Yahoo! Toolbar has always made navigating the web easier –- acting as a shortcut to search and as a way to keep track of your favorite Yahoo! sites. While that still holds true, we have noticed that people want more functionality from their toolbar, so today we are excited to share a new Yahoo! Toolbar –- one that makes it easier to stay on top of your online world no matter where you are on the web.

The new Yahoo! Toolbar now offers greater customization and more immediate access to the information you care about most from across the entire web – not just Yahoo! sites. Currently available if you’re using Internet Explorer 6+ and now for Firefox (as a beta), too, our new toolbar also helps you do some really handy things, including:

• Preview and Go: Most of us have sites we check every day –- sometimes more than once. Now you can preview information from your favorite sites directly within your toolbar. Small previews drop down from your toolbar, giving you real-time information without ever having to leave the page you’re on. Customize your toolbar with dozens of apps from Yahoo! and across the rest of the web, so you can check on your multiple email inboxes (Yahoo! and AOL), your eBay listings, the latest news from People.com or USA Today, stock portfolios, and even your local weather or movie showtimes.
• Search Faster: One of the most popular features on toolbars is search. So, we’ve created a better, more efficient way for you to conduct web searches (with the help of some cool technology from Inquisitor). The search box in your Yahoo! Toolbar now offers query suggestions, recall of sites based on your recent search history, and the ability to directly search other web sites, like Flickr and Wikipedia — right from the search box. It’s a real time saver!

By bringing the best of the web together in one place, we want to make the web work better for you – right from within your toolbar. Get started by downloading the new Yahoo! Toolbar at http://toolbar.yahoo.com/.

Burke Culligan
Senior Director, Yahoo! Front Doors

If you’ve never really liked your name, today’s your day to give it a rest. It’s National Joe Day, when everyone’s can introduce themselves as, well, “Joe.” So throw it out there legitimately when you order that venti triple-caff non-fat soy mocha latte. Here’s what we built for you Joe Schmo’s this week:

• The Interwebs invade your TV: You probably won’t ditch your computer any time soon, but now your TV can do more than just coddle couch potatoes. The new Yahoo! TV Widgets are here, debuting in Samsung’s new LED TV 7000, letting you multitask with a vengeance as you watch the boob tube. Without interrupting your program, you can check out content from Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Weather, and Flickr as well as (coming soon) great third-party brands like Twitter, the New York Times, Netflix, eBay, CBS Sports, Showtime and MySpace. You’ll find these widgets on TVs and devices from Sony, LG Electronics, Intel, and VIZIO starting this summer. Watch a demo here.
• Inquisitor goes global: A few weeks ago, we rolled out the Inquisitor app for the iPhone for people in the U.S. Now the mobile search app is available in ten more countries, autocompleting keywords and making suggestions so you can spend less time fat-fingering your query. And according to the Twitterverse, it appears to be scoring a spot on quite a number of iPhone first pages. (Note that you’ll need to change the country default in the options menu if you don’t want U.S. search results.) More here.

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It’s National Frozen Foods Day! A time to honor the cryogenic wizardry that prolongs the life and freshness of pizzas, peas, breakfast sausage, Hungry Man dinners, ice cream, and, of course, snowballs. Honorable mention goes to the microwave today. Here’s what we nuked up this week:

• Video free for all: Flickr made several video headlines on Monday. First, they granted free video uploads to all users (hooray!). Then they introduced HD video uploads for Pro users (yahooo!), bringing the magical and glorious world of crisp, aperture-rich high-definition video to the viewing masses on Flickr. And, finally, they introduced Flickr Clock, a unique new toy that lets you explore videos taken across the Flickrverse by time of day. Oh! And unrelated to video, free Flickr users are no longer relegated to organizing photos into just three sets — let’s hear it for unlimited sets for your 200 most recent photos.
• In the loop on Mail: If you noticed something different when you logged into Yahoo! Mail, that’s because the team has been sprucing up the page with more new social features. As we said in December, we’re working on bringing you a “smarter inbox.” Initially, you could see your friends’ Yahoo!-related updates (i.e., stories they’ve buzzed on Yahoo! Buzz, hotels rated on Yahoo! Travel, etc.). But now you can see their updates from across the web — sites like YouTube, Blogger, Yelp, Picasa, and more. And there are many more Yahoo! sites now live, including Yahoo! Sports and Flickr. More here.
• Inquisitive iPhone: If you own an iPhone in the U.S., I suggest you run — don’t walk — to the App Store and download yourself a copy of the new Inquisitor app. This new mobile version of Inquisitor makes searching on your iPhone a breeze by autocompleting keywords and making search suggestions, so you can spend less time typing and more time finding. Here’s the buzz on Twitter. Obama’s not your president? Sit tight — it’s coming to your world soon.
• That’s my Mac calling: If you’re a Mac head and like calling your friends via Yahoo! Messenger, listen up. One of our engineers has written a plugin that lets you automatically dial a friend from within your Mac Address Book. Just install the script, open a friend’s contact card, right-click on the phone number, select “Call with Yahoo! Messenger,” and start gabbing away. Make sure you have Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 4. More here.

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Seventy-nine years ago today, on Black Thursday, the first of the three major U.S. stock market crashes began, starting a three-year slide that stripped the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 89% in value. (And you thought today’s crisis was bad.) If bad luck comes in threes, we might all be good to go! Here’s what we did to beat the bear this week:

• Shortcut to cheap gas: Ok, so crude oil may have dipped below $70 a barrel, but you know that won’t last. And in this economy, who wants to spend more than they have to on anything? Yahoo! Search just launched a shortcut to help you find the cheapest gas in town. Just type “gas prices” or “cheap gas” plus your city name or zip code into our search box, and you’ll get a comprehensive list of the cheapest local stations (courtesy of GasBuddy.com), their address, and even a map as part of your search results. Stuff the rest of your nickels in your mattress. More here.
• Inquisitor branches out: You know that really cool Safari browser plugin that we bought and then enhanced? The one that auto-completes search queries and previews results along with ideas to help refine your search? Well, it’s become an equal opportunity app, available now for Firefox and IE7 and 8 browsers. And now Inquisitor generates more personalized results (based on a crazy smart algorithm) and helps you find your bookmarks faster. More here.
• Color control freak: You love the different themes and colors available for personalizing your My Yahoo! page. But you fancy yourself a designer and wish that blueberry could be more aqua, that maraschino more salmon. Enter customizable colors! Just log in to My Yahoo!, click “Change Appearance,” and head to “Customize Color” and have at it. You can create up to nine different colored themes, picking hues for your header, sub-header, page background, and content area. Color me in charge.
• Halloween help:The countdown to All Hallows Eve is on, so head over to our Halloween microsite for helpful tips and advice for maximizing this most ghoulish of holidays. You’ll find things like pumpkin carving patterns, a compendium of the most popular costumes (it’s not too late), tips for a greener Halloween, a really scary movie guide (and recipes for pumpkin-y things to eat while you watch them), and a tag cloud with the most popular search terms o’ the season. But, sorry, no tips for toilet papering the mean guy’s house.

Subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.