Happy Mole Day to you all! No, we’re not celebrating the burrowing mammal or even the chocolate-accented Mexican sauce. Mole Day commemorates Avogadro’s number — 6.02×10²³ — a way to measure infinitesimal things like atoms and ions. It’s celebrated from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m. on October 23rd. Get it? Here’s what our chemists concocted this week:

• Faces of the Flickrverse: Tagging has always been the fun part of Flickr, making it a cinch to find photos of anything from fungus to flugelhorns. This week, People in Photos made its debut, letting you add people to your photos, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in. If you’re tagged, you’ll get notified in your activity stream. If that sounds at all creepy to you, never fear – you’ve got plenty of privacy power. Opt out, opt in. More on the Flickr blog.
• Teach your phone to yodel: Sure, your mobile can probably mimic the sound of crickets, a dog bark, a vintage telephone, or sonar. But can it yodel? Now it can. In support of our Yodel Studio promotion, which seeks the world’s best new yodelers with a chance to be featured on our homepage and in our global marketing campaign, we’ve cooked up yodeling ringtones. And not just your government issue yodel. We’re talking hip-hop, a cappella, R&B, reggae, and bluegrass yodels. Download them here or text YODEL to 49737 in the US, 56263 in India, and 83338 in the UK. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your yodel and/or vote for your favorites. The deadline is November 8th.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Quick – who said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”? That’s right, Mahatma Gandhi and today would have been his 140th birthday. Take a little time to honor his legacy by celebrating justice, tolerance and creating change through nonviolent resistance. Here’s the kind of change we enacted this week:

• Homepage is more apptastic: If you’ve been playing with our new homepage apps, you’ve discovered our gallery of recommended apps. This week, we added more than a dozen new ones, with more to come. You can balance your personal budget with Mint, learn how to pair the right wine with your meal with an app from MyRecipes and Snooth, discover weekly deals at Target, get movie info from Flixster, or manage posts and comments on your WordPress blog — all from the Yahoo! Homepage. And because we’ve opened it up to third-party developers, expect that list to grow. More on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog.
• New Yahoo! Search: Notice anything different about Yahoo! Search? After a month of testing, we’ve rolled out a brand new Yahoo! Search that ups the ante in personal relevance. You’ll see new tools that let you explore related concepts; display only results from popular Yahoo! and third-party sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and IMDB; and narrow results by types of content like people, videos, and discussion forums. We also give you quick access to our Search Scan/SafeSearch tool, to protect you from viruses, spyware and spam, and Search Pad, which lets you take notes during your queries. More on the Yahoo! Search blog.
• Yahoo! Messenger kills bugs dead: The bug hunters on the Messenger team have released new versions of both Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta as well as Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone. In the former, they’ve fixed issues with webcam detection, added messaging to tell you when your friend needs to upgrade versions, offer better handling of unanswered calls, and explain when your Internet connection downgrades you to a voice call. Over on the iPhone, they’ve addressed the mysterious contact list disappearances. Download the upgrade in the iTunes App Store. More here and here on the Yahoo! Messenger blog.
• Zimbra milestone: Ok, what do Zimbra and South Africa have in common? People. Fifty million of them now have paid Zimbra mailboxes, just a bit more than the population of Africa’s most southerly nation That milestone comes amidst the launch of Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0, which now lets you more easily sync to your mobile, read and write emails with tabbed views, create presentations without external software, receive read email receipts, choose from among calendar views, and remotely wipe your phone if you lose it, among other features. More over on the Zimbra blog.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Avast, me hearties! Yon ‘morrow is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. If’n ye’d like to bellow like a true buccaneer, ye best be practicin’ smartly ‘fore the dawn. “Yes” tis an “aye,” “no” tis a “nay,” yer neighbor tis a “bilge rat,” an’ yer boss be a “scallywag.” “Wow” be “blimey!” an’ “gangway!” is what ye yells from yer car window. An’ ye best learn how to chat like a pirate, too. Here’s what we got shipshape this week:

• Unleash your inner curator: If you’re a photo nut, it’s easy to get sucked into exploring the more than 3.4 billion photos on Flickr. And if you’ve ever wanted to collect and horde your favorites by theme, have we got a new feature for you. Introducing Flickr Galleries, which gives members a handy way to celebrate the creativity of their fellow photographer. You can curate together up to 18 public photos or videos in one place – Big Ben, blue eyes, snails, cats with thumbs, mannequins, what have you. To get started, just click on the “Add to Gallery” icon on the menu bar. Just five days out of the gate and it’s a very popular feature – you’ve created more than 25,000 galleries to date. More here.
• Out with the old: The Messenger team has news for anyone using Yahoo! Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5. As of September 30th, we’ll be retiring those oldies. If you’re using anything below 8.0, you’ll find you won’t be able to sign in. That’s the price of progress, right? (We wouldn’t want you to be that guy still using a mobile phone with an antennae.) While Messenger 9.0 and the beta of Messenger 10 are rich in features like video sharing, full-screen video chat, spam protection, and more, we realize people like options. So after September 30th, you can also try Yahoo! Messenger for the Web or the IM built into Yahoo! Mail. More here.
• Celebrate en Español: In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Yahoo! En Español has teamed up with Kodak to invite Latinos – and Latinos at heart – to “Muestra Tu Herencia” (Show Your Heritage). Folks are invited to upload photos of friends and family through October 31st as well as leave comments. For every photo uploaded, Yahoo! and Kodak will donate $4 to the Hispanic College Fund (up to $20,000). And as of October 12th, we’ll unveil a digital photo mosaic of all the submitted photos as a tribute to Hispanic families across the U.S. Muchas gracias!

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Today, of course, is the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks in NYC, the Pentagon, and rural Pennsylvania. To ensure we never forget, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum just put out a call for people from around the globe to “Make History” with their images, videos, and stories as a permanent digital archive. Here’s how we made history this week:

• F-F-Fantastic phone apps: For the millions of you with touch-screen phones, you can now download some of Yahoo!’s most popular services. Call them the Three F’s: Finance, Flickr and Fantasy Football (or is that four Fs?). With interactivity reminiscent of their Web-based counterparts, these apps let you access our services on the go from an iPhone, iPod touch or select Blackberry models (including Bold, Tour and 8900 series). For now, Finance and Fantasy Football users can download them in the U.S. and Canada, while the Flickr app is also available in the UK, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For a deeper dive, check out our post earlier this week.
• Inviting apps & jumbo files: The new and improved Yahoo! Mail just debuted three new apps that turn your inbox into even more of a productivity hub. Head over to that handy Applications box and you’ll notice new apps from Evite and pingg — two options for sending and managing invitations. They sensibly integrate with tools like Yahoo! Calendar, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Maps to take the stress out of party-planning (and -going). And the new Attach Large Files app, courtesy of the folks at drop.io, lets you upload and share files up to 100MB. You can also collaborate by commenting on files, leaving a voicemail for more context or dialing in to a conference call for a real-time powwow. Read more here.
• Neighbors helping neighbors: Let’s say that waffle iron you plugged in blew your kitchen fuse and it’s been a blue moon since you last called an electrician. Where do you turn? The best tips are often from the people you bump into every day in your neighborhood. And we’ve just made it easier to get their word-of-mouth recommendations. Yahoo! Neighbors, a new feature on Yahoo! Local, lets you get answers to everyday problems. Use it to find local services or post questions and tips for the community. For a taste, check out this thread from some users in Dallas in search of a driving school.
• New souped-up Messenger for Mac: For all you Mac users, there’s a new beta version of Messenger available for download. Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 comes with a bunch of new bug fixes to help it run more smoothly. You’ll also get the Messenger Insider window that’s available on Windows versions, giving you a daily snapshot of what’s happening on Yahoo! and around the world. Want to take it for a test drive? Download it here and read more here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

It’s National Senior Citizen Day, a time to honor the wiser ones around us, thanks to a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan. Find your favorite elder states(wo)man, make them dinner, take them to the beach, or just sit back and ask them to tell tales of yore. BTW: You’d be surprised who qualifies as a senior these days (think Harrison Ford, Goldie Hawn, Diane Sawyer, and Debbie Harry). Here’s how we matured this week:

• Look ma, no wires: Those who manage their lives via Yahoo! Calendar and own an iPhone will rejoice – you can now sync the two! Tapping into the CalDAV open standard, we’ve collaborated with Apple to let you bring all your precious deets into your iPhone Calendar. You can also share your calendar with friends and family and likewise see their events on your phone. Nothing to download, no wires — it’s all over the air. That’s mighty George Jetson. More here.
• Tweeting your tunes: The latest version of FoxyTunes is out and it’s all atwitter. FoxyTunes, the toolbar that lets you control tunes from within your browser, now lets you easily tweet about the music you’re listening to. A project started about two years ago, TwittyTunes is officially a new default feature within FoxyTunes. And remember, you have 140 characters, which is enough to tweet, “Listening to a song I love: The Dandy Warhols – The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers aka the Ballad of Sherif Shorty.” What’s more, you can also share your song via Facebook, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Last.fm, and Yahoo! Status. It’s a musical meetup. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Six years ago today, some unruly trees in Ohio plunged 55 million people into darkness during the Northeast Blackout of 2003. While inconvenient, it forced people out of high-rise apartments, neighbors bonded, guitars went acoustic, candles were lit, and there might even be a higher than average number of kindergartners this year. Here are our new beginnings from this week:

• Cheapskates rule: There’s nothing like nuked portfolios and pink slips to make couponing de rigueur. This recession has spawned a generation of proud penny pinchers who enjoy the hunt for great bargains, and the refreshed Yahoo! Deals makes that even more sporting fun. In addition to daily deals, weekly electronic circulars, and online coupons from major retailers, you can now find great local bargains with coupons for groceries and neighborhood stores. You can even share your dollar-saving discoveries through social tools like Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious. Get your save on. More here.
• Trash talking mayors: Politics and fantasies should rarely mix. But mayors from 11 big football cities are letting their imaginations run wild as they pick their teams for the Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football Mayoral Face-Off. From San Francisco to Oakland, Green Bay to Buffalo, mayors are squaring off to see who can assemble the winning team. What’s in it for them? A check for $15,000 to benefit their favorite local sports charity. What’s more, the city with the most votes from football fans scores another $15,000. So go hit the polls now. More here.
• Measure your mojo: If you know how to retweet your @replies with a hashtag, you’re on Twitter. But do you know what kind of Twitter user you are? In celebration of the launch of our new Yahoo! Homepage, we’ve launched Know Your Mojo with a sophisticated pipe thingy that analyzes your account and spits out your social mojo. If you’re a Crowd Pleaser, you’re into hashtags. If you’re a BFF, you’re big into @replies. If you’re a Wall Flower, you seem to have forgotten how to type. We’ll also recommend what websites you should add to your own Yahoo! homepage to help feed your mojo. We’re a Concierge. More here.
• You’re two-faced: Speaking of customizing your Yahoo! Homepage, we’ve developed a Facebook quiz that acknowledges that there’s more than one side to each of us. In our Split Personality quiz, you’ll answer ten multiple-choice questions to determine whether you’re more like Tiger Hilfiger, Galileo Cronkite or Bono Rockefeller (etc.). And then we’ll suggest websites to add to your Yahoo! Homepage that match your dueling passions. What’s your split personality?

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Today is a day near to my heart — Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day. On this occasion, we are united in cursing impervious plastic packaging that even your sharpest scissors can’t cut. And those maddening wire twisties that slow the toy-to-child introduction rate by a factor of 27. Manufacturers, are you listening?! Here’s what we made easier to open this week:

• Photo hunting: There are more than 3 billion photos and videos on Flickr — guaranteeing that you’ll find awesome captures of just about anything. Now it’s easier to wade through that massive library with the new Flickr Search. The search results page has been redesigned with new “view” controls that let you dictate whether you want the thumbnails as small, medium, or detail. There’s also an option to view search results as a slideshow. You can also click on a particular photo to launch a popup preview with more info. And, since Flickr is all about serendipity and discovery, you’ll see links to the groups, photographers, tag clusters, and places that relate to your search. Try this search for polka-dotted poodle. More here.
• Fresh and Delicious: The team over at our favorite social bookmarking site unwrapped some tasty treats this week. Delicious now has new search tools, including the ability to search within a date range and filter by tags. You’ll also find rich content (YouTube videos, Flickr images, Yelp data) right on the search results page. Since we all want to know what everybody’s up to, Delicious has added the “Fresh Bookmarks” tab to let you see the most recently-saved bookmarks that are buzzing on Twitter. And speaking of Twitter, you can now tweet your bookmarks from right within Delicious. Ditto for emailing. More here and over on the Delicious blog.
• More Messenger movies: Baby panda videos. Movie trailers. Tour de France photos. The kind of stuff we love to share. If you have Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, it’s now all that much easier to ping friends with great videos and photos. The team had added support for a slew of sites to Messenger’s inline media player — ranging from Hulu, Facebook, and Vimeo to twitpic and CollegeHumor.com. All that because you told them to. Ask, and ye shall receive. More here.

Finally, a shout-out to reader Dennis Marks for suggesting we ditch the date in our Product Pulse headlines in favor of content clues (made good sense to us!).

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

¡Ay, caramba! It’s National Tequila Day! Perfect excuse to ditch that rot-gut variety and broaden your horizons beyond sugary frozen margaritas and shooters from a waitress’ holster. Get to know the finer points of fermented agave and sip a snifter of top-shelf blanco, joven, reposado, añejo, or extra añejo. But don’t overdo it just because it’s Friday! (Pssstt. Figs are the new hangover cure.) Here’s what we slammed down this week:

• Home sweet home: We’ve remodeled the house but we’re letting you pick out the furniture. The new Yahoo! Homepage is here! And it’s all about you. Load it up with your favorite websites by choosing from one of more than 65 apps or adding a link of your own. Also, your news is now hyper-local and you can also toggle the main news module for more of the big news that matters. And you can take it all with you — PC to mobile sync is coming very soon. If you live in the U.S., you can opt-in today by visiting http://yahoo.com/trynew. Our friends in France, India, and the UK will soon have access to localized versions and we’ll start rolling out to other markets in the next month. Take a tour and read more here.
• Roadtrip photos: If you’re one of the many people who researches travel destinations by checking out online photos, you’ll start packing your suitcase when you see the new travel image refiner on Yahoo! Image Search. You can now take a virtual tour of popular points of interest when you search for a destination. Which Hawaiian isle is right for you? Search for Hawaii and click on the thumbnails for islands like Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and popular spots like Haleakala National Park and Waimea Canyon. Try it with Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Rome, Sydney, New York City, San Francisco, and beyond. More here.
• More mobile Messenger: Attention, iPhone users – the latest Yahoo! Messenger app update is out and it is spiffy. Now you can get notified of a new message even when the app is closed. Make that, even when your iPhone is asleep! You can choose whether you get an alert on your home screen, an alert sound, or a badge featuring the number of messages — or all three, or none. Another new addition – you can now stay signed in for up to two weeks. Again, that’s even when your app is closed. And finally, you can now BUZZ! your friends – one of the most requested features for the iPhone app. Ask and ye shall receive! More here.
• Back to class: Yep, it’ll soon be time to trade flip-flops for Mary Janes – school is right around the corner. But we’re here to ease the pain. Our new Back to School site helps you choose the right backpack, find green school supplies, get safety tips, find ways to cut down your back-to-school budget, and even adjust to a new school. We give you a roster of shopping bargains, like dorm room essentials, MP3 players, and student duds. There’s also a study zone with fun learnings, games, and cool Avatar gear for when the time comes to drop a school bus in your background. And if you’re tired of the same ol’ same ol’, there are great healthy school lunch recipes. In the meantime, make the most of those flip-flops!

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Nine years ago today, the first blueprint of the human being emerged as the Human Genome Project released a first draft of a fully sequenced human genome. All hail the double helix! Since then, scientists have used it to screen for various illnesses and link genes with specific diseases. Here’s what we decoded this week:

• Toolbar tricks: Now, every browser comes with a toolbar, so why would you want the new one from Yahoo!? Does yours let you preview your email or content from more than 100 popular sites? Does it give you query suggestions as you search? Does it let you search directly within sites like Flickr or Wikipedia? I didn’t think so. Go download yourself the new Yahoo! Toolbar. It’s all about letting you do more faster. More here.
• Making the little guy feel big: If you own a small business, you know how much you covet the marketing dollars of the big dogs. Well, the playing field has officially been leveled. Our new My Display Ads let businesses of any size run affordable online display (or banner) campaigns that reach local markets on Yahoo!. How affordable? Let’s just say we can make thirty bucks go a long way. These self-service ads are easy to create – just pick from one of our 800+ templates; customize text, images, colors and add your company logo; select your target audience; and off you go. You’re guaranteed to feel embiggened. More here.
• Proud to have Pride: It’s LGBT Pride month and we’re doing it up big with this year’s Yahoo! Pride site. We’ve got news from the Advocate, a killer timeline that summarizes the last century in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender history, and an event finder for more than 1,000 Pride events around the world. But best of all, we might be sending you and a friend to Sydney for the LGBT Mardi Gras in February. But hurry, you have to enter by July 1st (or come meet us in San Francisco this weekend to enter in person). More here.
• Dog days of summer: The race is on and you’ve got about 11 weeks to make the most of it. It’s summertime and we’ve pulled together a little helpful microsite to keep you from squandering it. Need help with travel plans? Check out articles on getaways that involve beachs, golf, family, national park, or weekend furloughs. Want great recipes? We’ve got ideas for grilling, oven-free cooking, drinks, and chill-out treats. There’s also shopping ideas, tips on keeping that lawn green, kids activities, and giving your Avatar a more sunswept look. Check it out here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

So long, bunnies ears. Hello, digital clarity. If you have an analog television, today is D-Day (in the U.S. at least) — the long-fabled digital switchover is here. If you haven’t gotten your converter box yet, your TV is SOL — and static-y ghosts have gone the way of Pong, Betamax, and the 8-track. Here’s what we digitized this week:

• Rock on, iPhone: There’s just something about radio — that element of surprise, that anticipation of what’s coming next, that man-I-haven’t-heard-that-song-in-years sensation. That’s the promise of our new Yahoo! Music iPhone app. Powered by CBS Radio, it lets you browse through 300+ stations within more than 20 genres (from Bollywood to Goth to Naughty Comedy), skip up to six tracks an hour, find local stations via GPS, share stations with friends, and buy music you like via iTunes. Never get stuck listening to Muzak again. Read more here, then download the app.
• Cirrus, cumulus, Flickr: The fact that Flickr has democratized photography and turned many hacks into professionals is not lost on Getty Images, the legendary stock photo agency. So back in March, we debuted the Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com, allowing mere mortals to license their work for commercial use. Today, Getty has introduced “photo clouds,” a new way to navigate groups of related photos within the Collection. You can join the community and create your own cloud around topics like “winter,” “out of Africa,” “bizarre photos,” and “fishy.” (Note the spiffy massage music that soothes as you explore). But wait! There’s also a screensaver, desktop widget, and a new Facebook app that lets you create a photo cloud to reflect your status mood. Brings new meaning to cloud computing. More here.
• Go commando with Colbert: If you’re addicted to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, you probably know Stephen Colbert has been broadcasting from Iraq this week in support of troops stationed there. But he’s also leading an effort to make sure the children of said troops are getting what they need from a public school education. He’s teamed up with DonorsChoose.org to raise funds for military-serving schools, pitting the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard against each other. You can help by making a donation or spread the word by sporting a Colbert Avatar, with critical accessories like an eagle, bear, Colbert Nation hat, Che Colbert T-shirt, fireplace, and a desk. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor