The numbers say it all – country music is amongst America’s most popular music genres.  The genre grew more than 55% in 2009 and there are more than twice as many country music radio stations in the U.S. than any other music format. Country music concerts continue to successfully sell out and even here on Yahoo!, web searches for “country music songs” have been on the rise since 2007. When comparing 2010 searches to 2009 searches – searches in 2010 were 89% higher for “country music songs.” (FYI, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood are the most searched country music stars on Yahoo!).

We couldn’t ignore those numbers anymore, nor could we put our love for country music on the backburner any longer. Today we proudly announce the launch of Ram Country on Yahoo! Music, in partnership with Ram Truck.

Spotlighting a range of artists from A-level to emerging talent, Ram Country will serve as the ultimate internet hub for country music and its hottest stars. Features of the new site include:

• Original blogs and articles on country artists and country music news
• Photo galleries of country artists
• Exclusive video programs: Performances and lifestyle  stories such as:
  • Going Home: A docu-reality segment in which country artists are captured in their hometowns.
  • The Studio: Featured artists will perform three songs (including their most current hit) and then sit down for an interview.
  • Music With A View:  The featured artist will perform a scaled down, acoustic version of their current single in natural settings.
  • Country Covers:  The featured artist will cover either a classic country song or a contemporary hit by another current artist, as well as his or her own current single.
  • Another Side Of…: A reality segment in which what it’s like to live a day in the life of the artist is captured, giving fans another look into the lifestyle and what that artist loves to do in their spare time.

Yahoo! Music is one of the most trafficked music websites and Yahoo! attracts more than 32.5 million country music fans each month (according to comScore).With the Ram Truck integration, we are demonstrating the best of what online marketing can offer: relevant and entertaining branded programming at mass scale; and what Yahoo! Music can offer: a great mix of licensed content, original video content, editorial voice and large scale. While Yahoo! has seen success in original branded music programs before, such as the Nissan Live Sets concert series and PepsiSmash!, Ram Country is Yahoo! Music’s first genre-specific program.

And with the industry numbers looking the way they do, it’s clear that this is one very worthy genre.

- Jeff Bronikowski, Head of Yahoo! Music

Lady Gaga is up for 13 Moonman trophies, while Eminem has eight nods. Late night Goddess Chelsea Handler is hosting, and Kanye will return, one year after interrupting Taylor Swift’s best female video acceptance speech.

Yahoo!’s comprehensive reporting will include several insider perspectives. Editors from Music and Shine will man the red carpet for celebrity arrival interviews. OMG will host the fashion photo galleries. Music’s Managing Editor Lyndsey Parker will be enjoying the show from inside of the Nokia Theater, rubbing elbows with the stars, and Tweeting via the Yahoo_Music account. Yahoo! FP Entertainment Editor Lawrence Yee and Entertainment Blogs’s M.E. Courtney Reimer will host a live VMA Chat. We’ll be talking to the winners and nominees in the press room. Plus, expect VMA recaps from Day Time In No Time personality Nikki Boyer and Yahoo! News’s Pamela Woon.

Consider Yahoo! your one stop shop for VMA coverage.
If not is not impressive enough, two lucky Yahoo! users will be attending the celebrated event. Eva Sanchez of Ventura, California and Chanel Oliver of Hartsdale, New York are the winners of our Party Like A Rock Star! Sweepstakes.

Below, see some of our pre-coverage.

Yahoo! Music
Demand A Recount! These Videos Got Shafted At The 2010 VMAs
We Got Your Crazy: The Wackiest VMA Moments Ever
Listen All Y’all, It’s A Sabotage: These Classic Videos Bizarrely Never Won VMA Trophies

omg!
Most Memorable MTV VMA Moments

BAD VMA Fashions Looks

– Billy Johnson, Jr., Yahoo! Music editor

The VMAs have become a cultural touchstone in the music world, dating back to 1984, when it became clear that video didn’t kill the radio star. Neither has the Internet, and Yahoo!’s collaboration with MTV further enhances the experience of celebrating favorite artists and cheering them on as they vie for their VMAs.

Are Yahoo! Searches Already Predicting the Winners?

It looks like music fans are gearing up for the VMAs because searches on Yahoo! for “VMAs 2010” are up an incredible 1743% this month. While the VMA winners will not be announced until the Sunday evening awards show, we can’t help but wonder if all these searches could be early predictors to the winners. Yahoo! has unearthed the top searched Video Music Award nominees during this year’s nomination period, and if searching is an early predictor, a sampling of the winners would be:

VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Lady Gaga, Bad Romance

BEST FEMALE VIDEO: Ke$ha, Tik Tok
BEST MALE VIDEO: Usher featuring Will.I.Am, OMG
BEST HIP HOP VIDEO: B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams, Airplanes
BEST POP VIDEO: Ke$ha, Tik Tok

BEST ROCK VIDEO: Paramore, Ignorance

Even if our predictions are not spot-on, we’re as eager to find out the winners as you are—and we’ll meet you Behind the Lens! (Don’t forget us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/yahoo_music)

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

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

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

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

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

Barton Bishoff and Pam Woon

Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s Victor’s video profile:

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

Read more:

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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

That was easy, right? Well, that’s thanks to ad agency creatives who turned simple brand messages into iconic household catchphrases. They make it look easy, but it’s not. And it can be even tougher when creating online advertising because there’s more to it than simply putting an ad on TV. We know all about that and are working with our advertisers to foster big, memorable ideas online.

Here’s a digital short that our creatives produced to pay homage to all those creatives out there:

For the full story behind this video, head over to our new Yahoo! Advertising blog.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Crowds of starstruck pedestrians formed around a recording studio that we erected overnight in Times Square as yodels echoed through the canyons of the city. We invited anyone and everyone to come inside and give us their best interpretation of the Yahoo! yodel. What was at stake? The potential fame and bragging rights of having their yodel featured on the Yahoo! Homepage and in our new advertising campaign.

We camped out on Military Island for 12 hours in a brick building that included a dressing room with costume gear, a rehearsal room with gold records on the wall, and a state-of-the-art recording studio. Celebrities were on hand to mentor yodelers — Jewel, Pete Wentz, LeAnn Rimes, Randy Jackson, and Rob Cavallo, chief creative officer of Warner Music Group and one of the world’s most highly acclaimed music producers. (Jewel said her dad was so proud that all those years of coaching her to yodel had finally paid off.) Kimberly Caldwell of American Idol fame was our tireless emcee and we even had America’s Got Talent’s Manuela “The Yodeling Dominatrix” Horn to help rally brave souls. And house band musicians — with many Grammys among them — sat atop the marquee of the Hard Rock Cafe (Hollywood Squares-style), ready to give a live riff for each yodeler. We heard rap yodels, bluegrass yodels, punk yodels, funk yodels, hip hop yodels, the list goes on. We even had two Cirque du Soleil performers stop by for a rendition. And they were all projected on the Jumbotron for the crowd to enjoy (or, at least, be amused by).

The last time we sought the best new Yahoo! yodeler, back in 2003, we ended up launching the singing career of a 9-year-old girl named Taylor Ware. Yesterday, one lucky performer (pictured above) — a foot messenger whose boss told her she could come perform before she delivered her last package of the day — caught the eye of Pete Wentz and Rob Cavallo, who spent extra time coaching her and left with her MySpace info and email address. Remember the name Chanese Elife, people — she might have a bright future ahead!

We also held events in London and Mumbai because, you know, yodeling knows no geographic bounds. The top winners for each country will be crowned on November 15th, based on which videos receive the most views. So head over to the gallery and check out the contenders. You’ll help them find an audience of more than 500 million people.

For more on the event, read Lyndsey Parker’s Yahoo! Music blog posts, browse photos in our Flickr photostream (slideshow below), and watch video highlights from our NY, London, and Mumbai events:

Ya-hooooo!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Chavez
Vice President, Integrated Marketing

Have a look:

The spot debuted online on Yahoo! (you.yahoo.com) as well as on sites like Yahoo! Video, YouTube, Facebook, and Hulu.com. It will also begin airing on all the major U.S. TV networks and top cable channels, including AMC, ESPN, USA, Comedy Central and Bravo. You’ll see it in the UK and India starting October 5, and in other markets in 2010, including Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, and Taiwan.

Whaddaya think?

Stay tuned for behind-the-scenes insights into Anthem’s production…

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

What is Open Hack Day? It’s what happens when clever web developers, a wireless connection, a host of web services, and massive quantities of caffeine, pizza and donuts come together for an all-night code-a-thon. After 24 hours, creative coders show off their mashup wares and clever apps, American Idol-style, before a panel of distinguished judges, who bestow awards, praise, and lots of geek cred.

Ever since the first Open Hack Day back in 2006, we’ve made it a priority to be as open and accessible to developers as possible. Yahoo!’s audience is global – and so is the base of developers who value our open tools,technologies and vast user base. We’ve hosted Open Hack Days in the U.K., India, Brazil, and Taiwan; next month, we’ll meet with developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from New York’s vibrant Web technology and digital media scene.

We’ll kick off the weekend with a Friday morning keynote from Internet guru and NYU professor Clay Shirky. That’s followed by a full day of tech talks, panel conversations, and hands-on workshops that cover the latest Yahoo! developer tools and services. Yahoo!’s open platforms let developers build things that anyone can use on and off Yahoo!: Flickr toys, Connected TV Widgets, and open apps that you can install for Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, and more. On Friday evening, we’ll kick off the hack contest and hold our breath to see what’s built by Saturday afternoon. And in-between, we’ll host a special Open Hack edition of Ignite NYC — a geek’s open mic.

What will take this year’s prize? A moblogging purse, a phenomenal way to share and organize your photos in Yahoo! Mail, an iPhone orchestra, or something we haven’t even thought of yet?

To get a better sense of the Open Hack Day showdown, check out Ricky Montalvo’s “Hackumentary,” a short film documentary shot during last year’s event in Sunnyvale. Here’s the trailer:

Hack Day – a hackumentary short film from ricky montalvo on Vimeo.

Head over to http://www.icanhaz.com/yahoohacknyc to register, check out the wiki, or follow us (@ydn) on Twitter for updates. Let the countdown to Open Hack Day 2009 begin!

Chris Yeh
Head of the Yahoo! Developer Network

Here’s a video that captures just some of their stories:

Some notes on these great characters, by order of appearance:

• Sonia uses the homepage to manage her life… and admits to listening to Launchcast radio on Yahoo! Music when she’s in the shower.
• Dennis first used Yahoo! Search in grade school to look up the pink Power Ranger (he had a big crush).
• Bob lives on Yahoo! Finance and swears it helped him save his retirement funds.
• Evelyn relied on Yahoo! to stay connected to the world when she was in the Air Force, stationed in the desolate Australian outback.
• Bodhi is a California grad student from India who uses Yahoo! Messenger video chat to connect with her parents in India every night.
• Ted and Vicky used Yahoo! Messenger to court each other – much of it long distance. They also ditched their cable when discovering they could meet all their entertainment needs on Yahoo!.
• Erin is a fine art photographer who’s created a huge following on Flickr for her beautiful Polaroid photography (and scored press coverage and several commissions and exhibitions).
• Brandon is addicted to film and relies on Yahoo! Movies on his iPhone for ratings and reviews (and incidentally is one of the youngest patent holders in the US).
• Valerie used a Freecycle group on Yahoo! Groups to outfit her classroom with free stuff (including a clawfoot bathtub the kids read in).
• Larry admits to spending about two hours a day managing his teams on Yahoo! Fantasy Sports.
• Emily loves looking things up on Yahoo! Search, like where dimples come from and why the starling is the most hated bird in the world.
• Thomas gets sucked into Yahoo! News daily, digging that one minute he can read about the elections in Afghanistan and then stumble on something about the depletion of ants in the Amazon rainforest.

Connecting with real people, real users, to hear what they love, hate and need about using our products is what we’re all about. As our new brand campaign stipulates, Yahoo! is about you. All you.

Stay tuned for standalone video profiles of these great voices and more.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

This larger than life greeting welcomed me to work one morning, as I shuffled in with a case of the Mondays. Quite startled, I looked over to our headquarters guard shack and out spilled the purplest, most enthusiastic human being I’d ever seen — waving energetically with a big infectious grin. Did she know me? Who cares – she said I was gorgeous! Suddenly, it felt more like a Friday.

The thing is, she tells everyone they’re gorgeous.

Meet Shewondia Mills, a Yahoo! security guard who has become a veritable campus celebrity since she joined the team less than a year ago. Her iconic personality cracks a smile on everyone’s face — you can’t even help it. Every morning, she douses herself in Yahoo! spirit, which she embodies like no one before her. She is literally purple from head to toe — her fingernails, her eyelids, her eyelashes, her lipstick, her hair, the lenses of her glasses. People walk and drive out of their way to get her signature greeting, which lifts the soul and rescues the brain from its PowerPoint-induced haze.

Shewondia consistently proves that a little extra pride goes a long way. She has collected more “Backyard Bravos” (online awards employees send to fellow Yahoos on our intranet) than anyone else at the company, including Carol Bartz, Jerry Yang, and David Filo. Just today, she snagged second prize in the Guardsmark Security Officer of the Year award, taking home $5,000. And visitors are quite taken with her welcome wagon, including a New York Times reporter who recently came to interview our CEO.

Here’s a video that takes you behind the scenes with Shewondia, giving you a sense of her inimitable style and why her pride so purple.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

This is significant because data centers represent the majority of our energy consumption. Keeping Yahoo! running smoothly for more than 500 million people around the world calls for a lot of server power. So we’ve made it a priority to become a leader in designing and building data centers that are environmentally sustainable, investing millions to design facilities that make the best use of the energy we consume.

Here’s what makes us so proud of our future New York data center plans. First, it will be powered by one of the cleanest utilities in the country – fed predominantly by renewable hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. And second, a record 90% of that energy will power the servers. To put that in context, the industry average is 50% or lower, with the other half dedicated mostly to keeping the servers cool.

For data center geeks, we expect our Buffalo Lockport, NY, data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better. To achieve that, we’ve come up with a unique building design that we call the Yahoo! Computing Coop (because it looks like something chickens live in), which is angled to take advantage of Buffalo’s microclimate, using 100% outside air to cool the servers.

We’ve been pushing green data center standards since we started building our own data centers two years ago. For example, our facilities in Washington are powered by zero-carbon wind and hydroelectric sources, and we use free cooling for most of the year, dropping energy consumption by 40-50%. As we build more capacity to meet demand, we’ll continue to focus on innovations and inventions that improve energy efficiency. And we’ve been sharing best practices to encourage the entire industry to put smarter policies in play.

And we’ll continue to push ourselves hard to lower our impact. Today we’re committing to reduce the carbon intensity of our data centers by at least 40% by 2014. In other words, we’ll decrease our average electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from our data centers around the world. We’ll get there through a combination of innovative data center design, improving how we utilize our servers, cloud computing, and locating our data centers in areas where cleaner energy is available.

Reducing our carbon footprint has always been a priority and we’ve decided to focus all our energy and investment on that philosophy. We will no longer purchase carbon offsets as announced in 2007. Instead, we’ll focus our resources on reducing our carbon impact while helping the rest of the industry do the same. We believe creating highly-efficient data centers will have a greater long-term, direct impact on the environment and gives us the best opportunity to play a leadership role in addressing climate change.

So the next time you check your email, do a Yahoo! search, or get the latest environmental info on Yahoo! Green, you can feel good about putting some of the greenest data centers in the industry to work.

David Filo
Co-founder and Chief Yahoo

This year, delegates from 90 countries gathered to hear distinguished speakers like the UN’s Kofi Annan, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Twitter’s Biz Stone, Bob Geldof, and the heads of the world’s largest advertising agencies. And jury members judged more than 22,000 pieces of the most creative advertising from every corner of the globe. In short, it was the place to be for ad types.

Since advertising is one of our passions at Yahoo!, you can imagine we wanted to support the festival, Yahoo!-style. Our goal was to communicate that the world’s biggest ideas should live on the world’s biggest stage –- the online arena. So, Yahoo! had an innovative, local presence at the festival. Naturally, we placed ads in local media saluting the creatives, but we also deployed an awesome purple van and hit the streets with a giveaway that literally declared “Nothing Creative Happens in Penny Loafers.”

Our Mission: Project Flip Flop
How do you show the creative community that you really love them? You make them comfortable, of course! Members of Project Flip Flop canvassed the Croissette with pairs of purple Yahoo!-branded Havaianas flip flops, slipping them on the weary feet of anyone with a festival badge. Meanwhile, our purple van circled the streets and our own Purple Pedals bike rode the promenade to document the mission. By the end of the week, thousands of feet were happier.

The response was très fantastique!

• Fast Company wrote that the flip flops were the most sought after prize at Cannes;
• The Cannes Daily covered the campaign (page 12);
• A creative director from a global agency said to me, “Thanks for letting us be free!”;
• The head of marketing for one of the largest global brands in attendance asked for pairs for her children;
• Even the Twitterverse played along. One tweet suggested that we put this campaign up for a Lion next year. Another from halfway around the globe asked to add a pair to a Yahoo! footwear collection.

To see the mission in action, check out this short video (below), view our Flickr album, and see some of the images that our Purple Pedal picked up.

Creativity is the secret sauce in the best advertising and we want your Yahoo! experience to be well seasoned with it. For a look at the creativity that snagged the Lions, check out the official site at canneslions.com.

Elisa Steele
Chief Marketing Officer

The AllThingsD.com site has a liveblog recap of Carol’s interview. You might also head to the Twitterverse for a taste of how she was received. Some of our favorite tweets:

• Chris Anderson (@TEDchris): Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz knocking ‘em dead at D7. Smart, focused, engaging, funny, persuasive. Memo to self: buy YHOO?
• Peter Kafka (@pkafka): I think this may be Carol Bartz’ first big public appearance since coming to Yahoo. IMHO she’s crushing it.
• Larry Magid (@LarryMagid): Yahoo’s Carol Bartz is one of the funniest speakers ever at D.
• Katie Boehret (@kabster728): Our stage manager says: I wanna see the sitcom w/these two (referring to @karaswisher and Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO).

(UPDATE: The folks at D have taken down Carol’s video to replace it “with one that contains 100 percent more profanity. It’ll be up soon–we apologize for the inconvenience.” We’ll get it up when the link is available.)
UPDATE #2: And it’s back!

Here’s the video — uncensored:

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photos by Asa Mathat, AllThingsD.com

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

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth Churchill
Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research

This week, Samsung debuted a smart new TV, the 46-inch LED TV 7000 that features the first implementation of the Yahoo! TV Widgets. I know what you’re saying — I’ve tried that TV-Web mashup thing before. This time it’s different. You’ll find a dock at the bottom of your screen that features a number of customizable widgets for content like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Weather, Flickr and other great content coming soon. It won’t interrupt your television programming, so you can call up your stock portfolio while watching a baseball game or check for the latest headlines during a slow part of that PBS documentary. It’s multitasking with a vengeance.

But these widgets aren’t limited to Yahoo! content. Since we’ve opened the API to developers, anyone can build a widget, which you can easily download from the Widget Gallery, not unlike an app store. Soon you will be able to add widgets for Twitter, the New York Times, Netflix, eBay, CBS Sports, Showtime and MySpace (just to name a few) to your dock. Perhaps coolest of all, you can access video content through these widgets — so, for example, Blockbuster onDemand movies can stream right from the web to your TV screen. All this with just your remote.

Samsung is first out the door, but TVs and devices from Sony, LG Electronics, Intel, and VIZIO will follow, featuring the Yahoo! Widget Engine beginning this summer.

Since seeing is believing, check out this video demo from Connected TV VP Patrick Barry. Then read the review in the WSJ’s Mossberg Solution.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Okay, so, not quite 3D…but the national television morning show kicked off a short segment that looks at top stories (and some scintillating Yahoo! Search insight) from Yahoo! Buzz. We are extraordinarily well represented with former MTV veejay and uber-smart charmer Ananda Lewis. Every Monday, she will alternate with Fox anchor Dylan Lane in running down the weekend news, features, and celebrity tidbits that received the most attention (and votes on Yahoo! Buzz).

This week we covered which scenes unnerved “Twilight” heartthrob Rob Pattinson in his big-screen stint as Salvador Dali, the awful accident involving NFL wide receiver Dante Stallworth, and how bailed-out insurance AIG has managed to outrage taxpayers once more. You can watch the clip below. It’ll also appear on the Buzz Log and the Mike and Juliet site each week.

Vera H-C Chan
Yahoo! Buzz senior editor

“CONNECTED: The Power of Six Degrees” is a new BBC documentary that unfolds the science behind the popular trivia game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” whose notion that anyone on the planet can be connected in just six steps of association was supposed to be an urban myth.

The film follows two young scientists, Harvard’s Laszlo Barabasi and Yahoo! Research’s very own Duncan Watts, as they work to uncover the pervasive law that nature uses to organize itself. By studying vast natural and man-made networks — from the connections between Hollywood actors to the nervous system of a worm, the U.S. electric power grid and the WWW — they discover that diverse systems share a common blueprint. It takes us from the hunt for Saddam Hussein to the front-lines of cancer research and shows that the Six Degrees principle doesn’t just relate to people but also to viruses, web pages, neurons, species, molecules, and even fashion.

Watts, a former Australian Navy officer with a passion for extreme rock climbing, was a professor at Columbia University at just 29. He launched the explosion in the new science of networks while studying crickets and the mechanism that allows them to chirp in unison. He’s the author of “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.” Yodel Anecdotal will post a full interview with Watts soon.

“CONNECTED: The Power of Six Degrees” premieres tomorrow night on the Science Channel. Check your local cable listings for times.

Here’s the trailer:

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Barack Obama’s campaign was historic on many levels, but certainly no other candidate had ever harnessed the tools of the Web as effectively. He embraced technologies to not only rally his supporters, but also gave Americans what felt like a personal connection to him. He started to feel like a friend, a neighbor, a social contact. From Flickr to Facebook, Twitter to text messaging, he kept Americans in the loop with every movement of his campaign, helping them take a personal stake in it all. And there’s no question he’ll continue to use these tools to mobilize a nation as he takes the helm.
 
Here’s a video report on the phenomenon, how it helped win Obama the White House, and what role technology will play in Washington.
 

Heather Cabot
Yahoo! Web Life Editor

Editor’s Note: Heather Cabot is Yahoo!’s Web Life Editor and makes frequent appearances on television and radio, offering insights on consumer interests as they relate to life in the digital age. This is the first of many appearances she will make on Yodel Anecdotal, observing tips, tricks and trends about uses of the Web. Heather is a former ABC News anchor and correspondent. She writes a weekly blog for The Huffington Post and is the founder and publisher of The Well Mom, a weekly e-zine that empowers and inspires moms to care for themselves as well as they care for everyone else in their lives. 

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

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

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

When you operate in this country, the fifth largest in the world, you have to go big (and maybe even a little bit crazy) to get noticed. That’s why Yahoo! Brazil is producing a lunar eclipse. That’s right. This Saturday night, Brazilians will be treated to a partial eclipse of the moon, courtesy of Yahoo! Brazil.

The team down there is partnering with Celestial Marketing, an American company that has expertise in eclipse productions and cosmic phenomena, to pull the Earth ever so slightly to create a penumbral shadow on the moon. They’re also working with Brazilian astronaut Marcos Pontes to get Brazilians fired up about it. The eclipse will be broadcast on Yahoo! Brazil and those watching in the streets can download special viewing cards.

What’s this all about? We’re told it’s in honor of a new phase that Yahoo! Brazil will enter. I guess all will be revealed on Saturday. But as they say in Brazil, “Nao subestime o roxo”… or never underestimate the purple.

Check out how amped up they are in São Paolo (and brush up on your Portuguese):

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

I know this first hand because Matt came by to dance here at Yahoo!. If you’ve never heard of Matt, go check out wherethehellismatt.com. He traveled to 42 countries in 14 months to make his most recent video, “Dancing 2008,” which has been viewed more than 8.5 million times since he posted it in June. His scenery included a tulip field in the Netherlands, the DMZ in Korea, the “Painted Ladies” in San Francisco, children in Yemen, Bollywood-style dancers in India, bushmen in New Guinea, and free spirits in Paris.

I emailed Matt on a lark, with an invitation to come do a video with Yahoos in Sunnyvale. What you see here is the effect of one incredibly willing Internet phenomenon, as I dragged him hither and yon across our campus to shoot 33 scenes in less than seven hours. This video closed a recent company all-hands meeting — webcast to 14,000 employees worldwide — as a reminder that, in spite of the extraordinary events of last seven months, this is still one helluva great company.

You can download the song “Praan” (Bengali for “life”) at Amazon. It was composed by Garry Schyman and that incredible voice belongs to 17-year-old Palbasha Siddique of Minneapolis.

Thanks for the dance, Matt.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

What do you do if you’re the CEO and president of a company that’s become the preoccupation of the business section and you’re about to go on stage in front of hundreds of tech moguls, investors, and journalists at “D: All Things Digital” for a chat with the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg? You cue the video!

Here’s a short video prelude we pulled together for Jerry Yang and Sue Decker to help pull the elephant squarely into the middle of the room this afternoon at the 6th annual D conference in Carlsbad, Calif. It’s a parody of the vast quantities of advice that both execs have been receiving about Yahoo! in recent months. And we got a little help from our friends — Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz (our first investor), PBS’ Charlie Rose, Sony’s Howard Stringer, Intel’s Paul Otellini, Dell’s Michael Dell, Cisco’s John Chambers, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

For Yodel Anecdotal readers, we’re posting a special version with an exclusive Buffett outtake at the end. It’s clear why Warren was invited to cameo on “All My Children.”

Yahoo! will be filing a definitive proxy statement and accompanying WHITE proxy card with the SEC in connection with the solicitation of proxies for its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders. Stockholders are strongly advised to read Yahoo!’s 2008 definitive proxy statement when it becomes available because it will contain important information. Stockholders will be able to obtain copies of Yahoo!’s 2008 definitive proxy statement and other documents filed by Yahoo! with the SEC in connection with its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or at the Investor Relations section of Yahoo!’s website at yhoo.client.shareholder.com. Yahoo!, its directors, and certain of its officers may be deemed participants in the solicitation of proxies from stockholders in connection with Yahoo!’s 2008 annual meeting of stockholders. Information concerning Yahoo!’s directors and officers is available in its preliminary proxy statement filed with the SEC on May 22, 2008.

(Incidentally, this video is the dog that ate my homework and is the reason why you loyal readers found last week’s content a bit sparse. I’m a multi-hat operation.)

Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com

Much to my wife’s delight, among other things I contributed were five pairs of sneakers and athletic shoes and I was able to actually watch people pick them up and give them a new home. (Yes, people WILL wear other people’s shoes…) Hopefully they will get some great use and their new owners will think hard about what THEY could give up to turn their personal trash into someone else’s treasure.

I’m told Yahoos brought in more than 2,000 items from closets and basements throughout the Bay Area that might otherwise have been destined for landfills. The more interesting things I saw included a vintage map of Silicon Valley businesses from 2000, a red lacy bra (which seemed to disappear quickly), last-generation Tivos, Rockem Sockem Robots, vacuum cleaners, a complete set of Star Trek: Next Generation VHS tapes, bunny slippers, fleeces galore, Yahoo! schwag (Yahoo! Chicago stickers, anyone?), and gently used sporting equipment. Items that had not seen the light of day for years were suddenly adopted by new guardians, who promised to put them into immediate use. Although I think the snow skis might have to wait until next season…

We duplicated this fair in six California, New York, and Oregon offices. And whatever wasn’t claimed was carted away by local charities like the Salvation Army.

So if you see me around campus with size 10.5 Adidas shell-toes, know that they will be well cared for and infused with the spirit of giving.

Hmm… I wonder what size Jerry wears?…

Here are some photos and a video recap:

Lucas Mast
Senior PR Manager
Connected Life