Product Pulse – February 20, 2009

Posted February 20th, 2009 at 2:24 pm by Nicki Dugan, Blog Editor

 4 Comments / Filed in: Product Pulse

On this day 76 years ago, the U.S. Congress made a proposal that had brewers, vintners, bartenders, wine snobs, and fraternity brothers clinking glasses across the country — the 21st amendment. It would ultimately end Prohibition, shutter the speakeasy, kill profits for organized crime, and make hangovers perfectly legal in all 48 states. Here’s what we toasted to this week:

• Mobile makeover: The gang at Yahoo! Mobile rolled out a beta program this week for a comprehensive new mobile service known as, simply enough, Yahoo! Mobile. It will come to a cell phone near you next month on the mobile Web, as an iPhone app, and as an app developed for smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola, as well as those running Windows Mobile. It will replace Yahoo! Go and packages a variety of great mobile offerings into one location — search, email, messenger, address book, calendar, news, social networks, and even managing all your favorite non-Yahoo! content. To sign up for the beta, just enter http://mobile.yahoo.com in your phone’s browser (and be patient — it make take up to a few weeks to be admitted to the program). Here’s the press release.
• Ogling at the Oscars: Let’s face it — next to finding out the Academy Award winners, we care most about how everyone looks on the red carpet. That’s why the Yahoo! Search team has built a new Oscar-related carousel for Yahoo! Image Search. After Sunday’s show and parties, enter keywords related to Oscar-nominated films or actors and you’ll find a rolling gallery of the newest photos above the regular search results. Toggle your way through Slumdog Millionaire, Mickey Rourke, and Kate Winslet eye candy. More here.
• Watch with me: Raise your hand if you’ve ever IMed a video link to share a laugh with a friend, only to be disappointed when it takes them a few hours to finally get around to watching it. Wouldn’t it be cooler to watch that video together, at the same time? The scientists and engineers at Yahoo! Research think so and have just released a piping hot new version of Zync, a synchronized video player for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 for Windows. You can now simultaneously view videos on Yahoo! Video, Flickr and, of course, YouTube — with Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! News to come next week. Just paste the video link into your conversation and click the “Watch With Me” button — share, watch, chat. No download necessary. Now go watch the woman who missed her flight in Hong Kong with someone.

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Tagged: Product Pulse, yahoo research, yahoo! image search, yahoo! messenger, yahoo! mobile, yahoo! search

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4 Comments Add your own

Steve Yang | February 24th, 2009 at 9:11 am

To the management at Yahoo!

I realized the power of web 2.0 and have been trying to leverage it’s power in making my startup work more effectively –with Yahoo!Groups, Flickr, Google GWT, drupal, joomla, mediawiki, etc. But, although a geek in my younger days, I’ve been frustrated at the UN-ease of use of Google’s resources in creating mashups useful for us.

Yahoo started it, but did not seem to be a substantive effort. Amazon and Google have done much more than Yahoo in this area. I can see Yahoo making a come-back by developing and release truly user-friendly Web 2.0 resources –with drag & Drop ease, for instant mash-ups.

gag | February 24th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

Have some interns im or tweet and blog for the front page everyday at the bottom of the page. Have a team behind them, the im, blog or tweets should be about Yahoo! services and new finds on the web coz now people create less of websites and populate all kinds of new online services. They should do what Yahoo! surfers do but more by taking about all kinds of content like a new tweet or social network channel.

gag | February 24th, 2009 at 3:19 pm

Clicking the Yahoo! logo should present the front page everyday as an video and animation with voice in 1 minute while the front page remains in the background. Show where to click and what services are interesting and highlight a service for the day.

gag | February 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

This zync n im together has a zing factor i cant put my finger on but it sure is amazing right off. Great job team.