Yahoo!’s Jodie Kahn will be leading the first balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So, what does it take to navigate a 77-foot-long, 430-pound Spiderman balloon through the streets of New York while millions of people are watching on live television?

Jodie, who is director of platform business strategy for Yahoo’s Right Media, is about to find out.

Although this will be Jodie’s 8th year participating in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, it will be her first as a captain of a big, new balloon. And she’ll be guiding the first balloon of the day, no less.

Jodie, who reports that you need good running shoes, muscles, a sense of humor and a bit of technical training to take on the volunteer job, gave us a behind-the-scenes peek at the preparations for the big event.

While the rest of us will have to tune in to NBC or CBS at 9 a.m. Thursday morning to cheer Jodie on, her New York Yahoo colleagues will have prime seats for the festivities.  For the first time in its 83-year history, the parade will pass by the Yahoo! building!

Good luck to Jodie–and Happy Thanksgiving from Yahoo!

When you think of Times Square, you think of people – you and me, yellow taxis and lines for the latest shows. How about sitting and chatting with friends and family?  Playing games?  Checking email? Searching for Broadway show times or dinner reservations?

Yahoo! helps you connect with the people and things that matter most to you – wherever you are, including in Times Square.  While Yahoo! is the place where your world meets the world online, over 500,000 of you take in Times Square each day and it’s become a central spot for New Yorkers and people around the world.  We and our partners at the Times Square Alliance think it’s the perfect place to bring you free WiFi service (check out the landing page here)- for  New Yawkers enjoying your cawfee breaks and out-of-towners enjoying the Big Apple. Fuggedaboutit!

And don’t worry if you don’t have a laptop in Times Square – you can also access the service from your WiFi-enabled mobile phone. All you need to do is enable the WiFi feature on your phone, open your browser and click on the “Get Started” button on the mobile landing page. This will take you to Yahoo!’s mobile homepage (http://m.yahoo.com) where you can access your favorite content and services from across the Internet.

So, if you are  in New York City or will be anytime during the next year, come down (or up, depending on where you’ll be coming from) to Times Square to chat, play, search, and enjoy whatever else you do online with free WiFi service from Yahoo! and the Times Square Alliance.  And it’s all about Y!ou (in case you hadn’t heard).

Kelly Delaney
Buzz Marketing

In a couple weeks, we’re heading to the Big Apple for the third U.S. Open Hack Day, our first ever on the East Coast. On October 9-10, we will welcome developers from around the world to the Hudson Theater and Millennium Broadway Hotel in Times Square for Yahoo! Open Hack NYC for two days of learning, networking, coding, and fun. It’s all free and you’re invited!

What is Open Hack Day? It’s what happens when clever web developers, a wireless connection, a host of web services, and massive quantities of caffeine, pizza and donuts come together for an all-night code-a-thon. After 24 hours, creative coders show off their mashup wares and clever apps, American Idol-style, before a panel of distinguished judges, who bestow awards, praise, and lots of geek cred.

Ever since the first Open Hack Day back in 2006, we’ve made it a priority to be as open and accessible to developers as possible. Yahoo!’s audience is global – and so is the base of developers who value our open tools,technologies and vast user base. We’ve hosted Open Hack Days in the U.K., India, Brazil, and Taiwan; next month, we’ll meet with developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from New York’s vibrant Web technology and digital media scene.

We’ll kick off the weekend with a Friday morning keynote from Internet guru and NYU professor Clay Shirky. That’s followed by a full day of tech talks, panel conversations, and hands-on workshops that cover the latest Yahoo! developer tools and services. Yahoo!’s open platforms let developers build things that anyone can use on and off Yahoo!: Flickr toys, Connected TV Widgets, and open apps that you can install for Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, and more. On Friday evening, we’ll kick off the hack contest and hold our breath to see what’s built by Saturday afternoon. And in-between, we’ll host a special Open Hack edition of Ignite NYC — a geek’s open mic.

What will take this year’s prize? A moblogging purse, a phenomenal way to share and organize your photos in Yahoo! Mail, an iPhone orchestra, or something we haven’t even thought of yet?

To get a better sense of the Open Hack Day showdown, check out Ricky Montalvo’s “Hackumentary,” a short film documentary shot during last year’s event in Sunnyvale. Here’s the trailer:

Hack Day – a hackumentary short film from ricky montalvo on Vimeo.

Head over to http://www.icanhaz.com/yahoohacknyc to register, check out the wiki, or follow us (@ydn) on Twitter for updates. Let the countdown to Open Hack Day 2009 begin!

Chris Yeh
Head of the Yahoo! Developer Network