Would you believe it was only 55 years ago today that we first understood how genes were passed from generation to generation? Can you say double helix? After pausing to honor the granddaddies of molecular biology, check out what was in our deoxyribose nucleic acid this week.

• Would you like to touch our SearchMonkey?: If you’re a developer or site owner clamoring for a chance to monkey with enhanced Yahoo! search results, sign up for a developer preview of SearchMonkey or mark your calendar for our May 15th developer launch party. It’s our first step toward a totally new open Yahoo! strategy. Buh bye, links and abstracts. Hello, rich results with data like images, deep links, ratings, reviews, etc.!
• Circle of refinement: Yahoo! Local just made narrowing search results vastly easier with that rockstar of geometry: the circle. Looking for a greasy spoon for breakfast, but want one close to the ocean? Click “expand map” on your search query results and move that circle around to whatever ‘hood you’re looking for and make the radius bigger or smaller. As you move the circle, the business results automatically update. Brings new meaning to search radius. More here.
• Share your Flickr love: See something on Flickr and just can’t contain yourself? In this world of instant gratification, it’s now easier than ever to share photos, videos, sets, and groups with Flickr’s simple new “share this” button. Everpresent on the upper right side, it beckons you to email, link to, blog about, or get the HTML code to embed pictures and videos. What’s more, it will auto-complete screen names of your contacts as you type. All the more easy to spread the love. More here.
• Ain’t nothin’ better than free: You’re about to toss your old bottle cap collection when you realize there just might be a 10-year-old aching for a Nehi Red to complete his. That’s when you go check out our “Free is Good” microsite, launched in honor of Earth Day. It’s based on the old “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” adage and it’s there to help you find reuse groups in your neck of the woods. In addition to the warm feeling you’ll get inside from getting cool stuff and keeping other stuff out of landfills, you’ll have a shot at scoring eco-friendly prizes like a Smart car, a trek to a national park, a trip to an eco-resort, a home energy audit, local organic food or public transit for a year, or even free toilet paper (hey, who doesn’t need that?). Get thee green!
• Gimme your digits: You’ll never have to ask that again with the new MyBlogLog feature that lets you instantly add your MyBlogLog contacts and other members to your address book. They’ve rolled out one-click access to vCards (for Outlook, Thunderbird, Address Book on Macs, etc.) and hCards (for you more sophisticated microformats fan). Your info will reflect whatever you specified in your privacy settings. There’s nothing quite like portable data. More here.

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In addition to being the 103rd anniversary of the introduction of Einstein’s theory of relativity, it’s International “Louie Louie” Day! So go honor the greatest party song of all time with a little mass-energy equivalence. Before you gotta go, check out how we got down this week:

• Moving pictures: Been living under a rock? Then you don’t know that Flickr now supports video! The much-anticipated feature went live earlier this week, letting the Flickrverse capture life’s little moments as “long photos” to share with friends, family, or the world. Uploads are limited to 90 seconds and are available to Flickr pro users. Check out what people posted to the (no longer) Super Secret beta pool and get your questions answered here.
• Watercooler ammo: Grab your coffee and donut, fire up Firefox, and bookmark Good Morning Yahoo!, a new morning video news program that gives you the quick-and-dirty lowdown on the latest in news and entertainment. Brought to you by Yahoo! News and the good people at Dunkin Donuts, it packages a daily mix of news videos and fun features culled by Yahoo! News editors. It’s updated live from 6:00am to 12:00pm ET weekdays. Don’t leave for work without it.
• Ask and ye shall receive: The gang at Upcoming is all ears and has made some recent tweaks based on user suggestions. You can now upload flyers and photos to help promote your event, including a special call-out for an official photo, logo, etc. And you can send a message to everyone watching or attending the event you’ve created. Keep those ideas flowing.
• Can you read it now?: Along with wisdom, experience, and distinguished graying temples comes a lack of patience for small fonts. But the My Yahoo! team has delayed your need for bifocals just a bit longer by offering the ability to increase the font size on your special page. Just go to the “Personalize this page” button and blow up those pixels. No looking down your nose at that.

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We’re very excited to announce that Flickr now supports video!

Yes, those videos you’ve been accumulating on your hard drive or cell phone finally have a great place to hang out, meet other videos, and be loved.

Adding the ability to share videos on Flickr is a natural extension of our mission to be the “eyes of the world” — letting our members share what they see with the people who matter most to them, be they family and friends, or the world. As we set about adding video to one of the world’s most loved photo sharing experiences (Flickr has over 25 million members worldwide who have collectively uploaded over 2 billion photos), we did a lot of homework. We spoke to our members, took surveys, played with very many video experiences on the web, and, of course, took lots of video. Through the process, we learned a few surprising things:

• Most videos being captured today are essentially “long photos” — short clips that are captured on digital still cameras or mobile phones rather than long format video taken by traditional video cameras
• People aren’t sharing these clips much. If they are, it’s either via playback on their camera, DVD, or sending a large email file.
• While certainly there is video being shared on the web, most of it is re-broadcast content, such as clips from TV shows. If it’s user recorded content, much of it is material that is trying to be like broadcast content.

The video equivalent for the personal, authentic moments that are the hallmark of photos found on Flickr is actually pretty tough to find.

Until now. Check out some of the great videos shared by members of our Beta program:

So here’s how it works. If you’re a pro member, you can go to Flickr and start uploading your videos now. Video on Flickr works the same way as photos. Features you know and love like easy uploading, tagging, sets, sharing, privacy settings, adding to groups, geo-tagging, interestingness, and stats all work for video just as they do for photos. We support videos that are up to 90 seconds long each and up to 150MB large. Your unlimited storage limits still apply — so go ahead, push that to the limit.

Why 90 seconds?
Most video that people capture is, in actuality, fairly short-format content captured on digital still cameras. Our research suggests that most of it is actually under 60 seconds, and 90 seconds should be a pretty comfortable limit. As with (most) other features on the site, we’d love to hear feedback.

Why pro only?
Pro members are the most active, dedicated members of the Flickr community and are the foundation to all we do at Flickr. Starting with them seemed like the right way to introduce such a significant new feature to the site.

So what are you waiting for? Free your videos — share them on Flickr.

Kakul Srivastava
General Manager, Flickr

Fourteen years ago, two guys named Marc and Jim founded the first company to capitalize on the World Wide Web: Mosaic Communications Corporation. Their flagship, of course, was Netscape Navigator, which reigned supreme over the web browser market in its heyday. May it rest its soul. Once you stop feeling verklempt, check out the history we made this week:

• Bright Shine-y objects: Sometimes we women want a room of our own. That’s why we’ve created Yahoo! Shine, a new site for women that covers topics like parenting, fashion and beauty, love and sex, work and money, entertainment, and healthy living — and does so with a healthy dose of smarts and attitude. Best of all, start blogging on Shine and your musings might just run toe-to-toe with headlines from partners like Glamour, Self, Bon Appetit, Redbook, Cosmo, InStyle, and Women’s Health. More here.
• I can hear you now: All thumbs while steering with your knees? Now you can talk your way through mobile searches with voice-enabled Yahoo! oneSearch. Currently enabled on Blackberry 8800 series, Curve, and Pearl devices, with additional phones supported in the coming months, oneSearch with voice lets you search for anything — flight status, sports scores, maps — by simply speaking. Now it’ll be faster to shut up and drive.
• Search your iPhone: Love that Yahoo! Search feature, where search recommendations magically appear under your search box as you type, offering up query suggestions and related topics or phrases? Search Assist is now living in your iPhone. Not only does that speed up your searching process, it means the spelling-challenged among you no longer have to guess at how to spell septuagenarian, ukulele, and anecdotal. Bookmark it at m.yahoo.com. More here.
• It’s more fun with friends: With 42 million people uploading photos to Flickr, it’s not hard to imagine bumping into someone you know. But why wait for serendipity? Flickr just introduced “Find Your Friends,” which scans your Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts to find people in your address book already using Flickr. You’d be surprised how many familiar faces you’re missing out on. More here.

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The walls of San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery were plastered tonight with more than 2,800 photos taken by Flickr devotees — about as many as are uploaded to Flickr per minute on your average Saturday night. They were hand-selected from the pool created in honor of Flickr’s 4th birthday, which the faithful were out in force to celebrate.

There were photos of newborns, wombats, hedgehogs, Vietnam, the Alps, Groucho impersonators, numbers, shoes, coffee, the Batmobile, libraries, suck-ups, and, my favorite, rubber duckies. Printed by Photoworks San Francisco, they created a stunning backdrop as Flickerites wolfed down catering by Say Cheese and 400 cupcakes from Kara’s Cupcakes. Never was there a party with more cameras in tow.

All walks of Flickr life were on hand, including a dozen thrift-store brides from the Brides of March, adding a Flickrly appropriate dose of iconoclasm to the evening.

Check out our photos, along with the bevy taken by fellow guests here. Happy Birthday, Flickr.

Hi, my name is Carol and I’m a Flickr addict.

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 started to post my pictures from Myanmar on Flickr in February 2006, I just thought it was a good way of storing my photos at a cheap price. But then I received one comment, two, three… and people even favorited my pics. Mon dieu, there’s someone somewhere who looks at my photos and takes time to leave some messages!

My ego was flattered. I felt like the most important amateur photographer on Earth. Then I received an email from The Economist asking me for an Oman pic to be used in an ad. (What? I can earn money with my pics??? And they even paid!) I went to Papua New Guinea, put my pics online, received comments, faves, you know the story! GEO USA called me: “Hi, we saw your Papua pictures on Flickr. We want 12 pages for GEO Germany, OK?” (Yes, sir!)

A French editor saw my photos and asked me if I was OK making a book. (No problemo!) My book was released this Christmas and was number 10 on Amazon.fr last week! Lonely Planet, National Geographic Russia, Get Lost, UNESCO Magazine, etc. bought my pictures thru Flickr. And then, the leading French photography agency Eyedea (Rapho, HoaQI, Gamma) contacted me and signed me few weeks ago!

So, YES, Flickr works and… well, now, I must leave you cuz I have to pack my bags and go to India for one month to shoot!

I keep posting on Flickr as it remains the most powerful tool to be seen on the Web and in search engines, and I do not want to lose the direct contacts I’ve got with the world jury that comments on my stream.

Thank you, Yahoo!!

Eric LAFFORGUE
http://www.ericlafforgue.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics

Oh, bother. It’s Winnie the Pooh Day. Pause a moment to ponder the wisdom of the Bear of Very Little Brain, and then dig into this week’s product honeypot. TTFN!

Tag, you’re history: Important moments in history made their debut on Flickr through a pilot project with the Library of Congress called The Commons. They’ve added more than 3,000 photos from two of their popular collections — American Memory: Color photographs from the Great Depression and The George Grantham Bain Collection, images from the daily news scene nearly 100 years ago. Your job is to tag them and leave comments to add even more depth to these important archives. More here.

Fearless files: You’ve had that moment of hesitation when being asked to “accept file” when IMing a friend. (Hey, anybody can get a virus.) Fear no more. By teaming up with Symantec, Yahoo! Messenger can now automatically scan files with Norton AntiVirus (if you have Norton AntiVirus 2007/2008 and Norton Internet Security 2007/2008 installed on your computer). More over here.

Of flab and football: January can only mean two things: diet resolutions and football mania. That’s why you need to head to My Yahoo! to add the Diet Tracker module and Football Page. The Diet Tracker doubles as your personal trainer and guilty conscience, letting your track your daily weigh-ins against a target date. The Football Page is just that — a pigskin-filled tab with nothing but news, stats, photos, blogs and more. Pass the (low fat) chips.

Music blog remix: Yahoo!’s Media Innovation Group just released an experimental (”possibly dodgy”) desktop application that lets you mix together blog posts and MP3s from your favorite music blogs. Save your favorite posts on various music blogs, build your personal remix, save the results for future reference, make it into a playlist, podcast, or feed, or just share what you’ve mixed together with pals. It’s a proof of concept for now, but a cool concept nonetheless… more here from the developer himself.

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One of my favorite quotes hails from Karl Marx: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it.”

That’s why I’m at Yahoo! today. I run the ESP (Early Stage Product) team within Connected Life and my job is to imagine and invent the future of Yahoo! for social and mobile media for this group. We’re working to change the world by connecting all of us to the people and things we care about in ways that aren’t possible today.

Jerry Yang helped us imagine that world during the CES Industry Insiders keynote he delivered this morning, illustrating what’s possible as Yahoo! becomes a more open platform. People want to get relevant content, services, and connections wherever they are. A great example of this is Yahoo! Go 3.0, which Jerry and Marco Boerries, who heads Connected Life (my boss :-)), unveiled today. Not only is the new UI beautiful and simple, Yahoo! Go 3.0 is now open to let me access the services I want, whether they’re from Yahoo! or from third party developers.

We’ve created an open platform that enables developers, publishers, and advertisers to deliver mobile widgets that work in Yahoo! Go 3.0 and ultimately on any mobile browser. The platform creates distribution opportunities that never existed before in mobile applications—a developer can write once and publish to hundreds of devices. That has massive potential to change the mobile industry and how we live our mobile lives. It allows consumers not only to get the Yahoo! services they love, but also eBay, MySpace, and MTV... and I’d bet thousands more soon to come.

Then Jerry walked through a vision demo showcasing the possibilities of a more open Yahoo!, in this case focused on one of our key starting points, Yahoo! Mail. He showed how a smarter inbox could prioritize the most relevant connections in his life, both from Yahoo! and multiple social networks, and make all of his communications (email, IM, SMS, voice, status text, photos, etc.) simpler to manage. He then walked through how Yahoo! as an open platform—using Yahoo! Mail, Flickr, Yahoo! Local and Maps, and third party applications like Evite and eBay—could let you tap into the collective tastes, interests, and knowledge of the people you know and of the rest of the world. His example was trying to corral a bunch of very different friends, family, and execs for an awesome dinner. He was able to discover and explore what millions of people find interesting in Las Vegas (via Flickr and our TagMaps prototype) and what his dinner guests might enjoy as well.

Although co-founder David Filo’s recommendation was the Burger Palace (OMG, this vegetarian is glad we’re not going there), Jerry could easily find the best place we could all go together based on everyone’s interests (cuisine, entertainment, etc.) and what Yahoo! knows about the world. David Filo then came out and shared how making Yahoo! an even more open platform is going to power this vision for the future.

You should really catch the archive. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it here:

We’re all using multiple connected devices, communicating with each other, sharing our interests, our content, our social connections, and the places we care about. What Jerry, David, and Marco showed today is how a more open Yahoo! will help us live the connected lives we really want.

Marc Davis
Social Media Guru
Yahoo! Connected Life