Take Credit For Your Flickr Photo’s on Pinterest

It’s no secret that Flickr users’ photos are a huge hit on the social media site Pinterest, which features a “virtual pinboard.” And now, Flickr users can to get credit for their inspirational work. Flickr has just announced a partnership with Pinterest to make it easier for people to share Flickr images to Pinterest with proper attribution. A “Pinterest” button will be added to the site’s share menu, enabling people to “pin” all content that can be shared via Flickr including photo pages, favorites, and groups. When a Flickr photo is pinned on Pinterest it will be accompanied by clear attribution that includes the name of the photographer, the title of the image, and a link to the photo page. In addition, Flickr photos that are pinned from a third-party site or blog will automatically ll be attributed on Pinterest and link back to the Flickr photo page. Attributions cannot be edited, guaranteeing that each photographer will receive proper credit for their work. People who are uncomfortable with having their images pinned to Pinterest can opt-out of the sharing functionality. Now go get pinned!

Yahoo! Screen’s Hit Shows Get a Picked Up For a Second Season

Coming off of an incredibly successful first season of web shows, specifically created for a female audience, Yahoo! Screen is gearing up for its second season of specialty programming that covers a variety of lifestyle topics — from health and fitness, to cooking to relationship advice. Whether seeking relationship advice from our resident expert Niecy Nash in her hit show “Let’s Talk About Love,” or figuring out the best ways to navigate a busy schedule with Judy Greer and her health and fitness dream-team on “Reluctantly Healthy,” Yahoo! Screen delivers premium web programming that women are looking for. Along with returning shows, Yahoo! Screen will premier “The Yo Show,” coming this spring and featuring Micheal Yo, the pop-culture and E! News entertainment reporter, who will showcase a variety of unique features that will include exclusive celebrity interviews, comedy and the latest in pop culture. To check out all these shows and more, visit Yahoo! Screen.

Batch Upload For Flickr Now Available on Android

Attention all Flickr users who have been waiting patiently for the chance to batch upload photos from their Androids – the time has come! Users can now select as many photos as desired from the photo gallery on any Android phone. Easily add titles/descriptions, set privacy levels and add to sets, then Upload! Weak signal? No problem. We’ve added the upload queue to help ensure your photos get up to Flickr as soon as possible. Track the photos while they are uploading. If your signal cuts out and interrupts your upload, we’ll try again once we get connection or you can manually start it later. So, what are you waiting for? Get the app and start uploading more now!

Yahoo! Small Business Launches Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard

Yahoo! Small Business has just announced the launch of Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, a free tool that helps entrepreneurs discover new marketing opportunities to grow their businesses, while getting a clear picture of their marketing results, online reputations, and website performance, all in one place.

Designed specifically with the small business owner in mind, the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard enables small businesses to easily analyze website metrics and maintain accurate and comprehensive business listings across the Web.  With all these key business metrics accessible in one location, small business owners with limited resources can spend more time focusing on their core businesses and less time buried in multiple interfaces and spreadsheets.

Some of the key features included in the free Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard include:

•  Search engine and directory listings: Enables monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, covering over 100sites (including Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and more)
•  Online reputation management: Pulls information from up to 8,000 sources (including Facebook and Twitter)
• Site traffic analysis: Enables users to understand key website performance metrics (including Google Analytics)
• Small business-focused news and advice: Provided from Yahoo! Small Business Advisor
• Campaign tracking: Provides email marketing, SEO, and SEM campaign tracking (must subscribe to these services)
• Support: 24/7 in-house free customer support

 Premium paid services are also available for those businesses looking to increase their online visibility, track their competitors and attract new customers by taking advantage of marketing services from featured, best-in-class third party marketing vendors.

The Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard and Yahoo! Small Business Advisor are the most recent additions to the suite of tools from Yahoo! Small Business which also offers web hosting, ecommerce, domains, and business mail aimed at helping small businesses grow. Get it for free here.

Flickr Photos Get a Larger-than-Life Makeover!

When it comes to photos, most Flickr users would agree that bigger is always better! You asked and we listened! Flickr is excited to announce two new photo sizes, 1600 and 2048 pixels. They are already available in the lightbox and will be rolled out to the API and a few other places over the next few weeks. Along with our outstanding, low-compression photo quality, this will give you an exceptional viewing experience; no matter if you are in front of your HD display, your new iPad or any other pixel-perfect high-resolution screen.

The new sizes are available for all photos that you have uploaded since March 1. For each photo we are generating the two new 1600 pixels and 2048 pixels sizes (unless the uploaded image is smaller on the longer side). These new larger image sizes will make your photos look even more stunning on Flickr. Take your pictures to the next level today!

Photo: Available from Xerxes2K./ FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quicksilver/3022285020/

Power Player Series Heats Up Election Coverage
Got politics on your mind as election season heats up? You’re not the only one! ABC News and Yahoo! News Political team have come together to keep politics junkies satisfied with a dynamic dose of up-to-the-minute news and in-depth analysis of the elections thought the new Power Player series available on Livestand and screen mobile platforms.

This new daily video political series will he headlined by ABC news’ political dream team, which includes George Stephanopoulos, Jake Tapper, Amy Walter and more. These political heavyweights will discuss and offer insight on all things elections, from Obama’s disappearing allies in the Republican party to the court case that could cost him the election. Tune in every weekday for political news from Washington’s most respected news sources!

Yahoo! Fantasy Finance Kick-Off
Too strapped for cash to invest in the stock market? Here’s your chance to have all the fun without any of the risk! Yahoo! Finance just launched their first-ever Fantasy Finance game, sponsored by TD Ameritrade, in which wannabe traders can test their trading skills and Wall Street smarts by investing $100K in purple play money into a wide selection of Stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s) as listed on the major US exchanges.

Players will also have the chance to take a daily quiz for an additional $100 of play money to help increase their gains and the player with the highest total portfolio value at the end of twelve weeks will win the grand prize. The game is a great learning tool for budding investors of all ages and allows players the opportunity to emulate “real world” experience in the financial market. Happy trading!

Share Where You Are with the Latest Android Messenger App
Yahoo! has just launched a new version (v 1.6) of its Messenger Android app. Now, you can easily let your contacts know where you are by adding your location when you update your status message. If your friends are nearby, they may just meet you there!

The ‘Add Location’ button in the Status Message view lets you add your general location to all status updates. You can also add a specific place, like a restaurant or park. Unable to find a place or local business? You can manually enter a place or local business, which will be registered as a new location in our directory and can be used by other users on Yahoo! Messenger.

Adding a location to your status message is completely optional and will only be enabled if your Android phone allows us to detect your location via GPS satellites or WiFi and mobile networks. Once you declare your location, all your buddies will see where you are so you can easily rendezvous with them when you’re in the neighborhood. Try it out! Download it today from Google Play.

Flickr Announces new Meetup site.
Flickr has a longstanding reputation as the best place for photographers to connect and share their work online, but web connections can only take you so far. Flickr recently introduces a new Meetup.com feature to help bring Flickr users together in person!

The new feature will allow Flickr users to plan Flickr events, Photowalks, exhibitions and get togethers all over the world, which can now be organized and announced on the Flickr page at Meetup.com. Feel free to start and organize your own, or join in with existing ones in your neighborhood.

Flickr Contacts page gets a sleeker makeover
The first phase in Flickr’s 2012 redesign has just launched! Flickr’s contact page has been revamped using the new Justifed layout which will make it easier to see the stories your friends are telling with their photos. While the previous layout choices are still available, the new design optimizes for seamlessly displaying more images at larger sizes, so you can see more of the activity from contacts, friends and family at once. The new design offers Flickr members:

A more elegant layout, with whitespace and thumbnails removed for vibrant, un-cropped photos that way the photo is meant to appear (portrait, landscape, panorama, Instagram square)

Simpler and more dynamic navigation, including:

• Scroll-over functionality gives way to high-resolution pop-up images
• A simple light-box option for a full-screen view of the image selected
• Limitless photo scrolling removes the need to click from page to page

New ways to interact with images, including quick access to “favorite” images and comment right on the thumbnails

Check out the new Flickr contacts page here

Yahoo! Screen introduces the Yahoo! Comedy Channel
The live broadcast of Bill Mahr’s “CrazyStupidPolitics: Live from Silicon Valley” last night kicks off the launch of the Yahoo! Comedy Channel on Yahoo! Screen, which will feature a slate of original web shows from some of the top production companies and renown comedic talent. The lineup includes “Sketchy” a weekly video comedy series starting some of the biggest names in comedy and many others. Missed the Bill Mahr live broadcast? You can watch all the clips on Yahoo! Screen, hear all about his surprise headline announcement, and check out the rest of the video series available.

Flickr Android App Coming To A Language Near You!
Flickr rolled out an update to the Flickr Android app that includes nine new languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesian. The popular Flickr Android app, which initially launched in September 2011, allows even more Flickr members worldwide to take photos directly from the app, enhance them with filters, and quickly send pictures to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Check it out here.

The Signal Predicts Obama will win the Election
David Rothschild and David Pennock from Yahoo! Labs made a bold prediction in The Signal last week that Obama will win the general election in November by 303 electoral votes. The Signal, a Yahoo! blog uses the first ever real-time prediction engine that combines powerful scientific algorithms with multiple, real-time and historical data sources to generate predictions. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors. To date, the post has attracted over 40,000 comments, a record for The Signal.Stay current on the Signal’s latest posts here.

The Power of Yahoo! Finance for IntoNow

Business and economic news fans – this may be for you! This month Yahoo! launched a new feature in IntoNow that makes it simple for you to see news stories related to the companies being discussed on various business television programs and uses the power of Yahoo! Finance to give you up to the minute stock prices on those companies too. As you’re watching a program with IntoNow, whenever we detect a company being mentioned we now also show you the stock view. Keep an eye for more examples of where we can bring the scale and scope of Yahoo! right into your living room with IntoNow. Download IntoNow from the iTunes Store:

App Search UK – Taking the Guesswork out of Searching for Apps

Yahoo! has just announced the launch of App Search in the UK, the first desktop search engine for both iPhone and Android apps. With hundreds of thousands of apps in the Apple App Store and Android Market, finding what you want can be both exhausting and challenging. There are times you don’t know the specific name of the app, so you’re leaving it up to chance that you’re actually downloading the app you really want.  Just like when you’re searching for websites, Yahoo! helps you find apps that match the keyword or search term that you’ve entered. The App Search results page lists matching app titles with a comprehensive description, price, overall star rating from users, and screenshots all in one place to help you with your decision: to download or not to download. You can filter search results by device (Android or iPhone), price (free or paid) and category. Yahoo! App Search also helps you discover new apps via featured lists such as Top Trending, Top Free, Top Paid and Most Reviewed apps. You can also leave your own feedback and rating to help other users find apps. Discover App Search for here

Yahoo! Toolbar Update

We have released an update to the Yahoo! Toolbar available for Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. The new toolbar is the easiest way to check the latest news, weather and email while browsing. It also includes a redesigned Facebook app offering a quick view of status updates, news feeds and wall posts and the toolbar update for Internet Explorer features a coupon app — bringing a vast array of relevant coupons for each user to search or browse for coupons by category or popularity. The installation size has also been reduced, with the added functionality. It is available for download now at toolbar.yahoo.com

Product Searches Made Easy Through Shine

Shine from Yahoo, the leading website for women’s lifestyle content, has released the Get it Guide, an online destination for the must-have products that everyday women are searching for and talking about. The Get it Guide offers insights from real women into the latest products and trends, allowing customers to make more informed purchasing decisions. The Get it Guide also features a team of gurus to review, discuss and share their views on the products, inviting Shine users to vote for their favorites online. Published every few weeks, each guide will focus on a different product category, from fragrances to workout dvd’s, offering an ultimate one-stop shop for the products that savvy shoppers are looking for. Be sure to check regularly for favorite products and reviews.

Just in Time for the Holidays – New Features and Content for Livestand

It’s hard to believe it’s been just seven short weeks since Livestand’s debut in the Apple App Store (and since it was picked as one of Apple’s featured apps).  We’ve just finished updating it this week to add more features and popular publications. Here’s a look at what’s new in the app:

• A new recipe finder in Shine from Yahoo! so you can browse recipes and create handy shopping lists.
• Local deals from sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and Bloomspot are now seamlessly integrated into Yahoo! Today and Shine from Yahoo!.
• New Guest Mode allows you to take a tour and experience Livestand without signing in.
• Twitter integration to share articles, videos and more with a few taps.
• New publications, including: Shine from Yahoo!, Technology Review published by MIT, The Ticket from Yahoo! News (a new title focused entirely on the 2012 Elections), Minyanville, Victorian Christmas, and Big Think

And we’re still not finished – we’ll continue to iterate the app as we hear back from users like you. To download the updated app or try it out for the first time here, visit the App Store for Livestand.

‘Tis the Season for Sharing – Yahoo! Expands Facebook Integration To 26 More Sites

Back in September, we announced the Yahoo! News activity feature, putting your friends front and center in our U.S. Yahoo! News experience. And to our delight, more than 12 million of you have given it a try so far, discovering news stories and sharing what you are reading on Yahoo! with all your Facebook friends. Based on this success, we’ve expanded this nifty Facebook integration to 26 more Yahoo! sites worldwide, including Yahoo! News sites spanning the globe as well as US-based entertainment experiences, omg!, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Movies, and Yahoo! Games. The feature is designed to bring a deeply personalized, social news experience to more of the content millions of people come to Yahoo! to read each day. Check it out on omg! or Yahoo! News today.

IntoNow = What We’re “Into Now”

Maybe you saw IntoNow from Yahoo!’s new iPad app featured in the Wall Street Journal or ABC Tech Bytes? Maybe you heard about the app in Apple’s 2011 Rewind where it was named one of the top apps of the entire year. Or maybe you’re just hearing about it now. If that’s the case, give it a try. With more than 2 million downloads this TV companion experience is just taking off and perfect for holiday fun on your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

Yahoo! Image Search adds social sharing and continuous scrolling

We recently introduced two new, important features on Yahoo! Image Search to help people get the most out of searching for photos online: continuous scrolling and social sharing. Yahoo! Image Search now provides the ability to share any image through Facebook and Twitter. By clicking on the image from the search results page, people can browse effortlessly through full-size images via the desktop browser, then share with their preferred network of family and friends.

In addition to social sharing, people can scroll endlessly down the Yahoo! Image Search results to see more and more photos. Type a query for a current event and you can see photos pertaining to breaking news, along with the ability to continuously scroll through the results.

Yahoo! launches a new home for Search BOSS and three new offerings

We recently announced a new home for Yahoo! Search BOSS at boss.yahoo.com, and three new BOSS offerings: BOSS Hosted Search, BOSS Site Search, and BOSS Shortcuts. Whether you’re a site owner looking for a robust customizable search solution, a developer that needs the utmost flexibility for search as a service, or a publisher that needs quality solutions that deliver higher user engagement, boss.yahoo.com has it all.

Introducing Hub (beta) – the latest messaging app from Yahoo!

Earlier this month, Yahoo! launched Hub – a new beta group messaging app available for download in the Android app store. Hub is fast, easy-to-use and lets you have group conversations for free. Device-agnostic, Hub also allows you to easily add participants to any conversation thread so it’s easy to switch from private messaging to a group conversation. Whether it is just keeping up with a close group of friends or making spontaneous plans, with Hub you no longer have to deal with scattered messages.

Right Media’s Year in Review

This week we recapped a year of growth and progress for Right Media, the world’s leading display advertising exchange. Throughout the year, we announced enhanced capabilities in a wide range of areas, including mobile advertising, rich media, geotargeting and audience segmentation. But, what do the year-end numbers say? Check out some key Right Media stats for 2011 and get the full details on the Right Media Blog.

• 90+ markets around the world where RMX is the leading exchange
• 270,000+ buyers and sellers on RMX – an increase of 15% year over year
• 10 billion impressions hosted on RMX every day – up 20% year over year
• 14 billion transactions on RMX every day – up 35% year over year
• 30%-50% acceleration in campaign activation resulting from network investments

New Yahoo! Search Experiences for Recipes, Shopping and More!

Yahoo! Search debuted new, interactive results on top of the search results page for recipe, shopping and entertainment searches. We also introduced a new vertical search experience for recipes. Here is a quick overview on the new offerings:

• New Recipes results – Search on Yahoo! for a food item + recipes (for example: “apple recipes” or “artichoke recipes”) and a window will appear on top of the search results page with popular choices from leading food sites.
• New Recipes Search tab – Narrow down the results of recipes by preparation time, star rating, diet, meal type, occasion, or source via a new ‘Recipes’ tab.
• New Shopping results – Search for a product or category, like watches or cameras, and then easily compare products, find coupons and deals, and check out helpful buying guides.
• Updated Entertainment results – The new entertainment results on Yahoo! Search presents immediate answers about your favorite movies, music artists, celebrities and news stories.  Read the latest news, watch a popular video, or see what people are saying in the Twittersphere in one convenient place within Yahoo Search.

Users asked, we listened: Introducing Yahoo! Messenger 11.5

Here at Yahoo! we get a lot of user feedback – and we like that! It means that people are engaged with our products — and quite often, the user feedback is spot on. Such is the case with the newest version of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows. We prioritized user feedback over all else and have added some cool new features that will make your chatting more organized, efficient and fun. New features include:

• Tabbed IM: Conversations are now neatly organized in one convenient chat bar so you just have to go to another tab to start up a different chat.
• Easy Access to Recent Contacts: Odds are you only IM regularly with a   handful of your friends. Now your most recent contacts appear at the top of your list.
• Smart Archiving: Chat history is now categorized by friends, making it a snap to look up your chat history.
• New Social Games: Messenger now has more than 70 exciting games including titles like Backyard Monsters, Township and ourWorld.

We also improved spam protection, added quick access to all emoticons and added Romanian language support. Check out the new Messenger here.

Yahoo! Search Launched E-Commerce Site Search

Yahoo! launched E-Commerce Site Search launched E-Commerce Site Search on Yahoo! Small Business.  Yahoo! E-Commerce Site Search brings together many of the strengths in Y! Search – science, design and engineering, to provide a more relevant and engaging search experience. Using our new search, pilot stores have seen Search Conversionincrease by as much as 40% and Search influenced orders increase by up to 50%.

Calling all iPhone Users: Updated Yahoo! Search App Released

We have released an update to the Yahoo! Search App for iPhone and iPod touch, available now for download on the App Store. We’ve done a major overhaul to bring the familiar browser experience we all know and love on the iPhone and iPod touch, along with many new features that will enhance searching on the go! These features include:

• Local Tabs: Use the top navigation box to quickly find nearby bars, restaurants, ATMs and more with one simple click.
• Trending Topics: View the most current and popular searches by topic on the home page, with direct access to news, images and tweets.
• Voice Search: Skip the typing. Just talk and we’ll do all the work to help make the search easier and faster.
• Search and download iPhone apps: Search and find more iPhone apps that fit your lifestyle, with direct links to the App Store for quick and easy download right on the device.
• Sophisticated New Look: Rich, high-quality information for many search terms in a variety of categories including sports, news, entertainment and finance.

Earlier this month, Yahoo! rolled out some major new developments through Product Runway, including Livestand from Yahoo!, IntoNow from Yahoo!, Yahoo! Weather for Android, and a new Yahoo! Mail experience on the iPad. Since then, we’ve had a few more things brewing:

Yahoo! homepage gets a new look
You might notice something different the next time you visit Yahoo.com. Yahoo! added a handful of new enhancements to the Yahoo! homepage that bring even more relevant news, information and communication tools to its more than 365 million unique visitors a month. Key changes include:
·         Customizable content categories – Pick the categories you want displayed on your homepage and personalize the page by placing them in any order you like
·         More video content – Access more multimedia experiences from your homepage, including the top Yahoo! original programs
·         Even more headlines upfront – Easily expand the headline count from 4 to 10 stories on your page to get a fuller view of the day’s news

More relevant and personalized advertising experiences coming your way
Yahoo! just launched new audience targeting solutions that will help deliver more relevant and personalized advertising experiences to consumers.
·         Proximity Match helps advertisers market effectively at a local level, targeting consumers according to the distance between their home address and a retail or business location.
·         Audience Match is a solution that targets offline customers and prospects online (using offline data from partners such as Experian, Acxiom and IXI).
·         The newly enhanced Consumer Direct, which is a purchase-based targeting and measurement solution, now includes a host of new capabilities and features that enable marketers to target specific consumer segments at scale and measure the offline impact of their online campaigns.

Yahoo! Mail – now in Arabic!
With an estimated 70 million people using the internet in the Middle East and an additional 50 million expected to come online in the next three years, the Arabic speaking region is important for Yahoo! Our recently launched Yahoo! Mail in Arabic comes with an Arabic language user interface, an updated rich text editor so users can write and respond to emails and IMs in Arabic, and personalized local content courtesy of Yahoo! Maktoob. Sign-up at Yahoo! Maktoob.

Yahoo! announces 8 new original shows available on Yahoo! Screen
Yahoo! has announced its first full slate of original premium TV-quality Web shows, viewable on Yahoo! Screen, Yahoo!’s newly revamped online video destination with one of the largest online video libraries around. The new slate will include 8 original web shows starring Hollywood heavyweights such as “Arrested Development” actress Judy Greer in the healthy living show “Reluctantly Healthy.” Yahoo! Screen also features content from Hulu, Fox, NBC, TLC, and many more video sources. Be sure to check it out and watch the latest Yahoo! Minute to learn more about the latest from Yahoo! Screen.

• Faces of the Flickrverse: Tagging has always been the fun part of Flickr, making it a cinch to find photos of anything from fungus to flugelhorns. This week, People in Photos made its debut, letting you add people to your photos, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in. If you’re tagged, you’ll get notified in your activity stream. If that sounds at all creepy to you, never fear – you’ve got plenty of privacy power. Opt out, opt in. More on the Flickr blog.
• Teach your phone to yodel: Sure, your mobile can probably mimic the sound of crickets, a dog bark, a vintage telephone, or sonar. But can it yodel? Now it can. In support of our Yodel Studio promotion, which seeks the world’s best new yodelers with a chance to be featured on our homepage and in our global marketing campaign, we’ve cooked up yodeling ringtones. And not just your government issue yodel. We’re talking hip-hop, a cappella, R&B, reggae, and bluegrass yodels. Download them here or text YODEL to 49737 in the US, 56263 in India, and 83338 in the UK. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your yodel and/or vote for your favorites. The deadline is November 8th.

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Homepage is more apptastic: If you’ve been playing with our new homepage apps, you’ve discovered our gallery of recommended apps. This week, we added more than a dozen new ones, with more to come. You can balance your personal budget with Mint, learn how to pair the right wine with your meal with an app from MyRecipes and Snooth, discover weekly deals at Target, get movie info from Flixster, or manage posts and comments on your WordPress blog — all from the Yahoo! Homepage. And because we’ve opened it up to third-party developers, expect that list to grow. More on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog.
• New Yahoo! Search: Notice anything different about Yahoo! Search? After a month of testing, we’ve rolled out a brand new Yahoo! Search that ups the ante in personal relevance. You’ll see new tools that let you explore related concepts; display only results from popular Yahoo! and third-party sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and IMDB; and narrow results by types of content like people, videos, and discussion forums. We also give you quick access to our Search Scan/SafeSearch tool, to protect you from viruses, spyware and spam, and Search Pad, which lets you take notes during your queries. More on the Yahoo! Search blog.
• Yahoo! Messenger kills bugs dead: The bug hunters on the Messenger team have released new versions of both Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta as well as Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone. In the former, they’ve fixed issues with webcam detection, added messaging to tell you when your friend needs to upgrade versions, offer better handling of unanswered calls, and explain when your Internet connection downgrades you to a voice call. Over on the iPhone, they’ve addressed the mysterious contact list disappearances. Download the upgrade in the iTunes App Store. More here and here on the Yahoo! Messenger blog.
• Zimbra milestone: Ok, what do Zimbra and South Africa have in common? People. Fifty million of them now have paid Zimbra mailboxes, just a bit more than the population of Africa’s most southerly nation That milestone comes amidst the launch of Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0, which now lets you more easily sync to your mobile, read and write emails with tabbed views, create presentations without external software, receive read email receipts, choose from among calendar views, and remotely wipe your phone if you lose it, among other features. More over on the Zimbra blog.

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Unleash your inner curator: If you’re a photo nut, it’s easy to get sucked into exploring the more than 3.4 billion photos on Flickr. And if you’ve ever wanted to collect and horde your favorites by theme, have we got a new feature for you. Introducing Flickr Galleries, which gives members a handy way to celebrate the creativity of their fellow photographer. You can curate together up to 18 public photos or videos in one place – Big Ben, blue eyes, snails, cats with thumbs, mannequins, what have you. To get started, just click on the “Add to Gallery” icon on the menu bar. Just five days out of the gate and it’s a very popular feature – you’ve created more than 25,000 galleries to date. More here.
• Out with the old: The Messenger team has news for anyone using Yahoo! Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5. As of September 30th, we’ll be retiring those oldies. If you’re using anything below 8.0, you’ll find you won’t be able to sign in. That’s the price of progress, right? (We wouldn’t want you to be that guy still using a mobile phone with an antennae.) While Messenger 9.0 and the beta of Messenger 10 are rich in features like video sharing, full-screen video chat, spam protection, and more, we realize people like options. So after September 30th, you can also try Yahoo! Messenger for the Web or the IM built into Yahoo! Mail. More here.
• Celebrate en Español: In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Yahoo! En Español has teamed up with Kodak to invite Latinos – and Latinos at heart – to “Muestra Tu Herencia” (Show Your Heritage). Folks are invited to upload photos of friends and family through October 31st as well as leave comments. For every photo uploaded, Yahoo! and Kodak will donate $4 to the Hispanic College Fund (up to $20,000). And as of October 12th, we’ll unveil a digital photo mosaic of all the submitted photos as a tribute to Hispanic families across the U.S. Muchas gracias!

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• F-F-Fantastic phone apps: For the millions of you with touch-screen phones, you can now download some of Yahoo!’s most popular services. Call them the Three F’s: Finance, Flickr and Fantasy Football (or is that four Fs?). With interactivity reminiscent of their Web-based counterparts, these apps let you access our services on the go from an iPhone, iPod touch or select Blackberry models (including Bold, Tour and 8900 series). For now, Finance and Fantasy Football users can download them in the U.S. and Canada, while the Flickr app is also available in the UK, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For a deeper dive, check out our post earlier this week.
• Inviting apps & jumbo files: The new and improved Yahoo! Mail just debuted three new apps that turn your inbox into even more of a productivity hub. Head over to that handy Applications box and you’ll notice new apps from Evite and pingg — two options for sending and managing invitations. They sensibly integrate with tools like Yahoo! Calendar, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Maps to take the stress out of party-planning (and -going). And the new Attach Large Files app, courtesy of the folks at drop.io, lets you upload and share files up to 100MB. You can also collaborate by commenting on files, leaving a voicemail for more context or dialing in to a conference call for a real-time powwow. Read more here.
• Neighbors helping neighbors: Let’s say that waffle iron you plugged in blew your kitchen fuse and it’s been a blue moon since you last called an electrician. Where do you turn? The best tips are often from the people you bump into every day in your neighborhood. And we’ve just made it easier to get their word-of-mouth recommendations. Yahoo! Neighbors, a new feature on Yahoo! Local, lets you get answers to everyday problems. Use it to find local services or post questions and tips for the community. For a taste, check out this thread from some users in Dallas in search of a driving school.
• New souped-up Messenger for Mac: For all you Mac users, there’s a new beta version of Messenger available for download. Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 comes with a bunch of new bug fixes to help it run more smoothly. You’ll also get the Messenger Insider window that’s available on Windows versions, giving you a daily snapshot of what’s happening on Yahoo! and around the world. Want to take it for a test drive? Download it here and read more here.

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

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Look ma, no wires: Those who manage their lives via Yahoo! Calendar and own an iPhone will rejoice – you can now sync the two! Tapping into the CalDAV open standard, we’ve collaborated with Apple to let you bring all your precious deets into your iPhone Calendar. You can also share your calendar with friends and family and likewise see their events on your phone. Nothing to download, no wires — it’s all over the air. That’s mighty George Jetson. More here.
• Tweeting your tunes: The latest version of FoxyTunes is out and it’s all atwitter. FoxyTunes, the toolbar that lets you control tunes from within your browser, now lets you easily tweet about the music you’re listening to. A project started about two years ago, TwittyTunes is officially a new default feature within FoxyTunes. And remember, you have 140 characters, which is enough to tweet, “Listening to a song I love: The Dandy Warhols – The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers aka the Ballad of Sherif Shorty.” What’s more, you can also share your song via Facebook, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Last.fm, and Yahoo! Status. It’s a musical meetup. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Cheapskates rule: There’s nothing like nuked portfolios and pink slips to make couponing de rigueur. This recession has spawned a generation of proud penny pinchers who enjoy the hunt for great bargains, and the refreshed Yahoo! Deals makes that even more sporting fun. In addition to daily deals, weekly electronic circulars, and online coupons from major retailers, you can now find great local bargains with coupons for groceries and neighborhood stores. You can even share your dollar-saving discoveries through social tools like Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious. Get your save on. More here.
• Trash talking mayors: Politics and fantasies should rarely mix. But mayors from 11 big football cities are letting their imaginations run wild as they pick their teams for the Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football Mayoral Face-Off. From San Francisco to Oakland, Green Bay to Buffalo, mayors are squaring off to see who can assemble the winning team. What’s in it for them? A check for $15,000 to benefit their favorite local sports charity. What’s more, the city with the most votes from football fans scores another $15,000. So go hit the polls now. More here.
• Measure your mojo: If you know how to retweet your @replies with a hashtag, you’re on Twitter. But do you know what kind of Twitter user you are? In celebration of the launch of our new Yahoo! Homepage, we’ve launched Know Your Mojo with a sophisticated pipe thingy that analyzes your account and spits out your social mojo. If you’re a Crowd Pleaser, you’re into hashtags. If you’re a BFF, you’re big into @replies. If you’re a Wall Flower, you seem to have forgotten how to type. We’ll also recommend what websites you should add to your own Yahoo! homepage to help feed your mojo. We’re a Concierge. More here.
• You’re two-faced: Speaking of customizing your Yahoo! Homepage, we’ve developed a Facebook quiz that acknowledges that there’s more than one side to each of us. In our Split Personality quiz, you’ll answer ten multiple-choice questions to determine whether you’re more like Tiger Hilfiger, Galileo Cronkite or Bono Rockefeller (etc.). And then we’ll suggest websites to add to your Yahoo! Homepage that match your dueling passions. What’s your split personality?

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Photo hunting: There are more than 3 billion photos and videos on Flickr — guaranteeing that you’ll find awesome captures of just about anything. Now it’s easier to wade through that massive library with the new Flickr Search. The search results page has been redesigned with new “view” controls that let you dictate whether you want the thumbnails as small, medium, or detail. There’s also an option to view search results as a slideshow. You can also click on a particular photo to launch a popup preview with more info. And, since Flickr is all about serendipity and discovery, you’ll see links to the groups, photographers, tag clusters, and places that relate to your search. Try this search for polka-dotted poodle. More here.
• Fresh and Delicious: The team over at our favorite social bookmarking site unwrapped some tasty treats this week. Delicious now has new search tools, including the ability to search within a date range and filter by tags. You’ll also find rich content (YouTube videos, Flickr images, Yelp data) right on the search results page. Since we all want to know what everybody’s up to, Delicious has added the “Fresh Bookmarks” tab to let you see the most recently-saved bookmarks that are buzzing on Twitter. And speaking of Twitter, you can now tweet your bookmarks from right within Delicious. Ditto for emailing. More here and over on the Delicious blog.
• More Messenger movies: Baby panda videos. Movie trailers. Tour de France photos. The kind of stuff we love to share. If you have Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, it’s now all that much easier to ping friends with great videos and photos. The team had added support for a slew of sites to Messenger’s inline media player — ranging from Hulu, Facebook, and Vimeo to twitpic and CollegeHumor.com. All that because you told them to. Ask, and ye shall receive. More here.

Finally, a shout-out to reader Dennis Marks for suggesting we ditch the date in our Product Pulse headlines in favor of content clues (made good sense to us!).

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Home sweet home: We’ve remodeled the house but we’re letting you pick out the furniture. The new Yahoo! Homepage is here! And it’s all about you. Load it up with your favorite websites by choosing from one of more than 65 apps or adding a link of your own. Also, your news is now hyper-local and you can also toggle the main news module for more of the big news that matters. And you can take it all with you — PC to mobile sync is coming very soon. If you live in the U.S., you can opt-in today by visiting http://yahoo.com/trynew. Our friends in France, India, and the UK will soon have access to localized versions and we’ll start rolling out to other markets in the next month. Take a tour and read more here.
• Roadtrip photos: If you’re one of the many people who researches travel destinations by checking out online photos, you’ll start packing your suitcase when you see the new travel image refiner on Yahoo! Image Search. You can now take a virtual tour of popular points of interest when you search for a destination. Which Hawaiian isle is right for you? Search for Hawaii and click on the thumbnails for islands like Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and popular spots like Haleakala National Park and Waimea Canyon. Try it with Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Rome, Sydney, New York City, San Francisco, and beyond. More here.
• More mobile Messenger: Attention, iPhone users – the latest Yahoo! Messenger app update is out and it is spiffy. Now you can get notified of a new message even when the app is closed. Make that, even when your iPhone is asleep! You can choose whether you get an alert on your home screen, an alert sound, or a badge featuring the number of messages — or all three, or none. Another new addition – you can now stay signed in for up to two weeks. Again, that’s even when your app is closed. And finally, you can now BUZZ! your friends – one of the most requested features for the iPhone app. Ask and ye shall receive! More here.
• Back to class: Yep, it’ll soon be time to trade flip-flops for Mary Janes – school is right around the corner. But we’re here to ease the pain. Our new Back to School site helps you choose the right backpack, find green school supplies, get safety tips, find ways to cut down your back-to-school budget, and even adjust to a new school. We give you a roster of shopping bargains, like dorm room essentials, MP3 players, and student duds. There’s also a study zone with fun learnings, games, and cool Avatar gear for when the time comes to drop a school bus in your background. And if you’re tired of the same ol’ same ol’, there are great healthy school lunch recipes. In the meantime, make the most of those flip-flops!

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Toolbar tricks: Now, every browser comes with a toolbar, so why would you want the new one from Yahoo!? Does yours let you preview your email or content from more than 100 popular sites? Does it give you query suggestions as you search? Does it let you search directly within sites like Flickr or Wikipedia? I didn’t think so. Go download yourself the new Yahoo! Toolbar. It’s all about letting you do more faster. More here.
• Making the little guy feel big: If you own a small business, you know how much you covet the marketing dollars of the big dogs. Well, the playing field has officially been leveled. Our new My Display Ads let businesses of any size run affordable online display (or banner) campaigns that reach local markets on Yahoo!. How affordable? Let’s just say we can make thirty bucks go a long way. These self-service ads are easy to create – just pick from one of our 800+ templates; customize text, images, colors and add your company logo; select your target audience; and off you go. You’re guaranteed to feel embiggened. More here.
• Proud to have Pride: It’s LGBT Pride month and we’re doing it up big with this year’s Yahoo! Pride site. We’ve got news from the Advocate, a killer timeline that summarizes the last century in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender history, and an event finder for more than 1,000 Pride events around the world. But best of all, we might be sending you and a friend to Sydney for the LGBT Mardi Gras in February. But hurry, you have to enter by July 1st (or come meet us in San Francisco this weekend to enter in person). More here.
• Dog days of summer: The race is on and you’ve got about 11 weeks to make the most of it. It’s summertime and we’ve pulled together a little helpful microsite to keep you from squandering it. Need help with travel plans? Check out articles on getaways that involve beachs, golf, family, national park, or weekend furloughs. Want great recipes? We’ve got ideas for grilling, oven-free cooking, drinks, and chill-out treats. There’s also shopping ideas, tips on keeping that lawn green, kids activities, and giving your Avatar a more sunswept look. Check it out here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Rock on, iPhone: There’s just something about radio — that element of surprise, that anticipation of what’s coming next, that man-I-haven’t-heard-that-song-in-years sensation. That’s the promise of our new Yahoo! Music iPhone app. Powered by CBS Radio, it lets you browse through 300+ stations within more than 20 genres (from Bollywood to Goth to Naughty Comedy), skip up to six tracks an hour, find local stations via GPS, share stations with friends, and buy music you like via iTunes. Never get stuck listening to Muzak again. Read more here, then download the app.
• Cirrus, cumulus, Flickr: The fact that Flickr has democratized photography and turned many hacks into professionals is not lost on Getty Images, the legendary stock photo agency. So back in March, we debuted the Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com, allowing mere mortals to license their work for commercial use. Today, Getty has introduced “photo clouds,” a new way to navigate groups of related photos within the Collection. You can join the community and create your own cloud around topics like “winter,” “out of Africa,” “bizarre photos,” and “fishy.” (Note the spiffy massage music that soothes as you explore). But wait! There’s also a screensaver, desktop widget, and a new Facebook app that lets you create a photo cloud to reflect your status mood. Brings new meaning to cloud computing. More here.
• Go commando with Colbert: If you’re addicted to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, you probably know Stephen Colbert has been broadcasting from Iraq this week in support of troops stationed there. But he’s also leading an effort to make sure the children of said troops are getting what they need from a public school education. He’s teamed up with DonorsChoose.org to raise funds for military-serving schools, pitting the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard against each other. You can help by making a donation or spread the word by sporting a Colbert Avatar, with critical accessories like an eagle, bear, Colbert Nation hat, Che Colbert T-shirt, fireplace, and a desk. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Photos without the jail time: If you’ve ever hesitated before throwing that copyrighted photo into a presentation or web page, you’ll celebrate this news. Yahoo! Search has added a Creative Commons license filter to Yahoo! Image Search to help you quickly identify photos that are OK to reuse or modify. No other search engine saves your bacon that way. Not only do we keep you out of trouble, you’ll never even the see the photos you don’t have permission to use — it’s like Eve didn’t even know the apple existed. More here.
• Search that sport: That little search box just made you a better sports fan. Yahoo! Search has added a sports team shortcut that helps you keep track of your favorite teams, leagues, and events simply by typing in a keyword or two. When’s the next Lakers game? Who’s winning the French Open? Just go to Yahoo! Search. The sports team shortcut covers the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA, and college sports leagues including the NCAAF and NCAAB. More here.
• 360 comes full circle: Yes, it’s official — Yahoo! 360 is coming to an end. We know, we know — it took us a while to pull the plug. But rather than rush the process and risk losing your precious photos and prose, we wanted to make sure we had a solution in place — Yahoo! Profiles. You can move your content over to your profile, where your connections can keep tabs on you, or take it to go. You can export your entries to blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType. More here.
• Comments with a click: And in the hilarious third-party app category… Feeling too lazy, bored, tired, or uninspired to write a comment for that Flickr photo? Good thing some clever souls from Virginia have developed the Flickr comment generatr. You can choose between simple (“this is super :-p”) or verbose (“i eat up the framing and foto ;-) good job my friend”). Now you can be meaningless without even trying.

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• Buzzing the world: There’s news and there’s news people really care about. That’s what Yahoo! Buzz helps you filter. And now the site has made it even easier to keep tabs on what your contacts and the greater community find most interesting. As part of a fresh redesign, a new “Buzz Updates” tab surfaces the submitting, voting, and commenting activity from your friends and others. And given Yahoo! Buzz’s runaway success as the (insert shameless self-promotion) most popular social content service in the US, Yahoo! Buzz got its passport and just landed in India. Now readers all over India can keep tabs on what’s hot in everything from Bollywood to business in Bangalore. More here.
• Just tell me: The iPhone is truly the one thing I’d want on a desert isle, but let’s face it — its keyboard leaves something to be desired. That’s why Yahoo! Mobile just launched voice search for our Yahoo! Mobile iPhone app. Now you can search for anything — flight numbers, restaurants, gas stations, web sites — by just moving your mouth. You can also customize your “My Interests” tab with your voice — just click on “add anything” and say the topic you want to explore and add to your page. Our voice-enabled search is now available on more than 80 different devices/platforms – from Blackberry (including the newest ones) to Nokia to iPhone and Windows Mobile. Download the app or your update.
• Catch that play?: You can read about sports online, but it’s video that really gets the adrenaline flowing. Yahoo! Sports just revamped their video player so you can do more with the play-by-play. It now has a larger viewing window and you can watch videos in full screen. You can also share links or embed your favorite plays in your blog or what-have-you. And handy big thumbnails make it easier to browse through the video library. Check out this Lakers’ dunk. And then go get air sick.
• Group update: Six months ago, you might have noticed activity updates from your friends popping up in places like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Profiles. They’ve included activity on Twitter, Flickr, Yahoo! Buzz, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Music, delicious, and more. This week, Yahoo! Groups joined the fray. Now the questions, answers, advice, and photos you share with your group can also become an update for your Yahoo! connections, offering more airtime for the content you’ve created. And don’t worry — you have complete control over what you want to share. Read more here.
• Make it green: If you fancy yourself a MacGyver type and have an idea for a great new “green” gizmo, get thee to Yahoo! Green‘s new “Make It Green” campaign. We’re searching for the best new green products and do-it-yourself projects so we can turn them into real products. What’s in it for you? A chance to star on the PBS TV show Everyday Edisons, a check for $2500, and the glory of knowing that your little planet-saving idea is lining the shelves of stores. Not particularly inventive? That’s ok — just go give a thumbs up to whatever idea you like best. You’ve got until June 30th. Check it out.

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• Daytime drama: This whole working thing getting in the way of keeping up with great moments in soap operas, game shows, and talk shows? Yahoo! TV to the rescue with Daytime in No Time, a new daily video show that recaps the day’s most memorable daytime TV scenes in three minutes. Catch daily watercooler highlights from shows like Good Morning America, the Price is Right, the View, Rachael Ray, Ellen, and, of course, Oprah. The show follows in the footsteps of Primetime in No Time, whose late night TV recaps have earned it the distinction of the Web’s most watched original programming (~230 million streams to date!). Can’t hide the headphones from your boss? Read their daytime blog.
• Music videos get foxy: If you’ve discovered FoxyTunes, the toolbar that lets you control your tunes from within your browser, you know how excellent it is not to have to switch between apps when listening to music. Now you can use it to control YouTube music videos — from watching a single video to navigating video playlists. Do all this from the convenience of your FoxyTunes toolbar while you’re surfing in other tabs. More here.

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• Personal realtor: Home prices are lower than they’ve been in at least a decade – time for a deal! Good thing Yahoo! Real Estate just made house hunting a cinch. Scribbling down lists of listings? Bummed you missed that great new house when it came on the market? You can now save both your searches and your favorite houses with one click. You can also sign up for alerts for new pads that meet your criteria or when the price changes on a place you’ve been eyeing. What’s more, you can get listing updates via My Yahoo! or any RSS feed reader. If only we could figure out how to fix those banks! Check it out here.
• Summer flick fiesta: So many movies, so few summer nights. The new Yahoo! Movies Summer Movie Guide just hit the street and it lets you get a preview of the great new titles coming out this summer. Browse by month, genre, or popularity. Each movie summary includes a recap of the story, the release date, three good reasons to see it, and trivia you might not know. You’ll also find photos and video trailers and clips (many in HD). You’ve got a lot of popcorn in your future.

And finally, a plug for this weekend’s celebration of Flickr’s 5.25th birthday. If you’re in San Francisco, come by for cupcakes and divine photography from 4-8pm tomorrow. RSVP here. Can’t make it? Check out the photos we’ll be projecting on the walls.

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• Kittens vs. sunsets: This is the perfect Friday night distraction — Flickr Trends. A Flickr engineer mashed up the Flickr API with a trend chart, allowing you to compare the popularity (or in this case, the frequency of being a photo subject) of two terms. So go see which reigns supreme — blondes or brunettes, town or country, beer or fruit juice, mayo or ketchup, good or evil, boxers or briefs. Take it for a spin.
• Faretheewell Jumpcut: As we took stock of our myriad products, we determined it no longer made sense to maintain Jumpcut, the site that let you upload, edit, and share videos. So as of June 15th, we’ll shut its doors. We’ll soon offer a tool that lets you download your videos, which you might want to move over to Flickr or Yahoo! Video. We’re really sorry to see it go, but change we must.
• Get your vote on: This marginally qualifies for the Product Pulse, but it’s been a quiet week due to our pre-earnings quiet period! The nominees are in — the 2009 People’s Voice voting is now open for the Webby Awards and we’re honored to have omg, Flickr, Upcoming, and Yahoo! Go 3.0 in the running. Vote now!

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• Musical revival: Blowing its doors off their hinges, Yahoo! Music has fully embraced the open web with launch of its new Artist Pages. You’ll find downloads from iTunes; albums from Amazon; streams from Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody; music videos from YouTube and Yahoo!; photos from Flickr; and tickets from Ticketmaster – for more than 500,000 artists. And you call the shots on whatever modules you want to see. Eventually artists will be able to publish directly into their pages and developers will beef up our modules gallery. Music to our ears. More here.
• Instant iGratification: No need to get all twitchy when you leave your desk — Yahoo! Messenger is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Released into the wild this week, the free Yahoo! Messenger app can now be found in the iTunes App Store. It’s got a lot of the same bells and whistles — photo sharing, stealth mode, status messages, archiving, emoticons. More here. What?! You don’t have an iPhone? Lucky for you Yahoo! Messenger works with other phones, too — check the roster here.

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• Mobile home: As announced in February, we’ve collected all of our mobile offerings into one handy application called, succinctly, Yahoo! Mobile. And this week, it said “sayonara, beta!” You can now access Yahoo! Mobile for the Web on 300+ devices with HTML-enabled mobile browsers (http://new.m.yahoo.com/) or download the free Yahoo! Mobile app from the Apple iPhone App Store. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it’s open, so you not only get quick access to your favorite Yahoo! services (Mail, Messenger, News, Finance, etc.), you can check your Gmail, see Twitter and Facebook updates, read up on RSS feeds, and more. And, as an added bonus, iPhone users can also download Yahoo! Messenger. More here.
• Get a new image: Searching for an image? You might have noticed our spiffy new Yahoo! Image Search preview page, which is both prettier and more helpful. Click on that thumbnail of Vin Diesel and you get rewarded with a much larger image, along with thumbnails for other top image results and suggestions for related searches (ie, Dwayne Johnson, Brad Pitt, Paul Walker, etc.). More here.
• See attached: Yahoo! Groups is bringing back an old concept — the email attachment! Removed in 2003, we’re reviving this capability so Group members can share images and files and be able to retrieve them at a later date. That’s especially great news if you’re receiving digests. This new tool is currently in beta and will be rolling out to all groups over the next few weeks. Let the kitten photosharing begin! More here, including how-tos for moderators.
• On the Twitter sideline: Are you a Twitterholic looking for an easier way to monitor what’s being said about you or your brand? One of our engineers, playing around with Adobe AIR and the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), has created a nifty little desktop application called Sideline that lets you set up and save multiple tabbed search topics for Twitter conversations. Not bad for a side project. Take it for a spin here.

And, of course, don’t miss our new Ideological Search! ;-)

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

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• omg! celebrity mamas!: The ever-popular gossip site, omg!, is giving you one more way to obsess about the lives of the rich, famous, and far-too-photographed. This week, realizing that you can’t seem to get enough of Katie/Suri, Gwen/Kingston, Angelina/(pick one) on omg!’s Goddess blog, the team has launched “Spotlight to Nightlight,” a biweekly video program that peers into the lives of celebrity mothers. Each three- to five-minute episode features host Ali Landry (former Miss USA and famed “Doritos Girl”) chatting up a different celebrity mom, discussing parenting tips or the latest mama making headlines. Ever wonder how much a starlet’s nanny makes? Get addicted here.
• IE8 4 Y!: Microsoft’s brand new Internet Explorer 8 browser launched this week. Minutes later, we made a Yahoo!-optimized version available. What’s in it for you? Easy access to Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, our toolbar, and our homepage. You’ll get instant visual results for weather, stock quotes, and movie reviews/showtimes when you use the browser’s search box (i.e., a three-day weather forecast shows up right inside a search pulldown menu). And, no matter what site you’re on, you can always access a preview window to check your Yahoo! Mail. More on the Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Mail blogs. Download IE 8 optimized for Yahoo! here. (Not available for Macs. Duh.)
• Find photos with fast filters: Ever searched for just the right photo but gotten lost in a sea of stuff you don’t want? Yahoo! Image Search has just added a few new filters to hasten your mission. You can now narrow your scope by selecting black & white vs. color, restricting results to images that are either from Flickr or not, or even specifying the dimensions of the shot you’re after. And they promise more cool stuff to come. More here.
• Sometimes it’s the little things: The Flickr team rolled out two small tweaks that mean so much. If you’ve often found yourself irked by the “loading…” message you got when trying to narrow down your list of contacts, behold the people picker! It’s now lightning-fast when trying to find someone in your Contact List, share an image, or send Flickr mail. But wait, there’s more. For Flickr Pro members, the Stats page now shows real-time data for the day (no more waiting til midnight) and lets you drill down for daily details on up to 28 of the last days. More here and here.

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

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• Mobile makeover: The gang at Yahoo! Mobile rolled out a beta program this week for a comprehensive new mobile service known as, simply enough, Yahoo! Mobile. It will come to a cell phone near you next month on the mobile Web, as an iPhone app, and as an app developed for smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola, as well as those running Windows Mobile. It will replace Yahoo! Go and packages a variety of great mobile offerings into one location — search, email, messenger, address book, calendar, news, social networks, and even managing all your favorite non-Yahoo! content. To sign up for the beta, just enter http://mobile.yahoo.com in your phone’s browser (and be patient — it make take up to a few weeks to be admitted to the program). Here’s the press release.
• Ogling at the Oscars: Let’s face it — next to finding out the Academy Award winners, we care most about how everyone looks on the red carpet. That’s why the Yahoo! Search team has built a new Oscar-related carousel for Yahoo! Image Search. After Sunday’s show and parties, enter keywords related to Oscar-nominated films or actors and you’ll find a rolling gallery of the newest photos above the regular search results. Toggle your way through Slumdog Millionaire, Mickey Rourke, and Kate Winslet eye candy. More here.
• Watch with me: Raise your hand if you’ve ever IMed a video link to share a laugh with a friend, only to be disappointed when it takes them a few hours to finally get around to watching it. Wouldn’t it be cooler to watch that video together, at the same time? The scientists and engineers at Yahoo! Research think so and have just released a piping hot new version of Zync, a synchronized video player for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 for Windows. You can now simultaneously view videos on Yahoo! Video, Flickr and, of course, YouTube — with Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! News to come next week. Just paste the video link into your conversation and click the “Watch With Me” button — share, watch, chat. No download necessary. Now go watch the woman who missed her flight in Hong Kong with someone.

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• Mobile search gets easier: The Mobile team just rolled out a bevy of updates to the Yahoo! oneSearch Shortcut to make searching on your cell even swifter. A new auto-locate feature uses cell tower triangulation and Wi-Fi to detect your whereabouts so you don’t have to do any work. They’ve spiffed up Search Assist so that it remembers your recent search history (big fingered people rejoice!). And finally, it’s now available for Windows Mobile devices. More here.
• Messenger for Mac mo betta: The latest beta release of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac came out this week with new features and squashes for more than three dozen bugs. They’ve fixed issues around file transfers, display images, voice, chat rooms, stealth settings, and webcam. When you report IM spam, the offender is also added to your ignore list. And you can now choose a new message style for your conversation windows, just to shake things up. More here.
• Honest Abe in pictures: Our 16th president hit the big two-oh-oh this week and to celebrate, the Library of Congress hooked up with Flickr Commons to give you a revealing look at Abraham Lincoln over a period of 20 years. You see him from the earliest known photo through to the Civil War years, along with views from his funeral. Born into the era when photography burst onto the scene, Lincoln has been called the most photographed man of his day. More on the Flickr blog.
• So long, MyWeb: With three bookmarking services, it was time to streamline. MyWeb will ride off into the sunset on March 18th, making room for Delicious (social bookmarks) and Yahoo! Bookmarks (private bookmarks), both of which have seen recent upgrades and new features. If you’d rather take your bookmarks elsewhere, you can also migrate to third-party services with our handy export tools. More on the Yahoo! Search Blog and our help pages.

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• Calendar gets cooler: Back in October, we brought you a Yahoo! Calendar revival. This week, it got a little louder. You can now search your calendar events and notepad by keyword, as well as print your calendar in a special print format for day/week/month/event for better readability. If you’re a list-maker, you can now create to-do lists by topic (i.e., “kids,” “work,” “groceries”) and share them with others. Not a to-do fan? Just drag the column shut to banish it. And finally, new right-click functionality lets you make quicker work of adding, editing, printing, and viewing events. Head to the suggestion board if you want to help steer future enhancements. Haven’t switched from Classic yet? What’s the holdup?
• Finer FoxyTunes: The popular music toolbar we acquired a year ago this week just got a refresh. The FoxyTunes team unleashed no fewer than 20 enhancements in their latest Firefox plugin release. They include a new switch menu that lets you multitasking music listeners jump between media players (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody, etc.) along with a bevy of smarter, simpler improvements for menus, buttons, and an overall streamlined design. More here.

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