Today we’re excited to launch a whole new way to search and browse the Web across any device—Yahoo! Axis. It’s an innovative new mobile browser and desktop plug-in that gives people visual search results (as they type), ultimately providing a more direct path to whatever they’re looking for online. Think of it as a personal companion for your daily explorations of the Web.

You can download Axis as a standalone mobile browser for your Apple iOS devices here, and for major, HTML5 enabled desktop browsers, you can download the desktop plug-in here. Check out our video that walks you through how Axis saves you time whether on the desktop, mobile or tablet device.

Yahoo! Axis comes equipped with handy features that unify searching and browsing.  For example, our one-step search lets you preview and interact with visual search results without ever leaving the page you’re on. It’s the end of the back button! And our instant answers show the information you want as you type common searches like finding movie times, sports scores, stock prices and more.

Axis also includes a personalized home page that contains your most recently visited sites, bookmarks and articles you plan to read later. This personalized home page stays with you across your desktop, iPad and iPhone, keeping what’s important to you in one easy, centralized spot. No matter what device you started on, you can easily pick up where you left off when you switch devices.

Axis even has a few bonus features for iPhone and iPad users, like simple swiping to quickly get from one search result to the next, a bar that combines the search box and address bars into one, and sharing so you can easily post any page you’re viewing to Twitter or Pinterest.

We can’t wait for you to play around with this latest example of Yahoo!’s search innovation and tell us what you think.  To learn more, please visit axis.yahoo.com, our Search blog or Mobile blog.

So how do you enter for a chance to win?  Follow these simple steps:

• Fire-up the IntoNow app on your tablet or smartphone while watching Revenge during the last two episodes airing on ABC on May 16, 2012 and May 23, 2012 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET.) If you don’t have the app already, you can download IntoNow from Yahoo! for free here for iPhone and iPad devices and here if you have an Android phone.
• Simply “tag” the show and voilà, you may enter the contest and be one step closer to becoming a socialite!  With just one tap, IntoNow identifies the show you’re watching using its patented audio recognition technology, SoundPrint.
• While in the app, you can participate in Revenge-themed trivia, engage in real-time conversations with friends and other Revenge fans, and share what you are watching directly to your Facebook or Twitter feeds.

“Devices in the living room are allowing people to engage in TV like never before,” said Adam Cahan, founder of IntoNow and vice president of products at Yahoo!. “Entertainment is social and fans don’t just watch a show passively – they want to talk about it, share their favorite moments, and know what others watching in the show are thinking.  That context opens up powerful opportunities for networks and advertisers by amplifying the brand message from the TV right into the device in their hands.”

This truly interactive companion experience on a prime-time drama is another example of the key role IntoNow and second-screen apps are now playing in TV programming. Earlier this year, ABC partnered with IntoNow for the Republican presidential candidate debate, where viewers engaged with polls, read related news content and discussed the responses.

We already know you keep your mobile device handy in the living room – 80% of you use your tablet while watching TV – so make sure to have yours at hand for the final episodes of Revenge and your chance to experience the Hamptons lifestyle (minus the vengeful subplot.)

As a presenting sponsor of Internet Week, Yahoo! will of course be there. In fact, it will be hard to miss us. Look for us right at the get-go, as Yahoo! takes over a huge multimedia space at IWNY 2011 HQ on Monday, June 6. This immersive experience will take you deep into the Yahooverse with interactive, themed zones highlighting our leading content properties, like Yahoo! Finance, Entertainment, News and Sports. We’ll even have a studio set up for live webcasts with Yahoo! celebs like Breakout’s Matt Nesto and Jeff Macke, Trending Now’s Adrian Diaz, omg NOW’s Kristen Aldridge, and Angela Sun of the Yahoo! Sports Minute.  And for insider access to all things at Internet Week New York 2011, check out The Scene–including schedules, sessions, the players, photos, tweets and more.

For the second straight year, Yahoo!’s PROVOKE Summit will bring together advertising industry decision-makers, tech enthusiasts and creatives in one unique conference designed to “PROVOKE” discussion and ideas. Hosted by Yahoo!’s dynamic Bobby Figueroa, this event is sure to spark your creativity, plus Yahoo!’s Lauren Weinberg will provide fresh insight into the world of digital advertising based on Yahoo!’s own extensive research.  Get more on the Yahoo! PROVOKE Summit here.

We’ll also have several surprises that we don’t want to spoil for you, so be on the lookout for the Big Y! in and around Times Square and beyond.

And, of course, Yahoo! experts will be on hand to share their industry knowledge and perspectives. If you’re at IWNY 2011, don’t miss these key events featuring some great Yahoo thought leaders:

• OMMA Tablet Revolution Showcase featuring Alex Linde, Director, Mobile Advertising
• Realtime NY 11 featuring Ebele Okobi-Harris, Director, Business and Human Rights Program
• Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit featuring Blake Irving, Chief Product Officer
• OMMA Mobile featuring Paul Cushman, Senior Director, Mobile Sales Strategy, Yahoo!
• Third Annual Digital Media Summit featuring Ross Levinsohn, EVP Americas
• IAB Innovation Days Keynote featuring Ross Levinsohn, EVP, Americas
• IAB Innovation Days Digital Video Workshop featuring Edwin Wong, Director, B2B Strategic Research and Insight
• OMMA Social featuring Patrick Albano, Senior Director, Social

We know that not everyone can be at Internet Week—and no one can be everywhere if they are there—but you can follow the action here on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog, as well as on Yahoo! Advertising’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Hashtags and handles to look out for include: #provoke, #iwny, #IABIW and @IAB and @internetweek.

Get ready world, the latest version of Yahoo! Mail is moving out of Beta and coming to an inbox near you! This faster, safer, and easier email experience will roll out to you and all of Yahoo! Mail’s 284-million users worldwide, offering fun, engaging and productive features consistent across PC, mobile and tablet devices. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

Prioritizes the People and Things that Matter Most: Yahoo! Mail now offers you a more personally relevant experience focused on the people and messages that matter most to you:

• Quickly view and reply to messages, photos and videos: You can instantly respond to messages from Facebook, Yahoo! Groups and webmail providers directly from your inbox with an easy reply bar.
• Conversations that matter: Yahoo! Mail prioritizes messages and contacts that matter most. Now, when you want to compose an IM, SMS or email you will find your most frequent contacts and lists readily available. And, you can store and easily search IM and SMS conversations in addition to emails. Oh and did we mention you can now chat with your Facebook friends right from within Yahoo! Mail?
• Useful applications: You can now track purchases, unsubscribe from unwanted emails or send 100mb (i.e. huge) messages right from your inbox.
• More personalized options: You can choose from many vibrant themes and stationery options to express your personality and customize how you view messages and contacts.

Read more about the new features here.

Designed for Everyone – New Accessibility Features: Yahoo! has made it a priority to make sure the latest version of Yahoo! Mail is even more accessible to people with disabilities. We are proud to say that Yahoo! Mail can be used via a keyboard only or a mouse and leverages context-sensitive instructional text to make it easier for people who use screen readers.  Learn about Yahoo! accessibility initiatives at http://accessibility.yahoo.com

Under the Hood Remodel: This is the largest redesign of Yahoo! Mail in six years, and we rebuilt it with a focus on performance to make it at least 2x faster than previous versions of Yahoo! Mail.  In addition, we upgraded our spam technology to ensure that you aren’t receiving unwanted messages. Did you know that Yahoo! Mail already blocks more than 550 billion spam messages per month? Read more about the improved performance and spam protection here.

Better, Richer, Advertising in Mail: Yahoo! is the market leader in delivering audiences to advertisers, and Yahoo! Mail is no different.  We bring a unique combination of Science, Art and Scale – the Science to understand and target an audience, the Art to engage them within premium content and canvases, and the Scale to reach them in meaningful numbers that drive their business.  Click here to learn more about the advertising features available in Yahoo! Mail.

Nokia Users Get Powered By Yahoo! Mail: All of these great new features and functionality will also be available for Yahoo! Mail’s global partners.  For example, Nokia email and chat services are now “Powered by Yahoo,” offering Nokia users an easier, safer and more social email and chat experience.  Take a look at the Mobile blog to find out more.

The best news:  you don’t have to wait for Yahoo! Mail to come to you. Click here to upgrade and start enjoying, in our humble opinion, the best communications experience on the web (or phone or tablet for that matter)!

Personally yours,

The Yahoo! Mail team

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!

The interactive app takes advantage of the iPad’s multi-touch capabilities so users can manipulate views of stock charts; the ability to scroll across hours, days or months of market action; plot points in time; and even compare multiple stock tickers in one compelling chart. Anyone interested in following the market, or specific stocks on the iPad can now use Yahoo! Finance’s reliable and personalized tools anywhere, anytime.

The potential for this is big. Imagine sitting in a meeting with colleagues discussing market trends you now have real-time pricing data at your side. Want to take a look at how your portfolio is doing today without booting up the computer? MarketDash makes it fast and easy. Every tailored detail fits perfectly to the iPad screen – breaking news, real-time stock updates, and your own personalized portfolio information.

We’ve become so dependent on our mobile devices that it’s important to have a seamless experience across all of the technology we use on a daily basis. That’s why Yahoo! Finance provides centralized storage of portfolios and watch lists. Add a stock to a watch list from your iPad and it will show up instantly in the Yahoo! Finance app for iPhone or Android phones or when you view your portfolio on Yahoo! Finance. No matter where users log into their account they will see updated and personalized portfolio data.

To download MarketDash, go to the App Store on iPad and let us know what you think!

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!

For hundreds of millions of people around the world, email is a critical part of their online communications, connecting them to the people who matter most to them. With that in mind, we are rolling out Yahoo! Mail Beta — a faster, safer, more personally meaningful communication experience – seamlessly across PC, mobile and tablet devices. Here’s what we focused on:

Blazing Speed: We’ve re-architected Yahoo! Mail Beta from the ground up to provide lightning-quick performance. It’s at least twice as fast as previous Yahoo! Mail versions, and significantly faster in key geographies. The Yahoo! Mail team has made several technological advancements to make this happen, from utilizing Yahoo!’s cloud technology to focusing on user-flow optimization. Check out our post on the YDN blog for more on the great technology that’s making this possible.

Reaching Everyone: There are even more ways to share your stories with the people who matter most to you in Yahoo! Mail Beta – no matter what device or what service they use. We’ve added Twitter integration alongside Facebook, as well as richer IM and SMS experieneces, offering you more ways to share directly from your inbox. You can tweet or retweet or send a text message out to friends while pulling together an email.  And you can also easily check out photos and videos from Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube via a new feature that automatically shows slideshows right in your emails when your friends send you links from these sites.

Simple yet Powerful Search: When you’ve got unlimited storage (as you do with with Yahoo Mail) – you have a lot of email!  Our new search interface helps you get the messages you need quickly and easily.  You have the power of sophisticated searches at your fingertips, allowing you to sort and refine by sender, attachment file, date, or folder location.

Stay Safe From Spam: We all know spam is incredibly annoying; it can also be malicious. That’s why we’re proud to be No. 1 in spam protection, blocking over 130 billion spam messages each month. And Yahoo! Mail Beta gives you an even better spam-free mail experience by leveraging the power of Hadoop technology to keep you one step ahead of the spammers.

Take it With You: With this new communications experience, we’re making sure your encounters will be equally fabulous whether you’re emailing from your laptop, iPhone, iPad or Android device. No more relearning how to get things done each time you switch from one connected device to another.

So wherever you are in the world, check out Yahoo! Mail Beta now – a single speedy, simple, safe, and seamless stop for all your online communications.  We’ll be making lots of enhancements and improvements during this beta period, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback.  For more details about Yahoo! Mail Beta, visit the Yahoo! Mail blog, and to find out about related policy updates, check out the Yahoo! Policy blog.

- Kakul Srivastava, vice president of product management, Communications and Communities

About This News Bytes Episode:

In this week’s Yahoo! News Bytes, Pamela Woon and the Digital Media Bureau take you behind the scenes at Frameline Fest to talk with James Franco, who portrays the late beat poet Allen Ginsberg in “Howl”.  Known for his roles in the Spiderman movies, “Milk” and the iconic series “Freaks and Geeks”, Franco is among the busiest men in Hollywood.  With upcoming roles in the prequel to “Planet of the Apes”, a starring role in “Eat Pray Love”, a recurring role on “General Hospital” and a teaching position at Yale University this Spring we will be seeing a lot more of Franco in 2010 and beyond.

Centering on the turbulent times surrounding the obscenity trial involving Ginsberg’s poem “Howl”, the movie  also features “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, “Weeds” actress Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeff Daniels.  “Howl” is  slated for theatrical release in September 2010.

Recent Yahoo! News Bytes Episodes:

• Yahoo! News Bytes July 16, 2010 (David Beckham + Yahoo! Mobile World Cup app)
• Yahoo! News Bytes July 1, 2010 (Yahoo! Mobile Android apps)

About The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau:

The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau is a team of Emmy-nominated, multi-platform content creators who innovate and produce original video content, from webisodes to webumentaries. The Yahoo! Digital Media bureau is responsible for the weekly feature, Yahoo! News Bytes, which peels back the layer on everything Yahoo! The Bureau also produces the weekly Yahoo! Trends segment, which focuses on what’s trending in entertainment, pop culture and tech. Yahoo! Trends is distributed on broadcast television and seen throughout the United States.

Partnering TNS (Kantar Media), Nielsen and Synovate, Net Index 2010 sets Internet media currency for the coming year. The research offered strategic insights for industry decision makers and tapped into the massive Internet opportunities available in the country of study and throughout Southeast Asia.

Top line trends from the country studies were presented at the recent ad:Tech Media and Advertising industry conference held in Singapore on 3 June, where Yahoo! Southeast Asia hosted the launch of the Yahoo! Regional Net Index insights.

Highlights from the research were presented to gathered media, industry advertising executives, marketers and media planners from around the region.

Some key findings:

• Indonesia, the largest and fastest growing online market in Southeast Asia, has recorded a jump from 22% (2009) to 48% (2010)
• Internet cafés in Indonesia are gradually losing ground to Mobile as dominant Internet access point. A decline of 19% has been recorded in Internet access through cafes; 83% in 2009 to 64% in 2010
• In Vietnam, mobile Internet access is picking up fast, nearly doubling year-to-year, from 10% (2008) to 19% (2009). Popular activities are searching for information and listening to music
• User generated content and community building is driving this trend in some markets like Vietnam, where it occupies the largest share (47%) among social media activities.
• Search, in the Philippines has grown significantly from 58% to 76% to become the dominant online activity, surpassing email and instant messaging
• Social media in the Philippines is primarily used to stay in touch with friends and family (66%), send emails (64%) and for online chats (63%)
• Spread of digital media is changing the way Malaysians are consuming information, particularly news. Key news sources are; online newspapers (53%), Internet portals (47%) and local news sites (46%)
• In Malaysia, online music and video has attracted significant interest with 51% uploading/downloading music files online and 54 % watching video clips online. Over a third of users also play games online – dominated by younger males.

To capture the fast moving changes in mobile use in Indonesia, a Mobile Index study was also conducted.  The Mobile Index provided  a broader study on internet trends in Indonesia which indicated the explosive growth of mobile internet in Indonesia primarily driven by cheap and unlimited data plans with bundled offerings, improved mobile user interfaces, and industry wide marketing, mobile internet penetration has expanded by 26% points from 22% (2009) to 48% (2010).

Key findings of Mobile Index 2010 Indonesia include:

• More than half of mobile internet users belonging to SES A (social economic status-A) or in the age group of 15-24 years use mobile internet everyday
• Mobile Internet usage is predominantly from a mobile phone with advanced features rather than a smartphone as only 11% own a smartphone
• 41% of people surveyed have looked up content or searched for information in the past month; out of those who searched for content, News (54%) and Facts / Trivia (47%) were the most common searches
• Social networking is the key activity with 89% of mobile internet users accessing it in the past one month; 47% access social networking sites at least once a day

Together, the five comprehensive Net Index research studies, sponsored by Yahoo!  have provided the Southeast Asian media, advertising and marketing industries with essentials tools to value the power of the Internet in Southeast Asia.

Stay tuned for more insights and studies that we’ll be releasing in upcoming months!

Ken Mandel
Regional VP Advertising Marketplace, Yahoo! Asia Pacific

As a star of three World Cups, David is looking forward to sharing all the excitement of the tournament with the Yahoo! family of readers. Beckham brings a wealth of experience, real-life history, and enthusiasm to Yahoo!’s coverage of the World Cup. His exclusive content thoroughly enhances our already stellar line-up of offerings, including 16 global soccer sites, mobile experiences in 40 markets, rich search tools and a comprehensive writing and video crew in South Africa.

You won’t be able to miss David’s involvement with Yahoo! as he’ll be fronting the company’s World Cup advertising campaign. I offered my own face for use on the billboards, but we decided it was better to stop traffic for all the RIGHT reasons. I’m certain soccer fans everywhere will appreciate learning how one of the biggest names in soccer uses Yahoo! for news, views and up to the minute information when the big events happen.

As I write this in the shadow of Soccer City, the showpiece stadium which hosts the final on July 11, the vibrant and mystical nation of South Africa is raring to showcase its passion for life and soccer to the world. With David joining our award-winning group, Yahoo! Sports is the only place to be for World Cup coverage. Check out our in-depth stories, features, columns and videos, and try your hand at the Yahoo! Sports World Soccer 2010 fantasy game.

And most important of all, enjoy the World Cup, the tournament where the beautiful game captivates a global audience for one wonderful month.

Martin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports

Koprol allows people to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser, making the service accessible to a larger percentage of mobile users. The addition of Koprol to the Yahoo! family will extend Yahoo!’s social and mobile offering in this emerging market.

We caught up with the founders of Koprol.com in Jakarta to discuss this exciting acquisition. Take a look.

For more details, refer to our official press release.

Carol took the opportunity to share some background on the just-announcedglobal deal with Nokia, to share some love for the newly hired executive vice president of products, Blake Irving, and to share her thoughts on growth and innovation at Yahoo!.

QOTD on AllthingsD:

“Evidently, these days if you’re not coming out with some device, you’re not innovating. But that’s not true. There’s a soul to our product.”

–Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz says innovation isn’t dead at Yahoo

Tomorrow, Yahoo! Chief architect, Raymie Stata, will be serving as an expert judge at the Startup Battlefield competition. Follow us on Twitter for updates from the event.

Today we are excited to announce a worldwide strategic alliance between Yahoo! and Nokia to extend the reach of our industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them.

Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! will leverage each others’ strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.

As part of the alliance:

• Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as “powered by Ovi.”
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”
• Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access  the online content and services they need.

Together, Yahoo! and Nokia will continue to deliver compelling Internet experiences that address the core needs of consumers, developers, operators and advertisers. The companies will utilize their respective global distribution advantages and brand recognition across consumer audiences.

Select, co-branded service offerings are expected to become available from the second half of 2010, with global availability expected in 2011.

Nokia is the world’s largest mobile device manufacturer, with hundreds of millions of devices sold each year and a leader in digital mapping, with continuing investment and innovation focused on developing comprehensive digital mapping and navigation services, now covering 77 countries in 46 languages. With more than 600 million users of Yahoo!-branded sites per month, Yahoo! is a global Internet powerhouse, a one-stop Web destination enabling consumers to enjoy their online life anywhere and everywhere — all customized for their interests. As one of the leading Internet brands, Yahoo! is focused on growing its audience by providing seamless Web experiences across PC and mobile devices.

As hundreds of millions of soccer fans prepare for the world’s biggest sporting event, we are launching our first global initiative, which features microsites, compelling mobile experiences, fantasy games, and Yahoo! Search tools for more than 20 countries in 12 languages. To find out more, go to Yahoo.com and search for “Yahoo! coverage World Cup 2010.”

Shortcuts, Scores, Fantasy Soccer & More!

• New Shortcuts in Yahoo! Search results which will launch in more than 25 markets throughout the summer. These Shortcuts will provide rich information such as photos, videos, schedules, live scores, stats, team information and news, right on the Search results page.
• Real-time scores, schedules and breaking news, all of which fans can have at their fingertips by downloading the Yahoo! Toolbar with World Cup coverage. The toolbar can be customized with a country-themed skin to support any competing team.
• Yahoo! Sports World Soccer 2010, a pick’em style fantasy soccer game, which lets fans select winners for each match of the World Cup at us.wc.fantasysports.yahoo.com/world-cup. This is Yahoo!’s largest global launch of a fantasy product. Fans can play the game in 22 countries in 11 languages.
• Yahoo!’s first online penalty shootout contest  — Yahoo! Penalty Shootout — is set to launch at the end of May and will be available in more than a dozen countries. Soccer fans will be able to compete with friends, other fans, and sworn soccer rivals from around the world for a chance to win the Yahoo! Sports Pass, tickets to any four premier sporting events in the world per year for the next four years.
• Predictalot from Yahoo! Labs, a fun experiment that puts the “wisdom of the crowd” about the World Cup to the test. Predictalot lets fans in every country make millions of interesting predictions, like “How many teams from Europe will advance to the quarterfinals? or “Will a country that has never won before win it all this year?”

Customized Experiences for PC and Mobile Platforms

Continuing our tradition of providing fans with seamless online and mobile experiences, fans can find comprehensive world soccer coverage at (sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/). Yahoo! enables fans to get breaking news, scores, player stats, live commentary, and video from Yahoo! Sports, the No.1 online sports destination.

Yahoo!’s coverage includes:

• On-the-ground reporting from South Africa by award-winning writers Dan Wetzel, Martin Rogers, and Les Carpenter.
• “World Soccer Roundup,” a daily video news show that will recap top stories and give information on upcoming World Cup events.
• Dirty Tackle, a leading soccer blog from editor Brooks Peck, and contributors Richard Whittall and Ryan Bailey.

Later this month, Yahoo! will launch a comprehensive mobile site covering the World Cup 2010, providing up to the minute scores, schedules, standings, news, player profiles and more.  The site will be available in 40 markets, covering 13 languages and accessible across more than 4,500 types of mobile devices. Simply visit http://m.yahoo.com/worldcup from your phone to keep up to date on the latest.

Covering the Globe

For the first time ever, Yahoo! is hosting special events around the globe for soccer-loving fans in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Indonesia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. For the events Yahoo! has teamed with some of the sport’s most elite goalkeepers, past and present, to surprise fans worldwide. Fans can find out details about the events via Facebook at facebook.com/YahooWorldFootball. Yahoo!’s cloud is powering Yahoo!’s Coverage of the World Cup and creating a borderless Yahoo! community on the web for this global event.

Offering Advertisers Unique Opportunities

This year’s coverage of the World Cup throughout the Yahoo! network offers new and exciting opportunities for advertising and marketing partners, as well. From co-branding opportunities at Yahoo! offline events through online advertising opportunities at country and international levels, Yahoo! has marketing options to help the world’s biggest global brands participate in the excitement.

So if we don’t see you in South Africa, we’ll see you online at Yahoo.com!

As the newest Yahoo! employee, at the risk of being highly corny, I’m delighted to yodel my first purple-hued shout-out to the 600 million people and tens of thousands of advertisers and publishers who enjoy Yahoo!’s products every day.

Some of you might ask why anyone would say goodbye to surfing and cycling the Central Coast of California or travelling the globe with their family to take on the job of leading products and technology at Yahoo!  My answer’s pretty easy – meet just some of the brilliant people at Yahoo! that want to change the world, and then scan the amazing list of leading products around the globe these people have delivered at scale.  When I think about what this company has meant to anyone who has used the Internet, worked in the Internet industry, or wanted to reach people across the world, there is simply none better.

From wildly popular services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Flickr and Yahoo!’s mobile sites and apps, to Yahoo!’s best-in-class content properties like Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports, to many, many other great products across the world, Yahoo!’s product portfolio continues to be the envy of the industry.  Those incredible services and their respective audiences bring tremendous value for advertisers, which is why Yahoo! serves up 10 billion ads across its network every day and is the #1 publisher of online display advertising. How can anyone not want to be a part of that?

And that’s just what consumers and advertisers see from the outside.  Inside Yahoo!, there’s technological and scientific brilliance everywhere you look.  With 500 patents, one of the world’s largest cloud computing infrastructures, and top scientific talent across computer science, machine learning, economics and social sciences, I’m awed at the caliber of people I’m going to be working with. The intellectual horsepower doesn’t stop there – I’m looking forward to working with some of the smartest and best-in-class talent around the world in marketing, advertising sales, partnerships, programming, service engineering and operations.  The commitment Yahoos have shown over the years to delivering the best experience to both consumers and advertisers is one of the key things that attracted me here.  We’re in the business of delivering bespoke experiences to our consumers, partners and advertisers and I’m looking forward to working with all of you to build on that reality.

This week marks an exciting new journey for me personally, and I’m thrilled to be sharing my experiences and background with the world class people at Yahoo!  We have big opportunities, as well as big challenges ahead of us, and I’m getting ready to dive in and work with this great team to make Yahoo! even more central to daily online life than it has been over the past decade and a half.

My first day in the office will be May 17^th and I can’t wait to get started. Stay tuned for more as I get settled and dig in with my new team.

‘Nuff said.

-Blake Irving, EVP, Chief Product Officer, Yahoo!

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!

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

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

• 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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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

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

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

• 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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• 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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• 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.

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