This isn’t exactly a secret, but we’ve unveiled a new website for women today, called Yahoo! Shine.

When our editorial team — which includes editors that hail from Lucky to Jane to the Wall Street Journal — sat down to conceive it, we wanted to avoid all of the buckets that advertisers or marketers tend to put us in. We didn’t want to be a site just for moms or just for single or working women, or any specific demo- or psychographic. We wanted to create a smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info, and connect with each other and the world around them. The important thing wasn’t how to talk to a 32.5 year-old with 2.2 kids but how to inspire you laugh, think, get mad, empathize, and be surprised and entertained.

Shine melds content from the best writers and bloggers in women publishing (Glamour, Self, Bon Appetit, Redbook, Cosmo, InStyle, Women’s Health… to name just a few) with editorial from popular Yahoo! properties like Yahoo! Health, Yahoo! Tech, Yahoo! Food, and Yahoo! Green with content created by you. That’s right — we want you to be a part of it, not just a bystander. This isn’t a magazine or a TV show where you are an inactive participant — you help create the site. We want you to blog (go here to start your own, it’s pretty easy… and your post could be featured as prominently as partner content), comment on articles, vote in our daily polls, join in the harangue as we discuss daily events.

What you won’t find on Shine: Advice on how to please your man and diets that urge you to “lose 10 pound fast!” What you will find on Shine: Why buying an expensive “It Bag” is a waste of money; how to make a meal in 30 minutes and how to make a face mask out of last night’s 30-minute meal (okay not really, but you get the idea); how to de-stress at your desk; sharp, opinionated takes on the news; and finally, that you aren’t alone in your “Dancing with the Stars” obsession.

We women are experiencing something very cool happening in our culture today and Shine plans to be right in the middle of it. We’ve got a woman campaigning for the top job in the country, female bloggers now outnumber men, and we’ve got Tina Fey writing a hit network show, for goodness sakes. We no longer need to stand by passively as the media portrays us as fashion-obsessed diet victims. With the Internet as our megaphone, we can now portray ourselves as funny, opinionated women who are in charge of our incomes, careers, families, and happiness.

And isn’t that all we’ve ever wanted?

Brandon Holley
Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo! Shine

It’s never easy saying goodbye (it’s my last Product Pulse), but I leave you with the tenth anniversary of Viagra to help you rise to the occasion. And don’t you worry — the Pulse will live on. Have a look at what we’ve raised up this week:

• Let there be sound: Yahoo! Messenger gets Mac-tastic with the launch of the latest Mac Beta version, now with voice calling. Now you can make free PC-to-PC calls, make calls from your Mac to regular mobile phones (worldwide!) for as low as one penny a minute, and let your friends call you on your Mac from any phone. That’s not all — you get a free voicemail, so pals can leave a message when you’re away or not logged into Yahoo! Messenger. If you’d rather take all your calls, make use of the forwarding feature to send incoming calls to any regular or mobile phone number (you’ll need a Phone Out to do this). Download it here and read about the other handy phone tricks for your Mac here.
• Be there in a Dash: GPS devices just got juiced up with Internet connectivity. Dash Express (created by Dash Navigation), the first two-way connected GPS device, is now available on Amazon.com . It offers you the most accurate traffic and destination info, all from the comfort of your car - no wires necessary. (Think live info gathering and sharing from other commuters on the roads during peak commute times and an auto-update to software, maps, and historical traffic data.) Just be ready to fork out $399. And the best part? With a touch of a button, you can find everything from the nearest bakery to the cheapest taqueria with the power of the Internet, including Yahoo! Local search results.
• Popcorn time!: Nothing beats surround-sound theater speakers and that extra shot of butter on your popcorn. Now keep tabs of all the latest movies and showtimes at the theaters you want by adding the Movie Showtimes module on your My Yahoo! page. Add the module and click “Edit Module Preferences” icon to update your start page with movie screens in your hood.

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At age 21, Jia-Jia was like any other college girl in Taiwan, loving fashion and fantasizing about becoming famous.

Then her dream came true — as it has for dozens of other young women, thanks to the emergence of a new Taiwanese job description: Ecommerce Model.

Jia-Jia entered and won the “EC Model Contest,” hosted by Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions. She is now not only a celebrity to the more than 300,000 people who participated in the voting process and is coveted by media for interviews and photo shoots, she regularly models women’s wear for online stores on our auctions platform.

This unique new profession was born essentially from the Yahoo! Taiwan Auctions platform, as sellers sought new ways to market their wares. We launched our first contest in 2005, and today there are 30 full-time professional online mannequins like Jia-Jia modeling for the e-stores on our platform. Many are college students fitting the shoots between classes. Some earn more than US$6,000 per month.

What’s fueling the demand? They dramatically impact sales. Items that are modeled by these young women are viewed 30 times more often and sales are 30% higher than merchandise that’s merely displayed via product images. As a result, more than 95% of our VIP sellers are now using these models. And that is, in turn, fueling the growth of online sales across Taiwan.

Within less than two years, women’s wear sales have increased from 550,000 items sold per month to 800,000 — a purchase every 5 seconds. That’s a lot of clothes, accessories, bags, shoes, and beauty products. And the market is expected to grow 36% this year, according to the Market Intelligence Center.

The growth of the industry, on the backdrop of an expanding virtual market economy, is a good indicator of the change in Taiwanese shopping behavior. Not only are people gradually embracing virtual shopping over traditional street-shopping, the competition among suppliers is now driving marketing innovation. The birth and growth of the online mannequin industry is clear evidence that consumers want a better shopping experience — demanding the same visual experience that they get while perusing shelves and racks.

This trend is setting off a positive growth spiral: As virtual shopping gets closer to replicating offline shopping, delivering goods as well as the experience, the number of regular online shoppers is bound to surge. And, after browsing the nicely put-together outfits displayed on the mannequins, how can you just buy the skirt… and not the top, the bag, the boots, and the necklace as well?

Charlene Hung
General Manager, Yahoo! Taiwan

What does nine years in Yahoo! Surfing/Search Editorial prepare you for? A chance to stand across the stage from Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!.

Those who can remember back to the days of portal wars, high-flying IPOs, and sock puppets probably recall when the lifeblood of Yahoo! was its hierarchical directory — a time when “browsing” was more prevalent than “searching.” That directory was assembled by a team of “surfers,” a group of intellectually curious and idiosyncratically diverse individuals whose job was to build and expand the equivalent of the Internet phone book for cool sites and useful links. They literally got paid to surf the Web. And they got damn good at trivia.

So good that our very own Dave Sikula has earned a slot as a contestant on Jeopardy! tonight, representing his hometown of Pacifica, California. Dave joined Yahoo! as a surfer in 1999. Although he came to us as an information junkie, having spent several years as the periodicals expert at the fabled Kepler’s Books, his job helped him amass vast knowledge on a wide range of subjects — everything from sports and business to arts and politics.

In short, we’ve created a know-it-all. Tune in tonight to see if Dave can nail those Daily Doubles. Go, Dave!

UPDATE 3/27/08: HE DID IT! He won! And left with $15,000 in his pocket. Tune in tonight so see if he can do it again.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

From our travels across cyberspace, it’s pretty clear that the social part of the Internet is becoming more and more important to people. From chat to games to messaging to sharing things like news, entertainment, pictures, maps, movies and other “favorites,” users are looking for more ways to give contacts a sense of who they are and what they’re into. As social applications take the mash-up world by storm, a growing number of companies and data sources are opening up to give people the information they want, and developers are scrambling to create new applications that connect users with friends and colleagues.

Yahoo! has always been about helping users find and share information online, and we love giving our broad and loyal developer community the tools they need to keep innovating on this front. They echo our passion for creating the best Web experience for our users.

In this same spirit, we announced today that we’ve joined forces with Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages. We feel that this is the right step at this stage in its evolution. It’s no longer a trial balloon — it’s for real. We are taking this opportunity to help ensure websites and developers feel confident using OpenSocial as the building blocks for their new social apps.

We already offer Web services and APIs through the Yahoo! Developer Network that make it easy for developers to build applications and mashups that integrate data sources in new ways. We think OpenSocial will continue to fuel this innovation and make the Web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions.

We can only imagine the possibilities of what creative developers and publishers will do with these tools. Stay tuned for more on how we’ll be supporting OpenSocial and driving the OpenSocial Foundation to create an open and increasingly social Web.

Wade Chambers
VP of Platforms

It’s been 45 years since The Rock was designated to hold bad guys the likes of Al Capone and “Machine Gun” Kelly. Gangsta cred or not, there’s no escaping this week’s updates:

• Mobile March Madness: Now you can keep tabs on all the latest college hoops action wherever and whenever from your mobile phone with three new tools. You can get up-to-the minute news, scores, schedules and images on the dedicated mobile NCAA page, the new Men’s College Hoops mobile widget (you’ll need Yahoo! Go 3.0), and specially-configured Yahoo! oneSearch results, with specialized men’s college basketball content from Yahoo! Sports and Rivals.com. No need to be tied to your computer screen to keep score. More here.
• Team spirit: We’ve got more Audibles to cheer your NCAA team on Yahoo! Messenger. Whether it’s to jeer at your friends’ alma mater or boo a bad play, we’ve got Audibles (like a referee calling an offensive foul) and new avatar gear (find jerseys from more than 25 schools) to show your team pride. Make sure you’re using Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or 9.0 beta to get your spirit on.
• Staying on topic: You may have heard about the “New with Me” profile page on MyBlogLog that pulls together all your activity across the Internet and shows people what you’re up to (like a feed of all your updates and your friends’ updates). We’ve just added a new Tags page that combs through your “New with Me” page into relevant pages called Topics. What does this mean? Not only can you see an aggregation of your friends’ Internet whereabouts in one place, now you can find what your MyBlogLog community is saying, doing, thinking about any topic you find interesting quick and easy. BTW: Find out what the Easter chatter is here.

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Today kicks off one of my favorite times of year: March Madness. When sports fans across the country become completely preoccupied with college basketball.

Which brings me to this point — fans today have it really good.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I played in the NCAA tournament for North Carolina. That was back in the 80s, when life for a sports fan was nothing like it is today. A bit like walking to school uphill, in the snow, both ways.

Our fans would camp out in long lines to get tickets. If they missed the game, they would have to wait for the morning paper to get stats from the sports page (you know, the stats that some college freshman had to call in to the editor after the game). And they waited for the 11 pm news to catch the highlights. Those were some dedicated Tar Heels fans. But, man, it was hard.

Now don’t get me wrong. As I watch college hoops, I’m still in awe of the fans. Today’s college hoops fans continue to be passionate, but man, technology has made it a whole lot easier for them. They can buy tickets online, set their DVRs to catch the games they miss, sneak video highlights from their desks whenever they want, check stats and get alerts from their mobile phones, read reams of analysis from experts like, ahem, me. And they can use all that addiction to information to prove their mettle in fantasy sports leagues.

It’s a whole new world for fans. They are better informed, more involved and everybody’s an expert. By the way, for all those experts that aren’t as smart as they thought, Yahoo! Sports Tourney Pick’em is offering a Second Chance bracket worth $1 million. Busted bracket? Try it again before next week.

Man, today’s sports fans have it all.

Kenny Smith
Yahoo! Sports Analyst

Being a woman in business is never easy. Being a mother is never easy. But trying to juggle both is particularly challenging.

I’ve been fortunate in my career. I was an EVP at the Trump Organization, working for one of the most famously demanding bosses in the world. I was also lucky enough serve as a judge with him on the TV show The Apprentice. But in addition to those roles, I also held a far more important position — mother to two young children. It’s because balancing work and life is so challenging that when I left the Trump Organization I decided to start a new company, Carolyn & Co. Media, which I co-founded with another female professional, Jen Marr. Our company’s first brand “fwm: finding what matters,” will launch later this spring and will help women like myself equip themselves with the tools and resources to find this elusive balance.

One of the best ways for women to find flexibility in their careers is to start a business themselves (which is, of course, one of the reasons I’m doing so myself). That’s why I’m thrilled to have been on The Today Show this morning announcing, in partnership with Yahoo! Small Business, an exciting grant program for women entrepreneurs.

With this program, we’re celebrating women business owners, and highlighting the opportunities available to them when they use the Internet to pursue their goals. Three women will each win more than $25K in cash and services, as well as mentoring from successful business leaders. The three finalists will “compete” to accelerate their businesses. The most savvy among them will receive a “bonus” grant of an additional $10,000, to be awarded in October.

Female entrepreneurs seem to be on the rise. There are more than 10 million women-owned businesses in the US today, growing at twice the rate of small businesses overall.

I hope this program and my personal experience helps inspire women of all ages and backgrounds — professionals, retirees, stay at home moms, recent college grads, you name it. Whoever you are, if you’ve dreamed of starting your own business, I hope this program helps encourage you to embark on that rewarding journey and to use the Internet as your partner. Thanks to Yahoo!, it’s easier and more affordable than ever to bring a business online.

For more details, read more here and check out the website.

Carolyn Kepcher
CEO and Co-Founder
Carolyn & Co Media/fwm:Finding What Matters

The walls of San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery were plastered tonight with more than 2,800 photos taken by Flickr devotees — about as many as are uploaded to Flickr per minute on your average Saturday night. They were hand-selected from the pool created in honor of Flickr’s 4th birthday, which the faithful were out in force to celebrate.

There were photos of newborns, wombats, hedgehogs, Vietnam, the Alps, Groucho impersonators, numbers, shoes, coffee, the Batmobile, libraries, suck-ups, and, my favorite, rubber duckies. Printed by Photoworks San Francisco, they created a stunning backdrop as Flickerites wolfed down catering by Say Cheese and 400 cupcakes from Kara’s Cupcakes. Never was there a party with more cameras in tow.

All walks of Flickr life were on hand, including a dozen thrift-store brides from the Brides of March, adding a Flickrly appropriate dose of iconoclasm to the evening.

Check out our photos, along with the bevy taken by fellow guests here. Happy Birthday, Flickr.

Can’t live without your 500-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets? Well, thank Eli Whitney for figuring out a way to remove the seeds from cotton 214 years ago. After you finish thinking about the touch, the feel, read on for what we’ve seeded up this week.

• And the nominees are: It’s the final day of nominations for the Yahoo! Video Awards, so get your favorite videos into the line up. We’ve got it all — videos about zombies to Weird Al’s childhood. There are categories for all your interests including Best Indie Music Video, Best Internet Personality, Best Series, and more. And don’t worry, it’s okay to just vote. You may want to wait until Monday after all the nominees have loaded up their videos. Read more here.
• Getting foxy: Through our new friendship with FoxyTunes, we have a brand new version of FoxyTunes 2.0 for IE (freshly beta) to let you control any media player while surfing the web. What’s new? Now you can change the appearance of your FoxyTunes by installing custom skins (we’ve already got 11 skins available) and down the road you’ll be able to create your very own. We’ve even added a FoxyTunes Mini, basically a universal desktop widget that’s a customizable, collapsible, and skinnable version of its big bro. The best part — there’s a timer and alarm clock feature that lets you set your media player to your favorite song. The best part of waking up.
• Retiring in style: As Yahoo! Messenger turns 9.0, we’ve decided to retire our vintage versions (5.5 and 5.6). After April 1, if you’re using version 5.5 or 5.6, you will no longer be able to sign in. We know change is hard, so we’ve got two alternatives to help make it easier. You can download the new Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or the 9.0 beta, or try our Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. Both options offer better protection from spam, advanced features like voice calling and SMS, and the addition of your friends on Windows Live Messenger. And rest assured, your existing friends will follow up when you make the move! For more info go here and stay dialed into what else the team’s got up their sleeve here.
• Luck of the Irish: Whether you’re Irish or not, green beer and green cheer is just around the corner. So make it official by greening your My Yahoo! page with our new St. Paddy’s themed layout (complete with shamrocks, peeking rainbow, and blue skies). Go here and click on “Seasonal,” then go with the “St. Patrick’s” option.

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