“Hellooooo, gorgeous!!!”

This larger than life greeting welcomed me to work one morning, as I shuffled in with a case of the Mondays. Quite startled, I looked over to our headquarters guard shack and out spilled the purplest, most enthusiastic human being I’d ever seen — waving energetically with a big infectious grin. Did she know me? Who cares – she said I was gorgeous! Suddenly, it felt more like a Friday.

The thing is, she tells everyone they’re gorgeous.

Meet Shewondia Mills, a Yahoo! security guard who has become a veritable campus celebrity since she joined the team less than a year ago. Her iconic personality cracks a smile on everyone’s face — you can’t even help it. Every morning, she douses herself in Yahoo! spirit, which she embodies like no one before her. She is literally purple from head to toe — her fingernails, her eyelids, her eyelashes, her lipstick, her hair, the lenses of her glasses. People walk and drive out of their way to get her signature greeting, which lifts the soul and rescues the brain from its PowerPoint-induced haze.

Shewondia consistently proves that a little extra pride goes a long way. She has collected more “Backyard Bravos” (online awards employees send to fellow Yahoos on our intranet) than anyone else at the company, including Carol Bartz, Jerry Yang, and David Filo. Just today, she snagged second prize in the Guardsmark Security Officer of the Year award, taking home $5,000. And visitors are quite taken with her welcome wagon, including a New York Times reporter who recently came to interview our CEO.

Here’s a video that takes you behind the scenes with Shewondia, giving you a sense of her inimitable style and why her pride so purple.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

We’re sprucing up the joint today with major enhancements to three of our most popular products as part of our quest to make Yahoo! the center of your online world. We’ve rolled out improvements to Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Search to make them more personally relevant, help you get more done in less time, and keep you better connected with the people and things that matter to you most.

Let’s start with Yahoo! Mail.
After much testing, today we’ve reached a significant Yahoo! Mail milestone by bringing the best of the web – including photosharing, third-party apps and social features – to people’s inboxes… all 300 million inboxes around the world.

For photo hounds, we’ve introduced new multi-select and drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easier to attach photos, view thumbnail previews, and rotate images before you send them. And we’ve upped the photo and filesize limits from 10MB to 25MB.

We’ve also streamlined the inbox experience to further expand the social and open capabilities. A new Application Box brings third-party open apps like PayPal, Picnik, Xoopit, and ZumoDrive together with Flickr, Calendar and Notepad to make managing your email folders easier. Plus, we’re excited to add a new app to the gallery in a few weeks from Evite. With the Evite app you’ll be able to create invitations, check on events, and add items to your Calendar all from one place. And we are only scratching the surface on the apps available. Stay tuned as we roll out additional apps worldwide and specific apps for regional markets over the coming year.

Your inbox will soon be a bit more social, filtering out the noise by surfacing the most recent emails from your contacts and giving you birthday reminders. In addition, we’ve improved Yahoo! Contacts so you can automatically get updates when a contact changes their name, e-mail address or phone number.

We’ve also redesigned Yahoo! Mail for the mobile web (http://m.yahoo.com), giving you one-click access to check, compose and search email; allowing attachment downloads like Microsoft Office, PDFs and photos; and letting you access personal folders on the go. It’s available today on the iPhone and will be released on 400 other devices with HTML browsers on September 1st.

Here’s a video tour of some of the new features in Yahoo! Mail:

Introducing Yahoo! Messenger 10
With this new release of Yahoo! Messenger, the biggest news is the debut of truly high quality video calling. Using your Web cam, you can now have full-screen, face-to-face video conversations with crystal clear audio for free from right within your Yahoo! Messenger window. Messenger is also more getting social as we roll out new features to help you stay in closer contact with friends and family. A new “Updates” tab gives you a quick glimpse of what your contacts are up to – including status updates, Flickr uploads, Yahoo! Buzz stories, Tweets and more. Since our popularity only grows around the globe, we’re also letting you customize your client with one of 16 languages without having to download a different version. And finally, an improved iPhone Messenger app ensures the same great experience with your contacts’ messages even when you’re on the go.

Download the Messenger 10 Beta here: http://messenger.yahoo.com/winbeta. And be sure to check out a demo of what’s new in Yahoo! Messenger 10:

Testing the new Yahoo! Search.
To prove just how committed we are to continued innovation in your search experience, we’re testing a new search results page that ups the ante on personal relevance. We’re providing new tools for refining results that let you explore related concepts, display only results from popular Yahoo! and third-party sites, and narrow results by types of content like people, videos, and discussion forums.

We’re also using advanced science to detect what you’re searching for based on your search history. For example, if you search for “cat” and then later for “jaguar” we can figure out that you’re looking for content about the animal and not the car.

We’re running random bucket tests (no opt-in at this time) of this new version of search with a small subset of our users. In case you’re not one of the lucky millions, here’s a sneak preview of what we’re testing:

Finally, following the lead of the new Yahoo! Homepage, which now proudly wears our corporate color, we are introducing a new “universal header” across every Yahoo! product and service in the U.S. It not only sports a purple logo, it also features a Yahoo! Search box that integrates Search Assist on every page. We never want you to have to go far to find what you’re looking for.

Check out screenshots of our various enhancements as well as more details of today’s news at our Press Room and over at the Yahoo! Messenger Blog and the Yahoo! Mail Blog.

Bryan Lamkin
SVP Yahoo! Applications

A bicycle is a conduit for exploration and a camera is a way to document these explorations. Our Purple Pedals Project took these two concepts and merged them into one. We call it a yBike. It was conceived to be an ambient experience in which a rider could explore their adventures and the bike would do the rest. The rest was to document these explorations and share them with the world.

Think of it as Bikes+Flickr+GPS+Camera=Whoa! This math didn’t come without its challenges. In a nutshell here is what we created. A camera mounted on the handlebars in a waterproof, swivel-enabled housing takes a picture every 60 seconds. Then, the system grabs GPS info, merges it with the picture, and uploads everything to a Yahoo! Map. The system is powered by a series of solar panels and a battery pack on the rear rack .

First, we needed a base to build the technology on, which came in the form of a custom-painted Electra Townie 8. Electra Bicycle Company embraced the project and helped us get 20 custom purple rides to Brooklyn, where software and electrical engineering was being developed.

Uncommon Projects, based in DUMBO, Brooklyn, created the software and hardware necessary to make the system come alive. In a project where the production cycle should’ve been twice as long, Uncommon worked wonders in finding a stable solution quickly. They were able to research, identify potential solutions, build prototypes and produce 20 final products in the time it normally takes to create a production roadmap.

With the technology well underway, we needed to build a housing that was effective but also fit the bikes aesthetics. For this, we looked to Quill Hyde, a designer and metal fabricator with a shop in Redhook, Brooklyn. Quill brought just the right look to the housing. It matched the bike and the technology in a way that kept everything in synch. For me, all the components of the yBike needed to be homogeneous ensuring a Cadillac ride, not a Frankenstein gallop.

With the bike, hardware, technology and housing coming together we looked to our family at Flickr to plot all these images and data on a map. This way you could know where the bike is and see what the bike sees at any given moment.

We then found 14 photographers/cyclists to jockey these purple pedals around the world. Among these riders are Amit Gumpta of Photojojo and Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, who curate their images as they explore.

Four of the bikes will be passed from rider to rider and the 20th bike is destined to be in your hands. Head over to our Start Wearing Purple site on October 1st and tell us why you deserve a yBike and you just might wake up with a special delivery on your doorstep.

Jason Anello
Ideologist, Yahoo! Buzz Marketing

At Yahoo!, we talk about Purple quite a bit. Some folks internally would say we’re obsessed with it, in fact. From our earliest days, Purple has been the official color of Yahoo!. You can see it in our offices –- our furniture, our building signs, even our sprinkler heads. You can also see it out in the world –- we’ve created Purple taxi cabs, Purple trains, even Purple brains. Every day, visitors to Yahoo! hear us talking about Thinking Purple and Bleeding Purple… Yes, we take it that seriously.

Why Purple? Back in 1996, our humble digs needed quite a bit of renovation so our co-founder, David Filo (notoriously frugal), went out to buy some paint at the store. Once everyone had painted most of one large wall under dim fluorescent lighting, they stepped back and realized Filo had bought light purple (it was probably on sale). From that day on, Purple stuck.

But Purple ’s not just about the paint on the wall. It’s not just the blend of blue and red. It’s not just the latest trend in gardening and fashion (though it is). Purple is the color of innovation and ingenuity. It’s fun and youthful, but also courageous and daring. It represents a spirit of individuality but also a sense of connectedness with others. For us, it represents the spirit of our company, our culture and our products –- Purple is Yahoo!.

As a resident brand marketing guy (though we often say that the Yahoo! brand is too important to be left in the hands of brand marketers), I’m pleased to share that we’re launching a variety of Purple projects over the next few days and weeks. We’re embracing our Purple and sharing the spirit and pride with hundreds of millions of users who, perhaps, feel a bit of that spirit and pride as well.

“Start Wearing Purple” is the theme (and theme song) of this effort to celebrate Purple. It’s not about selling Yahoo! clothing – though we do have some amazing new limited-edition gear coming in from partners like Pony, tokidoki, big wave surfing legend Jeff Clark, Mimoco, and more. “Start Wearing Purple” is about celebrating that unique, charmingly eccentric side of all of us. You’ll see and hear about Purple Picks, the best Purple content from across the web hand-picked by Yahoo!; Purple Photos on Flickr and omg!; Purple Pranks with our friend Charlie Todd from Improv Everywhere; Purple Bikes that take photos; and even some Purple Acts of Kindness. And you’ll meet the Pioneers of Purple, inspiring people who’ve changed the world by following their passions and pursuing their dreams. “Start Wearing Purple” is, quite simply, an invitation to embrace and share the Purple in you.

Check out what we’re up to at startwearingpurple.com. And may some of that Purple pride rub off on you.

Purple reigns,
Nick Chavez
Senior Director, Brand Advertising