A dazzling display of auroras lit up the far northern skies Tuesday night (Jan. 24) in a supercharged light show…The northern lights show was sparked by an intense solar flare that erupted from the sun late Sunday (Jan. 22). The flare unleashed a wave of charged particles, triggering the strongest solar radiation storm since 2005 (- Yahoo! News)

Flickr members Ben-e-boy and Corinne Mills (Ben’s Mom!) caught the aurora over Dundee, Scotland. A local and national paper found their photos through Flickr and contacted them. Corinne was contacted by the local Dundee Evening Telegraph. Ben’s photos were found by the Scottish edition of the Times and after contacting him his photo was on the front page!

Photos from Fotoklubben Knäppisarna, PaulCyrPhotography.com, Ben-e-boy, and corinne mills.

It’s no surprise, mobile is getting bigger and bigger in the online world. Over a year ago, we introduced the mobile-optimized version of Yahoo! Answers, which is proving to be extremely successful amongst users on any device.

To make things easier for Android users, we developed an app that offered the Yahoo! Answers mobile experience outside of the browser. However, we noticed that most of our mobile users still access the site directly from their browsers. As a result, we decided to focus our resources in building better core experiences for Yahoo! Answers across devices. Effective today, we are retiring the app for Android, but don’t worry: you can still access the mobile version of Yahoo! Answers by visiting answers.yahoo.com from your favorite browser. Or if you already have the Android app downloaded, you’ll still be able to use it.

Thanks for reading,

Love movies? Yahoo! and Bertolli have your Sundance Film Festival ticket

Yahoo! is a Leadership Sponsor of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival (January 19-29). This gives Y! exclusive access to the nine short film finalists in the festival and allows us to screen them on Screen as part of our first-ever Yahoo! Audience Award competition.

We’ve invited our audience of millions to kick back and watch the finalists, share them with friends, and vote on their faves. The filmmaker who scores the most votes will also score $5,000 to help support their next journey behind the camera.

The Bertolli sponsorship is a three-fold ad experience, all part of its “Ladles of Love” charitable campaign.

The Yahoo! Sundance site features warm, hearty-soup-toned Bertolli wallpaper on either side of the Sundance screen and the voting card. A 950×60 ad bridges the wallpaper across the top with a short animation of a Bertolli-red curtain swishing to either side to unveil a lovely ladle dripping with Bertolli meal soup, the steam wafting past the “Where to Buy” link.

The Sundance coverage on Movies features the same wallpaper along with a 300×250 ad simmering quietly to the right.

Bertolli on Yahoo! Screen_2

omg! Now complimented its celebrity sightings with 300×250 to the right as well.

Bertolli recognizes Y!’s unique ability not only to satisfy our users’ appetites with mouth-watering content, but to satisfy brands’ appetites with mouth-watering user reach.

To wit: Traffic to all Sundance coverage is driven from Yahoo!’s homepage as well as multiple promo ads running across the entire Yahooniverse, a Y!-created ad on the Bertolli site, tweeting from the filmmakers, and media coverage.

Can’t beat that with a ladle.

Click here and here to have a taste.

– 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.

Tomorrow January 28 and in the coming weeks many countries will be celebrating International Data Privacy Day. To celebrate this day and honor the spirit of promoting awareness about privacy and best practices in this area, this year we chose to put the focus on the Spanish speaking Americas, due to the attention and momentum that privacy keeps gaining in this side of the world. Not only the right to “Habeas Data” has been widely recognized across the region but countries like Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica have taken a step further in developing and enacting comprehensive data protection laws. It is therefore not by coincidence that the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners took place in Mexico in 2011 and will take place in Uruguay in 2012.

At Yahoo! we have always taken privacy very seriously. Privacy is a core element in building our users’ trust, which is in turn core to us. We build our world-class products with privacy and trust in mind, and in order to succeed we strongly believe that the very first targets of education and awareness should be within the very inside of our company. This is why on February 1st the Yahoo! Miami office will host an invitation-only discussion on the latest global and regional developments in privacy. We will share perspective on how Yahoo! has maintained the hard earned role as a leader in building and maintaining user trust, how Yahoo! innovates with privacy in mind to give users transparency and choice in their online experiences, and what the landscape looks like for the online industry, as well as an overview of legislation affecting user privacy especially those affecting Latin America. There will be a Q&A session and the event will be videotaped – all in Spanish – for audiences unable to attend.

Laura Juanes
Director, international privacy for Yahoo!

by Claudine Zap

Two teens from Toronto successfully launched a Lego figure into near space -- and launched a storm of interest on the Web.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, 17-year-old classmates at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, took four months, many Saturdays, and $400 to carry a Lego figurine and four cameras miles above the earth, a project that the two did for fun, not for class.

"We didn't really believe we could do it until we did," Ho told the Toronto Star. You can see the video they made, using the stunning photos of the Lego man 78,000 feet off the ground, here.

The video of the Lego man in near space has gone viral, with 570,000 views and counting. Searches on Yahoo! for "lego man in space" have soared 325% in just one day.

The high school students, both seniors, were inspired by a video of a similar project undertaken by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The DIY contraption included a GPS locator so the students could track the weather balloon (a professional-grade one they purchased online) once it landed. Using a website that calculates a weather balloon's landing position based on coordinates and variables like wind speed, the two waited to launch the object until the timing was right for a Canadian landing.

The video shows the two-inch high LEGO man holding a Canadian flag flying high above Earth and the clouds, until the tilt of the earth's axis can be seen. And then the balloon pops, sending the Lego guy back to the ground in a mere 32 minutes.

Ho and Muhammad may still be walking on air with all the accolades they've received for their successful project. The teens have been offered cameras from Canon and asked to speak at an engineering competitions, and they've been given funds to cover the cost of the project. Even Lego sent its congratulations.

Not bad for two kids who haven't even found out yet where they're going to college.

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As all of you know, the mobile space moves incredibly fast. Our users are changing, and their needs are changing. New devices and new technologies are coming to market seemingly every day, not to mention the rate at which app stores are growing. All of us are looking for the freshest, most interesting apps and content all day, every day.

At Yahoo!, we’re focused on creating deeply personal digital experiences and there’s no doubt that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, priorities for us is to bring those products and ideas to the mobile user, whether they’re using feature phones, smartphones or tablets.

We’ve got some amazing mobile experiences, from News, Sports and Finance, to Mail, Messenger and entirely new products like IntoNow and Livestand. Our commitment is to deliver these products in ways that help all of our users (and advertisers) enjoy engaging and seamless experiences across all the devices they use.

Our plan is to keep moving, to keep innovating, and to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t – so we can make room for great new products. In that spirit, today we’re decommissioning several of our current mobile apps. We will be sending a notification later today that thefollowing apps will no longer be supported:

We’re moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset. You can expect to see more new Yahoo! mobile products in 2012, especially in areas ripe for innovation that build on Yahoo!’s strengths, such as companion experiences for TV like IntoNow, new ways to experience personalized media like Livestand, and some of our most popular and useful mobile apps like Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Sportacular and Flickr, which are already being used by millions of people around the world. And we’ll be building these experiences with disruptive technology that’s going to change the mobile game well beyond Yahoo!.

For apps such as AppSpot and Sketch-a-Search, we decided to integrate the key features you know and love into the Yahoo! Search app. For example, we recently announced the app search feature in the Yahoo! Search app for iPhone. Stay tuned for moreupdates to the mobile search apps for both iPhone and Android.

With more than 700 million users around the world, we’ve got a huge and growing audience. We’re going to bring them the Yahoo! they love on every device in their life.

Stay tuned for a lot of action from Yahoo this year. 2012 has just begun and we’re just getting started.

– Yahoo! Mobile Team

As all of you know, the mobile space moves incredibly fast. Our users are changing, and their needs are changing. New devices and new technologies are coming to market seemingly every day, not to mention the rate at which app stores are growing. All of us are looking for the freshest, most interesting apps and content all day, every day.

At Yahoo!, we’re focused on creating deeply personal digital experiences and there’s no doubt that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, priorities for us is to bring those products and ideas to the mobile user, whether they’re using feature phones, smartphones or tablets.

We’ve got some amazing mobile experiences, from News, Sports and Finance, to Mail, Messenger and entirely new products like IntoNow and Livestand. Our commitment is to deliver these products in ways that help all of our users (and advertisers) enjoy engaging and seamless experiences across all the devices they use.

Our plan is to keep moving, to keep innovating, and to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what isn’t – so we can make room for great new products. In that spirit, today we’re decommissioning several of our current mobile apps. We will be sending a notification later today that the following apps will no longer be supported:

• Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo! Answers (Android)
• Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo! Movies (Android)
• Yahoo! News (Android)
• Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)

We’re moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset. You can expect to see more new Yahoo! mobile products in 2012, especially in areas ripe for innovation that build on Yahoo!’s strengths, such as companion experiences for TV like IntoNow, new ways to experience personalized media like Livestand, and some of our most popular and useful mobile apps like Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Sportacular and Flickr, which are already being used by millions of people around the world. And we’ll be building these experiences with disruptive technology that’s going to change the mobile game well beyond Yahoo!.

For apps such as AppSpot and Sketch-a-Search, we decided to integrate the key features you know and love into the Yahoo! Search app. For example, we recently announced the app search feature in the Yahoo! Search app for iPhone. Stay tuned for more updates to the mobile search apps for both iPhone and Android.

With more than 700 million users around the world, we’ve got a huge and growing audience. We’re going to bring them the Yahoo! they love on every device in their life.

Stay tuned for a lot of action from Yahoo this year. 2012 has just begun and we’re just getting started.

– The Yahoo! Mobile Team

by Mike Krumboltz

George Clooney is a respected actor, director, and activist. But he's also a born prankster. The star of "The Descendants" recently visited "Inside the Actors Studio," where he dished about his plans for pulling one over on his good friend and rival Brad Pitt.

In the clip, an audience member asks Clooney about some of his favorite pranks that he's pulled. Clooney says, "I'm a big believer in making (movie) sets fun ... I have done some horrible things to people. Truly, truly horrible. I'm working on one now for Brad Pitt. It might end his career." Clooney then added, "I owe him, so I'm getting him."

What did Pitt do to inspire such a revenge? We're not sure if this is the reason, but according to Matt Damon, while on the set of "Ocean's Twelve," Pitt constructed a fake memo and gave it to the Italian crew. The memo instructed the crew not to look Clooney in the eye and only call him "Danny" or "Mr. Ocean." Clooney was apparently none too pleased.

Clooney's love of pranks goes way back. As the New York Post explains, the Oscar winner placed plants in front of Julia Roberts's trailer door on the set of "Ocean's Eleven" so she couldn't exit. He arranged for a tailor to secretly take in Matt Damon's pants every day while Damon was trying to lose weight for a role. "He couldn't understand how he seemed to be gaining weight while he was trying so hard to lose it," Clooney explained.

He also once told his friend, actor Richard Kind, that he was studying art. Clooney found a horrible-looking painting in the trash and told Kind that he'd painted it. "And then for his 40th birthday I gave him this horrible painting. He had to hang it on his wall, [it was by] his best friend! And for years people would come over -- everyone else knew it was out of the trash -- and go, 'That is a beautiful painting.'"

The episode of "Inside the Actors Studio" will air January 31.

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Tomorrow January 28 and in the coming weeks many countries will be celebrating International Data Privacy Day. To celebrate this day and honor the spirit of promoting awareness about privacy and best practices in this area, this year we chose to put the focus on the Spanish speaking Americas, due to the attention and momentum that privacy keeps gaining in this side of the world. Not only the right to “Habeas Data” has been widely recognized across the region but countries like Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica have take a step further in developing and enacting comprehensive data protection laws. It is therefore not by coincidence that the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners took place in Mexico in 2011 and will take place in Uruguay in 2012.

At Yahoo! we have always taken privacy very seriously. Privacy is a core element in building our users’ trust, which is in turn core to us. We build our world-class products with privacy and trust in mind, and in order to succeed we strongly believe that the very first targets of education and awareness should be within the very inside of our company. This is why on February 1st the Yahoo! Miami office will host an invitation-only discussion on the latest global and regional developments in privacy. We will share perspective on how Yahoo! has maintained the hard earned role as a leader in building and maintaining user trust, how Yahoo! innovates with privacy in mind to give users transparency and choice in their online experiences, and what the landscape looks like for the online industry, as well as an overview of legislation affecting user privacy especially those affecting Latin America. There will be a Q&A session and the event will be videotaped – all in Spanish – for audiences unable to attend.

laura
juanes
director, international privacy for Yahoo!

Flickr Pro is already without doubt the best deal on the web for uploading and sharing your photos. Unlimited uploads, unlimited storage, access to your super huge original files, stats on your account and no ads. Flickr Pro means that you can take all the photos you like with all your phones, cameras, celluloid lightboxes, microwave ovens, etc. and store your memories all together in one place for $24.95 per year.

Today we’re happy to announce some Pro pricing changes to make it even better:

• For people who would rather pay in smaller increments we’re introducing an option to buy Pro 3 months at a time for $6.95.
• We’re also dropping the price of a 2 year subscription to $44.95 (a savings of $10.95 off the 3 months at a time price).

Lastly, we’re also moving to a subscription model where Pro accounts will automatically renew. When your Pro account is near expiration, you’ll receive a reminder from us before it renews and you’ll of course have the option to cancel at anytime.

We hope these changes will make it even easier for members to enjoy all of the fun of Flickr Pro uninterrupted and for less money.

Note: Pro subscriptions purchased before January 25, 2012 won’t automatically renew. (You will have to pay the old fashioned way using that web order form thing like your Grandpa used to back in 2011.)

For more information please see our Payment FAQs and if you have any questions let us know in the forum.

Internet 2011 the year in numbers, nearly every possible Internet stat you could ever want.

Command and Conquer, recreation of the real time strategy game in HTML5 and Javascript.

Overview of CSS3 features and the basics of how to use them.

10 super useful PHP code snippets.

A good HTML5/JavaScript/CSS reference site.

Sketch in 3D with animating lines on HTML5 canvas.

A collection of pure CSS creations.

Test-Driven JavaScript development in practice.

CSSrefresh, automatically load CSS files when they change during development.

20 great sites to learn the ins and outs of video game design.

The Proxority principle in web design.

Mac OS X Lion emulated in your browser using CSS3.

Happy Fun Coding, a site to learn to program games in JavaScript.

The wonderful calc() function in CSS.

Pretty Loaded, a gallery of preloaders.

Graphical calculator in HTML5.

10 jQuery Mobile features.

Vogar, a command line tool that attempts to boost your productivity when developing Java programs.

A JavaScript pattern and antipattern code collection.

Benefits and pitfalls of using code frameworks.

The “iPhone” was the top searched term in 2011 — will this year’s Macworld reveal yet another spell-binding tech game changer that propels Apple to the top of searches in 2012?

As you consider stories focused on the news that comes out of this year’s Macworld, we wanted to share a few tidbits about what people are searching for online related to this year’s show.  So, what is captivating the attention of Apple addicts and pushing them toward Yahoo! for more information?

Macworld/iWorld 2012: Let’s face it, with people gearing up for the latest Mac news, Yahoo! searches for all things “i” continue to dominate, with 64% of searches this month for “Macworld” coming from men. And, beyond Macworld, people are turning to Yahoo! for info on everything from Apple products to details on legendary founder Steve Jobs.

All Things Apple: When it comes to Apple’s latest and greatest, fans are usually only kept satisfied for a few short hours before they begin scouring the Internet for information on the next version. Product searches for Apple this month on Yahoo! include:

·       Jailbreak: Yahoo! searches this month for “how to jailbreak iPod touch” are up 866% and searches for ”jailbreak iPhone 4″ are up 1,085%.

Steve Jobs: It has been almost four months since the world lost tech visionary Steve Jobs, and all eyes are on Apple to see how the company will push forward without the creative genius that brought the company back from the brink of failure with the creation of the iPod. As a result, people are still turning to Yahoo! for information on the beloved innovator who changed so many lives. Searches on Yahoo! this month for “Steve Jobs Apple” are up 4,527%.  Additional Steve Jobs searches that are piquing people’s interest in search this week include: “Steve Jobs Grammy,” “Steve Jobs doctor,” “Steve Jobs last words,” “Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,” “Steve Jobs first inventions,” “the Steve Jobs betrayal,” “Steve Jobs book,” “How Steve Jobs revolutionized technology.”

Regardless of what is revealed and debated at this year’s Macworld event, one thing is for sure, Mac fans will be sure to keep on chattering long after the doors close at the show!

—–

Love Yahoo! Search Trends? Explore them for yourself on Yahoo! Clues.

The first Academy Awards ceremony was on May 16, 1929 hosted by Douglas Fairbanks. It wasn’t broadcast on radio or television and only lasted 15 minutes. Times have changed since then. The Oscars are now broadcast to more than 1 billion people worldwide and three hours long!

How did the Academy Award get the nickname “Oscar”? According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences the nickname “Oscar” came about when then “Academy librarian (and eventual executive director) Margaret Herrick remarked that it resembled her Uncle Oscar. The Academy didn’t adopt the nickname officially until 1939, but it was widely known enough by 1934 that Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky used it in a piece referring to Katharine Hepburn’s first Best Actress win.”

The Oscar’s official name is the Academy Award® of Merit, weighs 8.5 pounds is 13.5 inches and takes 3-4 weeks to manufacture. So who will be the lucky winners this year to take home the coveted prize?

The nominations were announced on January 24, 2012 and our very own Academy Awards on Yahoo! Movies will be providing complete coverage of the event. You can also make your predictions there and share them with your friends. The winners will be announced at the 84th Academy Awards on February 26, 2012 and will be hosted by Billy Crystal. So find out then to see if your predictions were right!

What do you think of the nominations? Do you think anyone or film was overlooked? Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

We rolled out our first release of the year early this morning, which included a number of enhancements for your Yahoo! store. This post provides information about some of these enhancements, as well as actions that may be required on your part. For the full list of enhancements, please read our New Feature Releases page.

First, an important note for all merchants: Upon your first visit to Checkout & Registration Manager following this release, your Publish Order Settings link in Store Manager will become active. If you have not made changes in Checkout & Registration Manager, you do not need to publish your order settings [...]

We’re excited to introduce to you the Messenger Help Community!  In this new extension of Yahoo! Help, you’ll find a friendly environment where you can talk to real people like yourself, as well as members of the Yahoo! staff (yes, we’re real too). Whether you want to discuss features, seek help with an issue, or save someone’s day by sharing your wisdom and experience, there are a variety of discussion forums available to you. Come check it out!

While you visit, there are some features we’d like to bring to your attention:

Don’t miss out!
You can keep up to date with discussions by subscribing to them. Go to “My Subscriptions” and sign up to receive email notifications when posts are made to topics and forums that you’ve subscribed to. Have topics of your own? You can easily track these through “My Topics” and see what others are saying about your ideas and queries.

Boost your community status!
It’s easy to increase your reputation score in the community; just participate in a discussion to earn a variety of point awards. You’ll gain the most points when you successfully help others. A topic reply is good, a helpful reply even better, and a reply picked as a solution by the topic owner…the best.

Stay tuned…
These new community forums have only been open for a few weeks and already there are all sorts of great conversations going on.  We’re continually seeking ways to improve the features of the Help Community, so watch for updates and be sure to let us know what you think in our feedback forums.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you–come join the conversation!

Yahoo! Messenger Team

NFL.com’s Ryan Cannon (@rcanine) joined us at YUIConf 2011 to share the story of why NFL.com chose YUI over jQuery, how they migrated a large codebase from Prototype to YUI 3 on a tight schedule, and how they use YUI to create websites and mobile apps for one of the world’s most popular sports leagues.

Links

• View in HD on YouTube
• Slides
• Full YUIConf 2011 Playlist on YouTube

Last year, we added support for OAuth 1.0 – a much better way to have your users authenticating against Flickr. More information on Flickr user authentication via this method is available here in our Developer Guide and specifically here.

If you are app already uses OAuth, then you can skip this post and look at some gorgeous photos instead. However – if your app still uses the old Authentication API, you will need to update it to OAuth by July 31st this year.

Updating to OAuth is easy and you don’t worry about any user impact. You can exchange an old auth token from the old Authentication API, to an OAuth access token. The process simply requires that you make an authenticated request to the flickr.auth.oauth.getAccessToken API, which will exchange the old token used to make the request, with a new OAuth access token. Again, everything is documented right here. Flickr member Jef Poskanzer has also written an overview and comparison between the two auth methods: http://acme.com/flickr/authmap.html.

After July 31st, we will no longer support the old Authentication API.

More information is available in the Flickr API FAQ’s, and in the Flickr Developer guide, but if you have specific questions about updating your app, you may file a help ticket here.

Thanks for making Flickr more fun by contributing to our growing collection of apps!

Your Engineering Team at Flickr
(@FlickrAPI)

In this talk from YUIConf 2011, YQL engineer Paul Donnelly demonstrates the features of the Yahoo! Pipes editor and explains how you can use Pipes and YQL to power your web apps, create mashups, and more.

Links

• View in HD on YouTube
• Full YUIConf 2011 Playlist on YouTube

Last month during the holiday shopping season, I wrote an article for Yodel Anecdotal (Yahoo!'s corporate blog) about life working for Yahoo! Small Business and how all of you — our customers — inspire me every day. It was posted last night when Yodel Anecdotal launched their new look. You can read an excerpt from the article below, or read the full article at Yodel Anecdotal.

On behalf of the entire Yahoo! Small Business team, thank you to all of our Yahoo! Small Business customers for allowing us the opportunity to help bring your dreams to life. We're looking forward to a great year ahead [...]

Happy New everyone!

We are now a few weeks into 2012, how are you finding it thus far?

We’ve got a big year planned with the blog, but whilst we’re in the planning stages, we’d love to let you all have some input as well:

• What topics or areas of interest would you like to see covered on the Answers Blog in 2012?

Are there old things you miss, something you’d like to see changed or added? More guest bloggers or featured users? More or less of something? Let us know on the question above or in the comments below!

Kate
Community Manager

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The Yahoo! Privacy team sometimes receives the question of how long we retain a web browser’s ad interests. The answer is a bit complicated but I’d like to take a moment to review the life of an ad interest and how for the most part that life is a fairly short one – typically less than a few weeks.

Before an ad interest can be determined, a category must first be created. Yahoo! has nearly 400 standard interest categories in the US (these can viewed from Ad Interest Manager). Categories fall across a range of topics such as iPods, Ford Trucks, Kitchen Remodeling or European Travel interests. Once a category is created, the next step is scoring interest in that category.

The birth of an ad interest begins when an interest scoring rule is triggered in our backend ad interest systems. Only a few key events are reviewed for scoring today: searches, page view, ad views, and ad clicks. Note – our new mail system processes email keywords similarly to “searches”. These events are funneled to a special set of servers at Yahoo! which score each event for interest in a category. Each category may give different scores to different events. For example, for an interest in Gifting Flowers the system will typically weight a search higher than a page view, whereas the Truck interest category may score a visit to the Yahoo! Autos site higher than a generic “truck” search. The resulting event score is then added to the existing score for an ad interest in relationship to an anonymous browser cookie.

Once an event has been scored for an ad interest it is held in these systems for a short period of time just in case something fails and data needs to be reprocessed. After a few days the raw event information is purged from these systems and only the resulting scores remain. It’s important to note that when a user opts-out of receiving interest-based ads, their activity is no longer sent to our backend ad interest systems for scoring (this includes from the new Yahoo! Mail platform) AND ads are no longer selected for that user based on interests.

Now that we have a score for an ad interest, the question of its life span can be addressed. Ad interest scores at Yahoo! “decay” – meaning that each day that goes by, each ad interest category will slowly reduce its score for a browser cookie. Each ad interest category has a different decay rate – tied to how long it typically takes to make a purchase decision. For example, an interest in Gifting Flowers may live a very short period of time – less than a week. Whereas an interest in Trucks lasts longer. While most ad interest categories will decay out scores within a few weeks, the maximum decay is about 90 days.

Interest scoring and decaying are always occurring at the same time. On some days activities may increase the score in a particular ad interest category while other interests are decaying because no activity occurs in relationship to them. If a browser cookie event isn’t processed through our backend systems for 90 days, all ad interests for that browser cookie will decay out.

That’s it! In quick review, the steps are: ad interest category creation, select event scoring, raw data purging, and category interest decay.

To learn more about other forms of log data retention at Yahoo!, please read this blog article.

To learn more about interest based advertising at Yahoo!, view what we believe your ad interests are, and see other general ad interest related information, please visit http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim .

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Just in time for folks to unwrap new iPads or simply spend more time with the iPad they already own this holiday season, Yahoo! has dropped new features and content for Livestand. Time to sink into your couch.

In only six short weeks since Livestand’s debut in the App Store (picked as one of Apple’s featured apps), we’ve added in more entertaining features and popular titles to give you an even more personalized digital newsstand. And we’re still not finished – we’ll continue to iterate the app as we hear back from users like you!

In that spirit, here’s a look at what is new in the app today. To download the updated app or try it out for the first time here, visit the App Store for Livestand.

• A new recipe finder in Shine from Yahoo! so you can browse recipes and create handy shopping lists. Cooking for a holiday celebration? This is a great time saver.
• Local deals from your favorite sites like Groupon, LivingSocial or Bloomspot are now seamlessly integrated into Yahoo! Today and Shine from Yahoo!.
• New Guest Mode to allow you to take a tour and experience Livestand without signing in.  It’s now a lot easier for your friends and family to take a peek at what Livestand would be for them. Just make sure to get your iPad back when they’re done!
• Twitter integration to share articles, videos and more with a few taps. Simply log into your Twitter account through “Settings” on your iPad and start socializing.
• 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
  • Big Think

We have big plans for Livestand in the coming year and will always be creating new ways to more relevant, more personal for you.  We’ll be adding new capabilities (many of which you’ve let us know you want), and of course, a lot more great content that you’ll want to jump into every chance you get. 2012 will be a busy year!

Have a healthy and happy holiday season,

The Livestand team

• Renamed Module “Fetch Site Feed” to “Find First Site Feed“. Changed due to confusing name, which resulted in users using “Fetch Site Feed” instead of “Fetch Feed” – http://y.ahoo.it/uaPda
• Removed Alert icon in all modules that access a url. Confused users thinking the feed was invalid or unreachable. – http://y.ahoo.it/IoPXn
• Fixed Namespaced elements issues – http://y.ahoo.it/7x6PZ
• Fixed Subsequent Split module increases Truncate value – http://y.ahoo.it/pDyu0
• Fixed Pipe name alias redirect issue: http://y.ahoo.it/yoEsT

At Yahoo! we take pride in providing a deeply personal experience to our users around the world. A couple of weeks ago, we released a new version of Yahoo! Messenger which allows our users in Romania to use Yahoo! Messenger in Romanian language. Today, we are excited to announce the launch of Yahoo! Insider in Romanian, delivering locally relevant news in native language to our users in Romania!

To read more about the new Y! Messenger Romanian version in Romanian click here.
[Clic aici pentru a citi mai multe despre Y! Messenger in limba Română]

Make sure to download the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger to enjoy all of its fantastic new features: http://messenger.yahoo.com

Yahoo! Messenger Team

I recently asked our friend Sean from Pleiades (which I will *never* be able to spell correctly) to write up a lil’ guest post on how we did something cool with Flickr machine tags and ancient sites of the world – and here it is!

  $ curl http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/440947682/json | python -mjson.tool

  {
    ...
    "id": "440947682",
    "title": "El Kab",
    "type": "FeatureCollection"
  }

  class RelatedFlickrJson(BrowserView):

      """Makes two Flickr API calls and writes the number of related
      photos and URLs for the most viewed related photo from the Pleiades
      Places group to JSON like

      {"portrait": {
         "url": "http://flickr.com/photos/27621672@N04/3734425631/in/pool-1876758@N22",
         "img": "http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2474/3734425631_b15979f2cd_m.jpg",
         "title": "Pont d'Ambroix by sgillies" },
       "related": {
         "url": ["http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/pleiades:*=149492/"],
         "total": 2 }}

      for use in the Flickr Photos portlet on every Pleiades place page.
      """

      def __call__(self, **kw):
          data = {}

          pid = self.context.getId() # local id like "149492"

          # Count of related photos

          tag = "pleiades:*=" + pid

          h = httplib2.Http()
          q = dict(
              method="flickr.photos.search",
              api_key=FLICKR_API_KEY,
              machine_tags="pleiades:*=%s" % self.context.getId(),
              format="json",
              nojsoncallback=1 )

          resp, content = h.request(FLICKR_API_ENDPOINT + "?" + urlencode(q), "GET")

          if resp['status'] == "200":
              total = 0
              photos = simplejson.loads(content).get('photos')
              if photos:
                  total = int(photos['total'])

              data['related'] = dict(total=total, url=FLICKR_TAGS_BASE + tag)

          # Get portrait photo from group pool

          tag = "pleiades:depicts=" + pid

          h = httplib2.Http()
          q = dict(
              method="flickr.groups.pools.getPhotos",
              api_key=FLICKR_API_KEY,
              group_id=PLEIADES_PLACES_ID,
              tags=tag,
              extras="views",
              format="json",
              nojsoncallback=1 )

          resp, content = h.request(FLICKR_API_ENDPOINT + "?" + urlencode(q), "GET")

          if resp['status'] == '200':
              total = 0
              photos = simplejson.loads(content).get('photos')
              if photos:
                  total = int(photos['total'])
              if total < 1:
                  data['portrait'] = None
              else:
                  # Sort found photos by number of views, descending
                  most_viewed = sorted(
                      photos['photo'], key=lambda p: p['views'], reverse=True )
                  photo = most_viewed[0]

                  title = photo['title'] + " by " + photo['ownername']
                  data['portrait'] = dict(
                      title=title, img=IMG_TMPL % photo, url=PAGE_TMPL % photo )

          self.request.response.setStatus(200)
          self.request.response.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json')
          return simplejson.dumps(data)

A crisp fall night turned out to be the perfect setting for the 2nd annual Vancouver Human Rights Lecture, co-sponsored by the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program, The Laurier Institution, the University of British Columbia Continuing Studies and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Speaker Ethan Zuckerman in his lecture “Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: When Social Media Meet Social Change” asked the question ‘if 2011 ends up being the year of revolution, is it possible that social media had something to do with it?’

He questioned the theory that social media had nothing to do with protests and activism in 2011 and the opposing theory that the Internet changes everything – that as soon as you have access to information and to the internet, people will mobilize.

The reality, he stated, is not black and white: social media is not irrelevant, nor is social media responsible for how (or why) people get together and protest; instead social media falls within a complex grey area.

Citing Mohamed Bouazizi and his act of self-immolation as a launch-pad or ‘patient zero’ in the movements that have swept through the Arab world, he noted that social media platforms make it possible for people to create and disseminate information at a low cost.  More importantly, they allow people to contribute to the wider media ecosystem (including traditional media), which can sometimes result in citizens mobilizing beyond a small protest movement to removing a dictatorship from power.

He argued that while the development of encrypted and specialized tools for activists is important, just as effective are the tools that are simple enough for anyone to use. The tools that allow persons to easily share their own content and interests to a wide audience, as in the case of the internet user sharing her pictures of cute cats, becomes an even more potent tool for the person who accidentally stumbles upon activism. That user may be already using the tools, and can now use them to share their concerns and express themselves. These platforms are often difficult for governments to censor.

Ethan challenged the audience to become empowered citizens and netizens of the online world and to call on governments to respect the idea of a networked public sphere where content and information can be shared but also to call on companies to run the private spaces in a manner consistent with freedom of expression and privacy.

Yahoo! recognizes that the Internet is a powerful space for free expression and for this reason is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative comprised of ICT companies, human rights organizations, academics, investors and others. The GNI is a positive and collective step by these stakeholders to work together to challenge censorship and threats to privacy. The group has worked together to establish a code of conduct to guide technology companies in protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy across the globe when they encounter laws and policies that interfere with these fundamental human rights.

Over the next year, the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program will continue to explore how people, and more specifically women, are using social and digital media to support positive change in their communities and around the world. Our Change your World summits start in Cairo on January 18 2012, where, together with Yahoo! Maktoob and in partnership with Vital Voices we will focus on how women across the Middle East and North Africa are using technology, the Internet and various social and digital media platforms to create positive change in the world through four areas: leadership in governance and politics, human rights and social justice, journalism and entrepreneurship.  Join us for Change your World: Cairo 2012. Click here for more information.

To listen to the 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture podcast, please click here or view the lecture video here

Currently our cloud DB service has an outage that effects writes to the service. Reads are operational and working.

This means creating new pipes or editing existing Pipes will not work. But existing Pipes will still run and produce output as normal.

You can access you Pipe output by entering:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=<yourpipeid>& _render=rss/json/kml…etc.

e.g. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=ZKJobpaj3BGZOew9G8evXg&_render=json

Hello there, everyone! It’s been an eventful few months, and interacting with our community here at Answers has been as exciting as ever.

Adele, beautiful talented Adele, has been in the spotlight for a while now, with her powerful music and incredible voice. Rolling in the Deep and Someone like You are requested for every hour on the radio, are must-haves on every playlist, and can persuade even the most reticent bathroom singer into humming along. Adele has been nominated for 6 awards at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards due to take place in Los Angeles on 12th February, 2012. We checked in with our users on what the odds are of her cleaning out the Grammys.  Our TC Wendigo believes it’s unlikely as sweeps at the Grammys are very rare. But there is also a strong community out there rooting for her and cheering her on. Good luck to you, Adele.  We’re crossing our fingers for you.

2011 has been a year of many losses in Indian music. Very recently, we bid farewell to the Evergreen Dev Anand. Our editors too, felt the loss dearly; there were many outpourings of grief in the office. A memorial page was created to document tributes, and we invited Yahoo! users to join in and pay their respects to the Peter Pan of Bollywood. We received an overwhelming 250+ responses, as readers shared childhood memories of their beloved hero, and how he is inextricable linked to the magic of cinema. We invite you to write your own tribute, as you read the memorials here.

Touching on some burning issues across the country, like FDI in retail, and the new political tinge to the Anna movement, made us realize that there are strong opinions out there, if divided. While most believe FDI will be a positive change, benefiting the consumer by lowering prices and increasing quality, creating more jobs and pulling India out of recession, others believe that FDI is not suitable for a country like India which is still in early stages of development, where population, inflation and illiteracy are high.  The Anna issue also sees divided support. A large section believe that things have to become political before progress can be made, while others who support Team Anna’s ideals against corruption feel the cause will lose validity if given a political agenda. And the debate rages on…

With all the glitz surrounding Dirty Picture and Vidya Balan’s delicious performance as Silk Smitha, we decided to check in with our readers on whether Size Zero was still the in thing. Could the unabashed portrayal of retro sex-appeal change what is popularly perceived as beautiful?  I’m happy to report that nearly all of our 75+ responses rejected the Size Zero definition of beauty. Users spoke instead of healthy bodies, confidence and self-esteem as the components of beauty. Summing it up perfectly in fact, is the Best Answer as chosen by voters, which says size zero is beautiful only to people who like stick insects! Well said!

The month of December is quickly flying by, and we will soon be saying goodbye to 2011. The Yahoo! Year In Review is out, and comes highly recommended as a ton of fun (even if we do say so ourselves!).  To wrap up the year with a little silliness, we invited our users to send in their predictions for big Bollywood weddings in 2012. Who will tie the knot in B-town next year? While Saifu and Kareena ran away with the most number of votes, it appears that many are still rooting for Salman and Katrina! A few others that topped the list were Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Khemu, Vidya Balan and Siddharth Roy Kapoor, and Ritesh and Genlia. Well, dear users, only 2012 will tell how accurate that third eye is, and we look forward to measuring the New Year against your forecasts!

You might have noticed messaging surrounding the upcoming changes to Yahoo! Pulse. Here is a quick reminder that after December 1, 2011 you will no longer be able to use Pulse as it will be discontinued. We’re replacing Pulse with a new Profile, a simpler way to manage your settings and your identity in Yahoo!7.

Why the change?

We always strive to improve your experience on Yahoo!7. After evaluating tons of feedback from you, we decided Yahoo! Pulse was not meeting your needs. Yahoo! Profile is an easier way to identify who you are!

We’ve listed the main changes on when the transition occurs. To find out more info, please to go our Profile Help Pages or click on “see what this change means to you” on Pulse.

• We’ll transfer your Yahoo! Pulse information for you.
• Your social games will move to games.yahoo.com. Your apps will move to my.yahoo.com.
• There’s no updates feed.
• There are two privacy levels: public (visible to everyone) and private (visible only to you).
• Any profile information you had with the “connections” privacy level is now converted to private.
• It works on smartphones!

Have fun with Yahoo! Profile!

Share

The Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program is proud to be a co-sponsor, together with The Laurier Institution, the University of British Columbia Continuing Studies and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, of the 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture.  This year’s speaker will be Ethan Zuckerman whose lecture is titled “Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: When Social Media Meet Social Change“. The lecture will  be held on Sunday November 20th 2011, at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC, Canada. For tickets, please visit here.

Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: When Social Media Meet Social Change”

Activists around the world are turning to social media tools usually used for more pedestrian purposes: the sharing of family videos and videos of cats flushing toilets. But these tools can be extremely powerful in the hands of activists, as they are pervasive, easy to use and difficult for governments to censor. Ethan Zuckerman will look at “the cute cat theory” of internet activism, as it helps explain the Arab Spring protests, aggressive internet censorship in countries like China and Vietnam, and the challenges for the corporate owners of social media platforms in an era of online speech.

It’s been a while since my last blog but I’m very happy to report that since then, over the past quarter, our users have embraced the new Yahoo!7 Mail with over 80% of our audience now on the faster, safer and more beautifully designed Yahoo!7 Mail (not that I’m biased!).  And if you’re one of the many, make sure you’re using all the great features and have personalised your Mail by accessing the Mail Overview microsite – there are many colourful themes to choose from.

Incredibly now, it’s the lead up to Christmas which means more online activity sharing with the people who are important to you as well as shopping, organizing events and researching festive products and services through Yahoo!7 Search.  So I urge you to ‘stay safe online’ during this busy period by adhering to the excellent advice on the Stay Safe Online initiative.

You may be planning holidays but remember that spammers don’t ease up at this time and security can be compromised if you’re not vigilant.  Whilst Yahoo!7 has powerful and effective tools to prevent spam, detect spamming activity and reduce the risk of compromised email accounts, it’s a daily and industry-wide problem.  Damage can occur through a variety of ways – malicious software being installed silently on computers, users logging in unknowingly via a phishing page, having a common or easy-to-crack password and more.  In these cases, it’s vital to change your email password and scan your computers immediately to secure your account.

1) Change your password immediately – you can change your Yahoo!7 email account password at https://edit.yahoo.com/config/change_pw.  If you can no longer access your account, you can get a new password at https://edit.yahoo.com/forgotroot/.  Important: If you use the old password at other sites, we recommend you change it for those accounts as well. Furthermore, don’t revert to the old password at any time; that password can never be used safely again for any of your accounts.
2) Scan your computers for malicious software. If you have an anti-virus program installed, make sure to update it and then run a scan. Do this for both your personal and work computers (ideally you should be doing this periodically – put it in your Calendar). If you don’t have an anti-virus program and are using a Windows computer, you can try Microsoft’s free, anti-virus program here. For more advice and information on keeping your online experience safe, and your email and computers secure, visit the Yahoo! Security Center.

I hope you’ll never have to take these steps with your Yahoo!7 mail account but it’s better to be safe than sorry, that’s for sure!  So enjoy connecting with with your friends, family and colleagues safely and securely as we head towards Summer.

For the first time this October, India observes Domestic Violence Awareness Month, making it an international event.  This year, the focus isn’t just on violence against women, but also on the spreading of awareness of men as victims of domestic violence and harassment. This post elaborates in detail the forms of violence against women, men, children and the elderly.

To gauge our community’s awareness on the issue, we put out a few questions. And although it’s only been one day at the time of this post, I have to say the quality of response is extremely heartening.  Sensitized and informed, opinion is strong and information abounds.

Here are the questions we have up. We’ll be following this post with a round-up of insights from you, our readers, so please feel free to add your own interpretations, your own experiences, and contribute to the conversation as we spread awareness around the issue of domestic violence.

• What constitutes domestic violence? How do I recognize that someone is being abused?
• What is the Bell Bajao campaign?
• Is domestic violence a gender issue?
• What are the legal rights of domestic abuse victims?

Photo by Sip Khoon.

One of the giants of the technology sector, Steve Jobs, passed away today aged 56.

The Internet is rife with tributes from every possible corner; from blogs to Flickr to print and social media – everyone is mourning and remembering.

Yahoo! co-founder, Jerry Yang, had the following words to share:

“Steve was my hero growing up. He not only gave me a lot of personal advice and encouragement, he showed all of us how innovation can change lives. I will miss him dearly, as will the world.”

As we mourn his passing, we look back at the legacy he left behind:

• Which Apple product is the most innovative to you? And why?

Leave your tribute to Steve Jobs in the comments below!

Did you see the news? The new Delicious is now live!

We are also planning to launch a new Delicious blog in the coming weeks to better represent all the changes. In the meantime, you can follow our updates at the AVOS blog: http://www.avos.com.

- The AVOS team

(Flickr photo by General Wesc)

Hello everyone,

Yahoo! Answers is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Tuesday, September 13 starting at 1pm, and lasting several hours. Answers will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will not be affected by this.

Meanwhile, please check out these Yahoo! pages and:

• Upload your photos on Flickr.
• Get your geek on with the latest tech news on Yahoo! Singapore Tech Talk.
• Read about the latest news at Yahoo! Singapore News.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Last month, the newest version of Yahoo!7 Mail went live.  Some of you may have already seen and used it in beta form but now it’s dropped its ‘beta’ tag to become our latest and greatest Yahoo!7 Mail!  We’re proud of it and pleased to offer it to you.  We hope you upgrade soon – it’s easy, just go to our Mail Microsite to upgrade and enjoy the benefits:

Faster: This version of Yahoo!7 Mail is 2x faster than our previous versions of Yahoo!7 Mail, even for those with slower internet connections.
Safer: Globally, Yahoo! blocks over 550 billion spam messages a month and our advanced SpamGuard technology and anti-phishing platform have helped us reduce spam reports by 60 percent.  Here’s to a clean inbox!
Easier: Getting things done in Yahoo!7 Mail is even easier with features like rich photo slideshows, chatting with Facebook friends and instantly responding to messages with the reply bar.  We’ve also got over 50 themes so you can personalise your Mail box the way you like it – just drop down Options menu!

We’ve been building this new Mail for a while now and continually fixing things and releasing new functionality every few months. Have a look at our Help page for some tips to guide you during the migration process – click here.

Finally, even though the ‘beta’ label is no longer on the Mail product, we’re continuing to improve Yahoo!7 Mail.  There is a long list of features and functionality we’re tackling in the coming months and you’ll be hearing more!

We hope you enjoy using the new Yahoo!7 Mail.

Hadoop Summit 2011 is over. If you saw this tweet ”#hadoopsummit planned for 1,500. upped on demand to 1,600. finally accommodated 1,700. ran out of space, good problem to have. :-),” then you probably got an idea of how exciting and mobbed the conference was this year. With folks dropping by from coast-to-coast, and quite a few from around the world, Hadoop Summit 2011 will quite likely be the year’s largest Hadoop gathering. But even more so, because of the passion of everyone that participated, it was also the best Hadoop gathering of the year, raising the bar yet again for Hadoop technical content and networking.

At the Summit and since it ended, I have received questions from folks who attended the show and some who couldn’t make it. In general, a lot of people were curious about what went into developing the Summit and the approach we took to the Summit. I thought I’d take some time today and summarize my thoughts on this topic.

Obviously, in conference planning, a lot of the success of an event comes down to logistics, and fitting 1,700 people into the Santa Clara Convention Center for one action-packed today definitely requires a lot of logistics. But beyond those details, I think more important this year was the decision to change how we approached the Summit and to make sure the focus of the event was on building the Hadoop community itself. The Hadoop community will be at the heart of that continued innovation, so it is important that the community continues to grow and share with each other.

Here is what the Summit was really about for me and what I asked the team to focus on:

1. Content: This year we moved away from the “come as you please” style for presentation content that we had used in years past. What is the line that I used to stress this to the team? “Content is to the Summit what Location is to Real-Estate.”. Everything. Therefore all technical content was first selected then shepherded through a rigorous review and feedback process by the Program Committee. As a result, we heard some fantastic feedback on the quality and usefulness of the presentations this year in the technical tracks. Raymie Stata, Yahoo!’s CTO, made the point numerous times, saying that as a technology grows you usually see the amount and depth of technical content at conferences dedicated to that technology erode, but that at Hadoop Summit was just the opposite. If anything, the technical content was even deeper, which bodes well for Hadoop and the communities future. I cannot thank my Track Co-chairs enough for their support in making this happen. You can find out more about them at: www.hadoopsummit.org.

2. Sponsored Content: Related to keeping the overall quality of technical content high at the Summit was the desire to keep the amount of sponsored content relatively low, ideally in the ball park of 30 minutes out of the day. Mind you, the goal was never not to have any sponsored content. Sponsors who are offering Hadoop-related solutions have a significant role to play in the Hadoop Ecosystem and its evolution, but especially with so many new attendees and folks just getting started with Hadoop, the most valuable content is the technical focused insights they can put to work as they ramp up projects and get up to speed. The results speak for themselves – check out my fun fact number 3 below.

3. Ecosystem: There was some discussion and thinking early on in the conference planning that we should only include open source solutions in the program. However, in the end the majority of the Program Committee agreed that the Summit should represent the entire Hadoop ecosystem. Why? Because while technically it’s possible to separate Apache Hadoop from other Hadoop powered solutions, actual users don’t always make this distinction when putting Hadoop to work. Some use Apache, some use other distributions, but all of these folks are Hadoop users and are therefore part of the Hadoop ecosystem. Without users, there is no Hadoop, so who are we to leave some out?

4. Users: Speaking of users, they are who motivated us to have a brand new track this year focused on them, the Operations and Experience track. The goal of this track was to provide a forum for sharing how different companies are operating and managing Hadoop in the real world, or otherwise talk about their experience with Hadoop. As we had expected, this content was particularly popular with Hadoop users this year. I believe, in the years to come, given the pace of Hadoop growth the interest in this track will continue to increase and the content will no doubt expand as well.

5. Developers: Finally, developers are still the core of the Hadoop Summit and are still the engine for innovation in Hadoop. Many attendees complimented me on what a great “event” Hadoop Summit was. Interestingly, I never really thought of the Summit as an event. For me it was a Hadoop developer and user gathering. As a developer myself, having been there and done that, now I enjoy helping showcase the amazing, high quality work that comes from the Hadoop community of developers. Helping great code get shared and adopted by developers and users is really the heart and soul of the Summit for me.

Looking forward, on the heels of a successful Summit, what’s next? Here at Yahoo! I’ve been saying that Hadoop the Software is maturing, while Hadoop the Product is still in its nascence. Do I mean that Hadoop the Software is done? Not at all. What I mean is that future work on Hadoop as software will be focused on transforming it into Hadoop the product. That means a lot of development on Usability, Manageability and Operability. These very broad areas cover a lot of ground, but collectively they all go towards making Hadoop more Enterprise ready. Hadoop is already ready for the Enterprise when it comes to Scalability, Availability and Reliability. At Yahoo! we know this probably better than anyone else. But it is the rest of these core “abilities” that will put Hadoop on the fast track to Enterprise deployment at companies that don’t have large Hadoop engineering teams in-house.

Before I wrap-up, here are a few little known facts about this year’s Summit that speak to all of the above:

1. The Summit had a 27% percent acceptance rate for submissions – it was very competitive and a great sign that the interest in Hadoop is driving high-quality technical content.
2. 50% of the ticket sales happened in the last two weeks. In other words, you all need to plan better so we can fit more of you. :-)
3. There were no sponsored tech talks this year, none at all – so if you’re looking for unbiased, useful technical content, the Summit tech talks were as pure as can be.
4. Multiple leading database vendors are currently evaluating Hadoop and HBase for internal use.
5. Hadoop is designed for use with non-reliable storage. ;-)

Looking forward to seeing the northern California Hadoopers at the July HUG. If you would like to attend, you can sign up here: http://www.meetup.com/hadoop/.

These are exciting times for Hadoop and may you enjoy living through them.

/later

Some of you have been asking us about Firefox v5.x support.

The Delicious add-on for Firefox v5.x is available on the Mozilla site at this link.

If you upgraded to Firefox v5.x from an earlier version of Firefox, your existing Delicious add-on will not be automatically upgraded at this time. We’re working on making that happen – hopefully soon. For now, you will need to get the add-on at the above link.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience.

- AVOS Team

On June 29, Yahoo! will host the 4th annual Hadoop Summit at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Hadoop Summit 2011 brings together some of the most influential thought leaders in the space - from Yahoo, Facebook, IBM, NetApp, and others.

Jay Rossiter, Senior Vice President of the Yahoo! Cloud Platform Group will open the show with a keynote around how Yahoo! is developing the next generation of Hadoop applications to handle big data, the important role that Hadoop plays in Yahoo!’s integrated technology ecosystem and how wide industry adoption of Hadoop is benefiting the entire community.

Also on the main stage, Facebook will discuss its use of Hadoop to power the Facebook Messages infrastructure and IBM will discuss how they used Hadoop to power supercomputer, Watson.

Additional conference highlights include some key sessions:

• Next Generation Apache Hadoop MapReduce: Arun Murthy, Yahoo!’s lead architect on the Hadoop Map-Reduce development team, will lead a discussion on the next generation of Apache Hadoop MapReduce that factors the framework into a generic resource scheduler and a per-job, user-defined component that manages the application execution.
• Introducing HCatalog (Hadoop Table Manager): Alan Gates, Yahoo! architect for Pig and Howl, will provide an overview of HCatalog as well as the release/roadmap.
• Automated Rolling OS Upgrades for Yahoo! Hadoop Grids: Dan Romike, Yahoo! Hadoop Data and Grid Systems engineer, will detail how we are upgrading thousands of servers, the problems of system state management, and the operational workflows specific to a Hadoop grid environment.
• Case Studies of Hadoop Operations at Yahoo!: The Grid Operations team at Yahoo! operates about 40,000 servers running Hadoop in clusters of up to 4,200 servers. Charles Wimmer, Yahoo! senior service engineer of grid computing, will provide a dive deep into a series of case studies that exemplify these issues.
• Large Scale Math with Hadoop MapReduce: Nerd out and learn how Yahoo! established a new world record by computing the two quadrillionth bits of pi using Hadoop in July 2010. Widely covered in the news, the world record computation was composed of 35,000 MapReduce jobs, requiring 23 days of real time and 503 years of CPU time in Yahoo! clusters. Led by Yahoo! Hadoop engineer Tsz-Wo Sze, attendees will also learn MapReduce algorithms for large-scale mathematical calculation, their implementation, and our experience in running and tuning these computations in Hadoop clusters.

Check out the official conference agenda for a full preview of what’s to come and a look at the 32 different sessions, including best practice deep-dives and case studies on the Hadoop roadmap, operations and management, innovative Hadoop applications and research, and much more.

Space is limited, so don't miss this unique opportunity to hear directly from Hadoop thought leaders and pioneers by registering now.

And finally, a special thanks to the Hadoop Summit 2011 sponsors:

Platinum Sponsors:
* MapR Technologies
* NetApp

Gold Sponsors:
* Aster Data
* Cloudera
* DataStax
* Datameer
* IBM

Silver Sponsors:
* Amazon Web Services
* Arista
* Impetus
* Pentaho
* Syncsort

Sponsors:
* Dell
* Hadapt
* HStreaming
* Jive
* Karmasphere
* Mellanox
* Pervasive DataRush
* Quest Software
* Softlayer
* StackIQ
* ThinkBig Analytics

Stay up to date on Hadoop Summit buzz by following #hadoopsummit on Twitter.

If you are a Hadooper or would like to become one, come join the community for this one day event.

But you can continue to get search marketing content at the Yahoo! Advertising Blog

The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer is widely credited as coining the phrase “All good things must come to an end.” So it is with this blog, which will be shut down at the end of the month, on May 31, 2011. But in Internet parlance, this represents merely a redirect, not a 404 Error.

Our blogging attention these days is squarely on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog, which covers all aspects of online (and sometimes, offline) advertising, including search marketing. We generally post a dozen or more new, original articles there every week, including strategy advice and tips, coverage of industry events, interviews with industry leaders, the “Ad of the Week,” round-ups of internet and social media news, and much more.

And if search advertising in particular is the center of your universe, we’ve got you covered with a “Search” section on the Yahoo! Advertising Blog. Recent Ad Blog posts covered How Online Display Advertising Affects Search, Best Practices for Integrating Search and Display and why Product Strategy is the New SEO.

It’s been a pleasure providing high-quality content, advice and news to our customers and friends here on the YSM Blog since its launch in 2006. We encourage you to bookmark the Yahoo! Advertising Blog as a favorite in your browser, or better yet, sign up for a once-daily email digest of all of the blog’s content. You can also keep up with Yahoo! advertising news on Facebook and Twitter.

— The Team

If you have a smart or feature phone or a tablet computer like an iPad, you can now use My Yahoo! on it in a whole new way. We recently launched our beta site for My Yahoo! on Mobile. You can check it out here: http://m.yahoo.com/w/myyahoo. You’ll be able to access all of your feeds, add new ones, remove ones you don’t want anymore, as well as have access to all of your other favorite Yahoo! sites.

We have not yet implemented the My Yahoo! applications on the mobile site; we have plans to do that later in the year. If you need access to your apps, simply scroll down to the bottom of the page on the mobile site and click “Desktop”. To switch back, scroll down to the bottom of the Desktop My Yahoo! page and click on “Mobile”.

Enjoy taking My Yahoo! with you wherever you go.

Michael – Product Lead

Hey everyone,

Doing things twice instead of once is always a bit silly, so recently we decided it would be best to make the US blog (US) the main focus for everyone who speaks English and wants to keep up to date with everything going on in the world of Answers.

On the US Answers blog you’ll find everything from product updates to Answers news, celebrities and topical posts, competitions and of course Ask Mike (US), who blogs on curious, thought-provoking topics. You can leave your comments as well as Tweet and Liking posts on Facebook.

This means that for the foreseeable future the Canada Answers blog will point to the US Blog so for fresh news you’re better off heading there.  All our older  posts will remain here.

Thanks for all your feedback over the years,

Chief Product Officer riffs on Yahoo! and the future of data-driven media

“Yahoo! has a ton of data,” writes ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan. But then the post office has a lot of data, too. The question for any media company is how it plans to use that data to serve the interests of its core constituents—its audience, advertisers and partners.

Dignan was listening to Yahoo! Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, who spoke yesterday at the Morgan Stanley “Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference” at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, on how Yahoo! is utilizing its data now more than ever.

Dignan quotes Blake:

“Spending time with the folks at Yahoo!, I started to uncover some other strengths that I frankly didn’t know were there—the amount of science and data that exists. The way that the research organization communicates with the product team is unlike any company I’ve worked at before.”

Blake goes on to define Yahoo!:

“Yahoo!, at its core, is the premier digital media company. It’s simple. That’s it. We’re the premier digital media company. That doesn’t mean that we are a traditional media company that’s producing magazines. It means that we are a digital technological company that produces media. Media in the vernacular of the Internet is e-mail, it’s crowd-sourced, it’s conversations that happen whether it’s in the social media site or whether it’s media that served from a crowd-sourced editor, or somebody who is an editor using a series of digital publishing tools and surfacing that content around the world. So there’s, I think, a misunderstanding of what media is. Really, when you’re talking about the digital landscape and you’re talking about the Internet, just about everything you touch is media, whether I produce it myself and communicate with a few people, or it’s an editor reaching tens of millions of people.”

Read the full article on ZDNet.

— The Team

C’mon, Join the fun. Enter the Yahoo! Messenger Faceoff Contest Today!

Do you love emoticons as much as our 500,000+ Yahoo! Messenger Facebook fans do? From now through March 18th, show us your best emoticon impression for a chance to have your face turned into a brand new Yahoo! Messenger emoticon to be added to the Yahoo! Messenger emoticon gallery.

Check out the Yahoo! Messenger Faceoff Contest on our Facebook fan page. Join the fun by simply submitting a photo of yourself imitating your favorite emoticon. Then encourage friends and family to vote for your submission in the Faceoff gallery or to submit their own photos if they think they can do better! After two rounds of voting, the winner with the most votes will have their face turned into a brand new emoticon for the world to use.

Go ahead – show the world your best smiley! If you’re too shy to submit a photo, visit the Faceoff gallery to vote for your favorites and support your friends.

Which emoticon are YOU?

- Yahoo! Messenger Team

A look at the premier digital media company, then and now

It all started in February 1994. In a Stanford trailer. Innocently enough.

Two Ph.D. students decided to build a guide to the web. The goal? Keeping track of their personal interests.

Soon the lists that David Filo and Jerry Yang had compiled became too unwieldy, so they broke them out into categories. When those categories became too full, the two denim-clad engineers developed subcategories, and Yahoo! was born.

By the fall of 1994, Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day.

Fast-forward 17 years. Yahoo!’s global network includes 25 properties and is available in 13 languages. In January 2011 alone, nearly 179 million Americans pointed their browsers toward Yahoo!, ranking #1 in the comScore Media Metrix Audience Rank tabulation for the month

Here are four more ways Yahoo!’s gone from humble student beginnings to becoming the premier digital media company:

1. Global Reach: Globally, Yahoo! properties are ranked #1 in 8 categories, according to comScore figures for January 2011.Yahoo! was the top-ranked site in a whopping 13 U.S. categories in January, including News, Mail, Sports, Finance, Television and Shopping.

2. Personalization: The Today Module on the Yahoo! homepage shows consumers the stories they are most likely to be interested in reading, based on the information they gave in their profile, their previous clicks and other insights. Yahoo! visitors worldwide get a completely customized experience. On a typical day at the end of 2010, there were more than 45,437 variations of the homepage generated every five minutes—and more than 13 million variations every day.

3. Most Trusted: Yahoo! was ranked in 2010 by Edelman Trust Barometer as the most-trusted technology company in the world, a full 13 percent ahead of the nearest competitor in the technology category. Among all companies evaluated globally, Yahoo! holds the #2 spot for most-trusted companies, just one percentage point behind the leader, a consumer products goods company.

4. Advertising innovation: Yahoo! is a leading online ad network in the U.S. In 2010, Yahoo! launched a dozen new ad formats (for PC and mobile web) to help advertisers unleash creativity and connect with audiences through new, high-impact creative canvasses.

Yahoo! was created to make sense of this big, messy place we call the Web. And we’ve never strayed from that mission: to filter through the clutter and help people connect with what’s most important to them. By connecting each person with what is relevant, meaningful and inspiring to them, we create deeply personal digital experiences.

Congrats to all the loyal Yahoos, Yahoo! users and Yahoo! advertisers who have contributed to our success over these sweet 16 years.

And, if you’d like to give us a little something for our birthday, how about liking Yahoo Advertising on Facebook, following us on Twitter, or subscribing to our blog by email?

You could also recommend our marketing and advertising content to a friend. We want to continue spreading our yodels far and wide now that we can drive.

— Dianne Molina

Earlier this week Yahoo! Finance launched a brand new app for the top-selling tablet on the market. iPad users now have anytime access to their portfolios and stocks they care about most through MarketDash. The new iPad app provides real-time market data, news and charts, letting you walk away from your desk, yet still stay in sync with your investments.

The interactive app takes advantage of the iPad’s multi-touch capabilities so you can manipulate views of stock charts; the ability to scroll across hours, days or months of market action; plot points in time; and even compare multiple stock tickers in one compelling chart. Anyone interested in following the market, or specific stocks on the iPad can now use Yahoo! Finance’s reliable and personalized tools anywhere, anytime.

We’ve become so dependent on our mobile devices that it’s important to have a seamless experience across all of the technology we use on a daily basis. That’s why Yahoo! Finance provides centralized storage of portfolios and watch lists.

Add a stock to a watch list from your iPad and it will show up instantly in the Yahoo! Finance app for iPhone or Android phones or when you view your portfolio on Yahoo! Finance. No matter where you log in to your account you will see updated and personalized portfolio data.

To download MarketDash, go to the App Store or search for MarketDash in the App Store from your iPad!

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Photo by antwerpenR

Hey everyone,

Doing things twice instead of once is always a bit silly, so recently we decided it would be best to make the US blog (US) the main focus for everyone who speaks English and wants to keep up to date with everything going on in the world of Answers.

On the US Answers blog you’ll find everything from product updates to Answers news, celebrities and topical posts,  competitions and of course Ask Mike (US), who blogs on curious, thought-provoking topics. You can leave your comments as well as Tweet and Liking posts on Facebook.

This means that for the foreseeable future the UK & Ireland Answers blog will point to the US Blog so for fresh news you’re better off heading there.  All our older UK & Ireland posts will remain here, from topical stories to our favourite, the profiles of amazing contributors that we call Featured Users.

Thanks for all your feedback over the years,

-          Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

UPDATE
Ongoing product innovation is important to Yahoo! and we constantly test various product designs and features to gain valuable feedback and insights from our users. Part of this process includes identifying how we can make Yahoo! Finance even more useful and personally relevant.

On Tuesday night we started testing a new Yahoo! Finance Portfolio experience in the US to further enhance usability. Based on feedback about certain key features, we have chosen to move users back to the previous Portfolio experience and will make additional updates and modifications before we roll out the new features to our US users. The previous version will be back as soon as possible - we’re hoping to have it restored by the end of the day (Thursday).

Unrelated to the Portfolios redesign, we are currently experiencing an issue on a small select set of tickers on Yahoo! Finance. Tickers such as SPY, FPX, PLND, KCE and others. The team is actively working to restore these tickers. As a result, your Portfolio experience may show “No such ticker symbol”. We will have this issue resolved shortly.

Users that preferred the updated version can continue to access it through tour U.K. site or our Canada site. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused.

We’ll soon be launching a new version of Yahoo! Finance portfolios in the US. The update features a sleek new design, more flexible ways to create, view and modify portfolios, and a more intuitive user interface. All of your existing portfolios data will remain intact.

Below is a list of improvements that we think you’ll enjoy:

For a sneak peak at the new Yahoo! Finance portfolios, please visit our U.K. site or our Canada site, where the new design has already been launched. After you have logged in, click on the “My Portfolios” tab, and you will be able to view your portfolios as they will appear after the U.S. launch.

Portfolios are one of the top features on Yahoo! Finance and we will continue to refine the portfolios section and add new features and innovations over the coming months. Feel free to use the ‘Feedback’ link on the UK or Canada sites. We’ll also have ‘Feedback’ turned on in the US when we launch.

Whether you use portfolios to track your actual investments, to manage watchlists of companies or a combination of both, it’s our goal to deliver the functionality you need with an intuitive and reliable solution.

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On February 8, 2011, Yahoo! will be joining forces with INSAFE, to celebrate Safer Internet Day and to help raise awareness about safety online.

Answer our special question: here.

This year, efforts will address safety around “virtual lives” encompassing online gaming and social networking. The slogan for 2011 is, “It’s more than a game, it’s your life.” Staying online and being connected has become critical for today’s youngsters, and not being connected frequently means social exclusion.

GET INVOLVED

It’s easy to take part in this exciting one-day event!

• Learn more about online safety tips
• Share these online safety tips with your family and friends through Yahoo! Pulse, Facebook and Twitter
• Participate in the global Safer Internet Day Fair
• Share your own advice with the Answers community

Learn more about online safety tips

Think before you post. How you represent yourself online – the way you play games, the photos and texts you share, your avatar, and your profile – all add up to who you are. Invest in your online image.

Be a good sport when online. If you wouldn’t do it on the field, don’t do it online.

Take action and report bullying. By standing by and watching, laughing, or doing nothing when you see bullying happen, you become part of the problem. Don’t be a passive bystander.

Spread positivity when texting. Texting is core to staying connected and what you text is a reflection of you. Be thoughtful about what you text and confident that your texts portray you the right way. Remember messages can be misunderstood without body language to support your meaning.

Get out and connect with your world. It’s estimated that teens spend 7.5 hours a day watching some form of media. The Internet is fun, rich world, but don’t forget to unplug sometimes. Get out and connect with your friends in the real world.

Learn more about online safety. Yahoo! Safely is a global resource that provides parents, educators and teens with tips and advice on online safety. The site covers important topics such as managing digital reputations, avoiding cyber-bullying, and learning how to minimize risks on mobile devices, as well as provides guidance on how to safely use specific Yahoo! products, as well as a Yahoo! Answers Safety Guide.

Share these online safety tips for youth with your family and friends

Support Safer Internet Day by updating your Yahoo! Pulse status with:
“It’s more than a game, it’s your life: http://www.saferinternet.org”

Help drive awareness of online safety by sharing this blog post on Twitter and Facebook. It’s easy – just click `Like` or `Tweet` from the box at the bottom of this blog post to share it online.

Participate in the Safer Internet Day Fair
Join us in a “real” celebration of our virtual lives in the SID fair, by registering online or contacting your national awareness centre or SID committee. A video clip has been created in all official EU languages. Watch the clip and find further information about the activities being organised in your country through the Insafe website.

Share your own advice with the Answers community
Now over to you to share your own advice with the Answers community by sharing your tips on how to stay safe online in this week’s featured question:

– What are your best tips for staying safe on the Internet?

The best answer will receive a bonus 50 points and an additional `top 5` best tips will receive 10 points each!

Here’s to staying safe online – not just on Safer Internet Day, but EVERYDAY!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

It’s a new year so how about a new theme for your My Yahoo! page. We wish you prosperity in this year of the rabbit.

• Change your theme to 年年有餘 (prosperity through the years)

Michael - My Yahoo! Team Lead