The World IPv6 Launch takes effect at Midnight GMT on June 6, 2012. This means that in the U.S., you can expect changes take place on June 5 at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern.

What is Changing?
Yahoo! will be adding IPv6 support to several of our popular web sites, including www.yahoo.com, Yahoo! News, My Yahoo!, Shine, and OMG. We are also adding IPv6 support to Yahoo’s Content Distribution Network, which delivers nearly all of our graphics and JavaScript for all Yahoo! sites. These upgrades should all be transparent to you.

In the months following the Launch, we will continue to bring additional IPv6 support to other Yahoo! sites, including Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Finance.

How Does this Launch Impact You?
Most likely, the launch will be totally transparent to you.

Your browser will automatically use the best available protocol. If you have the new protocol available through your ISP, it will be used automatically. If not, you’ll use the old protocol automatically.

A very small number of you may have problems reaching your favorite Internet web sites as a result of the IPv6 upgrades. This is typically caused by a local misconfiguration, either of your computer, or your home router. You can check for this ahead of time by using the web browser test on our IPv6 help page. The page will provide further instruction in case you have any issues.

IPv6 Exceptions
We will continue to serve a few communities using the legacy Internet IPv4 protocol. We will do this in regions where deploying IPv6 will cause unacceptable delays. For example, many ISPs in Japan have technological hurdles to work through, when accessing the public Internet over IPv6. We will continue to work with those communities, and look forward to serving them with IPv6 in the future.

Why Is IPv6 Important for the Internet?
Thirty years ago, the Internet was born. It was opened to the general public in 1995, and has been steadily growing since. Though it started out as an experiment, it has grown into a critical part of our everyday lives.

The Internet is more than just a web address or an email address. Each time you visit www.yahoo.com, your computer looks up the proper number that will connect your web browser to our web server. Your computer does this for every single site it accesses.

The original Internet design is now running out of these unique numbers. Just like phone numbers, it is difficult to share the same number with several people (or several web sites). The main feature of IPv6 is to extend the Internet’s numbering system. This will allow more people, more devices, and more applications and web sites to join the Internet.

Wide-scale adoption of IPv6 will also help improve Internet security and ensure that the Internet experience you have today will be preserved (or improved upon!) in the future.

What Will Happen to IPv4?
The current IPv4 protocol will be with us for years to come. It will take time for all Internet Service Providers to be fully ready for IPv6. It will also take time for all home users to upgrade equipment. As such, ISPs will continue to provide IPv4 support.

How do I get IPv6?
Check with your Internet Service Provider (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc.). Many are working behind the scenes to get ready for IPv6. Some have already started upgrading residential accounts; others are enabling IPv6 upon request, and offering it to folks who are signing up with new services. Your ISP can give advice on which home routers will be compatible with their particular IPv6 deployment.

If you are an IT professional or an Internet application developer, and your ISP does not yet offer IPv6, don’t despair. You can use an IPv6 tunnel to bring the technology into your home or office. Do a web search for “ipv6 tunnel providers.” Tunnels are a convenient way to get early access to IPv6, and do early testing of your products. Keep in mind that tunnels may bypass your firewalls; be sure to do a security review and protect yourself adequately.

Welcome to the future!

Jason Fesler
IPv6 Evangelist, Yahoo!

Last week Barnes & Nobile released the Nook, its brand new e-reader, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. To acquaint bookworms everywhere with this lifestyle upgrade, the book chain ran a custom overlay ad that made a Nook out of Shine, Yahoo!’s lifestyle site.

When the user arrives on Shine, the page morphs into a Nook, displaying a fully functional Shine within the e-reader. The user is free to continue browsing the headlines and clicking through, all the while enjoying the Nook interface.

This first-of-its-kind custom overlay is a clever—and cleverly minimal—way to advertise this clever little device by literally showing it to users via their browsers, as opposed to telling them about it.

Click here to take a “shine” to the e-reader yourself. One look and you’ll be nooked.

– Thomas T. Lady

Editor’s Note: This entry was reposted from the Yahoo! Advertising Blog. For more information, visit their site, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The sweeps will run from March 8th thru April 8th on The Thread’s Facebook page where viewers can enter via a simple entry form. At the end of the month long period, three winners will be selected via random drawing and flown to New York merely weeks later for some ultimate pampering.

TO ENTER: http://www.facebook.com/yahoothethread

The Thread, Yahoo’s premier fashion program, airs weekly on Shine, Yahoo’s online destination geared towards women.

We designed the Yahoo! Contributor Network especially for you, our users, and we’re inviting you to share your perspective and creativity on some of our most popular content sites – including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, omg!, Shine, and even the Yahoo! homepage. The Yahoo! Contributor Network gives you an unprecedented opportunity to reach the largest audiences on the Internet on the topics that matter to you most.

You’ll be joining the world’s largest community of independent contributors, more than 400,000 writers, photographers, and videographers.

How do you get involved? Simply fill out a form on our registration page and you’re ready to get started. Once you register as a contributor, you can start submitting articles, videos, audio and images – or claim assignments from Yahoo! editors and you might be published on one of Yahoo!’s sites. And better yet, you’ll earn money based on the performance of your articles.

If you’re already an Associated Content contributor, it’s even easier. Sign in to the Yahoo! Contributor Network using your existing username and password and continue to share your content, with an even larger audience.

We encourage you to check out the site today and join up with our growing community of contributors. It’s an incredible opportunity for exposure and distribution of your work.
We look forward to hearing from you!

-Luke Beatty, VP & 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.

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

• Bright Shine-y objects: Sometimes we women want a room of our own. That’s why we’ve created Yahoo! Shine, a new site for women that covers topics like parenting, fashion and beauty, love and sex, work and money, entertainment, and healthy living — and does so with a healthy dose of smarts and attitude. Best of all, start blogging on Shine and your musings might just run toe-to-toe with headlines from partners like Glamour, Self, Bon Appetit, Redbook, Cosmo, InStyle, and Women’s Health. More here.
• I can hear you now: All thumbs while steering with your knees? Now you can talk your way through mobile searches with voice-enabled Yahoo! oneSearch. Currently enabled on Blackberry 8800 series, Curve, and Pearl devices, with additional phones supported in the coming months, oneSearch with voice lets you search for anything — flight status, sports scores, maps — by simply speaking. Now it’ll be faster to shut up and drive.
• Search your iPhone: Love that Yahoo! Search feature, where search recommendations magically appear under your search box as you type, offering up query suggestions and related topics or phrases? Search Assist is now living in your iPhone. Not only does that speed up your searching process, it means the spelling-challenged among you no longer have to guess at how to spell septuagenarian, ukulele, and anecdotal. Bookmark it at m.yahoo.com. More here.
• It’s more fun with friends: With 42 million people uploading photos to Flickr, it’s not hard to imagine bumping into someone you know. But why wait for serendipity? Flickr just introduced “Find Your Friends,” which scans your Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts to find people in your address book already using Flickr. You’d be surprised how many familiar faces you’re missing out on. More here.

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