Want to use your Yahoo! ID to tap into Arianna Huffington’s mind? How about any of the other contributors on the Huffington Post? If so, we have some good news. Starting today, you can use your Yahoo! ID to log into the Huffington Post with just a couple of clicks.

This is just one of the new features Huffington Post has enabled by tapping into our Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) platform. Y!OS is built on the idea that Yahoo! is more fun and personally relevant when we’re open to the best of the Web and when we make it easy for you to share and connect with who matters to you on Yahoo!. And in addition to letting you use your trusted Yahoo! ID on the Huffington Post, Y!OS technology is also powering two other great new features that are live today.

The first is Yahoo! Updates. Once you’ve logged into the Huffington Post with your Yahoo! ID, you’ll also be able to automatically share the comments you make there with your friends and contacts on popular products like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger.

The second is a new application for the Yahoo! Homepage that you can use to get a quick view into the hottest Huffington Post articles across 80 categories in a matter of seconds.

Finally, we’re also teaming up with the Huffington Post through Yahoo! News to feature and develop specialized articles, opinion pieces and reporting. Across Yahoo! we’re always looking for ways to bring you great content, whether it’s our own original reporting through our Yahoo! Newsroom Blogs, or from great sites like the Huffington Post, a leading voice in digital news.

To get started trying out these capabilities and sync up your Huffington Post and Yahoo! experiences, head over to the Huffington Post and click on the log in with Yahoo! ID button, install the new Huffington Post App on Yahoo.com or head straight to Yahoo! News.  Or better yet, try all three.

And if you run your own Web site and want to learn how to integrate with Yahoo!, check out our Yahoo! Developer Network and behind the scenes look at how Huffington Post did it. We’re excited to hear what you think.

Greg Cohn

Director of Strategy & Business Development for the Yahoo! Platform Technology Group

We have good news to share with everyone who uses Yahoo! and Facebook – in the first half of 2010 we will open the door between two of the Internet’s largest online communities. You will be able to see your Facebook friends’ activities on Yahoo! and share Yahoo! content – ratings, photos, article comments, and more – directly on your Facebook stream.  We’re doing this by deeply integrating a service called Facebook Connect across Yahoo!  properties worldwide, which we announced today.

As the place where over 500 million people visit every month, Yahoo!’s goal is to bring together social experiences from across the web, and provide one place for people to access information and stay in touch with the people they care about most.

Yahoo!’s integration of Facebook Connect will provide you with richer experiences across the Yahoo! products you use every day, such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Sports.  In the future, you’ll be able to choose where you want to update your status message – from destinations across Yahoo! – or directly on Facebook.

We are doing this as part of our commitment to deliver more personally relevant Internet experiences, so watch for more details in the New Year!

Jim Stoneham, VP of Communities for Yahoo!

Twenty-seven years ago, “Video Killed the Radio Star” premiered on a cable network geared toward playing nothing but 24/7 music videos. Remember when the screen would go black as MTV employees popped a new tape into the VCR? (Remember when MTV actually played music videos?) After you pay tribute to that original batch of VJs, check out what we riffed up this week:

• Speedier, easier, tastier: Fans of social bookmarking, rejoice! Delicious just got snackier. It’s now sporting an entirely new infrastructure, making it faster and more reliable. It’s got a revamped search engine that lets you search in all kinds of new ways, including within your social network. And it has a spiffy new interface, making it easier for newbies yet familiar enough for veterans. And for good measure, the site now lives at delicious.com so you don’t have to remember where that wacky punctuation goes (although, of course, del.icio.us still works just fine). More here.
• 24 hours of Flickr: August 8th isn’t just opening day at the Beijing Olympics. It’s the start to Flickr 888 — a day-long global photo project that invites photographers around the world to snap a moment in time and share it with the group. The goal is to capture a day in the life around the world. You can only submit one photo, so make it your best shot. Stumped? Check out photos from last year’s 24 hours of Flickr. More here.
• Back to school brainiac: Brain turned to mush over the summer? Head over to our new Back to School site and do some cerebral calisthenics. An interactive module of the brain helps you understand all four lobes and offers games to help you sharpen them. You’ll also find exercises for overall brain fitness and top-10 lists of back-to-school fashions, dorm essentials, elementary school stuff, and computer gear. And you’ll get info on how to hit the books while being green and a listing of the most popular back-to-school searches. Parents and kids welcome.
• Going on a Mail Safari: If you’ve been longing to use the All-New Yahoo! Mail with your Safari browser, pine no more. Full compatibility is here. Better yet, it’s OS agnostic, so it works with both the latest Mac and Windows versions of Safari. And that’s especially handy if you switch-hit between Mac and PC at home and work. Let’s hear it for harmony. More here.

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Today is the Summer Solstice, which means Summer’s offically here – well in the Northern Hemisphere at least. This is also the longest day of the year. Wondering what to do with those extra hours of daylight? Pull up a lounge chair, break out the tequila and check out what we’ve been up to this week.

Yahoo! Mail goes vintage: Frustrated by not being able to to get the email address you want? We’ve heard you and we’re doing something about it with the introduction of two new email domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com. If “rocketmail” sounds familiar it’s because it’s vintage Internet. RocketMail was one of the first free webmail services in the ’90s, was acquired by Yahoo! in 1997 and formed the basis of the first version of Yahoo! Mail. So, whether your style is brand spanking new (ymail.com), hip vintage (rocketmail.com) or comfortable classic (yahoo.com), head on over to http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses and get the email address you’ve always wanted.

Media Player gets foxy: Check out the latest wily addition to the Yahoo! Media Player. Through a rather clever integration with FoxyTunes you can now control all of the music inside your browser as well as outside of it. The latest version of FoxyTunes enhances any page that has music on it by automatically adding the Yahoo! Media Player to that page. This allows you to play any track on that page or even the whole page as one big playlist. The best thing is that once you start playing a web page with the new player you can instantly control it with FoxyTunes, even while surfing in other tabs or browser windows – just make sure to leave the page that’s currently playing somewhere in the background. And, if you close that page, your FoxyTunes will automatically switch back to your regular media player, be it iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc. Now that’s foxy!

Kids and technology – a parents’ guide: Wondering where to find the best information on keeping kids safe on the web? Well, look no further. Yahoo! Kids launched a new Parents channel this week bringing together some of the best resources in the business. Larry Magid, longtime technology journalist, Internet safety advocate and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, will be blogging alongside Ann Collier who’s been providing some of the best kid-tech news to parents on NetFamilyNews. Together they co-authored “MySpace Unravelled: A Parents’ Guide to Teen Social Networking.” So head on over to learn how to help your kids navigate the online world safely.

Internet Explorer – more del.icio.us: Last month we unleashed an early beta release of an Internet Explorer version of our del.icio.us bookmarks extension. And this week you can now officially begin to enjoy social bookmarking on Microsoft Windows XP and Vista operating systems. While the features are similar to its Firefox 3 extension counterpart, this little number also has more unique additions including faster searching within larger accounts of bookmarks and signals for new network activity and links for you. Learn more and download it now here.

Smithsonian goes to the Commons: The Commons photo collection on Flickr welcomes its fourth member in the shape of the Smithsonian Institute. As you’d expect the collection is rich in history – from photos by the Institute’s First Photographer, Thomas Smillie, to portraits of Artists, Scientists and Inventors (yes even Albert Einstein makes an appearance) and People and The Post. The contemporary collections include American Celebrations and a documentary from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. And don’t forget to check out collections from the other three members: The Library of Congress, Australia’s Powerhouse Museum and The Brooklyn Museum.

Ever tried to sign up for a new email account, only to find that the name you want is unavailable? We hear you. As the most popular email service in the world, Yahoo! Mail has more than a quarter of a billion users worldwide *. That’s a LOT of email addresses in use already. With that in mind, we’re making millions of desirable email addresses available today with the launch of two shiny new domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

If “rocketmail” rings a bell, it’s because it’s vintage Internet. Back in the ’90s, RocketMail was one of the very first free Webmail services. Yahoo! acquired it in 1997 and built the first version of Yahoo! Mail based on RocketMail technology. Some of the original RocketMail users chose to keep their RocketMail IDs to show that they had been among the first users of Webmail. Now, like so many beloved classics that are hip again –- cupcakes, big sunglasses, Indiana Jones, The New Kids on the Block –- RocketMail is back for a new generation to enjoy.

These new domains will offer the same great Yahoo! Mail experience, like unlimited storage, integrated instant messaging, free text messaging, and localized versions around the world. And, as always, a Yahoo! email address works for everything across Yahoo!, from checking Mail to using Messenger, Flickr, Groups, Finance and more. The added bonus is that with these two new domains, you’ll have the chance to land your perfect email address to help reflect who you are – which is what the majority of you are looking for according to a recent Yahoo! survey conducted by Harris Interactive**.

So whether your style is brand spanking new (ymail.com), hip vintage (rocketmail.com), or comfortable classic (yahoo.com), surf on over to http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses and get that email address you’ve always wanted.      

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

*According to comScore Media Matrix, April 2008.

**In a survey of 2,035 online adults ages 18+ conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Yahoo!, 56% of online adults indicated that they want their email address to reflect who they are.

Today is Penny Day, when we pay homage to the most wee of our coinage. It might not buy you much today, but how else could you give someone your two cents or compensate them for their thoughts? What would the frugal among you pinch instead? But for Pete’s sake, if you don’t see Honest Abe staring up at you from the pavement, just keep right on walking. Here’s what we picked up this week:

• Photo Mailer: Ever downloaded photos from someone’s email and wish you hadn’t? The new image preview feature in Yahoo! Mail will help you avoid future said hassles. It helps make it easier for you to preview photo attachments, right within your email. Receive multiple images? You can preview them as a slideshow or as a full-sized image before you download, which you can do in one fell swoop or just selected images. And, as always, you’ll have the comfort of Norton AntiVirus scans to make sure they’re A-OK. Watch the screencast here.
• My Flickr: If you’re as addicted to Flickr as I am, you get moving right over to My Yahoo! to add the new Flickr module. Not only can you view your latest snaps, you can check out the “activity” tab to see when you have comments or responses to your comments. All this without ever having to leave your My Yahoo! page. What’s more, you’ll have access to your sets, your groups, your favorites, your contacts’ photos, and even Flickr’s “Interestingness” feature. BTW: While you’re dolling up your My Yahoo! page, you might want to show that your colors don’t run by trying on the Memorial Day theme this weekend.

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