The atmosphere at the event was electrifying as Seaman represented Yahoo! in bringing the passion and spirit of the upcoming football season to life for Indonesian fans.  The goalkeeper took a total of 103 penalties from fans, Yahoo!’s partners and members of the media.

The Penalty Shootout event marked the launch of Yahoo!’s dedicated website for Indonesia featuring coverage of the 2010 World Cup, Liputan Piala Dunia 2010, the groundbreaking on-line Penalty Shootout Game and the hugely popular Fantasy Football game from Yahoo!, Piala Fantasi 2010

At the same time, Yahoo! in Southeast Asia also launched dedicated websites featuring coverage of the 2010 World Cup for Singapore , Malaysia and Vietnam.  Football enthusiasts in these markets can also stay on top of all the latest action from wherever they may be with specially-designed, easy-to-navigate mobile versions of these websites.

Exclusive Interview: David Seaman talks to Yodel Anecdotal and Yahoo! SEA editorial team about  things you might not know about him! Watch video interview:

More interviews with David Seaman can be found here and read more to find out what he thinks of England at this year’s World Cup.

So, what does it take to navigate a 77-foot-long, 430-pound Spiderman balloon through the streets of New York while millions of people are watching on live television?

Jodie, who is director of platform business strategy for Yahoo’s Right Media, is about to find out.

Although this will be Jodie’s 8th year participating in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it will be her first as a captain of a big, new balloon. And she’ll be guiding the first balloon of the day, no less.

Jodie, who reports that you need good running shoes, muscles, a sense of humor and a bit of technical training to take on the volunteer job, gave us a behind-the-scenes peek at the preparations for the big event.

While the rest of us will have to tune in to NBC or CBS at 9 a.m. Thursday morning to cheer Jodie on, her New York Yahoo colleagues will have prime seats for the festivities.  For the first time in its 83-year history, the parade will pass by the Yahoo! building!

Good luck to Jodie–and Happy Thanksgiving from Yahoo!

In this exclusive “Behind The Scenes” look, we see Mike and his team realizing an idea from start to finish, all the work that went into the project and how this effort ultimately made for a very intriguing result.

And here’s a few words from Mike Relm on the experience…

My life has been pretty digital lately so I decided to put a project together that let me step away from the computer and get arts and craftsy, at least for part of the building process. The idea behind this piece was to use the turntable in two ways that are on opposite sides of the technical spectrum. One being video scratching, which at the moment is the most advanced thing you can do with a turntable. The second thing is the zoetrope, which is the origin of motion picture. Anyone who has taken a film class will recognize the Muybridge images!

This was so much fun to make, definitely one of the best production experiences I’ve had. Helps to have a kick-ass crew, a few good ideas, and a beautiful location. We got to shoot at the Regency Center in San Francisco, which was built exactly 100 years ago, in a room that not too many people get to step foot in.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this project possible–and stay tuned for more cool things coming soon!

Barton Bishoff and Pam Woon

Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau

Victor runs Yahoo!’s accessibility program. He helps make it easy for people with all kinds of disabilities to use our sites. When I first met Victor, I had the same naïve reaction most people have – dumbfounded by how he could crank open his laptop and be fully self-sufficient reading email and surfing the web. That’s because I was clueless about all the remarkable ways that people with disabilities use technology.

Victor’s made it his mission to educate our designers and engineers, helping change their assumptions that accessibility somehow requires sacrifice or compromise. On the contrary, Victor argues that accessible design is better for everyone. Just as curb-cuts were designed for wheelchairs, they’re also a great convenience for strollers, luggage and shopping carts, right?

But driving the point home sometimes means making someone walk a mile in his moccasins. Enter the Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, which has been toured by more than 75 product teams to date. It’s filled with a wide array of assistive technologies – screen readers, onscreen keyboards, interactive Braille displays, etc. When Yahoos arrive, they’re told they’ve just had a stroke and can’t type with their fingers. They’re given a rubber ball and asked to type their name. Um… Next, they’re fully paralyzed. “OK, try to send an email.” Uh… After they’re introduced to the technology solutions, they watch videos of disabled people in action.

All this leaves developers making accessibility a goal before they write their first line of code. It’s why anybody can access rich features and tools on products like Yahoo! Sports, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Messenger for the iPhone. It’s why third-party websites that are inaccessible in their own right are now entirely accessible via the new “favorites” area on the Yahoo! Homepage. Victor has helped Yahoo! make enormous strides since joining us four years ago, but there’s still more to come.

We spent some time following Victor with a video camera to not only understand his work, but to appreciate his daily experience. Commuting by train. Playing guitar. Making lunch with his wife Karo Caran, a fellow student from the Overbrook School for the Blind. We watched as sighted people had their first awkward interactions with him. He laughs when he describes how often people raise their hands when he asks questions during his new hire orientation briefings. Well-meaning commuters sometimes escort him to the wheelchair zone on the train platform. It took me a while to realize he’s not offended by questions like “Did you see my email?”

Here’s Victor’s video profile:

Spend any amount of time with Victor and you realize that his blindness doesn’t really make him all that different from anyone else – except that his computer talks to him. Really, really fast.

Read more:

• Victor’s post about screenreaders
• Victor’s post about the launch of our Accessibility Lab in Bangalore
• An interview with Victor about his life and music

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Video credits: producer, Nicki Dugan; cinematographer, Brad Williams; director/editor, Ricky Montalvo
Photo by gingervitis

We decided to catch up with our chief marketing officer, Elisa Steele, to get some skinny on the effort. We asked her about the campaign’s genesis, the significance of the “It’s Y!ou” messaging, why we decided to launch a campaign now, why we went with a vignette approach in the campaign video, her favorite scenes, and why we introduced a new form of the Yahoo! yodel at the end of the new spot. Here’s the Q&A:

And we’re trying something new here — this is the first in a series that we’re dubbing Yahoo! Yodelcasts. We’ll interview Yahoos from all walks of life, share tips and advice, and take you behind the scenes. We’re all ears if there’s something you’re particularly interested in hearing about.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

For Yahoo! employees, this isn’t new. We’ve been bleeding purple since 1996 when we anointed it as our corporate color. Why purple? Lore has it that our notoriously frugal co-founder, David Filo, got a great deal on lavender paint for our decrepit offices. But ultimately, purple evokes everything that makes working here so unique. Now we want to share that energy with you. As we give our sites a new purple glow, it seems appropriate to reflect on how far our brand has come since our beginnings in 1994. Here’s a retrospective of the Yahoo! logo and its evolution over the past 15 years.

1994: No logo

In the beginning, Yahoo! didn’t have a logo. In fact, Yahoo! wasn’t even Yahoo!. Our cofounders, two Stanford University grad students procrastinating on their dissertations, created a directory of their favorite Web sites and called it “Jerry’s Guide to the Web.” It was simple, practical and easy to use. It wasn’t until later that year that Yahoo! became the official name of the company.

1995: The jumping "Y" guy

After Yahoo! went from a hobby to a start-up, we needed something to adorn our office door and company t-shirts. The jumping “Y” guy was born. Designed by David Shen, our 17th employee and the lone design guy in the office, the logo shows a person jumping for joy after finding what he needs on Yahoo!. The blue circle over which the “Y” guy is leaping represents the world. Today, the “Y” guy no longer graces our hallways and conference rooms, but if you’re lucky you might see him on a business card from an old-timer. Later that year, Shen partnered with ad agency Organic Online to design the logotype. Yahoo! needed a horizontal logo because it took up less space than the more vertical jumping “Y” guy. Shen and Organic made sure the letters rose towards the right “so that, upon reading the word, you would get a sense of rising energy with the exclamation point punctuating that energy at the end,” according to Shen. They eventually settled on Able font, which they modified and made purple.

1995: Going red on the Web

We decided the logo on our page needed some life, so in 1995 we decided on a logo that was bright red. This wasn’t just an aesthetic choice. We also chose it because red would more reliably display across different monitors and computers, which at that time was an issue for other colors. We also liked red for its boldness.

1996: New year, new logo

After much tweaking and refining, we launched the red Yahoo! logo across all of our sites on January 1, 1996.

1996: Purple on the inside

While red became the face of Yahoo! to our users, internally we were redesigning the logo. In 1996, we parted ways with the jumping “Y” guy and streamlined the logo to the now famous purple type-based version. Since then, we’ve been using the purple logo on everything from posters to cookies to the soles of flip flops that leave Yahoo! imprints in the sand.

1997-2004: The big bang theory

Yahoo!’s abbreviated logo, affectionately known as the “Y-Bang” (“bang” is typesetter’s slang for exclamation point), was originally developed in 1997 for a button on the Yahoo! Toolbar that links to the front page (the full Yahoo! emblem was too wide to fit). In 2004 we partnered with ad agency Ogilvy to redesign the Y-Bang and created a version with a white “Y” inside a purple oval and a purple exclamation point next to it. The purple Y-Bang is now the official abbreviated logo that you will see throughout our sites.

2009: Painting the world purple

Yahoo! is launching a new homepage with our new purple logo. We are also extending the logo to every page on our network, all of our company communications and all of our partnerships. Standardizing around the purple logo will create a consistent experience for Yahoo! users, advertisers and employees, and it will strengthen our brand going into the next decade. Go purple!

Glenn Tokunaga
Art Director and Senior Brand Specialist

To bring this promise to life, we shot a series of videos, lush vignettes set in multiple countries around the world, intended to represent the beauty, vitality, and diversity of you.  We used the best of that video library to create the 60-second anthem you see below:

There were some great creative minds and stories behind the video footage.  Our advertising agency Ogilvy assembled a star-studded production team that designed, shot and edited the videos in about a month.  The team included director Samuel Bayer, who directed Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around Comes Around”; costume designer Colleen Atwood, who won Academy Awards for her work in “Chicago” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”; Longinus Fernandes, the choreographer from “Slumdog Millionaire;” and Patrick Lumb, production designer for “Valkyrie.”  The result of their work is a tapestry of scenes that reflect the core brand attributes of Yahoo! — human, fun and inventive — expressed by people like you.  Every shot, every expression has a story to tell.

We shot in five cities around the world– Los Angeles, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, London and Hong Kong.   We braved the summer heat in the Mojave desert.  We got caught in a monsoon in Mumbai with only Pokemon (!!) slickers to keep us dry.  We fished for a soccer ball in the Arabian Sea using a bucket.  There was plenty of action behind the scenes.  Here are some fun tidbits about a few of the key shots:

• Dancers in feathers: The dancers’ feathered skirts and headdresses were all hand-made by Colleen Atwood and her team. In the last scene, the lead dancer floating to the camera is suspended by cables.  And guess how many total dancers there are… only four.
• Rose petals in the desert: We’re an environmentally conscious company. We actually swept up every rose petal during our time in the Mojave and brought them back to our studios in LA (okay, permits required us to do so as well).
• Man jumping across frame: This scene is meant to evoke how using Yahoo! propels people to go further and to achieve more. We got the effect by having a gymnast jump from a trampoline across a picture frame suspended 25 feet. He nailed it on the first take.
• Ice cream cone kid: Spencer is our star 4-year old who you’ll see not only in this commercial, but also in various ads on the Web and in print. If you’re an Oprah viewer, look for Spencer at the end of her show.
• Soccer players: Soccer is the best way to illustrate the global nature of sports and to show Yahoo! as the place where sports fans share their passions. We shot these scenes in Los Angeles, Mumbai, London and Rio de Janeiro. The take in Mumbai was an ordeal. Besides the torrential downpour, our only soccer ball ended up in the Arabian Sea after the first take.
• Celebrity paparazzi: Millions of people visit Yahoo! for entertainment, celebrity gossip, and news.  A small crowd of people showed up in Los Angeles the day we were shooting to try to catch a glimpse of our “stars.”
• Video game character: This scene represents the online games available on Yahoo! Games. The “purple gobbler” character was created for us from scratch.
• Keystone cops: This is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Yahoo! Finance, one of our most popular sites. We shot this in the studio and employed techniques used during the days of silent pictures (the guy with the money bags is running on a treadmill).  Take a close look at the tires on the police car.
• Club scene: Shot in Filmistan Studios in Mumbai, the dance sequence was arranged by Longinus Fernandes, who also choreographed the final dance sequence in “Slumdog Millionaire.”  The “club smoke” you see is actually dust and dirt from the floor of the sound stage.
• Walking exclamation point: We climbed up to a rooftop in lower Mumbai to get this shot.
• Light artist: This scene features an LA artist “painting” the air with an LED flashlight. In post production, the effects company, Method, tracked the point of light he emitted and mapped lighting effects to the path. It emphasizes Yahoo! as a source of creativity. This effect harkens back to a similar photo taken of Pablo Picasso in his studio (link).
• The yodel: One of the highlights of our brand campaign is the re-launch of our signature yodel. Listen carefully at the end of the commercial. You’ll notice there isn’t one voice yodeling, but many. We recorded literally hundreds of different people yodeling and then blended them together to create a chorus. We wanted the new yodel to sound full and global, and to evoke a cheer from all the people around the world who visit Yahoo!.

There are many, many other amazing scenes that you will see in the weeks and months ahead.  Our plan is to leverage this library of video footage in online formats, in additional television commercials, on mobile phones, and even in digital billboards.  It began airing yesterday in the US, and you’ll see it in the UK and India starting October 5, and in other markets in 2010, including Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, and Taiwan.

We hope you enjoy Anthem, and, more importantly, we hope you see YOU in it.

Nick Chavez
Vice President, Integrated Marketing

This week, Manhattan will be abuzz with thousands of brand stewards and creative types, coming together to pay tribute to the best in advertising and share visions about what the future brings. And Yahoo! will be there in force – helping marketers understand how to make the most of the online medium.

In honor of the occasion, CEO Carol Bartz and a bevy of senior Yahoo! executives rang the opening bell at NASDAQ this morning. Here’s video to prove it:

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Also, Carol and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hosted a conference call together this morning on our campus to discuss the agreement with media and analysts. You can check out an archive on our investor relations site. And here are a few photos of them both from just after the call.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

If you want to know what all that means, you’ll have to watch this video — now playing on the Yahoo! Homepage, starring just a handful of the many technical talents responsible for our spiffy new homepage.

Fortunately, it’s closed-captioned for the nerd-impaired.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

In two weeks, Carol will sit in conversation with Kara Swisher at the annual D: All Things Digital conference. In honor of this first public appearance, she’s agreed to an exclusive Q&A with Yodel Anecdotal. We invite you, dear reader, to submit whatever questions you’d like us to ask. We’re squeezing into her calendar so we can’t get to all of them, but we’d love your input. Fair game might be topics like “Why did you take this job?,” “What do you think needs fixing at Yahoo!,” “What’s your favorite website?,” and “Why do you like cheese so much?.”

Please submit your questions via ycorpblog [at] yahoo-inc [dot] com no later than 5pm PT next Tuesday (May 19th). We’ll post her answers on May 27th. Please include your name, city, and whether you’d prefer to be anonymous. And make it good!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Take Mitch Spolan, for example. We have a phrase around here that describes someone who’s loyal to the core — they “bleed purple.” That’s Mitch in a nutshell. He’s a 10-year Yahoo! veteran who’s seen it all — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the awesome. And he’s embodied the definition of pride throughout. And in this presentation, Mitch gave abut 13,000 people a bevy of reasons to share that pride.

You have to forget for a moment that he’s a sales guy (he was just promoted to head of our North American field sales organization) because what you’re about to watch isn’t some guy just trying to cut a deal. This video helps you understand what it means to bleed purple.

And you’ll also learn a thing or two about measuring social impact by a factor of Obamas.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Wylie’s not some commercial voiceover talent. He’s the real deal — a true singing cowboy. He’s got the belt buckle, hat, ranch, and 20 horses to prove it. I caught up with Wylie to find out how on Earth he got his start in yodeling, how Yahoo! found him for our first ad campaign, how life has changed since then, what he’s doing now, and what it’s like to be the world’s most recognized yodeler. You can read a full transcript of the interview here. But for you multitasking, RSS feed-scanning, I-only-have-time-for-300-words-or-less types, here are some highlights:

• Wylie yodeled for brands like Mitsubishi, Taco Bell, Porsche, and Miller Light before creating his 3-note hit for Yahoo! in 1996.
• When our ad agency brought him into the recording studio, he came up with 10 different yodels of the name Yahoo! in a matter five minutes.
• Wylie yodels for a living with his “Wylie & the Wild West” band.
• Wylie’s yodeling notoriety has landed him gigs with A Prairie Home Companion, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He has appeared on the Grand Ol Opry more than 50 times.
• Wylie trains cutting (or cattle) horses on a ranch near Dusty, Washington (population: 11).
• His dad was a Montana cowboy and ranch veterinarian and yodeled on horseback.
• Wylie learned to yodel from a reel-to-reel tape his aunt received from an Austrian ski team.
• Wylie and Yahoo! settled a lawsuit in 2002 after we inadvertently used his yodel in a national ad without the proper contract.
• Wylie toured the country as the emcee for the national Yahoo! Yodel Challenge in 2003. The winner, via write-in submission, was Taylor Ware, a 9-year-old who went on to becoming a finalist on “America’s Got Talent.”

And, yes, we’ve sent him his very own Insta-Yodel button. No home is complete without it.

Here’s Wylie in action, singing his most popular live song, about some guy who made it big by yodeling for a little Internet company in the mid-90s. And you can learn how to yodel like Wylie here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo by Bill Watts

MIT Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland stopped by to discuss this very topic with us yesterday as the latest in a series of Big Thinkers lectures at Yahoo! Research. He also shared insights into the expansive research he’s done in his career on what he calls “honest signals,” the non-verbal clues and patterns that reveal everything from how people interact on the job to who they date and whether or not they’re going to buy a given product or service when the telemarketer calls.

Professor Pentland is leading the exploration of this new realm of social science – designing new ways to collect data about our non-verbal communication patterns and analyzing the ever-growing mountains of data we’re creating when we use new technologies (like the Internet and especially mobile phones). Pentland’s work is aimed at making the ways we communicate without language a first class part of how we see and understand the world, and, together with his colleagues and students, he’s applying these new ideas to everything from predicting which speed-daters are going to get together, to tackling public health issues, to what makes companies and creative teams productive (here’s a hint: face time at the water cooler actually pays off!).

In the video below, I interviewed Prof. Pentland about his work. In a week or so, his full lecture will be available at the Yahoo! Research Big Thinkers site, but in the mean time, we hope you enjoy this preview. And for those iPhone and Blackberry users out there, you may want to download the CitySense app the next chance you get for a hands-on experience with the types of data and research Professor Pentland is working on.

Since 2006, we’ve had 20 “Big Thinkers” from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and others talk to us about everything from economic theory and marketplace design to online amateur media production and other forms of user generated content. They’re a lot of fun and we hope to share more of these interesting discussions and ideas with you as often as we can.

Elizabeth Churchill
Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research

I’ve been on a whirlwind tour for the last six weeks, talking with everybody from executive leaders to the guys who configured my laptop. I’ve been in student mode, slowly getting smarter about what makes this place tick. And most recently, I’ve been gathering information on what it’s going to take to get Yahoo! to a great place as an organization –- and one that brings you killer products.

People here have impressed the hell out of me. They’re smart, dedicated, passionate, driven, and really nice. There’s so much great energy and frankly lots of optimism. But there’s also plenty that has bogged this company down. For starters, you’d be amazed at how complicated some things are here.

So today I’m rolling out a new management structure that I believe will make Yahoo! a lot faster on its feet. For us working at Yahoo!, it means everything gets simpler. We’ll be able to make speedier decisions, the notorious silos are gone, and we have a renewed focus on the customer. For you using Yahoo! every day, it will better enable us to deliver products that make you say, “Wow.”

I’ve noticed that a lot of us on the inside don’t spend enough time looking to the outside. That’s why I’m creating a new Customer Advocacy group. After getting a lot of angry calls at my office from frustrated customers, I realized we could do a better job of listening to and supporting you. Our Customer Care team does an incredible job with the amazing number of people who come to them, but they need better resources. So we’re investing in that. After all, you deserve the very best.

We’re also leaning on this team to make sure we’re all hearing the voice of our customers (consumers and advertisers). I’m singularly focused on providing you with awesome products. Period. The kind that get you so excited, you have to tell someone about them. Whether on your desktop, your mobile device, or even your TV.

And that takes a real understanding of what you want/need/love/hate, how you’re using our products, and what you find simple, intuitive, easy and fun. Who wants innovation for innovation’s sake if it doesn’t make your life easier, more efficient, more productive? So expect us to hear you better and take better care of you.

Finally, a note about our brand. It’s one of our biggest assets. Mention Yahoo! practically anywhere in the world, and people yodel. But in the past few years, we haven’t been as clear in showing the world what the Yahoo! brand stands for. We’re going to change that. Look for this company’s brand to kick ass again.

Big thanks to the many of you who’ve reached out with positive comments. It’s clear people want Yahoo! to succeed. I’ll try to pop by here again soon, though probably not too soon. I have a pretty long to-do list.

Carol Bartz
CEO

What’s that, you say? You don’t know Yahoo! Buzz? It’s where you go to find the Web’s most remarkable stories, determined by people like you. Chances are you’ve read one of the millions of articles that have been “buzzed up,” commented on or featured on the Yahoo! homepage and across Yahoo! sites over the past year. Since Yahoo! Buzz is open to all publishers, the site features stories from tens of thousands of sources –- from the most prolific sites, to the truly quirky.

What we’ve found really interesting is the way people around the Web are busily interacting with the content on Yahoo! Buzz. People are voting on or commenting on stories every two seconds, and the top Yahoo! Buzz stories featured on the Yahoo! homepage to date have received well over 300 million clicks. And while Yahoo! Updates is still relatively new, we’re seeing more and more people sharing Updates from Buzz with their Yahoo! connections. So, whenever you “buzz up” a story, it shows up on Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and other relevant places across Yahoo!, providing another way to share your interests with your connections.

Many thanks to the publishers and the community of people who helped shape the headlines for millions by participating in the first 365 days of Yahoo! Buzz. The site already has more unique monthly visitors than any other social content site in the U.S., according to comScore Media Metrix.

For a look at our editors’ favorite Buzz stories from year one, head on over to the Buzz Log.

We hope you’ll keep on buzzing with us as we watch the next year unfold online.

Brian McMullin
Product Lead, Yahoo! Buzz

Photo from Theresa Thompson

We are wrapping up the first phase of our “bucket testing” and have gleaned some great insights from people in the US, UK, France and India who have tried out the new page. We’ve done a number of things to collect input –- from reading your comments here on Yodel to reviewing online feedback forms and customer care inquires to meeting with many of you in person and online. Bottom line is we’re getting closer to the final design, but we’re not quite there yet.

Before I share details around what we’ve learned, I wanted to give a quick recap of some of the functionality we’ve added over the past few months since just a fraction of you have experienced it firsthand.

Back in September, we introduced a new section called “My Apps.” The great part about having apps on your homepage is that you can easily check in and get more done –- from reading and responding to multiple email accounts to browsing local movie listings –- all without leaving the page.

Today, we’ve enhanced that experience and we’re testing more than 25 apps that will keep you updated with whatever you want to know. New additions include apps from eBay, Forbes.com, Wired.com and more top brands. We’ve also beefed up the Sports and Finance apps, for example, providing schedules, team standings, blogs links and more, plus one-click access to your stock portfolios and stock quotes. The best part is that the “My Apps” section is now customizable so you can add and remove apps (check out this screenshot) so your homepage reflects what matters most to you.

Here’s what we’ve heard from our testers:

Positive Feedback

• People are happy with the streamlined look and feel
• There’s lots of love for the applications
• Most testers said they prefer the new homepage over the current homepage

One comment that sums it up nicely:

“Well — I was surprised at first at how little change was introduced, and liked that. Now I’m surprised by how much change actually is packed in, but is more interaction based… Basically it’s deceptively different — looks and feels the same, but much more functionality built in at a new layer.” – Thomas

What We’re Working On
Now that we’ve got a critical mass of input, we’re translating it into updated versions of the page for ongoing testing. Here are some highlights.

• The #1 thing we’re hearing you want is more apps and we’ll be adding many apps in the coming weeks
• Most didn’t like the dark color that we tested initially — see the screenshot below of the new visual treatments we’re testing
• Easier ways to access and preview email and instant messaging accounts are in the works
• It should be easier to get to other Yahoo! services that you’ve come to rely upon

We don’t take changes to your homepage lightly and your input is critical. To help our designers and engineers, tell us what else you think we should consider. Is there a killer app that you’d love to see?

Know that we’re working hard to create a new homepage that you’ll love and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Tapan Bhat
Senior Vice President, Yahoo! Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

Every year, more than 12 million people reach for computer mice along with their remotes as they play fantasy football. Yahoo! Sports alone has more than four million players. That’s a lot of people demanding perfection when it comes to their league drafting process, how fast they can get their hands on data and stats, and how easily they can manage their rosters in that critical hour before the coin toss.

Though the leagues ended with the playoffs, we thought we’d give you a video look at the team of engineers that kept you on top of your game -– the people who toiled on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights to ensure that servers didn’t crash under the weight of all those stats. The team that brought you all the best new tools to help you make smarter calls. The guys (and gals) who, like you, live and breathe sports — nary a day goes by without at least one football jersey in the cube bullpen. In fact, quite a few of them have been working on Yahoo! Sports for more than ten years.

Whether you’re a Cardinals or a Steelers fan, may your guacamole be fresh, your beer plentiful, and your pizza hot. For once, Yahoo! Sports engineers will be watching the game right along with you.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what our users were most curious about today as they watched the swearing in of our 44th president:

• Oath of office – people were keen to read about “john roberts flub” as the Chief Justice stumbled slightly on the oath
• Aretha Franklin – that hat was on everyone’s mind; there were also questions about how old she is, along with confusion about her name (“anita franklin”)
• Joseph Lowery – people were buzzing about the Reverend and his funky benediction
• Dick Cheney wheelchair – why exactly was he in a wheelchair?
• Obama speech – because hearing it once was evidently not enough
• Inaugural lunch menu – great curiosity about what was being served to the President on this historic day
• Abraham Lincoln – searches about his bible as well as quotes that might have been invoked today
• How old is Obama - shouldn’t it be how “young” is Obama?
• Readings/music - there were spikes on particular pieces and lyrics, including misheard phrases (“air and simple gifts” and the misheard “heir and simple gifts”)
• Bush daughters’ letter to Obama daughters – interest in the advice between First Daughters
• Activities/lesson plans – parents and teachers searched for all sorts of things for kids, like coloring pages, lesson plans, activities, word searches
• Live coverage – an unprecedented global audience sought the experience live online
• Obama’s limo – there was great interest in this James Bondian machine.
• Tuskegee Airmen – people sought background on this group of World War II pilots who broke the color barrier in military aviation
• Michelle Obama dress – as usual, fashionistas wanted all the skinny on who designed Michelle’s dress (it was Isabel Toledo)

And if you get a chance, check out the Flickr Inauguration 2009 pool, which now boasts more than 4,000 images from the inaugural festivities.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from erin m

The Food Network’s “Dinner: Impossible” crew descended on our campus this week to pull off an episode that honored the anniversary of Yahoo! Search (specifically, the fifth year of our proprietary Yahoo! Search Technology). Celeb chef Robert Irvine arrived at our headquarters early in the morning to be given a seemingly impossible culinary challenge by Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang.

Since the show isn’t slated to air until April, we can’t tell you what we asked him to do, how many people he cooked for, and in how many hours, but let’s just say those of you who searched for food items on Yahoo! last year played a big hand in it. And I can tell you that some serious innovation was definitely required!

And we didn’t let Chef Robert do it alone. We lent him Yahoo! Search SVP Tuoc Luong and VP of Marketing Raj Gossain to help out in the kitchen. Two gourmands with a killer history with hot dogs. The best I can describe it as is sheer and utter mayhem — frenetic chopping, mixing, grilling, slicing, flouring, deep-frying, shouting, accusing, burning… as the hours and minutes ticked away.

Did Chef Robert achieve his mission? Wild horses can’t drag it out of us, but we do hope you’ll tune in to the Food Network to find out. In the meantime, a hearty happy anniversary to the Yahoo! Search Team.

Photos from the production and ensuing party can be found here.

UPDATE: The “Yahoo! Search Scramble” episode will premiere on the Food Network on April 15th at 10pm ET/PT.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo from CeciliaC

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to program news content for that kind of a massive audience. (Let’s just say Yodel Anecdotal’s readership has a ways to go.) After all, you’re basically responsible for informing roughly one in every two American Internet users about what’s happening in our world…and influencing what they talk about over cube walls. What does that responsibility feel like? How do they stay on top of the fire hose of news and then decide what gets one of those precious links? Who is “they” and what prepares them for this big job? How do they know what will click? What was it like to cover this year’s Election?

I took a camera backstage to answer these questions and more. Enjoy this up-close-and-personal look inside the Yahoo! Homepage newsroom.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

In contrast to breaking news, it’s a luxury to prepare for a massive news event that falls on the calendar. And like a Guitar Hero tournament, we notched up the intensity the further we went along in the rehearsal. The goal? To create a setting as dramatic as Wolf Blitzer’s call of states on CNN to ensure that everyone was as prepared as possible to program what proved to be an historic night.

After covering the 2000 and 2004 elections at the New York Times, and watching news organizations all over the country make premature (and wrong) calls, I had just one rule for our team: “Get it right.” When you are the de facto news source for over 40 million a month, you feel a tremendous responsibility when it comes to accuracy.

To strike the right balance of keeping up with network calls without distributing misinformation, we spent time with editors from the AP before the election to understand their approach toward calling results, which is part science, part art, part gut call. You might remember the AP was the only news outlet that sent Americans to bed without a new president in 2000, saying the race was too close to call.

At Yahoo! News, our editors’ roles are to program headlines from dozens of national and international newspapers, wires, and broadcast networks. But on Election Night, we took on a more pronounced mandate as news filter. For example, if a network called a critical swing state, we would wait until at least another network called the state before announcing the news in our breaking news blog and breaking news bar. After all, we were serving what turned out to a record-breaking audience — today, comScore confirmed that we attracted 7.5 million people, the largest single day of traffic in online news history, surpassing CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL.com and FoxNews.com. We couldn’t afford to be wrong.

Journalists are known cynics. But when Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, we all knew it was a huge moment. The newsroom suddenly got very quiet. The sense of history was palpable. I think we all felt honored to be standing there, passing that word along to our readers.

And in my eight years at the Times — where I covered 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — I was never more proud of a newsroom operation.

Richard Vega
Senior Editor, Yahoo! News

Photo from jrejtman

As a technical developer, it’s a wonderful feeling to go where you are utterly out of your depth, and yet realize that you’re surrounded by people who not only understand the material, but also have intelligent questions to ask. For two days, we all chose from among more than 50 lectures and no less than 80 less formal poster sessions. There were experts in geographic intelligence, accessibility, mobile widgets, data center efficiency, the future of drag-and-drop. Everything we talked about will affect you in ways you see… and some you don’t. For more technical detail, head over to our developer blog next week.

The theory behind Tech Pulse is simple: By having the inventors of all these key technologies explain them to the other techies, we’re making it possible to implement more of them for your benefit. Yahoo! is at heart a technology company and the more technology we have at our disposal, the more we can use it to create fun, useful, interactive experiences. The best way to spread all these amazing discoveries through our own tech community is to bring everyone together to listen and discuss. I’m sure that when all the engineers went back to the mothership, they shared their new knowledge with co-workers and the cycle of innovation started over again.

If nothing else, Tech Pulse emphasized the amount of raw talent at Yahoo!. While I can’t give away any secret sauce, trust that there’s an astounding depth of knowledge here to take concepts from theory to reality. We’re doing incredible things to create better experiences for you.

Tom Hughes-Croucher
Technical Evangelist
Yahoo! Developer Network

Think of it as Bikes+Flickr+GPS+Camera=Whoa! This math didn’t come without its challenges. In a nutshell here is what we created. A camera mounted on the handlebars in a waterproof, swivel-enabled housing takes a picture every 60 seconds. Then, the system grabs GPS info, merges it with the picture, and uploads everything to a Yahoo! Map. The system is powered by a series of solar panels and a battery pack on the rear rack .

First, we needed a base to build the technology on, which came in the form of a custom-painted Electra Townie 8. Electra Bicycle Company embraced the project and helped us get 20 custom purple rides to Brooklyn, where software and electrical engineering was being developed.

Uncommon Projects, based in DUMBO, Brooklyn, created the software and hardware necessary to make the system come alive. In a project where the production cycle should’ve been twice as long, Uncommon worked wonders in finding a stable solution quickly. They were able to research, identify potential solutions, build prototypes and produce 20 final products in the time it normally takes to create a production roadmap.

With the technology well underway, we needed to build a housing that was effective but also fit the bikes aesthetics. For this, we looked to Quill Hyde, a designer and metal fabricator with a shop in Redhook, Brooklyn. Quill brought just the right look to the housing. It matched the bike and the technology in a way that kept everything in synch. For me, all the components of the yBike needed to be homogeneous ensuring a Cadillac ride, not a Frankenstein gallop.

With the bike, hardware, technology and housing coming together we looked to our family at Flickr to plot all these images and data on a map. This way you could know where the bike is and see what the bike sees at any given moment.

We then found 14 photographers/cyclists to jockey these purple pedals around the world. Among these riders are Amit Gumpta of Photojojo and Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, who curate their images as they explore.

Four of the bikes will be passed from rider to rider and the 20th bike is destined to be in your hands. Head over to our Start Wearing Purple site on October 1st and tell us why you deserve a yBike and you just might wake up with a special delivery on your doorstep.

Jason Anello
Ideologist, Yahoo! Buzz Marketing

A few months ago I sat across the table from Charlie Todd, New York City comedian and founder of Improv Everywhere. I laughed out loud as he outlined potential outlandish and hilarious pranks created for Yahoo!’s upcoming marketing campaign.

Charlie has a long history of pulling public pranks. Among my favorites, he has sent 45 people into Best Buy dressed in blue shirts and khakis with the simple mission “help people,” he has tricked an entire audience into thinking he was Ben Folds (at a Ben Folds concert no less) and probably most famously, he orchestrated 100 people freezing in place for two minutes inside Grand Central Station.

Charlie is one of those guys who pushes the envelope and paints outside the lines. His pranks are fun, spontaneous, irreverent and daring. Since that’s pretty much how we see our brand personality, there were obvious synergies. We decided to collaborate for the campaign.

We both loved “Elevator Music.” The prank would take place in an elevator and be a progressive sing-a-long upon descent. The key was to have one person along for the ride that had no idea what was going on. The elevator is a space that has social norms and unwritten rules. When you break these norms there is nothing to do but react (or attempt to NOT react, which in itself is a great reaction). This particular elevator was in a 34-story building in downtown Manhattan.

In late August, we rode an elevator, rigged with 9 hidden cameras and microphones, up and down all day –- with actors singing a Gogol Bordello song. Unsuspecting riders reacted in ways we could never have anticipated. Most people laughed and jumped in. Some were not amused. And many were just in complete shock. Regardless of the initial reaction, as they left the elevator and went about their day, they were touched by a little purple whether they realized it or not.

You can find the final product here. Here’s an interview with Charlie about the stunt:

There are more purple pranks to come. With Charlie’s help, we have a few more purple zingers up our sleeves to be unveiled in the next month. As for the woman in the elevator, we believe she still can’t help but quietly hum “Start Wearing Purple” every time she presses the lobby button and the doors close.

Jason Anello
Ideologist, Buzz Marketing

We know your life has changed since 1994. Most of us have upgraded from big hair, flannel shirts and Nirvana, much as Yahoo.com has evolved over the years. Today we are challenged with keeping track of everything going on in our lives, in the news, with our family and friends, etc. The Web has evolved to keep us in constant communication, but this also means we are continually receiving emails, text messages, RSS feeds, tweets and IMs. Keeping up can be a struggle.

We’re working on a new homepage that will help you get more out of the Internet, make more of your precious time, and make sense of all the things going on in your world. After lots of ongoing research (i.e., focus groups, usability experiments, etc.), today we’ve begun testing an all-new, more streamlined Yahoo.com that will bring the things that matter most to you –- no matter where they “live” on the Web. Here’s a screenshot of one of the versions we’ll be testing:

Here’s how the new Yahoo.com should simplify your life:

1. One easy check-in point. We’re testing a dashboard area (off to the left) that will let you add previews of your favorite Yahoo! and non-Yahoo! services – starting with checking for new mail from multiple accounts (initially Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail and Gmail, with more to come), weather forecasts, and local events. We plan to add plenty more preview applications in the future, so that you don’t have to spend as much time jumping from site to site just to stay plugged in.
2. Helping you stay informed. We’re always hearing how much people love the “Featured” area of the page, so we’re going to keep enhancing that with more and more fresh, timely content you’re interested in from across the Web. And of course we still have the prominent search box, with Yahoo! Search’s handy “Search Assist” feature. As we continue evolving the test versions, you’ll also notice us adding more information about what your friends are doing across Yahoo! and the Web in general.

What does all this mean to you? Since we’re testing with a fraction of homepage visitors chosen at random – starting in the US, UK, France and India – you may be one of the testers! But even if you’re not, we encourage you to share your thoughts on what you want out of your Internet starting point. Keep in mind that we plan to add lots of exciting new things over the course of these tests, since this process is all about making sure we launch the best page for our users.

We’ll keep you posted as we add new preview applications from your favorite Web sites, create more ways to easily personalize the page so that it’s focused on what matters most to you, and eventually even open it up to the Yahoo! Application Platform so that external developers and publishers can submit their own preview applications to be featured on the Yahoo! homepage.

Tapan Bhat
SVP, Front Doors, Communities and Network Services

P.S. Check out this screenshot for a sneak peek into more features we’ll be adding during the testing process.
P.P.S. Did you notice the color of the logo on our test?

Since then, we’ve taken Open Hack around the world, with hack days in London –- where lightening struck twice and it rained indoors — and in Bangalore.

This weekend, we’re getting ready to welcome hundreds more developers back to our campus in Sunnyvale for Open Hack 2008 –- including the winners from five university hack days we held last year. We’re eager for our guests to put their ingenuity and imagination to work as they poke and prod and hack away on our products and services – including some new platforms for developers. We thoroughly expect to be blown away again.

During the hack-a-thon, we’ll give developers a sneak preview of the first Y!OS components. Back in April, we announced the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS), a set of tools and platforms that will fundamentally change how Yahoo! works, opening Yahoo! up to developers to take advantage of the social aspects of our most popular products. With Y!OS, developers can create applications and features (many we’ve never even thought of) for our network and our consumers.

The Y!OS sneak preview will include the ability for developers to check out what their new applications look like in Yahoo! Mail and My Yahoo! and take advantage of social connections on Yahoo!. These components will be available only for the weekend – giving developers a taste of what they will soon be able to build and share with the world. Stay tuned for their public debut in the coming months.

Our first Open Hack was described as “transformative,” “something special,” and “off the hook” but what struck me most was the creativity and camaraderie. The stuff of our roots. Jerry and I are dedicated to keeping that spirit of openness and innovation alive, but we know that we can’t come up with all the great ideas ourselves. We can’t wait to see what is created this weekend. Hackers, bring it on.

David Filo
Chief Yahoo

At least on the good days, I do recognize that being the executive producer for Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music is a pretty good gig. Somehow I parlayed years of pathetic low-five-figure annual incomes as a music journalist — free CDs, cool! – into a key role in what I believe to be the best video concert series on internet or television. I’m not curing cancer, nor am I paving blacktops or strapping on a tie and selling insurance; instead I’m getting away with a “grown up” vocation that somehow includes playing host to some of the biggest names in music.

But before I further this self-congratulatory drivel and come off looking like a total jerk, some perspective, please. If engaging with artists and managers and record labels requires a singular kind of finesse, working with the top-tier talent is an art unto itself. Nearly every single artist of that level is the benevolent dictator surrounded by a country full of handlers. And with them come demands and restrictions that inevitably cause a tug-of-war between what Nissan Live Sets is and how they want their artist represented within it. Some resist our quirky format (not doing a Q&A in the middle of the set, not stopping in between songs), some require audio post that perks up a flat vocal note or 30, many are nervous about how their artists, battling to mitigate the unstoppable cruelties of age, will be represented in this new HD world. To that end, camera angles and lighting are restricted and/or required to make butts smaller, wrinkles diminished, chins fewer. (And I’m not just talking about the ladies.)

And that’s but a minuscule portion of the craziness that ensues from the moment we book. But nothing is more of an adrenaline rush and reoccurring test of sanity than occurs during the typical 13-hour shoot day. When it’s crunch time, it’s a flurry of activity with a gaggle of parties demanding attention:

• VIP: “Why do those VIPs get to sit on that couch but I don’t?”
• Fan: “I want to meet Joan Jett. Here is my sob story why.”
• Mother of teen Avril Lavigne fan: “My daughter’s very upset that she can’t get an autograph.”
• Stooges manager to me: “Iggy will probably jump off the stage during ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog.’” Me to Fire/Safety officers: “Iggy will probably jump off the stage during ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog.’” Fire/Safety officers to me: “No, he can’t.” Me to Fire/Safety officers: “I’m not telling Iggy that he can’t. He’ll probably leave.”
• Macy Gray handler one hour before taping time: “We need 12 pair of black socks.”
• Velvet Revolver handler 30 min before taping time: “Scott wants makeup” (and yes we know we told you we didn’t need it).
• Snoop Dogg handler one hour before taping time: “Snoop wants McDonald’s” (and won’t eat it in his performance clothes so keep pushing that start time back).
• Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, five hours before performance, and after weeks of discussions on how to re-jigger the room so that the band could perform a hootenanny on the general audience floor: “We’d like four individual performance risers around the room in a diamond shape instead of this one here.” Okay…

But the rewards –- yes, back to the bragging –- are tremendous. For one, there are the performances. Man, oh, man. And on a regular basis I get to interact in a respectful and professional level with some fantastic artists. Sure, some couldn’t care less, and some are complete freaks, but many, many others are genuinely appreciative of what we are doing. And then, suddenly, you find, typically after the taping when the wars are won and guards are down, where conversations turn to the silly and mundane. These are the moments to cherish, such as:

• Keeping Joni Mitchell company at her request as she smoked and shared an old memory of Bob Dylan;
• Hearing Ryan Adams share how much he hates the kind of music that he’s most known for;
• PJ Harvey confiding in me how the Q&A was the weirdest thing she’s ever done in her life;
• The shaman Carlos Santana putting his hand on my cheek and saying, “Be good, brother;”
• Buddy Guy sharing stories about his early days in Chicago and genuinely inviting me to let him show me around the Windy City;
• Talking parenthood with Trisha Yearwood;
• Hoisting a beer with many;
• Saying no to blunts from several others; and
• Watching the Pretenders get stupid drunk.

And then there was Kelly Clarkson, an artist whose music for which I must confess to have had great ambivalence before working with her. She was the friendliest, coolest, kindest of the lot, not to mention a stunningly good vocalist. After the show, several Yahoo! types were getting a photo with her. “Come join in, Neal,” one of my co-workers yelled to me. “I already got my photo with Kelly,” I countered. “Yeah, and we made out,” Kelly enthused. Yeah… so there!

From that moment on, Kelly Clarkson has always been known as “my girlfriend.”

Neal Weiss
Executive Producer, Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music

The highlight, of course, was the Yahoo! exclusive interview with South Korean President Myung-bak Lee. This was a historic event as it was President Lee’s first interview with an online news organization and the first foreign head of state ever interviewed by Yahoo! News.

So how did all of this come about? The success of Yahoo! News’ interview of President Bush (in partnership with Politico) got the wheels turning. Interviewing President Bush spurred discussions within Yahoo! over which other world leaders we could get to sit down with us. I’m eternally indebted to Yahoo! Korea CEO James Kim, whose entire team did a tremendous job of pursuing the issue with the Blue House and then executing a highly complex operation in a very short period of time.

It was a great honor for me to get to go to the Blue House, the President’s residence, and meet with President Lee, who was very gracious and generous with his time. I asked President Lee questions about a variety of topics, from the ultra-serious issue of relations with North Korea to lighter fare such as the success of South Korea’s Olympians. I also asked a question from a user after Y! Korea asked for submissions from its users (there were literally 1000s to choose from). The discussion of North-South relations was particularly relevant for me since my father is a Korean War veteran.

One of the other highlights of my trip to Korea was a visit to the DMZ, which is an amazing place on many levels. The DMZ is both a literal and figurative ‘front line’ for a war that technically isn’t over, but it’s also a place where sworn enemies have figured out a way to coexist –- and even partner in a joint economic development project in the area. That gives me some hope President Lee will be right when he expressed confidence reunification will occur in his lifetime — and possibly suddenly as was the case with the reunification of Germany.

As for the rest of my trip, I was struck by the advanced technology available to the “average” Korean. From video conferencing on cell phones, to GPS devices that double as TVs to high-speed Internet access anywhere/anytime, Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries. I got insights on the scene from several tech industry executives and also met the world champion Starcraft player (video games are a huge spectator sport in Korea) — stay tuned to “Tech Ticker” for additional clips from those interviews.

Finally, I was blown away by the incredible hospitality and generosity of the people I met. Everyone I met was amazingly friendly and helpful — from colleagues at Yahoo! to local CEOs to a friend of a friend’s brother who took a day off to show me around Seoul, to the little girl at the Korean Folk Village who wanted to practice her English.

My only regret is I didn’t get to try live octopus (a local delicacy), but apparently it’s not in season. Next time!

Aaron Task
Correspondent, Yahoo! Tech Ticker

But not anymore.

Back in 1984, while I was at Apple, we discovered that the just-announced and beautifully designed Macintosh computer was, in some ways, terribly designed for much of the disabled population. One way we demonstrated this to our hardware and software engineers was to have them sit together, each in front of the Macintosh they’d been instrumental in designing, and do the following: “Put your hands in your pocket, put a pencil in your mouth, and type a 2-line memo.”

That simple simulation eventually led to the identification and fixing of more than 40 obstacles that were originally designed as conveniences for the average user. More than any lecture could have accomplished, the real-life simulation of disabled experiences led not only to the increased usability of the Macintosh, but also, in the words of one software engineer, to a new, more inclusive, way of seeing the world: “I’ll never view my work in the same way again.”

It’s useful to mention that the fixes—what we termed “electronic curb-cuts”—were, for the most part, quite simple to make. The much more difficult challenge was to recognize that the accessibility problems existed in the first place.

And so it is with websites. Even Yahoo!.

Which is why we’ve just opened the Yahoo! Accessibility Lab, a place where engineers, designers, and product managers can experience for themselves how disabled users navigate the web. And sometimes, how they can’t.

At this point, the Accessibility Lab is in its formative stage; we’re still learning how to make it as valuable a resource as possible. As a result, it is only available—for now—to Yahoo! employees. Here is part of what we’ve said to them in announcing this new on-campus location:

No matter what your position is at Yahoo!, we invite you to wander in, look around, play a little, watch a little, try a little, borrow a little… and then come back again. And again.

Come in and be blind for a while and learn how to buy a car at Yahoo! Autos. Or be paralyzed from the neck down and use Yahoo! Mail or play Yahoo! Games. Or be deaf, or learning disabled, or non-verbal. These are the kinds of experiences you can have in the Lab.

Our goal is to help you understand what it means to design products that are accessible to all of Yahoo!’s customers. Products that are usable. Enjoyable. Delightful. And inclusive.

In addition to simulating the disabled experience, the Accessibility Lab also provides a growing collection of books and videos that we hope will help visitors become more comfortable with the culture of disability. And help Yahoos keep disabled kids and adults clearly in mind as they design and code.

Alan Brightman
Senior Policy Director, Special Communities

Alan is the author of many books about the disabled experience, including his recent “DisabilityLand” (SelectBooks, 2008).