It’s elementary… Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, was born 150 years ago today. Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson, mastered the art of observation and deduction to solve crimes in 56 stories and four novels. But what we want to know is whether Mr. Spock is truly a descendant. Here’s the code we cracked this week:

• 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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Want to know what’s buzzing in Bangalore or Bollywood? Now you can, because Yahoo! Buzz is launching in India today, making it the first international version of the Web’s most visited social content service. Now, people throughout India can help bring the most buzz-worthy stories to Yahoo! India and beyond.

Today, Yahoo! Buzz in India is starting off with more than two dozen featured Indian publishers and we look forward to welcoming many more in the coming weeks and months. Since Yahoo! Buzz launched in the U.S. just over a year ago, more than 20,000 publishers from around the world have had stories “buzzed up.”

But that’s not all. We are introducing a new look for Yahoo! Buzz overall that more prominently features contributions from the site’s community. With our new “Buzz Updates” tab, we’re making it easier to follow the submitting, voting, and commenting activity of your friends and the larger Yahoo! Buzz community. And, you’ll also find it’s faster and simpler than ever to share the stories and videos you find most interesting, since we now automatically fill in the story headline and description when you submit a URL.

Take a look at the new Yahoo! Buzz:

And here’s the new Yahoo! Buzz in India:

Stay tuned for more about what’s next for Yahoo! Buzz, and in the meantime, keep buzzing and helping people find the most remarkable stories from across the Web.

Julie Demsey
Senior Director, Product Management, Yahoo! Buzz

If you tuned to the “Morning Show with Mike and Juliet” at 9:17 Eastern time today, you caught Yahoo! Buzz in 3D.

Okay, so, not quite 3D…but the national television morning show kicked off a short segment that looks at top stories (and some scintillating Yahoo! Search insight) from Yahoo! Buzz. We are extraordinarily well represented with former MTV veejay and uber-smart charmer Ananda Lewis. Every Monday, she will alternate with Fox anchor Dylan Lane in running down the weekend news, features, and celebrity tidbits that received the most attention (and votes on Yahoo! Buzz).

This week we covered which scenes unnerved “Twilight” heartthrob Rob Pattinson in his big-screen stint as Salvador Dali, the awful accident involving NFL wide receiver Dante Stallworth, and how bailed-out insurance AIG has managed to outrage taxpayers once more. You can watch the clip below. It’ll also appear on the Buzz Log and the Mike and Juliet site each week.

Vera H-C Chan
Yahoo! Buzz senior editor

Tonight, the Yahoo! Buzz team has party hats on in celebration of its first year.

What’s that, you say? You don’t know Yahoo! Buzz? It’s where you go to find the Web’s most remarkable stories, determined by people like you. Chances are you’ve read one of the millions of articles that have been “buzzed up,” commented on or featured on the Yahoo! homepage and across Yahoo! sites over the past year. Since Yahoo! Buzz is open to all publishers, the site features stories from tens of thousands of sources –- from the most prolific sites, to the truly quirky.

What we’ve found really interesting is the way people around the Web are busily interacting with the content on Yahoo! Buzz. People are voting on or commenting on stories every two seconds, and the top Yahoo! Buzz stories featured on the Yahoo! homepage to date have received well over 300 million clicks. And while Yahoo! Updates is still relatively new, we’re seeing more and more people sharing Updates from Buzz with their Yahoo! connections. So, whenever you “buzz up” a story, it shows up on Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and other relevant places across Yahoo!, providing another way to share your interests with your connections.

Many thanks to the publishers and the community of people who helped shape the headlines for millions by participating in the first 365 days of Yahoo! Buzz. The site already has more unique monthly visitors than any other social content site in the U.S., according to comScore Media Metrix.

For a look at our editors’ favorite Buzz stories from year one, head on over to the Buzz Log.

We hope you’ll keep on buzzing with us as we watch the next year unfold online.

Brian McMullin
Product Lead, Yahoo! Buzz

Photo from Theresa Thompson

Beware: The task of looking back at 2008 could induce whiplash.

Last year, I introduced our annual review of search trends and touched on the subject on how a billion (or so) searches can sketch a portrait of a culture in motion. The motion this year was volatile, to say the least, what with the American presidential elections, the Beijing Olympics, and a doggedly stubborn global economic morass.

This time, the Yahoo! Year in Review is even bigger and more ambitious, the better to reflect the potent issues that rumbled in news and searches. Editors and producers from throughout Yahoo!–news, sports, Buzz Log, Buzz, and much more–investigated the themes that emerged for you this year, including economy, politicians, Olympians, and influential women.

While 2007 was a time of environmental activism and a tech evolution, this year showed your growing sophistication and reliance on the Web in the political process. From the primaries to Election Day, you went online in droves to register to vote, donate campaign funds, check out primary results, figure out what a delegate was, scrutinize the Electoral College, and vet the candidates, their associates, and even their family members. Likely (factcheck.org) and unlikely (snopes) sources became your stop to check rumors.

And lest you think I’m avoiding the subject–yes, Britney Spears has once again emerged as the top search in 2008. Even the music artist’s story this time around symbolized the year’s sober mood…and she has some fascinating company in the Top 10.

Visit our site to check out other trends in search and news. To compare what intrigued you in 2007 versus 2008, take a gander at the Flashback overview, which also links to previous years’ lists. Finally, a late-breaking blog will introduce more top 10 lists of 2008 throughout December.

Vera H-C Chan
Senior Editor, Buzz Log

Fourteen years ago, devotees of WXYC, the college radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fired up their computers and tuned in to the world’s first radio signal to be broadcast over the Internet. Now about 13 percent of Americans listen to radio online — still well more than those who subscribe to satellite radio. Here’s what we broadcast this week:

• Social buzz: Yahoo! Buzz is the latest to get into the open game. A new Updates section on Yahoo! Buzz lets you keep track of stories that your friends have buzzed up or down. Also new is a “Comments” section for individual stories so that you can weigh in with your own opinion and further the conversation. What’s more, you can give a thumbs up or down to other people’s comments, or reply to them. Lots of opportunity to mouth off! And you’ll find a personal activity hub for each of your contacts (provided they want you to see it) so you can check out their voting and commenting history.
• Take me to your leader: The next POTUS might still have 73 more days before he takes office, but it’s not too early to send him a presidential communique — via photo. The Guardian has set up a Flickr pool for people who want to send personal photo messages to Barack Obama — whether you want him to end the war, fix healthcare, adopt that puppy, or prove you wrong. It’s worth a thousand words.
• Cinco de delicioso: A big happy 5th birthday to the team at Delicious (or Del.icio.us, for you die hards). But that’s not the only number five to be celebrated. They now boast more than 5 million users, all of whom have civic-mindedly saved more than 180 million unique URLs. Cupcakes all around.

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