Today, Yahoo! is bringing a new travel experience to market — Yahoo! TimeTraveler, the ideal app for people who find themselves in a new city with a few hours or more to explore.  Available now for iPhone and iPod touch, Yahoo! TimeTraveler creates custom geo-targeted itineraries on-the-fly, based on a person’s location and the amount of time they have to spend.

The app pulls tremendous content and interesting data from across Yahoo!. It features curated travel information and gorgeous imagery from Yahoo! Travel, pulls metadata, including location and time stamps, from Flickr, and also integrates nicely with Yahoo! Search, as well.

Yahoo! TimeTraveler creates a trip plan, directions and a map to guide the way through the coolest parts of the city – from museums, cafes, restaurants, and even off-the-beaten path spots. It’s easy to drill down for more information, like ratings and reviews on restaurants and hotels, simply by clicking over to Yahoo! Travel from within the app.

Yahoo! TimeTraveler works for 29 cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Chicago, Dubai, London, Paris and Rome among others. For international destinations, it’s easy to save the travel itineraries prior to traveling (and access later) to avoid international data charges.

Sharing a trip with friends is easy via email, Twitter, Facebook.  People can also publish trip plans on Yahoo! Travel (http://travel.yahoo.com) with a direct link.

One of our top priorities is to innovate for the mobile user, across all types of devices and platforms. And as Yahoo! continues to move toward a mobile-products-first development model, you’ll see more innovation like this from us in the future.

Download the Yahoo! TimeTraveler App for free from the App Store today and start exploring.  And let us know what you think!

Seven teams of developers from Singapore, Costa Rica, Brazil, UK, Canada, Seattle, San Diego, Cincinnati and New York City competed head to head for the grand price of a trip to Athens, Greece for the WPP Stream conference. With help from Yahoo!’s world-class team of technical experts and facilitated by Yahoo! Developer Network the competitors worked all night to build their prototypes – many of which were built on Yahoo! technologies like Cocktails, YUI, YQL, Calendar, and Flickr.

After review by our judging panel, the winners were:

• BEST OVERALL HACK: B.Lock, which lets individuals earn money by lending out bikes to others via three components: an electronic bike lock, a web portal, and a mobile app.
• BEST CREATIVE HACK:  A tool called ShutterSpot uses crowdsourced data from Flickr to provide insights into camera brands people are using around the globe.
• BEST CLIENT-FOCUSED HACK: Building off of the Nike+ app, a whole new social experience incorporates video glasses on tracked runs to record, share, and compete with friends.

After consuming vast quantities of pizza and Red Bull, attendees from Possible Worldwide, Blast Radius, dotJWT, VML , Catalyst Online,  Ogilvy and Wunderman  celebrated their hacks and the opportunity to collaborate across WPP agencies for brilliant new ideas and concepts.

Thanks to all of these latest hack participants, and stay tuned more from our hackday series.

Take Credit For Your Flickr Photo’s on Pinterest

It’s no secret that Flickr users’ photos are a huge hit on the social media site Pinterest, which features a “virtual pinboard.” And now, Flickr users can to get credit for their inspirational work. Flickr has just announced a partnership with Pinterest to make it easier for people to share Flickr images to Pinterest with proper attribution. A “Pinterest” button will be added to the site’s share menu, enabling people to “pin” all content that can be shared via Flickr including photo pages, favorites, and groups. When a Flickr photo is pinned on Pinterest it will be accompanied by clear attribution that includes the name of the photographer, the title of the image, and a link to the photo page. In addition, Flickr photos that are pinned from a third-party site or blog will automatically ll be attributed on Pinterest and link back to the Flickr photo page. Attributions cannot be edited, guaranteeing that each photographer will receive proper credit for their work. People who are uncomfortable with having their images pinned to Pinterest can opt-out of the sharing functionality. Now go get pinned!

Yahoo! Screen’s Hit Shows Get a Picked Up For a Second Season

Coming off of an incredibly successful first season of web shows, specifically created for a female audience, Yahoo! Screen is gearing up for its second season of specialty programming that covers a variety of lifestyle topics — from health and fitness, to cooking to relationship advice. Whether seeking relationship advice from our resident expert Niecy Nash in her hit show “Let’s Talk About Love,” or figuring out the best ways to navigate a busy schedule with Judy Greer and her health and fitness dream-team on “Reluctantly Healthy,” Yahoo! Screen delivers premium web programming that women are looking for. Along with returning shows, Yahoo! Screen will premier “The Yo Show,” coming this spring and featuring Micheal Yo, the pop-culture and E! News entertainment reporter, who will showcase a variety of unique features that will include exclusive celebrity interviews, comedy and the latest in pop culture. To check out all these shows and more, visit Yahoo! Screen.

Batch Upload For Flickr Now Available on Android

Attention all Flickr users who have been waiting patiently for the chance to batch upload photos from their Androids – the time has come! Users can now select as many photos as desired from the photo gallery on any Android phone. Easily add titles/descriptions, set privacy levels and add to sets, then Upload! Weak signal? No problem. We’ve added the upload queue to help ensure your photos get up to Flickr as soon as possible. Track the photos while they are uploading. If your signal cuts out and interrupts your upload, we’ll try again once we get connection or you can manually start it later. So, what are you waiting for? Get the app and start uploading more now!

Yahoo! Small Business Launches Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard

Yahoo! Small Business has just announced the launch of Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, a free tool that helps entrepreneurs discover new marketing opportunities to grow their businesses, while getting a clear picture of their marketing results, online reputations, and website performance, all in one place.

Designed specifically with the small business owner in mind, the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard enables small businesses to easily analyze website metrics and maintain accurate and comprehensive business listings across the Web.  With all these key business metrics accessible in one location, small business owners with limited resources can spend more time focusing on their core businesses and less time buried in multiple interfaces and spreadsheets.

Some of the key features included in the free Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard include:

•  Search engine and directory listings: Enables monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, covering over 100sites (including Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and more)
•  Online reputation management: Pulls information from up to 8,000 sources (including Facebook and Twitter)
• Site traffic analysis: Enables users to understand key website performance metrics (including Google Analytics)
• Small business-focused news and advice: Provided from Yahoo! Small Business Advisor
• Campaign tracking: Provides email marketing, SEO, and SEM campaign tracking (must subscribe to these services)
• Support: 24/7 in-house free customer support

 Premium paid services are also available for those businesses looking to increase their online visibility, track their competitors and attract new customers by taking advantage of marketing services from featured, best-in-class third party marketing vendors.

The Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard and Yahoo! Small Business Advisor are the most recent additions to the suite of tools from Yahoo! Small Business which also offers web hosting, ecommerce, domains, and business mail aimed at helping small businesses grow. Get it for free here.

Flickr Photos Get a Larger-than-Life Makeover!

When it comes to photos, most Flickr users would agree that bigger is always better! You asked and we listened! Flickr is excited to announce two new photo sizes, 1600 and 2048 pixels. They are already available in the lightbox and will be rolled out to the API and a few other places over the next few weeks. Along with our outstanding, low-compression photo quality, this will give you an exceptional viewing experience; no matter if you are in front of your HD display, your new iPad or any other pixel-perfect high-resolution screen.

The new sizes are available for all photos that you have uploaded since March 1. For each photo we are generating the two new 1600 pixels and 2048 pixels sizes (unless the uploaded image is smaller on the longer side). These new larger image sizes will make your photos look even more stunning on Flickr. Take your pictures to the next level today!

Photo: Available from Xerxes2K./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quicksilver/3022285020/

For starters, Flickr has added a Pinterest button in the share menu to easily “pin” photo pages, favorites, and groups. If you don’t want your content to be shared, you can disable sharing in your account settings and make the Pinterest option unavailable.

With Flickr images amongst the most popular content pinned to Pinterest, we believe your Flickr photos should be properly attributed to you, regardless of where they are pinned from.  Starting today, every image shared from Flickr will be clearly credited with the name of the photographer, the title, and a link from Pinterest to the photo page – this will also include all Flickr photos previously shared on Pinterest. The attribution cannot be edited, so even repins of images will be credited and linked back, so that people can leave comments, fave your photo, or contact you directly on Flickr.  This also works automatically for any Flickr photos embedded in websites or blogs, giving you much more certainty that you’ll be credited when your Flickr photos are shared on Pinterest.

You can read more about the new features on the Flickr Blog and on the Pinterest Blog.  Try them out and share your feedback as we continue to evolve Flickr and work to further protect the rights of photographers and content owners.

Photo: Available from Xerxes2k./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quicksilver/6770210647/

For many women, life is divided into two parts: before kids and after kids. From the moment you cross that line into motherhood, nothing is ever the same.

It’s a revelation you can see in the face of Brenda Law, Shine’s beloved Community Manager, in a photo taken just after delivering her twin boys.

Here’s how Brenda remembers feeling in that instant: “This photo is the first time I held my boys together as one was whisked away after birth because of his low body temperature. That moment you realize you’re a mom is truly overwhelming. It’s pure joy, intense love, relief, and a bit of fear because they are such tiny perfect beings and you just want to do your very, very best for them.”

Yahoo! Shine wants to know what your first moment of motherhood looked like — whether it’s your first pregnancy photo or your first face-to-face in the hospital, we want to see it.

It may be hard to explain what it feels like to hold your baby for the first time, but that’s what photos are for. Upload your own first mommy photo to Shine’s First Mom Photo Flickr Pool and share the love!

Moms have already started to submit their photos – check them out here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1946650@N20/

We will be featuring entries in a gallery on Yahoo! Shine next month – just in time for Mother’s Day.

This completely new uploading experience makes it easier than ever to select, upload, and share images. You can edit batches of photos and share the story behind your photos, adding tags, captions, and organizing sets.

We used HTML 5 technology so you can easily drag-and-drop to arrange your photos exactly the way you want them to look in your photo stream. And we’ve amped up the experience by increasing our upload speeds by up to 30% and our file size limits to 50MB for Pro users and up to 30MB for free users. With options like these, you don’t have to sacrifice pixel quality when sharing your photos with family and friends.

The Flickr team is hard at work to bring you even more cool features as part of this larger reimagining of the Flickr experience. Stay tuned for lots more!

In the meantime, you can read more about the new Uploadr on the Flickr Blog and on the Flickr Developer Blog at code.flickr.com.

Go forth and Flickr!

Photo: Available from Schill./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schill/6464356545/sizes/l/in/faves-karaem23/

For the first profile in the series, Flickr is spotlighting Santa Cruz, CA-based photographer Carolyn Lagattuta, whose experience with Flickr is a true reflection of what the site hopes to instill in every user –- inspiration.

Before joining Flickr in 2006, Carolyn had a nagging feeling that something was missing in her life. “I always felt like I never really had one particular thing I was good at — something that lit my fire and made others feel something” Carolyn said. “Little did I know, I did have a talent in me. Flickr and the people I’ve met through the site brought it all to the surface.” After a friend suggested that the university administrator and casual photographer, join Flickr, Carolyn immediately found her niche within the site, connecting with other photographers, joining Flickr groups and gaining recognition among her peers for her quirky, colorful style and creativity. Carolyn’s newfound passion for photography, cultivated through Flickr, breathed new life into her career, friendships and even the way she looked at the world. “Flickr has made me see everything in a whole new light,” she said.

Carolyn spoke with Flickr about her photography, Flickr-founded friendships and how the photo-sharing site has influenced her life today.

You are quite the Flickr fan! What has made your experience with the site so positive?

I know it sounds cheesy, but Flickr has truly changed my life. It ignited something inside me and made me feel like I was really good at something. I wasn’t really a photographer before I joined Flickr, I was just at home, taking photos of my baby to send to my husband at work with a point-and-shoot he had bought for me. The best part of joining the site initially was that I didn’t need to be a professional photographer to capture people’s attention with my work. As my eye and technical ability began to improve, my husband upgraded my cameras and my work was getting noticed more and more. The feedback I got from my Flickr contacts, both good and bad, inspired me to keep shooting to see where it would take me.

I joined a Flickr group called Mission 24 which gave us weekly photo challenges where we were assigned a particular word and had 24 hours to take a picture of the way we interpreted it — literal or not. While my photos weren’t the greatest at first, I always tried to be as creative as possible and I even made the front page of Flickr with my tampon- inspired interpretation of the word “flow.”

I think this experience kicked-off my passion for wanting to think outside the box and have fun with my photos. The reaction to my work has made me feel like I really have a place within the Flickr community, and that I’ve made connections that will last a lifetime. All in all, I cant even begin to express the impact that Flickr has had on my life.

Tell us about the friendships and connections you’ve made with other users

Hands down, one of the best things about the site has been the friendships I’ve made with Flickr users all over the world. We communicate on a regular basis, sharing insights on photography, video clips and information on photo workshops. There’s this constant communication between us that has even crossed over into our personal lives. I know about people’s children and families and we help each other whenever needed. It’s crazy to think that these kinds of personal connections could be available on a photo-sharing website.

How has Flickr helped you with your career?

I work at UC Santa Cruz. I was first hired as an administrator in public affairs and communications, but as I got more involved in Flickr, my photography techniques improved due to the guidance I was receiving from other users, and my work soon captured the attention of my co-workers and manager. Three years ago, photography was written into my job description and now I’m also a campus photographer, shooting for the school’s various publications and websites. With all the restructuring and layoffs taking place throughout the workforce, I’m confident that this has made me more valuable to my employer. I even took a picture from the UC Santa Cruz campus that ended up being featured in Newsweek! It just gets better and better.

What has been your main takeaway from your Flickr experience?

The benefits I’ve enjoyed from the site are too many to count but I think the main thing is that Flickr, and photography in general, has made me see everything in a whole new light. I notice everything and everything is magnified. Even if I don’t have my camera with me, I notice it all, be it beautiful or ugly, ordinary or unusual; a couple holding hands, or a rusty sign, or a sunset, or a piece of trash in a gutter. I’m seeing everything and appreciating it in a way that I never imagined I could. Knowing that my new way of looking at the world has inspired me and my Flickr community of friends has been invaluable.

Check out Carolyn’s photo stream here. Interested in having your Flickr story featured? Click here to submit your story for a chance to be our next featured photographer!

Here are a few of our favorites:

• Personalize your in-box: Yahoo! Mail has many colorful themes to choose from and two of them are even animated! People with newer Macbooks who use the Google Chrome browser can have an alien zipping around their screen. To check it out go to Yahoo! Mail, “Options”, “Themes” and select the thumbnail with the alien in the UFO. Move your laptop around to see the alien fly faster. There’s another theme that moves too. We’ll give you a hint – it’s blue. Hey, we don’t want to give everything away so easy!

• Keep your in-box tidy: Automatic Organizer sorts your emails according to pre-set preferences so your inbox doesn’t spiral out of control. Regret signing up for some of those newsletters? Use the Unsubscribe feature to safely get off mailing lists. And to manage your emails, set up folders so it’s easy to find the important ones. If you right click on an email and select “filter emails like this”, you can set up an automatic filter to make email filing a snap.

• Photo Slide Shows: Yahoo! Mail detects photos in your incoming emails, so you can view slideshows right from your Inbox. An incoming email that contains photos, or a link to a photo service like Flickr, displays thumbnail images at the bottom of the message.

• Take it with you: Yahoo! Mail is mobile. Apple iOS5 users can easily add their Yahoo! Mail account to their iPhones & iPads. Android users can download our popular Yahoo! Mail Android app from Google Play.

• Organize your purchases: Drowning in email receipts? Online shoppers, rejoice – we’ve got you covered. Sign up for the All My Purchases app within Yahoo! Mail to get all of your receipts and purchase information centralized in one spot.

• Hidden Cat: For all cat-lovers out there, be sure to Alt-Click on the Yahoo! Mail logo within Mail to meet our resident team mascot. “Fluffy” can only be seen for people using Firefox or Internet Explorer.
• Become a productivity master: Shift + ? pulls up all of the keyboard shortcuts within Yahoo! Mail. Learn new shortcuts like N = new message, T = start a new text and P = print message.

And to those of you without a Yahoo! Mail account, open a new account to see what you’ve been missing!

We’ve been nominated for 5 Webby Awards this year, and we’re also in the running for 5 Webby People’s Voice Awards. The winners of the prestigious Webby Awards, handed out for excellence on the Web, are selected by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS), but the Webby People’s Voice Awards are voted on by members of the online public – that’s where you come in.

The People’s Voice Awards let consumers choose the best in each category, and we need Yahoo! fans to help us bring the awards home for:

• Flickr for best Community website
• omg! from Yahoo! for best in the Celebrity/Fan category
• IntoNow in the Social category
• Financially Fit in the How-To and DIY category
• Failure Club in the Reality category

Voting is open through April 26, so click the links above and cast your ballots for our nominees!

Adding to the exciting news, the Academy has acknowledged other outstanding entries among the nearly 10,000 received as Official Honorees, including 7 Yahoo! entries:

• Yahoo! Movies — Movie and Film category
• Yahoo! TV — Television category
• Yahoo! Mobile Flickr Android App — Best Use of Device Camera category
• Chow Ciao — Best Web Personality/Host category
• Nikki Boyer of Yahoo!’s “Daytime in No Time” – Best Web Personality/Host category
• A Decade of Difference — Events & Live Webcasts category
• Around the World with Christiane Amanpour — News & Politics: Series category

Yahoo! is committed to creating deeply personal digital experiences for our users. We’re very proud to be recognized by the IADAS with our Webby Award nominations, and would be even prouder to win the Webby People’s Voice Awards we’re up for – so vote for our nominees and share in our collective yodel: Yahoo!

March was a big month for fun as well. The annual SXSW music, film, and technology festival nabbed the No. 2 spot on our trending list. Third place went to St. Patrick’s Day. Apparently our photographers are a very lucky bunch – there are nearly 1,000 pictures tagged as four-leaf clovers on Flickr. March Madness rounded out the top five this month.

Though their inspiration changed, our users stayed true to their technology. The iPhone 4 was once again the most popular camera on Flickr, followed by DSLRs from Canon and Nikon.

For more interesting Flickr trends, including a special section for foodies, check out the March Trend Report below.

Photo: Available from The Next Band./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nextbestband/3653114771/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Power Player Series Heats Up Election Coverage
Got politics on your mind as election season heats up? You’re not the only one! ABC News and Yahoo! News Political team have come together to keep politics junkies satisfied with a dynamic dose of up-to-the-minute news and in-depth analysis of the elections thought the new Power Player series available on Livestand and screen mobile platforms.

This new daily video political series will he headlined by ABC news’ political dream team, which includes George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper, Amy Walter and more. These political heavyweights will discuss and offer insight on all things elections, from Obama’s disappearing allies in the Republican party to the court case that could cost him the election. Tune in every weekday for political news from Washington’s most respected news sources!

Yahoo! Fantasy Finance Kick-Off
Too strapped for cash to invest in the stock market? Here’s your chance to have all the fun without any of the risk! Yahoo! Finance just launched their first-ever Fantasy Finance game, sponsored by TD Ameritrade, in which wannabe traders can test their trading skills and Wall Street smarts by investing $100K in purple play money into a wide selection of Stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) as listed on the major US exchanges.

Players will also have the chance to take a daily quiz for an additional $100 of play money to help increase their gains and the player with the highest total portfolio value at the end of twelve weeks will win the grand prize. The game is a great learning tool for budding investors of all ages and allows players the opportunity to emulate “real world” experience in the financial market. Happy trading!

Share Where You Are with the Latest Android Messenger App
Yahoo! has just launched a new version (v 1.6) of its Messenger Android app. Now, you can easily let your contacts know where you are by adding your location when you update your status message. If your friends are nearby, they may just meet you there!

The ‘Add Location’ button in the Status Message view lets you add your general location to all status updates. You can also add a specific place, like a restaurant or park. Unable to find a place or local business? You can manually enter a place or local business, which will be registered as a new location in our directory and can be used by other users on Yahoo! Messenger.

Adding a location to your status message is completely optional and will only be enabled if your Android phone allows us to detect your location via GPS satellites or WiFi and mobile networks. Once you declare your location, all your buddies will see where you are so you can easily rendezvous with them when you’re in the neighborhood. Try it out! Download it today from Google Play.

Flickr Announces new Meetup site.
Flickr has a longstanding reputation as the best place for photographers to connect and share their work online, but web connections can only take you so far. Flickr recently introduces a new Meetup.com feature to help bring Flickr users together in person!

The new feature will allow Flickr users to plan Flickr events, Photowalks, exhibitions and get togethers all over the world, which can now be organized and announced on the Flickr page at Meetup.com. Feel free to start and organize your own, or join in with existing ones in your neighborhood.

Today, only on Yahoo! Music, fans can enter to win exclusive VIP tickets to experience Madonna live and up close during her highly anticipated global tour.  These “in the pit” tickets are for fans only and cannot be purchased; they can only be won on Yahoo! Music.   Just upload a photo of yourself with the album cover from MDNA to the Flickr group below.  Winners will be selected at random from all photos uploaded.

Enter on Flickr here: http://flickr.com/groups/MDNA

Join this Flickr group and after agreeing to the rules post a picture of yourself posed with Madonna’s new album cover from MDNA – which you can find on iTunes. Winners will be selected at random from all the photos uploaded. Winner may select a Madonna 2012 World Tour concert date/location from a pre determined list of concerts. Click on the link to the official rules for more details.

Contest begins Monday, March 26th and runs through April 23, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET

Return to Yahoo! Music for more exclusive content from Madonna as she prepares for her global tour.

On the technical side, the iPhone 4 was once again the most popular camera for snapping Flickr photos. Canon took the second, fourth, and fifth spots with the 5D Mark II, Rebel T2i, and 7D. Third place went to the Nikon D90.

The February Trend Report also highlights some great stats about The Commons on Flickr. This unique collection contains over 200,000 public-domain photos from 56 premier institutions such as the Library of Congress and NASA. Users are encouraged to tag and comment on these images to help promote the hidden treasures of the photography world.

Photo: Available from stephen_d_luke./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_d_luke/6833665761/in/photostream

Flickr Contacts page gets a sleeker makeover
The first phase in Flickr’s 2012 redesign has just launched! Flickr’s contact page has been revamped using the new Justifed layout which will make it easier to see the stories your friends are telling with their photos. While the previous layout choices are still available, the new design optimizes for seamlessly displaying more images at larger sizes, so you can see more of the activity from contacts, friends and family at once. The new design offers Flickr members:

A more elegant layout, with whitespace and thumbnails removed for vibrant, un-cropped photos that way the photo is meant to appear (portrait, landscape, panorama, Instagram square)

Simpler and more dynamic navigation, including:

• Scroll-over functionality gives way to high-resolution pop-up images
• A simple light-box option for a full-screen view of the image selected
• Limitless photo scrolling removes the need to click from page to page

New ways to interact with images, including quick access to “favorite” images and comment right on the thumbnails

Check out the new Flickr contacts page here

Yahoo! Screen introduces the Yahoo! Comedy Channel
The live broadcast of Bill Mahr’s “CrazyStupidPolitics: Live from Silicon Valley” last night kicks off the launch of the Yahoo! Comedy Channel on Yahoo! Screen, which will feature a slate of original web shows from some of the top production companies and renown comedic talent. The lineup includes “Sketchy” a weekly video comedy series starting some of the biggest names in comedy and many others. Missed the Bill Mahr live broadcast? You can watch all the clips on Yahoo! Screen, hear all about his surprise headline announcement, and check out the rest of the video series available.

Flickr Android App Coming To A Language Near You!
Flickr rolled out an update to the Flickr Android app that includes nine new languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesian. The popular Flickr Android app, which initially launched in September 2011, allows even more Flickr members worldwide to take photos directly from the app, enhance them with filters, and quickly send pictures to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Check it out here.

The Signal Predicts Obama will win the Election
David Rothschild and David Pennock from Yahoo! Labs made a bold prediction in The Signal last week that Obama will win the general election in November by 303 electoral votes. The Signal, a Yahoo! blog uses the first ever real-time prediction engine that combines powerful scientific algorithms with multiple, real-time and historical data sources to generate predictions. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors. To date, the post has attracted over 40,000 comments, a record for The Signal.Stay current on the Signal’s latest posts here.

A Flickr Of Love from harry katz on Vimeo.

Hearing stories about people meeting online isn’t unusual. Nearly one-third of new couples now meet through the web and the Internet has become second-most common way to meet a significant other. But while online-dating sites might be the most obvious way to connect online, a different kind of web forum is quickly emerging as a new and seemingly unlikely way to meet a match: Flickr.

Since Flickr’s inception in 2004, users have used the photo sharing site to post and share their best photographs with their families, friends and the larger Flickr community, often forming connections with virtual strangers over shared photography related interests. Missouri couple Jasmine Garcia and Anthony Tripoli first connected through Flickr in 2007 when Anthony began following Jasmine’s photo stream, keeping up with her latest updates and providing her with valuable feedback on her photography. Flickr exchanges eventually turned into phone chats, which turned into an in-person meeting when Jasmine accepted Anthony’s Valentine’s Day  invitation to visit him in Columbia, Missouri. The rest is Flickr history.

Jasmine and Anthony, who recently moved from Missouri to Las Vegas have found a way to honor the medium that brought them together by launching a joint photography venture thrashionistas.com that they promote through Flickr. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, Anthony discusses the couple’s love for photography, each other and the photo sharing site that made it all happen.

Flickr and dating? Seems like an unusual combination. How did Flickr spark your interest in one another?

Often when I browse Flickr, I’ll look at the photos that my friends have marked as favorites as a way to explore the work of other photographers. It was by doing this that I discovered Jasmine. Her photos touched something in me and I added her a Flickr friend, began commenting on her photos and it took off from there.

You seem to have a lot of admiration for Jasmine’s work. What is your favorite photo that she has taken and why?

It’s hard to pick my favorite photo of Jasmine’s because I genuinely love and feel inspired by all of her work, but if I had to point to something, I would choose a portrait she did of our friend Ann. We collaborated on the lighting for that one, and actually used leftover Christmas lights from our house to create that kind of ethereal glow around her.

Is there a particular aesthetic you share when it comes to photography?

We both enjoy portraiture and taking photos of people as well as lifestyle-oriented photography. Jasmine has an amazing eye and an uncanny ability to capture people in the most flattering and personal ways. I am very technical and obsess over getting the lighting right, making sure the depth of field is perfect for the photo and that the environment is just right. We also both have tattoos and enjoy finding creative ways to capture the beauty of body art through photography.

You are both avid photographers, how did your mutual love for this medium translate into a joint career?

We have been working side by side on different freelance photo assignments under the name Thrashonistas for the better part of a year now. We book mostly local editorial and commercial work including portraiture and tattoo shops and we hope to eventually move to Los Angeles to pursue photography on a larger scale. We still have our individual Flickr accounts, which we use regularly to promote our personal work as well as our thrashonistas work.

Any advice for other Flickr users hoping to make a love connection through the site?

Flickr is an ideal way for photo enthusiasts to meet people who share similar interests in photography. Whether you both love taking photos with a specific camera, enjoy photographing landscapes or whatever your passion may be, Flickr can be best way to connect. Jasmine and my’s attraction to each others Flickr photos led to us talking more, which led us to where we are today. So my best advice is to not hesitate to reach out to anyone on Flickr who’s photos spark your interest. You never know where it might take you.

Check out Anthony and Jasmine’s Flickr profiles and view their Trashonistas work here.

Photos: Available from Jasmine Garcia and Anthony Tripoli/ FLICKR

Photo: Available from sharper65./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41421819@N05/6227046130/in/photostream/

Cities all over the world are marking the Chinese New Year with feasts, festivals, and parades. Naturally, this lively, festive, and colorful holiday is a photographer’s dream – especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, which boasts the largest Chinese -American community in the United States – and the biggest parade. San Francisco-based photographer and longtime Flickr user Dave Golden has covered this event for years, and his Chinese New Year-related Flickr album is among the most popular galleries of the event on the photo-sharing site. Dave spoke with Yahoo! about photographing San Francisco’s Chinese New Year parade and how Flickr has helped him get the kind of exposure needed to boost his career.

Fast Facts

Name: Dave Golden
Age: 47
Location: San Francisco
Occupation: Web Developer/ Photographer
Flickr User Since: 2005

What is your favorite thing about being a San Francisco photographer?

I enjoy walking around San Francisco and exploring and photographing the different neighborhoods. The diversity of the neighborhoods is often visible in the numerous cultural events and festivals we have throughout the year.

You have been taking photos of the city’s Chinese New Year celebration for four years now, and your Chinese New Year gallery on Flickr is very popular. What is your favorite visual aspect of this event? Why does it make for such beautiful photos?

The Chinese New Year celebration is full of color, elaborate costumes, and cultural performances, which show the richness of Chinese culture and the Bay Area’s Asian American community. The parade is one of the largest in San Francisco and one of the only evening parades in the city. Photographing an event at night can be very challenging. I seldom use flash; instead I depend on what little available light there is that I might get from streetlights and storefronts. The low light may be difficult to shoot in sometimes, but it can also result in some very unique images.

As a longtime Flickr user, what is your favorite thing about the site?

Flickr’s tagging has always been one of the most useful features to me. It is my favorite way to explore photos. Most of the publication requests I receive via Flickr are from people who have located my photos online, which I don’t think would be possible if not for their tags.

I also like the metadata available on the site, which is particularly useful for photographers. When I’m curious about how a photographer created a particular effect, I can check to see what camera they used and other related information. This feature has been especially useful for me and isn’t available on many other photo sharing sites.

Your Flickr stream gets thousands of views per day. Has Flickr helped your photography career?

Flickr has been a huge help to my career as a photographer. Before Flickr came along, it was much harder for me to share my photos with the public the way I do now. I have been using the site since 2005 — before that, I had to rely on creating my own HTML photo galleries which is obviously a much more complex process that gave me less visibility than Flickr.

A number of publications look to Flickr for content, particularly for events. I have received requests from all over the world. Silverkris, Singapore Airlines’ magazine, used a photograph in their travel calendar section that I took at a festival in Nikko, Japan — they located it on Flickr. And another magazine, Peacework, based out of Massachusetts, used a photograph I had taken in Japantown to accompany an article about activism in Okinawa. All in all, Flickr has been an indispensible tool for me in my career.

Stay tuned for more profiles of Flickr users who have benefited from the photo-sharing site. Flickr, which boasts over 6 billion photos uploaded by 70 million members worldwide, has become a staple for casual picture takers to serious photographers alike.

See the Year in Photos 2011 on Flickr.

Although there are nearly 6 billion photos on Flickr, Front End Manager Ross Harmes has been able to see first-hand how much of a difference a single Flickr photo can make. After checking in with the man responsible for taking a photograph that held a place on Flickr’s front page for five years, Ross learned that Flickr helped spur a significant career change. “This guy went from being a cement layer to now a professional photographer just because of the publicity he got from that one photo.”

Editors Note: This article is part of a series entitled “Life at Yahoo!,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. To hear more of these stories, visit Yahoo! Careers, or visit us on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

A recent Yahoo! Mobile/Razorfish study reveals interesting gender differences in usage and ranks the smartphone as the number one device in the home with 75% of votes, with a landslide 80% of respondents using their phones to multi-task while watching TV.

The more than 2,000 U.S. respondents that participated in the study were asked questions on their multi-tasking habits and device preferences, bringing to light some interesting trends and valuable insights. Following are the top 10 findings:

1. Did you see that?: An overwhelming 90% said that multi-tasking on their smartphone (while watching live TV & commercials) was to communicate with others (via text or phone).
2. Pass the remote: 60% access the mobile web (not apps or email) during TV commercials, 38% of which is related to the content they are watching. 15% of respondents admitted that they are never without their phone for the entire duration of a TV show.
3. Laptop vs. tablet: Searching for content related to what’s on TV at any given time is more prevalent for tablet users than laptop/desktop users — over half (57%) of people multi-tasking on tablets are searching for related content, while the same could be said for just 33% of laptop/desktop users.
4. Women want to know: Young women are the prime demographic to surf the Internet related to what they’re watching (65% of women under the age of 35, compared to 47% of men of the same age).
5. Mobile phone scapegoat: 52% of consumers use their mobile device to escape awkward situations. Women are more likely to use their phone as an excuse than men.
6. No need to stop & ask for directions: Overall, men (59%) are using their web-enabled mobile devices most frequently for navigational purposes.
7. Are you ready for some football?: Men were almost twice as likely to say that checking their mobile phone for sports news causes arguments with their significant other (29%) compared to women (17%).
8. Men are glued to stats: 58% of men are ‘fact checking’ on their mobile web browser while at a live sporting event, with nearly half (47%) checking out scores of other games and players.
9. The gender divide: Men are more likely to use their mobile device as a functional, all- in-one tool; whereas women are more likely to use it as an extension of the traditional phone, to update and connect with friends across their social networks on the go.
10. Mobile shopping is a man’s world: Online purchases on smartphones are more popular with men (70% under 35 years) than with women (64% under 35 years).

Any of this ring true with you? Check out the full report released today, available on http://www.razorfish.com.

To learn more about Yahoo! Mobile, check out mobile.yahoo.com and ymobileblog.com/blog. Search for “Yahoo!” in the iTunes App Store or Android Market to discover industry-leading apps, such as Livestand from Yahoo!, Yahoo! Messenger, MarketDash, Flickr, Sportacular and dozens more. With more than 100 mobile partnerships, you can find your favorite Yahoo! experiences on nearly every mobile device and platform.

Edwin Wong

Yahoo! Insights

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

A personalized living magazine just for you — Livestand for iPad is here: Livestand weaves together content from leading third-party publishers and Yahoo!’s global media network to create a visually stunning and deeply personalized digital experience tailored for you and your interests and passions. Whether it’s presenting the latest recipes, timely tweets, breaking news, or blog posts, Livestand brings you the content you care about like you’ve never seen before. Check out the video below, read more here, or better yet, visit the App Store and download Livestand for free today.

The perfect companion for your TV – IntoNow for iPad: IntoNow makes TV-watching more engaging, social, and fun with one touch of a button. Like magic, IntoNow automatically identifies what you’re watching – whether live or recorded – and displays related content and personalized recommendations on what to watch. It also lets you have conversations with friends who are watching the same shows, and follow Twitter feeds of actors and athletes on TV. It’s available today for free download in the App Store.

Today’s forecast is sunny with a touch of Flickr – Yahoo! Weather for Android: The new Yahoo! Weather app brings weather to life with beautiful photos that correspond with where you are, what the weather’s like, and what time of day it is. All the photos are from the Flickr community, with a crowdsourcing effort launching at http://flickr.com/projectweather to create a global-weather image library. The app is available as a free download in the Android Market in 35 languages and 63 countries.

A fresh way to look at email – Yahoo! Mail for iPad browser – Yahoo! Mail gives you a rich, vivid entry point on your iPad Web browser for viewing unread emails from your contacts, as well as customized local weather, trending video content, and personalized news. Read more here or head to mail.yahoo.com from any iPad to try it out.

Get your social on while reading the news – Conversations and Notifications on Yahoo!: A couple of new social features expand upon the Yahoo! News activity we launched last month to give you more ways to connect, communicate, and get updates from your friends. Want to chat about a story you’re reading? The Conversations feature lets you have small group conversations within Yahoo! News. The new Notifications feature will inform you of new social activity of interest across Yahoo! – such as feedback on reviews, responses to comments, or new conversations with friends. Both Conversations and Notifications will be available in the coming weeks.

Cutting-edge platform with a splash of lime – Cocktails: Livestand is built upon Cocktails, a powerful open platform for developers and publishers that uses many of Yahoo!’s popular developer tools such as YUI and YQL. Read more about this new platform offering here.

Unmatched creative canvas for advertising: Yahoo! continues to evolve its advertising experiences to creatively engage with audiences and tell their stories. Read more about Yahoo!’s new tablet and social advertising offerings here.

I’m pretty sure you will have heard many times before, but it’s true, in the internet and media world: content is king.

It sounds simple, but what this statement doesn’t do is capture the innovation, the passion and the strives in technology which help Yahoo! deliver the most relevant content to 92 million users in Europe alone by a combining unique technology with human expertise.

First off, you may ask who am I? I am Noelia Fernández Arroyo, VP, Head of Audience in EMEA. I’ve been at Yahoo! for over 13 years. Jerry and the team initially hired me to launch Yahoo! Spain back in 1998. I joined the company because it had the ambition to improve the World through great technology and services, with editorial at the core and you know what, the principle still remains the same today. Yes, I’ve seen changes and have experienced challenges but I firmly believe in Yahoo!’s commitment and passion to create deeply personal experiences on the Web. Yahoo!’s passion, is my passion.

To that point, we have been investing in the right areas and focusing where we can win, and where we are winning! Did you know in Europe’s five largest markets Yahoo! reaches 92 million people, up over 7 million or 9% year on year against a market growth of 2% and we’re ranked number one or two in five categories across Europe: News, Finance, Sport, Flickr and Answers. We are in a unique position where we can leverage our innovation and technology with our European users to deliver compelling content to a mass audience, every day.

We have the best technology combined with talented, global editorial teams who help us turn around events and news that people care about on a global basis. Let me give you an example, the London riots were big news here in Europe, as it was globally. We were seeing a lot of activity on the streets, which was both prolific and sensitive in nature. The flexibility of the global publishing platform allowed our News and Front Page teams to respond quickly to create around the clock coverage and exclusive content in real time and through people’s own eyes. Interestingly, in August, the UK video streams rocketed by 191% on Yahoo! News showing the demand and consumption of rich content in parallel to news stories.

So, how do we do this?

Firstly, we keep investing strongly in our new global content publishing platform. It’s called the Yahoo! Publishing Platform. It’s global but puts power in the hands of local teams here in Europe working for local audiences; it allows us to act much faster to world events and activities and provides a platform for easy integration of rich video content.

So what does the Yahoo! Publishing Platform actually mean for the life of our Editors in Europe?

• In Italy, where Yahoo! Movies is on the Yahoo! Publishing Platform, it took just one hour to create recent coverage of the Cannes Movies Festival which delivered double the performance from the previous year
• We can create and publish original content easily and quickly: in Yahoo! omg! alone we publish over 35 original stories per day unique to Yahoo!
• The Yahoo! Publishing Platform recently launched for Yahoo! Video, Lifestyle and News. A combination of coverage of key events using the new platform led to a 20% increase in Yahoo! News page views in Europe[iv]
• omg from Yahoo! has also launched in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK
• Yahoo! Movies in Italy launched onto the platform leading to a 60% increase in page views
• So far we have launched 95 products already onto the Yahoo! Publishing Platform

Through our science and technology, we can make informed decisions, based on scientific data rather than predictions and estimations. It allows the editors I work with to get ahead of the game and be first with the right content. This is where C.O.R.E. (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) comes in, a technology that was developed by Yahoo! Labs a couple of years ago. Sophisticated algorithms and machine learning technology, combined with human expertise allows us to carry out deep personalization to our 674 million users globally and 92 million in Europe.

Did you know?

• Our Editorial team appropriately delivers on average, 35 stories per week day, per market, targeted to our users individual interests based on our own technology
• Yahoo! personalizes 2.2 billion content module experiences on our pages per day
• We show 13 million personalized homepage versions per day and the click through rate in the Yahoo! Magazine on the frontpage has increased by more than 700% in Europe as a result of this technology

So you can see why I am committed, focused and excited to be a Yahoo! and this is just a taste of what we are currently doing here in Europe. I know we have plenty of innovation and new products up our sleeves over the coming months, so watch this space!

Gracias and keep up the purple!

Noelia Fernandez Arroyo
Proud to be a Yahoo!

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series entitled, “In My Own Words,” that gives employees the opportunity to share their own stories about Yahoo!. Feel like yodeling your own? Post your Yahoo! story on your social networks using the hashtag #myYahoostory.

Second Act from Yahoo! News took home the Reality Webby Award in the Online Film & Video category, edging out nominations from reputable sources such as The Washington Post. If you haven’t checked it out already, Second Act is a Yahoo! Originals show that celebrates real people who discover their passions and reinvent themselves to reach for their dreams. Second Act has always aimed high with inspired storytelling, emotional resonance and graceful, artistic execution and has now been recognized as such in the eyes of the creative industry.  We hope you’ve enjoyed the program as much as we’ve enjoyed producing it, check out our season 1 recap below:

Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby – developed with our partners at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners – came away the winner of the Mobile & Experience Marketing award in the Interactive Advertising category, beating out campaigns from recognizable brand such as Unilever. At the end of 2010, Yahoo! ran a highly engaging and interactive local market activation program that showcased Yahoo! Mobile apps. The purpose of this initiative was to encourage people to download and use Yahoo! mobile apps in a meaningful way while showcasing our digital marketing innovation that would generate buzz, water cooler talk, and exhibit thought leadership. The Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby was a two-month citywide gaming challenge held in San Francisco, using first-of-their-kind 72-inch touch screens in transit shelters featuring interactive games tied to four key Yahoo! mobile apps: Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sportacular, Yahoo! Messenger, and Flickr.

In addition to our two wins, our partners at Turner Sports won the People’s Voice award for Best Interactive Use of Video for their Ryder Cup Live Video player powered by Yahoo!. And of course, a big shout out to Yahoo! Finance, which was nominated for the Financial Services award in the Websites category and six Yahoo! properties recognized as honorees (some in more than one category), representing the top 10% of entries in their respective categories.

Congratulations to the Second Act from Yahoo! News and the Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby teams. They will be honored at the 15^th Annual Webby Awards on June 13^th in New York City.

Yahoo!’s royal wedding site will be an extension of Shine From Yahoo!, the leading Website for women’s lifestyle content, and demonstrates Yahoo!’s position as the premier Web destination for landmark global events. And speaking of global – the royal wedding site is localized and live in nine markets outside the US. We invite you to experience the royal wedding through all the features our site offers:

• Guestbook: The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook gives people a place to offer their marital advice and best wishes to Prince William and Kate Middleton, then share those wishes with users’ social networks.  Even celebrities have left messages for the couple on our guestbook!
• Photo galleries: View photos of the couple’s courtship, Kate Middleton as a child, and much more.
• Articles and blogs: The latest news on the royal wedding, plus articles on the wedding trends, fashion, the royal wedding’s participants and guests, and more.
• Wedding live stream: Watch the royal wedding live by visiting http://royalwedding.yahoo.com on April 29.
• Video:  Yahoo! will feature video from Associated Press, Reuters, and ABC News, along with original video content including a joint ABC News/Yahoo! News Web show called “Wedding Royale.” ABC News will also provide weekly flashback videos of the royal family. During the week of the wedding, Yahoo! will have a crew on the ground in London producing stories on topics people are most interested in.
• Mobile site: Yahoo! allows you to get your Royal Wedding fix anytime, anywhere, by visiting http://m.royalwedding.yahoo.com from your mobile phone.
• A chance to enter the “Live It Up Like Royalty” sweepstakes: By signing the Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook or by “liking” Shine from Yahoo! on Facebook, users will automatically be entered to win a trip to Las Vegas to be treated like a king or queen.

Additionally, Flickr by Yahoo!, one of the world’s best places to post and share photos, features The Official British Monarchy Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishmonarchy/tags/rw2011/ Join the celebration, the Yahoo! way. Cheerio!

Yahoo!’s ‘You In?’ campaign set out to create a ripple of kindness around the world over the holidays by leveraging our vast community’s social networks. We encouraged people to update their online status with how they were helping others and a call-out for others to join them. For instance, someone shared “I just paid the toll fees for 20 cars behind me. You In?”.

Through this campaign, Yahoo! inspired over 320,000 people from 18 countries to do random acts of kindness and encourage their friends and family to do the same. People updated their status on the ‘You In?’ website, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Profiles, Yahoo! Mobile, Facebook and Twitter. They also shared hundreds of photos and videos of their random acts of kindness on Flickr.

Congratulations to all the Yahoos who made this campaign a success!

If you have any questions, you can reach out to the Yahoo! for Good team at yahooforgood@yahoo-inc.com.

We live in a beautifully content rich world. More than 3.5 million photos get uploaded to Flickr every day. On email we receive nearly 2.5 billion emails each day, and many of us send hundreds of texts and tweets per month. Simply put, life is digital. In order to enjoy and share all this content, people want much more than a PC experience replicated on their tablet or phone—they want something fundamentally new.

As the premier digital media company, we see a clear opportunity to push the boundaries of personalization to deliver intelligent experiences specifically tailored for each individual.  This ultra personalized content experience is our vision for Livestand from Yahoo! – a digital newsstand, delivering a wealth of ever-changing content from multiple publishers, continuously programmed by a person’s interests and contexts.

With Livestand from Yahoo!, what you’re reading will be personalized based on your interests, your location and even the time of day.  Your experiences, which will begin on tablet form factors, will include intuitive touch interactions and an elegant design that focuses foremost on the content.

As the media landscape continues to evolve with mobile and tablet experiences top of mind, publishers and advertisers must expand their content to these platforms to stay in front of consumers.  We see an opportunity to provide publishers and advertisers with a pipeline for fresh and active content and to help them reach and engage their most valuable audiences.

With Livestand, we’re using ad formats that evoke the emotion of TV advertising with a highly-visual magazine-like experience.  And they’re combined with the effectiveness of an Internet ad that’s data-rich, actionable, even location aware.  It’s all personalized and in context – just like our content.

In the first half of 2011, you’ll see Yahoo!’s vast digital content library come to life through Livestand from Yahoo! – from Sports, News, Finance, Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo! Contributor Network – as iPad and Android tablet applications.

Stay tuned here for more updates over the coming weeks.

Blake Irving, EVP, Chief Product Officer, Yahoo!
@Blakei

We are thrilled to announce that the neighborhood of North Beach in San Francisco is the winner in the Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby – a two month city-wide challenge that came to an end on January 28th.

Here’s how the competition shaped up:

1. North Beach: 363,650

2. Tenderloin: 329,625

3. Mission: 306,275

The first of its kind, the Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby was a unique experience using 72″ touch LCD screens located in downtown bus shelters. Riders were able to represent their neighborhood by playing interactive games and competing for a community block party with a performance by Grammy winning band, OK Go.

This innovative contest encouraged residents and commuters to engage with games that highlighted Yahoo! Mobile applications. Users were able to compete by choosing a neighborhood from a drop-­down menu on the game screen, then select from four fun and engaging Yahoo! Mobile app-related games themed around Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Sportacular, and Flickr .

On Saturday, February 5th, the North Beach community will celebrate their win and host a block party at The San Francisco Art Institute overlooking iconic San Francisco landmarks such as Coit Tower and Alcatraz. The block party will feature a free performance by Grammy-winning band OK Go, local food vendors and games.

For additional information on Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby & block party, visit: http://www.busstopderby.com/

Since the debut of Yahoo! Connected TV at CES 2009, we have defined the category of Internet-enhanced television, working with top TV brands to bring the TV app experience to life across Sony, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, and VIZIO TVs. This year, we’re taking the TV experience into a new era through the introduction of a ground-breaking feature we call broadcast interactivity.  Imagine a TV experience that brings you even closer to the programs and brands you love by letting you interact with the programming in a way you never could before. You’ll be able to play along while watching your favorite show, vote for a reality-TV participant, get more information about characters, or make e-commerce purchases using a TV app.

Yahoo! is collaborating with television network powerhouses ABC, CBS, HSN, and Showtime and top brand advertisers Ford, Mattel and Microsoft on content for a pilot program launching in the first half of 2011, and will showcase examples of the new feature during CES.  Read more about it at the Connected TV and Yahoo! Advertising blogs.

That’s not all though. We’ll also be demonstrating new ways to take advantage of the many connected devices we use today – from mobile phones to tablets and Internet-connected TV and more:

• D-Link Internet-Connected Media Player, Featuring Yahoo! Connected TV: D-Link announced plans to launch the first ever Internet-connected media player, featuring the Yahoo! Connected TV platform. The D-Link device will provide consumers access to the Yahoo! Connected TV experience without the purchase of a new TV.
• New Yahoo! Connected TV Apps:  Today the Yahoo! Connected TV experience centers around a collection of more than 100 easy-to-use TV apps that run the gamut from social networking to music, games, news, weather, finance, shopping, and more than 50,000 movies and TV shows on demand. New TV apps launching at CES include CNBC, Clear Channel Radio, NBC, QVC, mgMedia, and more.
• Flickr App Preview for Windows 7 Devices:  We’re making it even easier for you to share and organize your photos using the leading online photo sharing community in the world. The Flickr apps for Windows 7 phones and the Slate tablet – launching in a few weeks – will provide a sleek user interface and unique inter-connectivity between phones, tablets and laptops.  Check out more details on the Flickr blog.
• Yahoo! Local for Mobile:   Our goal with the new Yahoo! Local is to be the best place for people to find what’s happening in their neighborhoods, whether they’re at home or on the go. With rich hyper-local content, the new Yahoo! Local provides people a truly personalized experience across desktop and mobile (currently available via the mobile web on iPhone and Android), enabling them to discover and contribute to the best local news, deals, and events nearby, all in one place. Check out more details on the new Yahoo! Local for mobile on the Yahoo! Mobile blog.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with more of the latest news, pictures, and videos featuring Yahoo! at CES 2011.

Cheers,
Irv Henderson

The campaign will use interactive games to highlight Yahoo!’s mobile app offerings to San Francisco residents and commuters, many of whom spend their down time at transit shelters using smart-phones to get information and stay connected on the go. Users will compete by choosing a neighborhood from a drop-­down menu on the interactive game screen at any transit shelter, then select from 4 fun and engaging Yahoo! Mobile app-related  games themed around Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo!  Messenger, Yahoo! Sportacular, and Flickr.

Participants earn points for  their neighborhoods as they compete against each other in the games, playing in either single-player or competitive mode against other neighborhoods around the city. A wide variety of neighborhoods across San Francisco are represented, including SOMA, North Beach, Mission, Castro, Hayes Valley and many others.

At the end of the campaign, the winning neighborhood will get a free concert from Grammy Award-winning rock band OK Go at a local neighborhood venue.

For complete rules and regulations, as well as a list of the Muni bus stops through out the city that will be included, please visit derby.yahoo.com

Game on, San Francisco riders!