For everyone interested in following excitement of the Winter Games that get underway today, Yahoo! makes it even easier for you to get all your information, even if you are on the go.  In addition to keeping fans on top of the action with a Games-dedicated website, today we’re launching a new Olympic mobile site at m.yahoo.com/olympics.

It’s the place to go when you’re out and about and want up-to-the-minute coverage on this year’s Games. You’ll get access to everything from live results, upcoming events, medal counts, and photos to news, expert commentary, and more—all from your phone. We’ve also integrated Olympics into our mobile search results, so you can easily find what you need fast.

So head over to the newly launched  Yahoo! Mobile Blog to get a preview video of the mobile Olympic experience and all of the other cool mobile things we are are doing at Yahoo!

Our new mobile homepage is awesome. But don’t take our word for it– CNET, NBC, IDG News Service, ReadWriteWeb, Reuters and others have said great things about it and all of our recent mobile product enhancements.

As Yahoo continues to bring our mobile services to consumers around the world, today we are announcing the launch of Yahoo! Mobile en Español, a Spanish-language mobile homepage customized for the specific needs of the U.S. Hispanic consumer to more than 1,900 mobile devices.

In an effort to make Yahoo! the center of people’s online lives, we’re bringing the best of Yahoo! to mobile devices and are providing the U.S. Hispanic population with a mobile experience that is both culturally and personally relevant, uniting their world and the world around them.

A few facts for you about the U.S. Hispanic population:

•    There are 46 million U.S. Hispanics. If compared, the U.S. Hispanic population would comprise the ‘second largest country’ in Latin America
•    Mobile Internet usage among Hispanics is outpacing that of all other groups, with 88% of Hispanics consuming content on their mobile phones (comScore)
•    Hispanics use more phone features, including Internet access, at higher rates than other mobile subscribers.

For Yahoo! Mobile en Español, visit http://espanol.yahoo.com from your mobile device.

And for our Spanish speaking users, more announcement and product details are below:

Yahoo! ha continuado llevando nuestros servicios móviles a los consumidores alrededor del mundo y hoy nos complace anunciar el lanzamiento de Yahoo! Mobile en Español, una página principal móvil disponible en el idioma español y diseñada en base a las necesidades específicas de los consumidores hispanos de los EE.UU. en más de 1,900 aparatos móviles.

Con el propósito de hacer de Yahoo! el centro de la vida en línea de las personas, estamos llevando lo mejor de Yahoo! a los aparatos móviles y proporcionándole a la población hispana de los EE.UU. una experiencia móvil que es de gran importancia para ellos tanto a nivel personal como cultural, logrando juntar su mundo particular con el mundo que les rodea.

Tal como la pagina web de Yahoo! En Español (http://español.yahoo.com), la nueva página principal móvil de Yahoo! permite a los consumidores usar su teléfono para obtener todo lo que desean del Internet en un solo lugar. Aquí mencionamos algunas de las funciones más destacadas, populares y “cool”:

HOY:
•    Proporciona acceso al galardonado servicio móvil Search de Yahoo!, contenido seleccionado editorialmente, así como las noticias de EE.UU. y el resto del mundo presentadas en español, incluyendo la sección “América Latina”, la cual ofrece un contenido importante de noticias de la región latinoamericana.

FAVORITOS:
•    Te permite mantenerte conectado a través del acceso al correo electrónico (incluyendo Yahoo! Mail, Gmail®, Hotmail™) y cuentas de redes sociales de los proveedores más populares de la Web (incluyendo Twitter™, Facebook®, MySpace®, Flickr®, YouTube™ y más), así como mensajería  instantánea, libreta de direcciones y funciones de calendario.
•    También puedes permanecer informado al reunir todo tu contenido favorito de la Web —deportes, noticias, información local, fuentes RSS, las condiciones del tiempo, las acciones, el horóscopo, y más — en un solo lugar.
•    Con la función de sincronización de PC a móvil puedes llevar contigo tu contenido y servicios favoritos de tu escritorio y tu página principal de Yahoo!. Además, para cualquier cambio que hagas a través de la red de Yahoo! en la PC – como añadir una acción a  Y! Finanzas o una fuente RSS a Mi Yahoo! – te brindaremos la oportunidad de que puedas hacer lo mismo de forma muy fácil en tu experiencia de Yahoo! Mobile en Español.

SITIOS Y!:
•    Una lista de directorio con el número cada vez mayor de servicios de Yahoo! disponibles en tu teléfono. Aquí puedes encontrar servicios específicos y descubrir nuevos productos

Para Yahoo! Mobile en Español, visita http://espanol.yahoo.com desde tu teléfono móvil.

Esperamos que hayas disfrutado Yahoo! Mobile en Español y agradeceremos tus comentarios y tu opinión sobre nuestra página.

Felipe Munoz
Principal Director Movil de Yahoo! Hispanic Americas y Brasil

Ask anyone on the street if they have photos in their wallet and you might find a handful. But on their phone? That’s another story. Over the last year, our team at Flickr has seen a more than 50% increase in the number of people who have accessed our mobile site. And it can’t go anywhere but up from here.

That’s why we’re rolling out a radically overhauled m.flickr.com site today. What we’re most excited about is that now –- for the first time -– you’ll actually be able to play Flickr videos back on your phone. Ever since we launched video, we’ve let you upload your “long photos” directly from your cell, but we think the playback functionality is pretty huge. It’s based on the Yahoo! Video Platform and takes advantage of its ability to serve content to a wide variety of phones, screen sizes, and video/audio codecs. We’ll be rolling video playback out over the coming weeks for handsets that support streaming video, starting with the iPhone and iPod Touch today and more to come.

The new m.flickr.com sports a sleek new interface that makes it significantly easier to view your photostream and sets, and puts recent activity (yours and your contacts’) front and center. We’ve also added a bunch of new capabilities, like letting you add contacts, favorite images, and change your privacy and permission settings –- all while you’re out walking the dog. And, in support of our “eyes of the world” vision, we’ve also added the ability to explore the latest “interestingness” photos.

iPhone users have been playing with our new mobile incarnation since we released our beta in October and now we’re expanding the experience to any smart phone that supports browsers like Webkit, Firefox Mobile, and Opera Mobile.

The mobile phone has become central to how many of our users take pictures and how they share their view of the world with the important people in their life. We think the new Flickr mobile experience reflects all the cool possibilities that today’s advanced and rich mobile web has to offer, combined with all the functionality Flickr members know and love.

So grab your phone, bookmark m.fllickr.com, and enjoy photos and videos with a big smile on that small screen.

UPDATE: Just a clarification. Video playback is available for videos uploaded yesterday onward. Over the next few months, we’ll work to make the entire catalog of videos viewable on our mobile site.

Kakul Srivastava
Flickr General Manager

Thirty-nine years ago today, the Cardinals and Bruins set aside all rivalry when computer scientists at Stanford and UCLA created the first permanent link between their two shiny new ARPAnet routers — paving the way for modern networked computing and eventually the means for all of your tweets, pokes, LOLcats, and smileys. Here’s what we hooked you up with this week:

• T-Mobile triumph: If you’re a T-Mobile subscriber in the U.S., you’ll be spending a whole lot less time trying to find things with your mobile phone. That’s because Yahoo! oneSearch is now the default mobile search for T-Mobile’s new web2go service, serving up search results designed specifically for your cell phone. After all, it’s an awfully small screen and wading through a sea of links is downright irritating. More here.
• Sticky search: Faithful Product Pulse readers will remember when we unveiled Glue Pages in India, an experimental concept for search that sticks text, images, and video content together into a single results page. It’s now a U.S. import, available as a slightly different experience as Yahoo! Glue beta. It assembles content from across the Web into a veritable microsite about your query. Topics are limited for now (we’ll expand over time), but go check out how it handles popular people, places and things like cupcakes, Sarah Palin, Twilight, and Citigroup. More here.
• Feel-good news: Recession, deflation, layoffs, bank meltdowns. C’mon, isn’t there some good news out there? Why, yes, there is. And the good people at Sears want to make sure you see it. Head to Good News Now, a new video channel on Yahoo! News that sees the world through rose-colored glasses — spotlighting strictly uplifting stories in the news. You’ll find profiles of heroes, medical triumphs, baby Obamas, charitable neighbors, natural disaster survivors, and more. The channel will run through New Year’s. Maybe headlines will improve by January?
• Britney, Britney, Britney: Whether you’re a tabloid subscriber or just read copies at the dentist’s office, you’re all too familiar with the world’s fascination with Britney Spears. Well, the volume increases on Monday, when Yahoo! TV will premiere the exclusive trailer of MTV’s upcoming documentary, “Britney: For the Record.” Then we’ll spend the rest of the week gearing you up for Britney’s 27th birthday and the release of her new album “Circus” on December 2, with special coverage across Yahoo!. On Monday, check out “Britney’s 27 Wildest Moments” on Yahoo! Music; Friday, omg will share “Britney’s 25 Most Memorable Looks;” and next Sunday, Shine will take a look at Brit’s relationships. Mark your calendar!
• Big time in no time: And a final note… I’d like to congratulate the team behind Primetime in No Time, the show that gives you a rapid-fire recap of the TV you missed the night before. They’ve just served their 100 millionth stream since launching in March, becoming one of the most successful original programs in the history of the Internet. Hosted by comedian Frank Nicotero, the show is clearly addictive. w00t! More here.

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With the 2008 Olympic Games just around the corner, this is a nostalgic time for many Americans. After all, who can’t remember their favorite Olympic moment?

I’m no different, except my favorite moments were spent atop the Olympic medal podium. My formative years were with the U.S. gymnastics team, and for three unforgettable Games, I got to compete with and against the best in the world.

Needless to say, a lot has changed for me since I last wore the red, white and blue. Instead of worrying about my next floor exercise, I’m worrying about how I’ll be able to stay up late enough to watch the women compete. I’m a spectator now, and I want to make sure my next favorite sports moment isn’t happening while I’m sleeping or driving to the grocery store!

This made me realize I needed to be in Beijing this year, but I haven’t forgotten how it feels for everyone back at home. That’s why I’ll be joining fellow Olympians Gretchen Bleiler and Mike Powell to cover the 2008 Games on the Yahoo! Sports Summer Games site. We’ll work alongside Yahoo!’s experts to give every fan a minute-by-minute account of what’s happening with the world’s greatest athletes, day or night.

I know, you’re thinking that still won’t help when your favorite sport isn’t covered in the papers, or is only on Channel 390 at 3:25 a.m. But Yahoo! is offering some new features to help you stay on top of all the sports – like the Watch List, which lets fans track results, news and medals for their favorite countries, sports and athletes. You won’t even need to worry about staying next to your computer, because Yahoo!’s mobile Web site gives fans the option of tracking the medal count, getting the latest news, and seeing photos right on your mobile phone.

So while you’re half way around the world from the Games this summer, don’t wonder what it’s like to be there. Just visit Yahoo! Sports Summer Games and look for me and my friends; we’ll tell you – anytime you want. It’s not a trip to the podium, but it’s pretty close!

Dominique Dawes
Yahoo! Sports
1992, 1996, 2000 U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team

Here I am again, writing to you from CommunicAsia in Singapore, where we’re making an even bigger splash than the last time you heard from me. As in other regions, we’ve been making massive inroads in the mobile markets in Asia over the past year.

We’ve definitely proven Yahoo! to be the partner of choice for mobile carriers around the world. How? By making our products mobile-first. From Yahoo! Mail SMS Alerts, which we just announced in India, to Yahoo! Go 3.0, we want to give users around the world the best possible mobile experience — no matter what mobile device they’re using.

Let’s start with mobile search. Today, we announced five new Yahoo! oneSearch™ partnerships with leading mobile operators in India, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Taiwan. With these partnerships in place, we now reach 95% of the mobile users in the Philippines and more than 50% of the mobile users in India, one of the fastest growing markets in the world.

We’ve also introduced an English version of Yahoo! oneSearch with voice that recognizes regional accents for India and Singapore. I’m also excited to announce the launch of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia.

And we’re not stopping there. Today we also announced several new mobile widgets specifically geared to the Asian markets. We’ve got something for music lovers (MTV Asia), sports fans (Yahoo! Cricket), movie fans (Yahoo! India Movies Showtimes), and even one for fans of the hit Australian TV show “Home and Away” to name but a few of the widgets added to our growing roster.

For those of you wondering how mobile brings home the bacon, we’ve got big news there, too. Mobile operators around the world are looking to content and services for additional revenue growth. Enter mobile advertising, which will ultimately offer these carriers new revenue streams.

This brings me to my final announcement here at CommunicAsia. We’ve just added Malaysia’s Maxis Communications Berhad and India’s Idea Cellular Limited to our growing list of mobile advertising partners, which includes AT&T, T-Mobile International and Vodafone UK.

With mobile usage nearing ubiquity in Asia, we’re really pleased with the increasing array of services we’re offering this important market. And we believe these latest announcements show that we are on the right path. We’re getting ever more excited about where that path will lead us. Keep an eye out for what we do next.

Dave Ko
Managing Director and VP, Connected Life Asia Pacific

Photo from KarlMarx

There’s a lot of debate lately about cell phones in the air. Do we want to be connected and productive with carryons securely stashed in overhead bins? Or do we like the excuse of being fully disconnected at 30,000 feet? Would we welcome the ability to make calls on our mobiles, or would we rather send a lynch mob to seat 19D?

Turns out 74% of consumers don’t want to hear you yacking with your office cohorts, but they wouldn’t mind a bit if you sent them a text message. A new survey commissioned by Yahoo! and conducted by Harris Interactive revealed that nearly three out of four consumers agree that mobile phone usage on planes should be restricted to silent features. The majority of us want to stay connected to our life on the ground. Email, text, IM, games — all good. But if we have to sit next to you making goo-goo with your girlfriend in Gilroy, game over.

What’s more, more than two-thirds think there should be a designated talking section. Hey, it worked so well with smoking. Why not?

So how about you? Want to participate in our entirely statistically-invalid random sampling?

Will Yodel Anecdotal readers agree that silence is golden?

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

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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It’s been 45 years since The Rock was designated to hold bad guys the likes of Al Capone and “Machine Gun” Kelly. Gangsta cred or not, there’s no escaping this week’s updates:

• Mobile March Madness: Now you can keep tabs on all the latest college hoops action wherever and whenever from your mobile phone with three new tools. You can get up-to-the minute news, scores, schedules and images on the dedicated mobile NCAA page, the new Men’s College Hoops mobile widget (you’ll need Yahoo! Go 3.0), and specially-configured Yahoo! oneSearch results, with specialized men’s college basketball content from Yahoo! Sports and Rivals.com. No need to be tied to your computer screen to keep score. More here.
• Team spirit: We’ve got more Audibles to cheer your NCAA team on Yahoo! Messenger. Whether it’s to jeer at your friends’ alma mater or boo a bad play, we’ve got Audibles (like a referee calling an offensive foul) and new avatar gear (find jerseys from more than 25 schools) to show your team pride. Make sure you’re using Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or 9.0 beta to get your spirit on.
• Staying on topic: You may have heard about the “New with Me” profile page on MyBlogLog that pulls together all your activity across the Internet and shows people what you’re up to (like a feed of all your updates and your friends’ updates). We’ve just added a new Tags page that combs through your “New with Me” page into relevant pages called Topics. What does this mean? Not only can you see an aggregation of your friends’ Internet whereabouts in one place, now you can find what your MyBlogLog community is saying, doing, thinking about any topic you find interesting quick and easy. BTW: Find out what the Easter chatter is here.

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Feeling the need for speed? Let’s give a birthday cheer and toast to Janet Guthrie for breaking the mold 70 years ago, as the first woman to compete in both the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500. And you thought Danica was racy. After you’ve caught your breath, check out our speedy updates.

• Everything in one place: Imagine being able to link practically any kind of Web content to your phone (think news feeds, web sites, videos, images, emails, search queries). Yahoo! onePlace works like a smart mobile bookmarking tool and brings all your favorite content in one place with one click. You organize it how you want it and it dynamically updates itself (like flight status). It’s also designed to link to your personalized content on the Yahoo! network (My Yahoo!, Flickr, del.icio.us) and other sites too (like Yelp and Digg). One caveat: it’s coming out in Q2 2008. So keep those fingers ready!
• Test-drive worthy: Yahoo! Maps just got juiced up with new neighborhood data, expanded worldwide coverage (especially throughout Eastern Europe), and some new stylistic improvements like lighter map tiles and hybrid road colors. The coolest part is the new lower zoom levels and view into 12,000 new neighborhoods like the “Lower East Side” in New York. We’ve even added new “points of interest” info like schools, rest areas, and ski resorts. There’s more to come, so stay tuned and read more here.
• All things digital: If you’re addicted to Kara Swisher’s daily “BoomTown” chatter, we’ve got the perfect addition to your My Yahoo! page. The new “All Things Digital” module lets you stay on top of the Valley tidbits with the latest tech commentary and analysis from Kara, Walt Mossberg, and John Paczkowski. Add it here.
• The eagle has landed: Well, for developers that is. For Web, mobile, and desktop developers that haven’t yet gotten wind of the news, Fire Eagle (our new open location-based platform) has beta launched so you can build cool applications that hone in on a user’s location. How does it work? Users share their location (in a secure and safe way) so that you can create cool ways for them to discover the world around them. It’s invite-only, so make sure to ask for an invitation and keep tabs on the team’s updates.

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