Muhammad Yunus was the one delivering that message, you might.

Last week, we had the great pleasure of welcoming the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank to speak at our Sunnyvale campus to share his journey as the “banker to the poor” and discuss the important role information technology plays in society. He imparted that it’s not about where technology is taking us, but rather where we want to go with it — a powerful message and reminder of the opportunity Yahoo! has to positively impact the world and inspire change.

As a microcredit (small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans) pioneer, it’s not surprising that the Bangladesh native questioned the value of economic theories and PhD’s as people just around the corner were dying of hunger. After seeing the ruthlessness of money lenders and the plight of poverty-stricken families trying to obtain their loans, he knew there was a simple solution to this difficult problem. He would be part of the solution.

His first loan consisted of $27 in total, which Dr. Yunus used to help 42 basket weavers regain their dignity and independence from creditors (who charged exorbitant interest rates and yielded mere pennies in profits). What followed was a lifelong pledge and journey of an educator turned banker, who arms the poorest of the poor with the tools and means to become financially independent. He firmly believes that poverty is not created by the poor, but rather is a system we have created. To prove this point, he has given loans to nearly 100,000 beggars and has seen 10,000 of them completely stop begging and 90,000 of them transformed into entrepreneurs in their own right. The Grameen Bank has the highest recovery rate of any banking system in the world with 98 percent of the loans being paid back.

How does technology play a part? Grameen’s “phone ladies” are widespread across rural communities in Bangladesh, offering the use of mobile phones for a fee. By loaning out cell phones on a per call basis and putting them in the hands of the rural poor (many of whom have never seen a telephone before), these women become the central access point to information technology and the rest of the world. So, what’s next for Dr. Yunus? Imagine “Internet ladies.” Talk about making technology work for you.

Julie Han
Blog team

When Yahoo! committed to going carbon neutral in April, we knew it would be a global initiative. It was only appropriate that on my first day as Yahoo!’s director of climate and energy strategy – before moving my belongings from my life in Boulder, Colorado – I found myself on a plane headed for Western Brazil to check out some small hydropower projects. Things haven’t slowed down much since then.

After much due diligence, Yahoo! has decided to offset its 250 thousand metric ton carbon footprint from 2006 through hydropower in rural Brazil and wind turbines in India. We’ve partnered with EcoSecurities and CantorCO2e, who helped us source, vet, and execute these projects.

What does 250 thousand metric tons look like? Think of taking 35,000 cars off the road for a year, or turning off the lights on the Vegas strip for two months.

We wanted to set a strong standard for approaching this emerging marketplace and developed this checklist to guide us:

• Support high-quality carbon offset projects in areas where Yahoo! has a local presence.
• Find uniquely Yahoo! ways to give back to the communities that benefit from our projects.
• Ensure that the projects we support are verifiable.
• Be as transparent as possible about our process.

After two days of bumpy travel by plane, car, smaller plane and truck, we reached the community of Catorce de Abril, a small village in the state of Rondonia, 1,400 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. It’s powered by the Primavera hydropower project, which produces the offsets that Yahoo! has purchased. This is a small run-of-river dam, which means it uses natural flow and elevation drop to generate electricity. Although hydropower is common in Brazil as a whole, much of this region receives its power from state-subsidized diesel plants. Investing in a clean power project here seemed critical and timely.

Electricity is new to Catorce de Abril. Only recently, the village school was powered by a small diesel generator – dirty, noisy, threatening to young lungs, and not very reliable. And not surprisingly, the school has no computers – classroom materials are copied on a 1970’s-era mimeograph and the nearest Internet connection is an hour away. Yahoo! has committed to connecting the school to the Web and supplying computers and digital cameras that both students and residents can use to reach beyond their village, provide a window into their community via Flickr, and foster an open exchange of ideas.

Almost 10,000 miles away, Yahoo! is partnering with local businesses to purchase offsets from 43 750-kilowatt wind turbines in Vankuswade, Maharashtra, in western India and Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu, in southern India. This investment was particularly important to us, as India is one of the most carbon-producing regions in the world. With our rapidly growing presence in India, we felt a sense of responsibility to encourage the development and use of cleaner energy there. And we‘re exploring various community programs that will support and empower residents of these communities.

We know the issue of global warming is top of mind for our consumers and employees. The top questions in our internal company “question of the week” queue have been about all things green. Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible business and hopes our approach encourages our industry peers, users and employees to engage, take action, and make their own positive impacts.

Chris Page
Director of Climate and Energy Strategy

“Move that bus!” Don’t worry, we won’t out you for getting teary-eyed while watching Ty Pennington’s home makeover show. But he may, if you forget to toast his birthday. Afterwards, take a look at our household improvements.

• A window into Flickr: Windows Live Photo Gallery beta users just got another Flickricious reason to load up their photos. Now you can get your photos off your camera, tag them, make simple corrections, and load them up directly to Flickr. It even has the option to stitch together multiple photos auto-panorama style. If you’re a Windows XP or Vista user, check out the beta here. And then read more from the Flickr team.
• Upcoming in your next search: If you liked the streamlined search results on Upcoming, then you’ll love finding all your fave Upcoming local events by doing a Yahoo! Search. Type in “events in San Francisco” and get instant access to SF events this weekend, next weekend, or popular ones to come.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

Every photo has a location – it was taken somewhere. Unfortunately, there haven’t been very many great tools to allow browsing of photos by location. At Flickr, we take this challenge pretty seriously and have been working hard to figure out the best way to allow our visitors to see the world through the prism of the incredible, incredible photography on Flickr.

To that end, we’re completely making over Flickr’s map explorer and preparing to introduce a new Places Pages feature. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, is giving a preview of these great new additions at the Web 2.0 Summit, so check it out if you can.

The new Flickr map will display tags that will hover over specific locations, representing interesting and newsworthy things going on there. Clicking on any tag will take you to a photo stream of the popular and current photos related to that topic in that location. This is a great way to browse through news and events on a global basis – a forest fire here, a folk festival there, and fireworks in that other place. It’s like getting a pulse on the world by listening to a million camera shutters snapping pictures in unison.

Helping visitors discover photos by location is key to Flickr’s vision of being “the eyes of the world.” Our new Places Pages will provide a zoomed-in way to explore virtually any place in the world through iconic photos, popular tags, relevant Flickr groups, featured photographers of that region, along with local information such as a detailed map, current time, and temperature. What’s really cool about these pages though is that they are literally built by our members. Each photo, photographer, or group featured on any Places Page will be included because our members found them interesting as an aggregate group. There’s a lot of math to keep the content fresh, relevant, and awe-inspiring, but the end result is just stunning.

The new map and Places Pages are not yet available. We’re putting some finishing touches on them in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the Flickr blog for the official launch.

We want to thank our 15 million members for making Flickr so fabulous and for sharing their amazing images with the world. With these new features, we invite you all to explore the world through the eyes of Flickr members – it’s truly a humbling experience.

UPDATE: Both new features are now live!

Kakul Srivastava
Director of Product Management, Flickr

Something incredible is happening in Israel and Palestine. Israelis and Palestinians are unified in demanding decisive action toward peace. As the founder of the OneVoice Movement, a grassroots effort to amplify the voices of moderates on both sides who wish for an end to the Middle East conflict, I can attest this journey hasn’t been an easy one. But we are making progress.

The need to mobilize a global community of voices was becoming ever apparent and timely. Today, we were set to host unprecedented simultaneous ”Peoples’ Summits” in both Tel Aviv and Jericho. Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians had planned to gather to hear from dignitaries, religious leaders, and performers and to deliver messages to their leaders that the time has come to sit down and work toward a two-state solution. Musician Bryan Adams was to headline both concerts, which would be linked via satellite. We’d teamed with Yahoo! to webcast both events, setting the stage for individuals around the world to take part and make an impact.

Unfortunately, absolutism and violence prevailed yet again.

After a series of violent threats against OneVoice staff and supporters, we made the difficult decision to cancel the two events. All of us were devastated, feeling as though we were giving in to tyranny and letting our members and supporters down. But I realize it isn’t us, but those who have silenced this groundswell of support on the streets who have let their own people down.

I’m happy to report that OneVoice has not been silenced, but rather strengthened, by these events. We will proceed in launching our One Million Voices campaign today despite the obstacles. We have already collected hundreds of thousands of Israeli, Palestinian and international signatures of support, with the ultimate goal of reaching one million. These will help push the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to initiate immediate, uninterrupted negotiations towards reaching a two-state agreement. And, with the U.S.-led meetings scheduled for November, the need for this campaign couldn’t be more critical.

We hope you will join the nearly 600,000 Palestinians and Israelis who stand together in mutual support. Go to video.yahoo.com/onevoice, sign the OneVoice mandate, then encourage friends and family to do the same. Watch Jason Alexander, Elliot Gould, Danny DeVito and Ann Cusack express their support; take a position on Yahoo! Answers questions; and see Flickr images from our activities on the ground. Join us in calling on the leaders of Israel and Palestine to deliver an end to this conflict.

Daniel Lubetzky
Founder of OneVoice

We have less than 24 hours before the curtains go up on Pop!Tech, the annual ideas summit that brings together 500 big thinkers from around the world in Camden, Maine to discuss innovative ideas and projects that are changing the world. Just as important, the virtual curtain also lifts online to bring this extraordinary conversation to the world, and we’ve partnered with a fellow big thinker to make that possible.

We’re discussing “The Human Impact” this year to foster dialogue on the influence human beings have on the world and on each other, and new ways to measure humanity’s global impact. For the first time ever, we’ll be streaming live video of the Pop!Tech conference, courtesy of Yahoo!, so that individuals everywhere can listen in, take part, and join the conversation of such visionaries and experts as cognitive scientist and New York Times-bestselling author Steven Pinker, Grammy-award-winning R&B artist John Legend, healthcare pioneer Dr. Victoria Hale, and leading humanitarian Zainab Salbi, to name a few.

Here’s how you can take part:

• Watch the streaming video starting Thursday through Saturday between 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM EST here. Submit your questions to the presenters and participants in real-time by emailing questions@poptech.org.
• Answer the question: “What is the most powerful but underappreciated way we can shape the future?” on Yahoo! Answers. You’ll not only see your response side by side with PopTech presenters like John Legend, your response could be read on stage.

Making Pop!Tech accessible over the Internet marks a real shift in the nature of thought leadership discussions. So Yodelers, come join us online to take your seat at the table.

Andrew Zolli
Curator for Pop!Tech

There’s been much curiosity and speculation about what’s been happening here at Yahoo! over the past few months. Roughly 100 days into our business review, I’m ready to start sharing some of the framework for where we see the future of Yahoo!.

After I last posted in July, we gathered senior leaders from across the company to develop a vision that we believe is truly different from that of the past. We conducted an intense review of our business, examining everything from our strategy and culture to our competitive position and how the marketplace is evolving. We knew we had to change not only our business, but also how we prioritize and make decisions. We had to shift from a siloed mentality to a more collaborative organization that marches toward a common horizon. We had to determine which businesses to invest in, and which to begin to exit or de-emphasize.

What we ultimately saw was massive untapped potential and the opportunity to achieve things few companies on the planet could accomplish. As audacious as that sounds, we believe it’s entirely within our reach with a lot of hard work and discipline, greater focus, tough decisions, a shift in culture, and faster execution. And what will drive us? Creating incredible experiences for our customers.

Based on our analysis, we’ve made important decisions. We defined a strategy that revolves around making Yahoo! indispensable to an ecosystem of consumers, advertisers, publishers and developers while tapping into three key differentiators: generating and leveraging insights, deploying open platforms, and becoming partner of choice. While these have long distinguished us, we intend to do more with them going forward. We will do so by measuring how much more “relevant” we can become for each member of our ecosystem. We believe centering around “relevance” will become a unifying focus for us and drive increased value in everything we do.

We’re placing our bets in three big multi-year objectives. Let me walk you through them, what they mean, and what kind of actions support them:

1. Become the starting point for the most consumers: We’re defining “starting point” as being the sites that help you better manage your life and connect you to what matters most to you. Services like our Front Page, My Yahoo!, mail, search, and mobile all fulfill that role, while properties like news, sports, and finance (for example) serve as anchors from those starting points. We’ve made it our mission to provide kick-ass experiences in both of these categories to inspire the most consumers to begin their day with us. It’s critical for us to continue to invest and innovate in these offerings so that we can power and delight these consumers. Recent moves like the new Yahoo! Search, the new Yahoo! Mail, and our acquisitions of Zimbra and BuzzTracker should give you a sense of what we mean. And by tapping into our insights, we think we can significantly increase our relevance (why serve up World Series content to you on our front page when what you’re really interested in is Dancing with the Stars?).
2. Become the must-buy for advertisers: What’s key here is our transformation from selling inventory on primarily the Yahoo! network to becoming an advertising company that delivers comprehensive, integrated, and targeted solutions on Yahoo! and beyond. Through our acquisitions of RightMedia and BlueLithium, we think we’re on track to becoming the industry’s leading open ad network. We’ll provide advertisers with the benefits of more insights, open competition, and scaleable tools and platforms. We think our momentum is building. Panama’s global rollout is nearly complete, our display business is showing signs of growth, we’ve signed on more great publishing partners, and we’re encouraged by the traction we’re seeing in our new strategy.
3. Deliver open, industry-leading platforms that attract the most publishers and developers: We have phenomenal technology platforms and data infrastructure, and it’s time to share. Besides building on open API for critical platforms, we’re looking at many different ways to open Yahoo!. We’re excited about what could happen when a motivated community of publishers and developers starts plugging into our most popular services. Imagine how efficient your Yahoo! Finance experience could be with portfolios integrated from your brokerage. Or how personalized your Yahoo! homepage could be with a cool third-party widget. The possibilities are endless and “open” is all part of a new way of operating at Yahoo!.

Our new decision-making framework also informed what we’d no longer invest in. To start, we’ve de-emphasized our focus on subscription music in favor of ad-supported music, migrated Yahoo! Photos to Flickr, we intend to transition Yahoo! 360 to a more integrated Yahoo! “profile” experience, we’ve closed Yahoo! Podcasts and plan to shut down a number of one-off services, and we’re currently assessing our options for our Kelkoo comparison shopping service in Europe. We’ve identified still more areas and we’ll continue to work through them.

While our recent actions and initiatives provide the breadcrumb trail for Yahoo!’s future direction, you should now have a clearer sense of the new path we’ve charted. We’ve scripted our strategy, sharpened our organization, determined how we’ll prioritize, and zeroed in on our big bets. We’re in the midst of our transformation and seeing some initial progress. There’s hard work ahead, along with a large and growing market opportunity. If we execute as planned, I’m confident we’ll be creating substantial long-term value for our users, advertisers, publishers, and developers – and, of course, for our shareholders.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo