The four winners, who shared the top Gold prize are; Colenso BBDO Auckland, New Zealand for Yellow Pages, Taproot, Mumbai India for The Times of India, McCann WORLDGROUP Hong Kong, for Metro Publishing and Clemenger Proximity Melbourne Australia for Yellow Pages.

At the Spikes Asia event this week, Yahoo! also invited some of the judges, speakers and delegates to take a seat in our BIG IDEA CHAIR and share with us what they think are the key ingredients to making an idea big.

Hear what they say on this video clip:

We are also very excited to have the opportunity to talk to some of the industry’s most creative minds, including Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP Worldwide, legendary author and ex-creative director, Bryce Courtenay and Bob Greenberg, Chairman, CEO, Global Chief Creative Officer, R/GA to get their thoughts on trends, creativity and the future of digital.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all the guests who shared their creative insights with us in our Big Idea Chair and a big congratulations to all the winners at Spikes Asia this year.

Watch event highlights on video:

Christopher Harris
Head of B2B Marketing, Asia Pacific

Filipinos were already talking about a possible “Congressman Manny” ring introduction on social networks and the Philippine blogosphere as soon as Pacquiao took the lead in the congressional race. He eventually won in a stunning upset in the country’s first automated elections. Which means that after two attempts (his previous try in the 2007 elections suffered a horrible loss) Pacquiao can now add legislator to his long list of accomplishments as one of the all-time boxing greats.

It is a remarkable tale of a boy who grew up in poverty but overcame the odds to become one of the greatest boxers and richest athletes in the world. More than that, however, he is a national hero in the Philippines, where even criminals take a day off and the military and insurgents stop fighting, so they can stay glued to the screens and watch Pacquiao fight.
Yahoo! Philippines has chronicled through the Ringside With Manny microsite which has spread through word of mouth on social networks, such as the Ringside With Manny on Yahoo! Meme. Through Yahoo!’s Ringside With Manny, millions of fans in the Philippines and around the globe could keep themselves updated on latest Pacquiao news, while also participating in Yahoo! Philippines’ live blogs of the fights, such as Pacquiao’s encounters with Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey.

In fact, before Pacquiao’s historic win over Cotto – that gave him his seventh world title in seven weight classes – Pacquiao sat down with the Yahoo! Sports team for a Ringside With Manny interview.

More importantly, Yahoo!’s Ringside With Manny offered exclusive content that gave visitors a better glimpse of the man behind the great boxing champ. Whether it was a video of Pacquiao singing and playing the guitar, or answering trivia questions from Yahoo!, the goal of Ringside With Manny was to bring readers closer to the champion.

Yodel Anecdotal had the opportunity to ask Pacquiao a couple of additional questions. Check out his replies:

Yodel: What’s on your iPod playlist right now?
Pacquiao: Mostly love songs and Martin Nievera. My all-time favourite is ‘You raised me up’ by Josh Groban

Yodel: Will you allow your daughter Princess to join show business? (Ed: His three-year-old daughter Princess loves to perform in front of the camera)
Pacquiao: I am not against it. As long as she can finish her studies, I’ll support her on whatever she wants

When asked about his mum, Pacquiao has this message for her: “Thank you for guiding us. I pray to God that you’ll have a long life because we need you by our side…”

Fight fans are still praying that a mega fight between Pacquiao and undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. will still push through in what arguably will be the richest and most important boxing bout in history. Whether or not his opponent will be Mayweather, however, Pacquiao has said that he will retire after his fight in November.

In the meantime, check out Yahoo!’s Ringside with Manny to follow our latest updates on Manny Pacquiao.

Post contributors: Joey Alarilla, Priscilla Tan
Social Media Editors, Yahoo!

I’ve decided to make this football season count by joining the Yahoo! Sports Mayoral Face-off, taking on ten other mayors from football havens around the country for a chance to win big money for charity. Mayors from cities like San Francisco, Kansas City, and Green Bay are putting together their dream fantasy teams. Whoever wins the league gets $15,000 to donate to a local sports program — my pick is NFL YET Tampa Bay. In addition, the city that collects the most votes from football fans scores another $15,000 for their non-profit. Take that, budget cuts!

I view this as not only an opportunity to compete for money, but as a chance to demonstrate why Tampa Bay easily has the best football fans in the country! Plus, it’s a great way to interact with my fellow mayors outside of politics. But most of all, this is an occasion for me to prove that I, Mayor Pam Iorio, know my football, how to craft a winning team and how to have fun.

However, I cannot do this alone. I’m calling on the great residents of Tampa and the entire Bay area as well as the citizens of other participating cities to show their support by voting in the poll for the top football city (poll opens tomorrow). In addition, I call on citizens from across the country to join us in the fun and awaken their competitive spirits by creating their own Yahoo! Fantasy Football leagues.

So here’s a heartfelt good luck to all the other Mayors in the league. Nation, we look forward to you joining us in the fun this season. You can follow our progress and your city’s polling status at Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football. Now it’s time to face off!

Pam Iorio
Mayor
Tampa, Florida

It’s not that I’m lazy or don’t care. I tell my son a hundred times a day to turn his bedroom light off when he’s not in his room, my security lights are on a timer so I don’t forget to turn them off, I’ve learned how to brush my teeth with a few drops of water, I use organic cleaners, I eat organic food, etc.

But I’ve found that there just aren’t that many useful and truly ‘green’ consumer products on the market.

I’d love to own a small hybrid car but I don’t think my wife, two kids, baby, blind black lab and a I would fit very well, even though I am on a diet. I recently found some interesting looking coasters made from recycled CD’s, but just because I think it’s cool to have a Def Leppard coaster on my coffee table doesn’t really help anything, does it?

Yahoo! Green’s Make it Green campaign (launched last month) could tangibly help change all of this by inviting regular people from around the world to submit ideas that will improve our lives and ‘green up’ our planet.

You don’t have to be a scientist to enter and you don’t have to have a patented product either. That’s because Yahoo! has teamed up with the company I work for, Edison Nation. We have tons of expertise and experience reviewing products, handling intellectual property, and partnering with manufacturers and retailers to put products onto store shelves.

If your idea is selected, you will earn $2,500, a share of sales for up to twenty years and possibly be featured on PBS’ Emmy award winning invention show Everyday Edisons.

So if you think you have a great green idea, don’t delay — Make it Green ends June 30th!

Kermit and the planet thank you.

Michael Cable
Director, Edison Nation

“You let total strangers in your house?”

It all started a few years ago in my midtown apartment in New York City. My roommate Luke and I worked from home, and though we loved the freedom this afforded us, we missed the opportunity to brainstorm, share ideas and interact creatively with our peers. We decided to invite a friend over to work with us on the kitchen table every week or so — that friend brought another friend, and that one brought another, and another. All of a sudden, our living room was filled with 20 friends and friends of friends typing on laptops.

We’d talk about what we were working on, look for solutions to problems we were trying to solve and we’d work. Most of us were developers, designers, or entrepreneurs, some worked alone, some worked for large companies. The common thread was we all wanted more creative interaction with those in our field. Thus Jelly began and started to spread.

Jelly was on NPR, in Wired, on NPR again, on CNN, on the Today Show. People all over the world started writing in and I helped them start their own Jellies. It seemed that our needs weren’t unique; people everywhere were craving a new way to work.

Now nearly 100 Jellies exist around the world. The phenomenon of Jelly caught Yahoo!’s attention over a year ago and together we created Jelly Talks, a live speaker series. Each month we host an influential speaker at a Jelly location and stream the conversation online via live webcast, allowing the global Jelly community to participate in the event. We’ve had JellyTalks speakers from Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Google, Yahoo!, and independents like Guy Kawasaki and Chris Messina talk about the latest in tech.

This Friday, June 26th, we have a special JellyTalks Q&A event with marketing guru Seth Godin (little known fact: he used to work at Yahoo!). He’ll be at Jelly New York City and live on the web starting at 11am PST. Be sure to tune in at http://jellytalks.yahoo.com. The webcast will not be archived, so don’t miss out!

Amit Gupta
Co-founder, Jelly

Abebe is an Ethiopian journalist, but the regime in his home country is too repressive to allow true journalism, so he is in exile. He had been in London for years before coming to the U.S. as the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellow at Stanford.

The Yahoo! fellowship was specifically established for people like Abebe, journalists from countries where there are strong challenges to a free press. Yahoo! and the Knight Fellowships agreed that supporting journalists who were directly or indirectly under attack should be at the top of the to-do list, and so we created the Yahoo! Fellowship in 2006, with a generous gift from Yahoo!.

Abebe is the third Yahoo! Fellow, following Imtiaz Ali, from Pakistan, and Violet Gonda, of Zimbabwe. Like Abebe, Violet was in exile, too. Abebe’s great idea is Addis Voice, a London-based website devoted to independent news about Ethiopia. It has become a trusted source of news and commentary for the Ethiopian diaspora. Here’s an interview with Abebe:

Abebe’s fellowship is ending, and we are ready to welcome Nadia Trinidad of the Philippines, one of the deadliest countries for journalists in the world. Nadia is a senior correspondent for ABS-CBN Brooadcasting Company in Manila. She will study the psychological and sociological aspects of corruption in the media. She will arrive in August.

Journalists are under attack around the world, and organizations like the Committee To Protect Journalists make sure that those attacks are brought to light. It makes me feel proud that the Knight Fellowships and Yahoo! have teamed up to provide a fellowship at Stanford every year for someone who is bearing the brunt of those attacks.

Jim Bettinger
Director, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
Stanford University

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

Limousines arrived at Gertz-Ressler High School to pick up 10 teens. They were heading out for an evening of film and female empowerment, along with mentors from the Step Up Women’s Network. The girls couldn’t have been more excited and were certainly the envy of their peers! The girls thought the limousine would be the biggest surprise of the night – little did they know what was to come.

After a scrumptious dinner, we presented the girls with a Yahoo! backpack, and they couldn’t believe what was inside. Licetz, the girl I was paired with for the evening, was dancing in her seat when she saw the Flip video camera that was hers to keep and would empower her to make her own powerful voice be heard.

The evening culminated with a VIP screening of “A Powerful Noise,” a documentary presented by CARE about women changing the world. The girls were completely inspired by the strong role models in the film and felt they could also make a difference in their communities. There was a special buzz in the air the entire evening, as the Step Up girls knew they would also have the chance to make a video, capturing their reaction to “A Powerful Noise.”

The two featured videos below were created by Step Up girls who won an all-expense paid trip from Yahoo! to attend the CARE conference in Washington D.C. in May. This is sure to be a life-changing experience for them.

I’ve found it rewarding to volunteer for Step Up’s program for high school girls. It gives these teens an opportunity to be mentored by many professional women throughout their high school years as they prepare for the next step — college. As the first person in my family to receive a college degree, I know how important it is to these girls and their families that they go to college.

These girls don’t often have the opportunity to feel special and privileged, and I was so impressed with Yahoo! for giving them this wonderful, first-class experience.

Edie Lynn Ortenberg
President and CEO of The Hollis House
Volunteer for Step Up Women’s Network

My Experience on the Ybike
When I hit the dusty roads of Tanzania, “karibu” and “wow” were some of the first things I heard. “Karibu” is Swahili for “welcome” and shows everyone’s openness and goodwill at the sight of me with my purple Yahoo! bike. I could tell by the expressions on people’s faces that a “muzungo” (“white man”) on a purple cruiser was not an everyday sight — most white people arrive in four-wheel drives.

There are plenty of bicycles in Tanzania. The people who ride them — the majority of Tanzanians — cannot afford cars or motorcycles. The fancy Yahoo! bicycle with solar panels, camera and the shiny purple colour showed people that the bicycle is not just as a means of transportation for the poor.

I’m cofounder of Baisikeli (Swahili for “bicycle”), a project that makes high-quality bicycles accessible to the poorest people of Africa. These bikes have many purposes, including helping farmers increase their income by more than 100%, just by enabling them to move twice the amount of crops in half the time. We also build bicycle ambulances, which are donated to rural health care centres to enable them to provide vital access to health care in neighbour villages.

My Running Guides
The Baisikeli workshop is based in Arusha, 80 kilometres from Mt Kilimanjaro. When I first arrived from Denmark, I went out for a bike ride to get a feel for the vibes of the city. Within the first few minutes, two young boys were running next to the bike shouting “around – around!,” explaining that they were going to give me a guided tour of the neighbourhood. To be honest, I’ve had better guided tours. But taking into consideration that “around” was their only English word, the energy they put into the tour was amazing.

The Attention
A Yahoo! bike ride in Tanzania was a new experience every time. Obviously, you get a lot of attention when riding a fancy purple bicycle in Tanzania. People would often ride up alongside me and start asking questions in Swahili and show enthusiasm for both the bicycle and me. Children on the side of the road would call for siblings, who would come running out of houses, screaming euphorically at seeing the muzungo on the purple bicycle. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was great every time — seeing the small children amused by me passing by.

A boy laughing at muzungo passing by on a purple bicycle:

Uses for Bikes in Africa
Bicycles are important to Tanzanian infrastructure. They are vital in the mobility of both the population and goods. People are employed with transporting huge amounts of things like charcoal, milk or bread, traveling dozens of kilometres to the city to sell them.

Sometimes people turn their bicycles into mobile shops, so they can ride around and sell their goods. Here’s a bicycle sneaker shop:

The idea of using bicycles for varied means of transport is the foundation of Baisikeli. We design bikes based on what we observe about how they are used in society. If people can make a living transporting 100kg tomatoes, they can make an even better living transporting 200kg. As a result, our mantra is: “Bikes for a better life.”

Here are some more examples of people riding bicycles with a heavy load: a shop, two baskets balance the weight, selling ice cream, and goatskins.

Bikes for Better Health
Bicycles also mean the difference between life and death for inhabitants of rural villages — everyone from pregnant mothers to children with malaria. Twenty-five percent of children never reach the age of five. Bikes can change that. I visited a village called Intavira, 60km from the nearest city and without a proper road leading to it, to donate a bicycle ambulance. This village of 2,000 inhabitants was the largest of 20 in the area and the only source of proper health care. Sick relatives are often pulled in a wagon by cow. Now with the Baisikeli ambulance, the surrounding villages will have easier access to the clinic –- and we hope this will reduce the rate of deaths in the area.

Here’s a slideshow from my visit.

Henrik Smedegaard Mortensen
Co-Founder
Baisikli – Bikes for a better life

I’m also here to tell you why the 2009 fantasy baseball season is going to be the year that I bring you stat junkies a Yahoo! Sports fantasy baseball championship. Get ready to celebrate America’s favorite pastime with ballpark dogs, peanuts and your favorite fantasy cover athlete: me.

As free agents are starting to settle with their respective new teams, this fantasy baseball season will make for amazing and unpredictable baseball both on and off line. So start your draft prep, because spring training is just around the corner and Yahoo! Sports has all of the stats you need to leave the competition in the dirt.

If you don’t believe me, check out the Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball page or pick up a copy of Yahoo! Sports’ first magazine, Fantasy Baseball ’09 Draft Guide. It hits your local Borders or Barnes & Nobles in March. Don’t miss a second of the action with exclusive drafting information, player stats, streaming live games, MLB news, Yahoo! Fantasy expert tips and more.

Now, go round up your friends and family to join you in a harmless game of fantasy baseball. Little do they know that you’ve got all your bases covered to take home this year’s championship. Don’t forget to look for me, Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball ’09 cover athlete, online at Yahoo! Sports. Let the smack talking begin!

Mark Teixeira
Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball ’09 Cover Athlete
New York Yankees #25

Now I’m co-owner of Dapple, purveyor of the first line of environmentally-friendly products that deal with baby-specific cleaning challenges. And thanks to Yahoo! Small Business, our business is skyrocketing –- even in the current economic climate.

In March, on a whim, my partner Tamar Rosenthal and I applied to Yahoo! Small Business and fwm‘s “Seeds for Success” grant program and were later named one of the three finalists chosen from among 5,500 entrepreneurs. Over the last six months, we competed for the grand prize by working toward milestones with our website, sales, partnerships, PR and marketing, and more. More than 660,000 people recently cast their votes on Yahoo!. And lo and behold, we won!

It’s wild to think that just six months ago, we had no products on shelves, no retail presence. Just a few prototypes and a lot of hope. After we earned Yahoo!’s grant of $25,000 in cash and services, it was the perfect storm. We were able to produce our first two products, found small retailers in our New York City neighborhood willing to be our first test market, and built our web site. I can’t describe the kind of endless credibility the Yahoo! name gave us. We later struck deals with two major national retailers, attended trade shows, won an iParenting Media Award for best product, and got a lot of great attention from mommy bloggers. We’ve sold more than 25,000 units to date, have distribution in 300 stores and strong interest from big national chains, and now have six products in our line.

As part of our prize, we got mentoring advice from some really legendary figures through fwm (Finding What Matters). For example, fwm’s Carolyn Kepcher, of “The Apprentice” fame and Yahoo!’s program co-sponsor, helped us shore up our business plan while being a great sounding board. Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, taught us about breaking through closed doors “in a ladylike way” but never giving up. Brand guru David Vinjamuri helped us create thoughtful packaging (e.g., pump dispensers are far more convenient for harried moms) and branding that resonated with our customers. Beauty maven Bobbi Brown gave tips about carefully growing our business. And Scott Smigler from Yahoo! partner Exclusive Concepts helped us recognize how important a successful Web site is as part of the mix and was amazing in revamping our Yahoo! Small Business Web site.

We’ve experienced many ups and downs in our journey and we’re often humbled by the hard work and dedication of other passionate entrepreneurs. If you’re on the edge of jumping in and think you have a great idea with a lot of promise, we say “go for it!” But put on your seatbelt and hang on –- the ride is incredible. As for Dapple, we plan to use our grand prize winnings to bring you even more baby-friendly cleansing products in the near future.

Dana Rubinstein
Co-Founder, Dapple

As a fantasy life coach, there are some tips I can offer you to help your game, including the most important one –- draft me, Braylon Edwards, wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, first. Did you know I hold the team record for receiving yards and caught 16 touchdowns last season, second best in the NFL? Do you know how many points that is? That’s big time… enough to make you look silly if you don’t draft me this year.

Second, gather your family, friends and co-workers around the computer and kick-off the fantasy season at http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/. The new draft is so easy your mom can use it. Yes, invite your mom to play in your league, and like any good coach I must remind you not to talk smack to your mother.

Third, sign up for fantasy football mobile features. Do you think coaches just sit around all day? No, they are on the move and they can’t afford to let the team struggle because they’re moving and shaking. It’s not acceptable for your fantasy team to be left behind because you didn’t know your receiver was injured. As of September 2nd, sign up for Yahoo! mobile at http://m.yahoo.com/fantasy and manage your team while you’re on the go.

I hope these pearls of wisdom transform your ’08 fantasy team into a championship. Check out Yahoo! Sports this season for more of my coaching tips.

Braylon Edwards
Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football ’08 Cover Athlete

The Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship at Stanford was established for people like Violet, journalists from countries where there are strong challenges to a free press. Yahoo! and the Knight Fellowships agreed that we needed to support journalists who were directly or indirectly under attack, and so we created the fellowship in 2006, with a generous gift from Yahoo!. (The Knight Fellowships itself has been around since 1966. A young Jerry Yang first met with the Knight Fellows in the spring of 1995.)

The first Yahoo! Fellow was Imtiaz Ali, from Pakistan, where journalism is a deadly occupation. But there could hardly be country that fits our definition better than Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s regime has systematically and brutally cracked down on anyone who disagreed with it — opposition politicians, the press, human rights activists and others. Violet Gonda has been banned from the country (actually, the justice minister said the country would welcome her back — but only in prison) so she works in exile, at a small radio station, SW Radio Africa, in London. This station broadcasts uncensored news about Zimbabwe back into the country by any means possible, including text messaging. (Want to get a taste of her work? Listen to these two interviews, one with a Mugabe spokesman and the other with Desmond Tutu.) We were proud to have her for the year at Stanford, where she studied the development of news media in emerging democracies. Now she is back in London. If there’s a God in heaven, someday she will someday be able to return to her homeland.

And as she leaves, we are ready to welcome Abebe Gellaw, of Ethiopia, who will be the 2008-09 Yahoo! International Fellow. Like Violet, Abebe is in exile. He left after the Ethiopian government started rounding up and arresting journalists in November 2005. He is editor-in chief of Addis Voice, a London-based website devoted independent news about Ethiopia. He will arrive in August for his year.

Journalists are under attack around the world, and organizations like the Committee To Protect Journalists make sure that those attacks are brought to light. It makes me feel proud that the Knight Fellowships and Yahoo! have teamed up to provide a fellowship at Stanford every year for someone who is bearing the brunt of those attacks.

Jim Bettinger
Director, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
Stanford University

I’m no different, except my favorite moments were spent atop the Olympic medal podium. My formative years were with the U.S. gymnastics team, and for three unforgettable Games, I got to compete with and against the best in the world.

Needless to say, a lot has changed for me since I last wore the red, white and blue. Instead of worrying about my next floor exercise, I’m worrying about how I’ll be able to stay up late enough to watch the women compete. I’m a spectator now, and I want to make sure my next favorite sports moment isn’t happening while I’m sleeping or driving to the grocery store!

This made me realize I needed to be in Beijing this year, but I haven’t forgotten how it feels for everyone back at home. That’s why I’ll be joining fellow Olympians Gretchen Bleiler and Mike Powell to cover the 2008 Games on the Yahoo! Sports Summer Games site. We’ll work alongside Yahoo!’s experts to give every fan a minute-by-minute account of what’s happening with the world’s greatest athletes, day or night.

I know, you’re thinking that still won’t help when your favorite sport isn’t covered in the papers, or is only on Channel 390 at 3:25 a.m. But Yahoo! is offering some new features to help you stay on top of all the sports – like the Watch List, which lets fans track results, news and medals for their favorite countries, sports and athletes. You won’t even need to worry about staying next to your computer, because Yahoo!’s mobile Web site gives fans the option of tracking the medal count, getting the latest news, and seeing photos right on your mobile phone.

So while you’re half way around the world from the Games this summer, don’t wonder what it’s like to be there. Just visit Yahoo! Sports Summer Games and look for me and my friends; we’ll tell you – anytime you want. It’s not a trip to the podium, but it’s pretty close!

Dominique Dawes
Yahoo! Sports
1992, 1996, 2000 U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team

Kids don’t email often anymore. They text-message and send instant messages faster than you can figure out what they’re saying, and sometimes faster than they know what they’re saying. The new iPhone will be available in July; just what does that mean for the kids who use iPhones? There are plenty of controls parents can put in place to help guide their kids to use the web safely, but it’s not always the simplest information to find. And even when we put controls in place, kids grow into teens quickly and move beyond simple controls. They need to learn how to navigate the online world safely, and parents need to know how to help them find their way.

There are some great resources on the web for parents to learn all of this, of course. It’s just often hard to know where to look. Yahoo! Kids launches its new Parents channel this week with some of the best resources and top minds who have been looking out for kids on the web under one roof: Yahoo! Kids Parents.

You’ll find Larry Magid, a longtime technology journalist and Internet safety advocate blogging about safety issues, including what parents need to know about the new, less-expensive iPhone that will surely make its way into more kids’ hands. Larry contributes to CBS News, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News and several other major news outlets.

He also is the co-director of ConnectSafely.org, an interactive web site for teens, parents, and educators with Anne Collier, who also is blogging on Yahoo! Kids Parents. Anne and Larry are the co-authors of “MySpace Unraveled: A Parent’s Guide to Teen Social Networking.” Anne has been providing some of the best kid-tech news to parents in an accessible, measured way on NetFamilyNews, and she’s now bringing her well-informed, clear-eyed perspective to Yahoo! Kids.

As a Yahoo! Tech blogger for the past few years, I followed Anne and Larry’s take on kids and technology closely. I also checked in often on Common Sense Media, a wonderful resource for parents to vet movies, video games – all media available for kids to consume. Now, you can find all of these and more expert voices and resources on Yahoo! Kids Parents to make sense of the latest technology advances and what they mean for kids of all ages. I’ll also be blogging on Yahoo! Kids Parents, in addition to blogging for my daily Yahoo! gig, editor of Shine Work+Money.

Finally, a place on the web to find reliable information from several trusted sources about kids, technology, and online safety.

Dory Devlin

Yahoo! Kids Parents Tech Blogger

Photo from galina135

But first, let me explain why this program is so near and dear to me. One word: Mentoring. My own career, including the opportunity to judge on The Apprentice and the upcoming launch of FindingWhatMatters.com (what should be the single largest network of career/life experts and resources anywhere), was built on the advice of wise mentors. They helped steer and cheer me. And now it’s my turn to pay it forward.

The three winners will have access to a host of business experts, including myself; Bobbi Brown, founder and CEO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics; Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines and author of the bestselling book “Basic Black: The Essential Guide to Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life);” and a dozen others who have walked the entrepreneur’s road. We’ll take them under our wings and show them the proverbial ropes.

Each finalist will also receive a grant package that includes $20,000 in cash, $5,000 in website consulting from three Yahoo! Small Business partners, and website hosting from Yahoo!.

Without further ado, I present the three finalists:

Dana Rubinstein (New York, NY): Dana is co-founder of Dapple, a company which produces baby-safe and earth-friendly detergents, cleaners and sanitizers. She and her business partner created these products based on their own experiences of wanting safer, eco-friendly choices for their children. Dapple is ready to launch its first product in NYC test markets this spring.

Abby Port (Woodstock, GA): Abby is founder and CEO of Red Koala, an online purveyor of customizable canvas-based art for everything from home décor to other canvas products, such as shoes, totes and luggage. A veteran of the corporate world, Abby decided to start her own business after the birth of her third child. Work on Red Koala’s website has already begun and the site should be ready to launch in a couple of months.

Karla Duncan (Birmingham, AL): A pediatric speech pathologist, Karla is founder and president of Head2Toe Publications, a company that designs and develops toys and educational materials specifically for special needs children. Karla founded Head2Toe out of a desire to have the products she truly needs in order to care for the children with whom she works. Head2Toe products currently are in development.

These women, painstakingly (truly the roughest part of this assignment!) selected from among 5,500 entrants with compelling ideas, will spend the next six months using the mentoring, hosting and financial resources they’ve won to grow their businesses. The one who achieves the most growth in that time will win a $10,000 bonus grant.

Want to keep up with their progress? Check in regularly to track the finalists and their businesses, and tap into blog entries from them, as well as from Bobbi, Cathie, and me.

Success. It’s all in knowing where to go with what you’ve got. And finding the right someone to point you there.

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

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

I’ve been hooked on Flickr since 2005, so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard I might be able to share my Flickr fever as part of my job! I work for TechSoup, a nonprofit that other nonprofits go to for technology help and resources. Typical nonprofits we work with are very small organizations working with the poor or youth activities.

Here at TechSoup we’ve been using Flickr’s photo service for years in a variety of ways. NetSquared, a TechSoup program, set up the “I Want Change!” and “NetSquared” Flickr Groups to help people share ideas about how nonprofits use Web 2.0 and social networking tools like Flickr to tell their stories and spark change. We encouraged NetSquared participants from all over the world to use event-specific tags to make it easy to share their pictures of group meetings and events on Flickr. So it seemed a perfect pairing when Flickr started talking with us about offering nonprofits a donation program of free Flickr Pro accounts.

When nonprofits turn to TechSoup for technology help and resources, they’re often looking for donations of software and hardware. Their technology is sometimes so out of date that they can hardly imagine something beyond the basics of word processing, fundraising, and virus protection. Donating Flickr Pro accounts will let nonprofits effortlessly use social networking both for fun and to help better fulfill their mission for social benefit.

I am a firm believer that photos have the power to amplify storytelling and provide a glimpse into the reality of a situation to move people to take action around causes. Such a believer that we think it’s important to reach out to the 90,000 nonprofits that are registered with TechSoup to help them find like-minded people by introducing them to the world that is available to them through Flickr and cool tools like tagging and creating groups. For example, Interplast has used Flickr to demonstrate the results of free reconstructive surgery for poor children in developing countries.

I have met so many amazing people through Flickr. I have chatted with people from countries I will never visit — people in war-torn areas who amaze me in their openness, people with shared interests and visions that can mobilize quickly to effect change. And I’ve even met some Flickr people face-to-face who have become good friends. I can’t imagine a world without Flickr. I am so glad to have a professional mission that now allows me to show nonprofits how Flickr can open so many possibilities for them, their staff, their volunteers, their clients, customers, and friends.

If you work as nonprofit volunteer or staff member, please check out the Flickr donation program on TechSoup. So, get on with it, go forth and load up your photos!

Carol Rudisill
Director, TechSoup Stock
TechSoup

When I first started searching for a solution to this problem I looked long and hard at what was out there already. That’s when I found OpenID. Over the past 5 years I’ve been active in the world of open source and identity and as the current Chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation, we’ve been working hard to make the web a more “open” place. OpenID is an open technology (developed much in the same way that Mozilla’s Firefox or the Linux kernel is) that has been built by an amazing group of individuals. The goal was simple; create something that allows users to quickly and easily login to any site with just one username and password.

Today’s announcement by Yahoo! supporting OpenID is the realization of three years of hard work from this extremely passionate community of developers. I have never met a more committed set of people focused on doing “the right thing” all the time. In the coming months, the community will continue to formalize around the OpenID Foundation. It’s the home of OpenID and a place for this community to thrive.

Yahoo! has really made a big leap with the support of OpenID. More than just supporting another open protocol, they are embracing the concepts around the open web; the idea that users not only own their data but that they should be in complete control of their digital identities. Traditionally this has been a difficult concept for companies, sites and users to grasp. The ever-changing reality is that not only is this good for users, its just plain good for business.

I couldn’t be more excited to see this happen and it’s going to open a door of opportunity for users and developers alike. We’re already seeing innovative ways to secure your identity, communicate and even engage in the political discourse. We’re only scratching the surface on what OpenID is going to enable as a key component of the open web.

I know we don’t have all of the answers to how this will all play out. Today is another step forward in the long walk to a better experience for the user. One thing is for sure; the best is yet to come.

Scott Kveton
Chairman of the Board of Directors
OpenID Foundation

The arithmetic hasn’t changed. Despite the good news released by UNAIDS earlier this month that there are fewer people living with AIDS and fewer infections than previously estimated, there are still 33 million HIV-infected people on the planet and 7,000 new infections daily. AIDS is the fourth leading cause of death globally. Life-prolonging treatments for AIDS have improved and have become more available and affordable even in poorer countries. These drugs are not cures, nor are they, because of resistance and toxicity problems, a long-term solution for sufferers. The best hope for ending the epidemic is a preventive vaccine.

Securing funding for this vital but long-term work is a challenge, and Yahoo! is once again bringing its resources to bear. In 2001, Yahoo! became International AIDS Vaccine Initiative’s (IAVI) first major corporate supporter, providing free advertising to raise awareness around AIDS vaccines. On the occasion of World AIDS Day 2007, Yahoo! will bring hope to the field by featuring IAVI’s “Make AIDS History – $100K Campaign” on its World AIDS Day microsite. The money raised will support IAVI’s Innovation Fund , our newest scientific initiative designed to bring fresh, bold approaches to AIDS vaccine research.

We hope that you will visit the IAVI-Yahoo! microsite and consider making a donation. Securing financial support is key to our mission, as is spreading the word about the need for an AIDS vaccine. Vaccines for other diseases have altered the course of human history. They have eradicated smallpox from the world and polio from most western countries. More than two dozen fatal diseases can now be prevented by vaccines. We must add AIDS to this list. We hope you can do your part today.

Seth Berkley
President & CEO
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

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’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

Are you ready to take part in a new kind of presidential campaign forum, one that puts you in charge of shaping exactly what kind of viewing experience you want to have — from the questions that are asked to the ability to pick and choose what issues you want to hear about and the candidates you want to hear from?

Then, do we have a mashup for you.

Later this week, Yahoo!, in partnership with the Huffington Post and Slate, will be rolling out our first-ever online-only presidential candidate mashup — moderated by Charlie Rose and featuring all eight Democratic candidates (we have extended invitations to all the Republican candidates, and are looking forward to presenting a GOP presidential mashup later this year).

Here’s how it will work. On September 12, Charlie Rose, armed with user-submitted questions, will have a conversation with each of the candidates. After the candidates have finished talking, the tech geniuses at Yahoo! will work their magic and the next day the video will be put at your disposal — empowering you to create the debate of your choosing.

A few weeks ago, more than 100,000 Yahoo! users took part in a poll to determine the subjects to be covered in the mashup. The winning issues turned out to be the war in Iraq, health care, and education. The candidates will also be asked a wild card question that can be about any topic.

The rest is up to you. Want to see what all the candidates said about Iraq? It’s just a click away. Or maybe you just want to compare the answers of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Or perhaps health care is your primary concern and you want to see how John Edwards’ take on the issue compares to Joe Biden’s or Chris Dodd’s. The point is, you can watch what you want, when you want, and how you want. Focus on one candidate or one issue or mix and match. Then share your takes on what you see with your friends or other mashup users.

The tech advances of the last few years have turned the news and entertainment worlds on their ears, shifting the balance of power away from media pooh-bahs dictating what is important and what is not, and towards consumers — and citizens — being empowered to choose and create. Technology is poised to have the same game-changing effect on the political world.

The 2008 campaign will be the first truly 21st-century presidential race. We have entered the era where candidates routinely announce their candidacy, try out and place campaign ads, and raise tens of millions of dollars online. And they are connecting to voters via increasingly interactive websites.

This bodes well for the democratic process since it will allow campaigns to engage a whole new generation of young voters who spend so much of their time — and get so much of their information — online. It’s where they get their news; it’s where they share their views (and their pictures, videos, favorite songs, diaries, etc). It’s how they stay connected to their friends — and how they can become connected to the candidates.

So, starting on September 13, be sure to check out our candidate mashup — and be part of the online revolution currently storming the barricades of the ’08 race.

Arianna Huffington
Editor-in-Chief
Huffington Post

Having been heralded by the daily late afternoon thunder and lightning storm, the clouds rolled in to create a dark and moonless humid night. There were 18 of us on our nightly turtle watch. Without our flashlights — or as our British friends would say, “torches” — it was nearly impossible for me to see more then a few feet away.

Pulga (that’s flea in Spanish), the neighborhood dog, started barking and howling. Despite our leader’s no light rule (“don’t scare the turtles”), the flashlights came on to reveal the oddest creature any of us had ever seen. It was about three feet long, mostly white with a black saddle. But it had no visible face — just a long skinny snout. Startled by Pulga, it stood on its hind legs and began a funny kung-fu-like dance while making a kind of eerie screeching-howling sound. Fortunately for all involved, it quickly decided flight was better than fight and scampered off into the jungle.

We all stood there amazed and then laughing at what we had just seen, not knowing for sure if it was for real or some sort of live Muppet show. We found out later we had just had the rare privilege of seeing a Tamandua (banded or lesser anteater).

Our Tamandua sighting was just one of many different and wonderful experiences we enjoyed during our nearly two-week tour of Costa Rica, thanks to Yahoo!. I’m a second-grade teacher from Butler Creek Elementary school, located in Gresham, Oregon, and I had the privilege of being chosen by Yahoo! to participate in a free eco-trip with G.A.P Adventures. I was nominated by my school because of my work with our environmental club. Choosing a trip from the menu of fantastic adventures G.A.P offers was difficult, but my husband Tom and I decided on Costa Rica because this particular tour included a week of volunteering at a sea turtle protection project. We both prefer experiencing the local culture first-hand rather than spending our time at a resort. This also seemed to fit the eco theme. Did we get it right!

Our group of 17 strangers from England, Canada, and different parts of the U.S. went on an incredible journey that included a sloth rescue, monkey sightings, an up-close-and-personal sea turtle egg-laying experience, horseback riding, volcano viewing, a jungle cruise, white water rafting, zip-lining, and much more.

As I think about how this trip will affect me as a teacher and what I’ll bring back to my students, I remember the day we visited the local elementary school at Playa Matapalo. I was able to sit with a small group of children, about the same age that I teach, and despite the language barrier, it quickly became apparent to me that I was talking to the same kids I see every day. There was the jokester, the shy one, the thoughtful one — the same mix that is in my class. It truly is a small world. A world we all must appreciate more before there is nothing left to appreciate. Whether we are protecting sea turtles or salmon, pine trees or palm trees, we must leave for our children the wonders that we enjoy today.

I am very grateful to Yahoo! for their commitment to our environment and to the next generation. Through campaigns like Be a Better Planet or product efforts like your Autos Green Center, you are helping us all be more aware of alternatives to our more destructive habits. The Internet can be a powerful tool that can help us all appreciate the world we have and environmentally responsible companies like Yahoo! are at the forefront of that effort. I truly appreciate the opportunity that Yahoo! gave me to explore just a tiny but important part of our world.

Mary Nemmert
2nd Grade Teacher
Butler Creek Elementary School
Gresham, Oregon

Ever since it was named Yahoo!’s winning hack, the purse has been the topic of many conversations in the fashion industry. As Fall Fashion Week kicks off this week here in New York, I’m proud say I’ll be escorting the accessory throughout the festivities, proving that fashion and technology are a keen match.

The hack, Blogging in Motion, was a design that used Flickr and Zonetag APIs to feed images taken from a purse fitted with a Nokia camera phone and Bluetooth GPS to our Flickr photostream in real time. Using a pedometer, the purse can be set to take pictures every 10 steps for a photoblog that doesn’t miss a thing.

I’ll be using the purse to provide an inside look at Fashion Week events from a very unusual perspective. In fact, tonight I’ll be hosting an event for fashion bloggers organized by my friends at Fashion Indie. If you can’t make it to the festivities, check out Fashion Indie’s Flickr photostream for some cool shots.

As for what’s next for me, I am writing a couple of books about fashion and technology that are tentatively scheduled to come out next year. In addition, I’ll be launching a few (more wearable) techie-fashions later this year using some cutting-edge new materials. I’m hoping that they’ll even be machine washable.

Diana Eng
Fashion Nerd
2006 Yahoo! Open Hack Day Winner

Today, Brad Pitt and I hosted a “board cutting” ceremony in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward to launch what we hope will become the future of green affordable housing and a cornerstone of New Orleans’ rebuilding efforts. Global Green sponsored an international design competition last summer, with more than 125 firms competing to design a zero-energy affordable housing development. This morning, we offered the first hard-hat tour of the Holy Cross Project site, showcasing the winning design, which was created by Matthew Berman and Andrew Kotchen of Workshop/APD.

Thanks to our friends at Yahoo! Green, you can take a virtual tour of this home, which is being built with green products and energy efficient systems and whose solar panels will generate enough electricity to power the home. You’ll find information about dozens of green products and systems, which fall into the categories of water conservation, energy conservation, natural resource conservation, indoor air quality, and durability. You’ll learn about innovative materials such as eco-friendly termite- and mold-resistant wood, soy-based foam insulation, and wheat boards.

The principles we are applying are simple at their core: if only 50,000 homes in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were rebuilt according to even 40% of the energy and resource standards used in this home, the residents would save up to $56 million in electricity costs and reduce global warming pollution by 550,000 tons each year.

Global Green’s work has always included a focus on communities and addressing those in need. From our work on green schools to green affordable housing, it’s about revitalizing communities from the inside out, while addressing poverty. It is immensely rewarding to be bringing together and mobilizing such a dedicated team of people — from Brad Pitt; our lead funding partner, The Home Depot Foundation (with whom we’ve worked on green affordable housing for several years); Yahoo!; our designers, architects, and developers; and the Holy Cross community — all believing that imbedded in this project is real hope and the opportunity to make New Orleans the first true green city.

Matt Petersen
President and CEO, Global Green

Q. You are credited as the first person to use the text smiley face :-) in electronic communications, specifically online bulletin boards. How did you come up with the idea and what was its initial purpose?

In the early 1980′s, the computer science community at Carnegie Mellon was beginning to make heavy use of online bulletin boards or “bboards” – the primitive ancestors of online newsgroups and, much later, of blogs. Many of the posts were serious – talk announcements, requests for information – while other posts discussed topics of general interest, ranging from politics to abortion to campus parking.

Given the nature of the community, we also had a number of posts that were humorous (or attempts at humor). The problem was that if someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke. In some cases, they would respond angrily to what (they thought) the post was saying. This often led to “flame wars”: lengthy arguments that would bury the original thread of the discussion.

Someone proposed that the only way to prevent this, short of banishing all these clueless people from our midst, was to invent some sort of marker that could be put in a post’s subject line to indicate that the post was meant to be sarcastic and should not be taken seriously. But in those days, all we had was the ASCII character set, and nobody could come up with a short sequence of characters that conveyed the desired meaning. And then it occurred to me that the character sequence :-) looked like a grinning face if the reader turned his or her head sideways.

So I posted a very brief note on a Carnegie Mellon bboard proposing that we use :-) as the joke marker, and :-( as the “I’m not kidding” marker, though the latter soon evolved into a marker for unhappiness or anger. I tossed this off in about five minutes, not even bothering to proofread the note or save a copy. And things took off from there.

Q. How did people react to the smiley when you first used it? How much time passed before people started to adopt the smiley?

Those who were participating in the local bboard discussion about a joke marker liked the :-) idea and picked it up at once for their posts and Email. From there it quickly spread to other research universities via the Arpanet – the ancestor of today’s internet. Within a few months I started seeing lists with dozens of “smilies” including open-mouthed surprise, person wearing glasses, Abraham Lincoln, Santa Claus, the Pope, and so on. For a few people, creating and compiling these complex text-string smilies (later dubbed “emoticons” by someone) became a serious hobby.

Q. Was there a specific point in time when you realized you created something that would take off the way that this did?

This idea spread very quickly through the few universities and hi-tech companies that were on the old Arpanet. It was gratifying that my colleagues found the idea so amusing, but I figured that it would stop there and would gradually fade away as the novelty wore off.

It did stop there for quite a while, though it never faded away. The Arpanet evolved into the Internet. First it spread to other universities and companies, gradually it began to spread to research groups outside of the United States, and in the 1990s the Internet quickly spread into the homes of average citizens. And as each new group got access to Email and newsgroups and blogs, they began to see the smiley faces. Many of them adopted this idea, either because they found it amusing or they considered it a badge of membership in the computer-savvy community.

This second phase occurred so gradually that it was almost invisible to me. So I didn’t realize that the smiley had turned into a long-lasting, worldwide phenomenon until years later, when the mainstream media started writing stories about it.

Q. What’s the most interesting thing that has happened to you since being acknowledged as the creator of smileys?

There have been a lot of little moments when friends and acquaintances have learned that I’m “that guy”, and their jaw-dropping reactions (or sometimes outright disbelief) have been fun to watch. The press coverage has come in waves: someone at a local paper will do a story, AP will pick it up, and two weeks later I’m on the phone with some reporter from Finland or New Zealand.

One interesting moment was when the Wall Street Journal did a story on this. Several members of my family have been successful in business, and I was always (jokingly) called the black sheep of the family for going into something as impractical as artificial intelligence research. So guess which member of the clan was the first to get his name on the front page of the WSJ – for some silly thing I tossed off in five minutes.

Q. You’ve shared that you are not a big fan of the newer animated emoticons. However, if you were to create a new emoticon today to express any emotion, what would it be?

I’ve been a fan of Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.” It would be nice to have a smiley that captures that emotion as well as Munch did. When deadlines are looming and things are going wrong, I’d use that symbol about six times a day. The :-( symbol just doesn’t capture the full horror of discovering that your Internet connection just went down, an hour before the deadline for submitting a major funding proposal.

Q. What do you think is the future of the emoticon?

It’s surprising to me that people still use these things – they were very much a product of the limited character sets that we had in the 1980′s. But they’re quick, convenient, versatile, and occasionally clever, so maybe they’ll live on even in a world where we all have access to graphics and voice and video in our messages. Of course, if written communication dies out altogether, as some have predicted, then the emoticon will die with it, but I don’t expect to see that.

Q. Have you heard any unusual tales of where smileys have been used in particularly tense situations? Between world leaders, for example, where body language is important?

I’ve never heard of a smiley being used in a message between world leaders or in an international treaty. But back in the 1990′s, when the Soviet Union was breaking up and everyone feared a coup, I saw some messages from people in Moscow to their friends in the West with news that they were still OK and that things were not quite as scary as they appeared to be in news reports. Some of those messages had smiley faces, signifying relief and reassurance rather than “this is just a joke”. That was one of the few times when I’ve felt real pride in helping to create this thing.

Q. Do you think emoticons are over-used?

Sometimes. When people first discover this idea, they tend to got nuts for a while – just as they do when they discover that they can put a dozen colors and a hundred fonts in a single document. That’s annoying to those of us who have been using Email for decades and who no longer are thrilled by all the possibilities. These people are trying to show that they’re part of the “in group”, but by over-doing it they actually label themselves as “newbies”. But most people soon outgrow this phase and settle down, only using an occasional smiley or frowny face where it makes some kind of sense to do so.

Some people feel that the emoticon has no place in good writing. True, an emoticon can take the place of the facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice that we use in face-to-face communication, but it’s certainly possible to convey sarcasm or unhappiness in other ways. I always wonder whether these same people object to the exclamation mark – a typographical convention that has been in common use since the 1400′s. Like emoticons, exclamation marks are not really necessary to convey meaning: a good writer can find other ways to express excitement. But many writers do find them useful – and a few writers annoy us by using too many of them!!!

More details on Professor Fahlman’s involvement in the birth of the text smiley can be found here.

And don’t forget to enter the Yahoo! Messenger Emoticontest to be the new face of Yahoo! Messenger! Yahoo! Messenger will add six new animated emoticons to its service in the coming months. To enter Yahoo! Messenger’s Emoticontest, go here and submit a photo of a signature look or favorite expression. The Bix online community will vote on the submissions and determine the next generation of emoticons in Yahoo! Messenger. The contest is running in the U.S., India and Vietnam until July 31, 2007.

Which might lead you to ask, “Why is Yahoo! announcing a deal with some company that was founded before the advent of electric lights?” For us, however, it seems like an obvious next step in the continued evolution of the way people get their news.

The press release outlines the basics: McClatchy, the country’s third largest newspaper publisher with 31 daily and 50 weekly newspapers and a big Internet portfolio, is going to start providing next-generation international news for some of the Yahoo! News pages. To start, we’ll be looking especially to our foreign bureaus: Baghdad, Cairo, Jerusalem and Beijing are first in line to contribute, scheduled to begin early in the second quarter.

They won’t just be sending news stories, though that’s a foundation for the plan. In addition, they’ll produce blogs available only at Yahoo! and McClatchy that take readers deeper — “behind the headlines” is the applicable cliché. Called “Trusted Voices,” we’ll encourage them to color outside the lines of traditional journalism in their blogs, offering readers a boots-on-the-ground perspective from the Arab street in Egypt or the increasingly crowded slopes of Everest (to name two of their recent datelines). Maybe Hannah Allam will provide a list of the Egyptian websites or blogs she finds most useful in understanding politics there; Dion Nissenbaum might help you unravel the political connections of those Israeli newspapers you always hear quoted. Tim Johnson, who covers China and Asia from Beijing, could offer insight into obstacles facing people thinking about going for the Olympics in 2008.

Some of these will be new efforts launched especially for this Yahoo! partnership; others are already under way. Tim’s been blogging from China for years at China Rises. The Iraqi employees at our Baghdad bureau offer a gritty, street-level view of the war no non-native reporter could duplicate at their group blog Inside Iraq.

Their English isn’t always perfect; their authenticity is beyond question. A recent post began like this: “Now and while I’m writing these words, the American troops are attacking a part of my neighborhood west Baghdad. At the same time, I got a call from my nephew that some insurgents are attacking her neighborhood south west Baghdad.” Another one included this chilling, understated opening: “Every time I tell myself that my next blog will be a pleasant story of days of old, I am confronted with a different story that needs to be told. A friend of mine called me to tell me the bad news. Her brother had been kidnapped, and the ransom set at $100,000. For any Iraqi, such an amount spells disaster.”

When the trans-continental telegraph started delivering same-day news from the East Coast to Sacramento in 1861, McClatchy’s Sacramento Bee newspaper had to start doing things differently. Same with commercial radio, and then television, and then this browser-thingie that showed up in the early 1990s. (McClatchy’s Raleigh News & Observer newspaper started Nando Times,widely credited as one of the first Internet news sites.)

Adaptation, change and competition are part of our DNA at McClatchy — and have been for 150 years. We’re excited about this chance to join the folks with the world’s biggest news audience in exploring the next phase of the adventure. Keep an eye out for our “Trusted Voices” in Yahoo! News, and please let me know what you think, what else you’d like, and what we could do better.

Howard Weaver
Vice President, News
The McClatchy Co.
hweaver at mcclatchy dot com

So many people coming out of the theater after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” told me how deeply affected they were and that they were looking to figure out what they could do to make a difference. It became clear to them from the overwhelming evidence that the debate about this climate crisis is over and it’s just a matter of “What can I do?”

My message today is this: You can do one thing right now and it only takes 18 seconds. That’s how long its takes to switch to an ENERGY STAR compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). That simple action will put money in your pocket and at the same time reduce greenhouse gases and our dependence on energy. If every American swapped just one bulb, it would save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and keep the equivalent of two million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere. We’d save enough energy to light more than 1.5 million homes for an entire year!

Today, a group of companies, government entities, non-profits, religious groups, academic institutions and individuals are launching a campaign to educate Americans about the cost-savings and environmental benefits of CFLs. 18Seconds.org is a movement about empowering the individual: Every person in America can literally change the world in one easy step.

If flickering, buzzing tubes come to mind when you think fluorescent, you’ll be surprised by today’s CFLs. They now rival the warm light of traditional incandescent bulbs and they work just about anywhere. They do cost more at the checkout counter (about $2.50), but you save it back in your electric bill in a matter of months. Simply put, CFLs are a win-win for your wallet and the environment.

Yahoo! has built a powerful tool in www.18seconds.org, which tracks data for CFL purchases nationally and locally. You will be able to see the amount of CFLs sold across the country, by city or state — along with the equivalent dollars, energy and greenhouse gas emissions saved. By the way, I have to give a shout-out to the amazing engineers who were given a sabbatical from their day jobs to pull it together. 18Seconds.org is a great feedback tool to see how we’re doing. AC Nielsen has collected purchase information for most grocery store, drug and mass merchandise retailers and is feeding it to the site. Hey, all you bloggers out there, grab the 18seconds badge and you’ll have your own personal ticker.

I believe the CFL is the Trojan horse into the minds of the American public — once you get somebody feeling good about making a difference while also saving money, you have them thinking about what else they can do. Every CFL represents an opportunity for ordinary people to take a stand.

Policymakers are beginning to embrace CFLs as an energy-saving solution. The Australian government just announced plans to ban incandescent bulbs in five years and similar legislation was proposed here in California by Assemblymember Lloyd Levine. And 12 U.S. mayors have already signed on to promote the 18Seconds mission in their respective cities — from San Jose to Seattle to Trenton. With proven cost savings and environmental benefits, and endorsements from leading scientists, non-profits, corporations and government entities, the popularity of CFLs is reaching a tipping point.

Global warming is potentially the greatest threat we’re facing this century. There’s a lot that has to be done. We need more fuel-efficient cars; more solar, wind and other renewable-energy technologies; and reduced carbon emissions from manufacturers. But don’t underestimate the power of simple collective actions. Change a bulb, change everything. Today.

(And weigh in on my Yahoo! Answers question today with your creative ideas on growing the movement.)

Lawrence Bender
Producer, “An Inconvenient Truth”

Photo from tedconferencephotos

The site is jam-packed with resources like car review videos, the latest news headlines, Yahoo! Answers content, del.icio.us links, myths debunked, and tools like gas-impact calculators, federal and state incentive programs, and alternative fuel station locators. Oh, and a cool new Green Rating system, which Yahoo! Autos developed with Environmental Defense, helps you gauge (on a scale of 1–100) how environmentally friendly your combustion engine is (or isn’t).

To demonstrate that green can also be macho, the Yahoo! Autos team has built the world’s fastest peanut-oil-powered vehicle — a 3,500 horsepower truck with Boeing 747 rear wheels and a parachute for brakes. On November 12, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, they hope to hit 240 mph and set the record as the fastest “greasel” ever driven. Our monster truck needs a name. Can you help?

In honor of all this greenery, we sat down with Martin Eberhard, CEO of Tesla Motors, who recently came to show off his incredible cars as part of our TechDev speaker series. (Watch the video of his interview with Yahoo! Autos’ Jon Guzik below). Martin’s little company has resuscitated the electric car with a vengeance. The Tesla Roadster goes from 0 to 60 in about four seconds, yet gets the equivalent of 135 mpg. And you can drive 250 miles on a single charge. The only catch is there aren’t many available (they only have a few 2007s left), and they go for $100,000. But hang tough until 2009 when the Tesla sport sedan will debut for less then $50,000 in mass production. I’m saving my nickels.

For four hours on Thursday and Friday night, people were invited to build and arrange 3D scenes and submit pictures from the virtual world to the Time Capsule. The Yahoo! Time Capsule sim will remain open in Second Life until November 6th, 2006 (so grab a free account at secondlife.com if you don’t have one). You can view images from the online Time Capsule and video from Jemez on screens and in an evolving 3D image sphere. (Note: You can still submit text and photos in Second Life until November 6.)

In true user-created metaverse fashion, where almost anything goes, almost anything went. In addition to noting humanoid visitors, I saw a giant lumbering teddy bear that would have given the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man a run for his virtual currency, dancing smurfs and turkeys, giant robots, and a young musician named Mel Cheeky, who logged in from Wales and sat on top of the Time Capsule drop box, serenading everyone for several hours on Friday night while streaming her live tunes inworld.

I’m the futurist on the Electric Sheep team (this is Jerry, co-blogging this with Jonah), helping guide the way to the 3D Web we see coming together between web-connected virtual world, video game, and geo-spatial technologies. For everyone in Second Life, the Time Capsule focused our thinking on the future of the kind of space we were in. How funny I’m sure we’ll look in 2020. (And no laughing about how funny we may look to you now! This is serious business :)).

We also sent an avatar from our very beta side project, playfully named Destroy Television, to the event to aid in the documentation. In many ways, Destroy *is* a time capsule, an avatar lifelog streaming live images from Second Life to the Web at destroytv.com and automagically posting tagged pics of everything she sees to Flickr (quite possibly the best photo service in the world ;)). You can watch a slideshow of Destroy’s most recent pics, for the moment cued to the Time Capsule event, here.

We’re really excited to have contributed to the Time Capsule project and doubly excited that Yahoo! would be aware enough to include the exciting frontier of virtual worlds like Second Life in the Time Capsule. This is a crucial time to capture the state of people’s virtual lives. We believe that Second Life’s current one million accounts are a drop in the bucket compared to the usage of these technologies in the future. Things can only get bigger for the metaverse in the next 14 years.

So, see you in 2020! Or in Second Life any time you want to look us up.

Jerry Paffendorf/SNOOPYbrown Zamboni &
Jonah Gold/Hank Hoodoo (Second Life Time Capsule chaperones),
and The Electric Sheep Company team