Planet (Totally unofficial, you understand.)

by Mike Krumboltz

What. A. Week. One of Hollywood's most famous starlets filed a lawsuit so bizarre, so unintentionally hilarious, laughter was the only suitable response. Elsewhere, Toyota continued to struggle with runaway cars, and a popular cable commentator was upstaged during a wacky interview. Read on for those stories and more with the Buzz Week in Review.

Runaway Prius alert
It was just another day for Toyota owner James Sikes when he took to the San Diego highway. Things quickly turned terrifying when he realized the gas pedal of his 2008 Prius was stuck and he had no way to slow down. Mr. Sikes called 911, and a member of the highway patrol was able to pull up alongside, told him to put the car in neutral, and then pulled in front of the Toyota to help slow it down. All things considered, the story had a happy ending. But much like the car itself, the searches were absolutely out of control. Immediately, lookups on "runaway prius" and "toyota with no brakes" both soared. But now, there are some rumblings about the runaway Prius being a hoax a la the "balloon boy." The company admitted to being "mystified" by the problem, and a writer for Forbes is highly suspicious. But law enforcement insists that "no evidence has emerged to suggest that Sikes was dishonest." The investigation will continue, but in the meantime Toyota put together a video to watch in the event that your car starts accelerating uncontrollably. Handy!

Glenn Beck: Speechless
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck isn't often upstaged. However, even the excitable Beck couldn't control disgraced Rep. Eric Massa from going on a strange, stream-of-conscious rant during an appearance this past week. Mr. Massa had recently resigned his post due to an ethics inquiry and allegations that he had harassed employees. During the interview with Beck, Massa admitted to "sexless groping and tickling of his staff, sending inappropriate text messages" as well as other personal failings. However, Massa contended, it was his "no" vote on health care reform that got him booted. During the interview, Beck often interrupted Massa, in an attempt to talk about his own problems. An article from Time magazine that broke down the odd exchange was one of our buzziest pieces of the week. Additionally, Web queries for "eric massa resigned" and "glenn beck interview" just wouldn't shut up in the Search box.

The law according to Lindsay
Actress and professional party girl Lindsay Lohan sued E-Trade for $100 million over a commercial that features a baby named Lindsay. Ms. Lohan contends that the ad, in which the baby Lindsay is referred to as a "milkaholic," capitalizes on her name and is clearly based on her. Ms. Lohan's lawyer contends that her client has "elevated 'Lindsay' to the same sort of one-off recognition status as 'Madonna' or 'Cher.'" Of course, that's debatable, and E-Trade has spoken out, saying it plans to defend itself "vigorously" and calling the lawsuit "without merit" (a nice way to put it, in our opinion). Regardless of (or more likely, due to) the apparent insanity of the lawsuit, searches on "lindsay lohan lawsuit" and "lindsay lohan etrade" both soared over 1,000% this past week. We can only assume amused law firms around the country forwarded articles about the story with record speed.

Also buzzing this week...
• Hollywood dreamboat Robert Pattinson has a new movie.
• Steve Jobs will gladly accept your money now.
• The ironically titled video game "Final Fantasy XIII" hit store shelves.

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by Claudine Zap

Daylight Saving Time is coming, and with it, longer, more light-filled days are on the way. Some may be surprised that Daylight Saving Time is already here. But there's a reason for that. Below, your Buzz round up of searches on the time change.

When is it?
We spring ahead the second Sunday in March. This year it's Sunday, March 14. While the first day of spring isn't for another week, we've gotten a jump on the season since 2007. In fact, we now get four more weeks of longer days, since Daylight Saving now goes through the first Sunday of November. You're welcome. Not all states observe the time difference: Hawaii and most of Arizona opt out.

Why do we have daylight saving time?
The hope is that we save energy -- since there's less of a need to switch on the lights if natural light will do. Studies have shown the electricity conserved on the new schedule is actually pretty nominal. But look on the bright side. Literally. Those longer light-filled days are sure nice. Searches on the time switch have increased 100% in the last week. The sunlight-deprived would like to know "what is daylight saving time," "daylight saving time dates," and "origins of daylight saving time."

What is the history of daylight saving time?
Fun fact: The idea was first floated back in 1784 by one Benjamin Franklin. While minister of France he wrote the essay "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light." The idea failed to, um, see the light of day until practically 100 years later, when the U.S. railroads instituted a standardized time for their train schedules. That time change was imposed nationally during the first World War to conserve energy, but was repealed after the war ended. It became the national time again during World War II. After that, it was a free-for-all of states deciding if they wanted it, and when it would start and end. Congress finally enacted the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which decreed that if a state chose to opt in to daylight saving, it had to be at the same time as everyone else.

Why does it start at 2 a.m.?
The website LiveScience explains that's it's pretty much the least disruptive time of day to make a switch. After all, most of us are asleep. Those who work on Sunday usually start later than 2 a.m. And fair warning for anyone planning on attending church services or brunch that day.

While the shift is only one hour, according to UPI, sleep disorder specialists say you should prepare yourself: You actually can lose sleep over the time change. Experts suggest going to bed 15 minutes earlier a few days before. Our unscientific suggestion: Sleep in on Sunday.

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Want to use tab navigation in the small view of your Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) app? Here’s one way to approach it:

For those using feed readers, you can see the code on Github.

The script’s operation flows like this:

1. The small view will first load the default content (see below), which will callback to this code to fetch the output defined in the else clause of this code.
2. That content will then use a yml:include tag to call back to itself with the parameter “item=1”.
3. The script will then execute the if statement and return the default body content for the app.

To use the script, do the following:

1. Copy/paste this code into the index file at the root of your app. For example, if the base url for your app is http://example.com/index.php, put this code in index.php. Be sure to remove/comment-out any code already in index.php that may interfere.
2. Put the following code in the default small view code box in the YAP dashboard: loading…. Note that because the “params” attribute is omitted from the yml:include tag, the tag will call back to the app’s base url by default.
3. Preview your app’s small view in the YAP dashboard. You should see “loading…”, followed by the appearance of your “tabs” (“item 1 | item 2 | item 3”) above the text “loading …”, followed by the replacement of the loading text with “this is item 1 content”

This little snippet has a BSD license detailed, along with usage instructions and other information, in the code’s readme file.

Erik Eldridge
Yahoo! Developer Network (@ydn)

Here at YUI HQ, we’re working toward the next major release of YUI, YUI 3.1.0. Yesterday we shared some YUI 3 loader work that Adam Moore has done for 3.1.0. His “YUI 2 in 3″ project allows you to use components like YUI 2 DataTable simply and efficiently in YUI 3. Meanwhile, his loader improvements also mean you can bring in YUI 3 Gallery modules like Storage Lite with the same ease and efficiency. 3.1.0 will also mark the GA release of Satyen Desai’s component/widget foundation for YUI 3.

We’re also running the YUI 3 Gallery Contest, the winner getting a JSConf conference pass and $500 at Expedia.com to help with travel. You’ve got two full weekends left of hacking before the deadline!

In the meantime, there’s been a lot going on in the community — here are a few of the things we’ve noted recently:

• In the YUI 3 Gallery — Jeff Craig’s Slideshow Module: Jeff Craig, author of the Chromahash and Crypto modules, has released his Slideshow module for the YUI 3 Gallery.  His writeup on his blog provides a good introduction to the component, which he used for the Washington State University commencement site.
  

  Recently, at work, we had a desire to update an instance of a flash-based slideshow widget on our commencement website. This widget did absolutely nothing special, but the real problem we had was that, we didn’t actually have a license for Flash, and the way the slideshow had been built, we needed to be able to build the SWF file from scratch in order to update the order. Since our users rarely come to us with anything that isn’t some sort of emergency, we had to take the flash files to another department to make our quick change and compile a new SWF.

You can read Jeff’s full writeup on his blog.

Stoyan Stefanov on YUI’s CSS Compressor: Stoyan has signed on to work on the YUI Compressor, and he’s written about the CSS minification component of that tool on PHPied.com: “Originally written in PHP by Isaac Schlueter and ported to Java by Julien Lecomte, CSSMin got a JavaScript port by yours truly some time ago. Because, after all, JavaScript is the language of the web, isn’t it? You can play with the latest git version of the JS port online here. I’m also happy to report that the JS port is now used in PageSpeed and YSlow (as you probably know Firefox extensions are written in JavaScript).” (Original source.)

Satyam’s YQLDataSource for YUI 2: “Thanks to Jonathan LeBlanc’s article on the YUI Blog I thought that it would be cool to have a YQLDataSource to make it easier to use YQL data in YUI 2 DataTable, YUI 2 Charts and YUI 2 AutoComplete. The table below is built using such a DataSource…The YQLDataSource does not require any parameters. It will automatically use the YUI 2 Get Utility to access the YQL servers using JSON format and providing a suitable callback. The DataSource just needs to be instanced like: var ds = new YAHOO.util.YQLDataSource();.” Check out Satyam’s full documented example for all the details.

German-language Screencast on Using YUI in DreamWeaver CS4: According to the author, ‘In diesem Film zeigt Ihnen der Trainer die Verwendung und Konfiguration des Web Widgets “YUI TreeView“. Sie lernen die HTML-Struktur dieses Widgets kennen.” This is a beautifully produced screencast on using CS4’s YUI support, focusing on the YUI TreeView Control.

Ajaxian Covers SVG Wow, SVG + YUI 3 Animation: Brad Neuberg notes on Ajaxian the debut of Vincent Hardy and Erik Dahlström’s SVG Wow site.  Many of Vincent’s examples, including the flying song-lyric animation called out by Brad, are powered by YUI 3’s Animation library running within the SVG document.

Simple File Upload in Grails (using YUI Connection Manager): Simon Palmer shows you how he leveraged Thomas Sha’s YUI Connection Manager and Matthew Taylor’s slick Grails UI package to add asynchronous file upload to his Grails project. (Note: You may be able to lighten the kweight of this solution by not including the full utilities.js package but rather cherrypicking the components you need — in this case, that might result in just <script type="text/javascript" src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?2.8.0r4/build/yahoo/yahoo-min.js&2.8.0r4/build/event/event-min.js&2.8.0r4/build/connection/connection-min.js"></script>.

Chris P. Jobling on Watching YUI Theater: Writes Chris: “This last week or so I’ve been watching a lot of Yahoo! YUI Theatre videos on JavaScript, starting with Douglas Crockford’s excellent five-part series Crockford on JavaScript and ending yesterday with Christian Heillman’s inspiring talk on YQL and YUI. This has inspired me to explore how I can use YUI (a JavaScript library) in the next version of my Proman dissertation project management application which will be needed for 2010-2011 allocation round in May. If it works out, there’ll also be some new teaching material for next year’s Web Applications module (EG-259). I’ll post more in the under the tag YUI on the Proman, Man blog as I get to grips with this stuff.”

YUI Panel: Changing Buttons and Re-using a Panel on Same Page: Ciitronian.com has posted a brief YUI 2 Panel tutorial: “The requirement was to make a modal panel in YUI, which work at its own as a activation widget using Ajax (YUI 2 Connection Manager). The idea was pop up a YUI Panel when a user clicks on ‘Activate’, that modal panel will allow the user to enter details of when he/she wants to schedule the activation (where user can choose now or a later date) and then user can hit Submit and Cancel buttons.”  Click through for the full tutorial.

YUI 2 Calendar: Using and Modifying Multiple Calendar Picker Instances on Single Page: Ciitronian.com “explains how to create multiple instances of calendar widget of YUI 2. There are many examples of how to use Calendar widget on YUI’s official website but for my application, the requirement was to to schedule multiple actions on the same page, giving each one a date of its own, so I developed my calendar widget” to solve that problem. Click through for the full tutorial.

by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (Searches increased by +20,422%). The former model/singer and first lady of France disputed rumors that both she and President Sarkozy are having extra-marital affairs.
2. Conan O'Brien (+999%). The comedian who left his "Tonight Show" job has taken the show on the road.
3. Sei whale (+645%). A restaurant and sushi chef were charged with illegally serving up the endangered whale meat.
4. Harry Reid (+547%). The senate majority leader's wife and daughter were hospitalized from a car accident.
5. Lady Gaga "Telephone" video (+526%). The just-released music video features Beyonce. Hott.

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In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on the horizon, the Library of Congress today posted over 100 delightful photochroms of Ireland from from the Detroit Publishing Company. Take an armchair trip to the green Irish countryside, indulge in a seaside stroll, or look for your Irish kin.

Got a photo taken from the same view as the ones in this collection? Show us your Then & Now series in the Flickr Commons group.

Historical photos from the Library of Congress. Contemporary photo by SciFiGeek.

At Yahoo! Search, we pay attention to what’s popular on the Web and what matters most to you. We know that celebrities rank near the top of the buzziest searches on Yahoo!, so this is one area in search that we’ve been working on to make even better. As we’ve already started to do with news, local, sports, music and movies searches, we want to make your pop culture search results more useful.  Now you can find photos, videos, news and other interesting information right on top of our Search results page, without digging through all 10 blue links.

Our brilliant scientists are working hard behind the scenes to uncover the relevant details and content hidden in the billions of pages on the Web. What this means is that we can surface the nuggets scattered across what we call the “Web of Things” to show you the stuff that matters to you, right on your Search results page. Our aim is to save you many clicks and a lot of time, while creating a fun way to conduct searches for related topics of interest.

For entertainment junkies, there is all kinds of great information we can find for you in our rich Search results. For example, if you’re a TV fan looking for details on your favorite show we just launched a new TV shortcut that will display the latest video clips, bonus videos (or even entire episodes), episodes list, ratings, show times from Yahoo! TV, and photos – all with just one click from the Search results page.

On the left side of the page, we show suggestions of related celebrities, movies or TV shows related to your entertainment queries. Check out the search results for “Days of our Lives” actor Jensen Ackles. If you click on Ackles’ result, we’ll show you a brand new rich shortcut with photos, videos and tweets about him. Plus you’ll get new suggestions to explore more Search results for his co-stars, like Jessica Alba and Orlando Bloom, or some of the movies he’s been in.

Click on Orlando Bloom and you’ll see that the new Celebrity shortcut brings up news, along with his photos, videos and tweets.

So go on and search for your favorite entertainment topics on Yahoo! We are curious to know what you think!

P.S. If your favorite celebrity has an official Twitter feed, you can see their tweets right on the search results page! This way, you won’t miss a minute of their lives.

P.P.S. We’re also now showing enhanced shortcuts for a broader range of movies and music to include even more of your favorite stuff. Take a look at our search results for music artist Tommy Emmanuel or the movie Pretty Woman.

Alexandra Levich and Yuko Kamae

Yahoo! Search

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about real-time bidding that includes Yahoo!’s Right Media. We are really excited about the momentum we’re seeing in the real-time bidding space.  Right Media was the first marketplace to offer real-time bidding (RTB) in our own marketplace over five years ago (see the story we posted on this [...]

Photo by James Bowe

Throughout the month of March and into April, we will be celebrating the Food & Drink category on Yahoo!7 Answers with a menu of Autumn food created by you!

Unlike the rest of Yahoo! Answers globally who are currently preparing to embrace Spring the days here in Australia are getting steadily shorter and the weather is growing colder, so we will be focussing on foods suitable for eating during the season of Autumn. With your help, the menu will feature dishes for an entree (starter), main and dessert.

What do I need to do?

We’re glad you asked! By 12 noon AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Tuesday, the 16th of March (that’s next week, 4 days away), we’d like you to submit open questions to us about a recipe you’d like to know for an entree, main dish or a dessert. They should be for dishes suitable for Autumn fare.

You can submit them by leaving a comment here with your link or by sending an email to us at y_answrs_team_au@yahoo.com.au.

Make sure your questions are open for the duration of a week. If you want to extend the duration of your question, simply click on the “Expiration Date” available in the action bar below your question via the “Edit” dropdown.

What next?

Stay tuned to our blog!

If your question is selected, it could appear for a full week in the Best of Answers module on our Answers front page and receive 50 bonus points to your Answers account. If at the end of the opening period of your question, you carefully select a better quality response, we will offer 20 extra points.

Be sure to keep an eye on this blog for further details as they emerge.

We look forward to your questions!

Kate
Community Manager

Ask any hostess – the biggest and most daunting task every hostess faces is the selection of the menu for that special occasion and those very special guests. We all know that a typical meal includes a choice of starters, the main course, and the dessert. We’ve decided on Answers to make this task easy for every hostess.

This March we celebrate the Food & Drink category on Answers. As a part of this celebration, you can share your best recipes for starters, main-course, and desserts as answers to the three open questions we’ve posted.

With this celebration you not only get a list of recipes from the Answers community that you can try out, but also get a chance to be selected as the best answerer. The answerer whose recipe is chosen as the best answer will receive 200 points on Answers.

And since it’s a celebration, we’ve decided that we will also choose 4 more recipes as ‘good answers’ for each question. Each answerer whose recipe is chosen as the ‘good answer’ will receive 100 points.

Of course, this choice will be with the community’s help which is why we urge you to use the thumbs up feature and vote for the recipe you loved.

So if you would like to share your recipe for an exciting starter answer:
Which recipe for a starter would you like to share with the community?

If you have the perfect recipe for an easy-to-make main course, share the recipe here:
What’s your best easy-to-make main course recipe?

Go ahead and share that sweet temptation you indulge in. Answer with your best dessert recipe:
What’s the recipe for your perfect pick-me-up dessert?

But before you rush to share your recipes, brush up on the 5 Golden Rules to Answering and do remember to follow our Community Guidelines.

If you are new to Yahoo! India Answers, here’s all that you need to know.

So now, get sharing and start cooking!

Make sure your recipes are in before 12 pm (IST) Friday, March 19, 2010.

Let’s celebrate March with food!

Deliciously,
Bhumika Anand
Community Manager

One of my fellow Yahoos, Victor Tsaran, was on a local morning news show this week, talking about his work. Victor is a program manager on the Accessibility team here at Yahoo!.

The Accessibility team’s charter is to work with product teams, including Messenger, to make our technologies as usable as possible for disabled users.

Seeing Victor on TV reminded me of the interview I did with him in early 2007, not long after the blog started. In the video below, Victor shows me how a blind person can use Yahoo! Messenger. Close your own eyes, pretend your mouse is useless, and then think about how you would use Yahoo! Messenger.

With the help of screen reader software, a visually impaired user can enjoy the Internet and products like Yahoo! Messenger. This kind of software responds to a user’s key commands. It scans the page or application and reads the content aloud. In this way, visually impaired users can “hear” where they are on the screen or web page.

Because it reads the words aloud, a screen reader may sound wordy to people unaccustomed to it. But a visually impaired user who is adept at using the reader can set the audio playback at a lightening pace. When Victor demonstrated how he uses Yahoo! Messenger with a screen reader, it sounded to me like supersonic gibberish. But as you’ll see in the video below, Victor slowed it down for my (and perhaps yours) less able ears.

Needless to say, it gave me a unique perspective on what it’s like for a visually impaired user to use Yahoo! Messenger. For more about Victor – even his life outside of Yahoo! – check out this article and video from the Yahoo! Corporate Blog.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

by Michael Krumboltz

Three new movies hit theaters this weekend, and they couldn't be more different. "Remember Me," a romantic drama, stars Hollywood "It Boy" Robert Pattinson. For action lovers who prefer to see buildings explode than lovers swoon, there's "Green Zone," starring Matt Damon. And if it's a comedy you want, "She's Out of My League" might do the job. What say those cranky critics?

Remember Me
Robert Pattinson rocketed to the top of Hollywood's A list after his breakout role as Edward Cullen, a vampire with a heart of gold, in the "Twilight" films. Fans (especially the ladies) love him, but the question remains: Can he carry a movie that doesn't feature bloodsucking studs? "Remember Me" is his chance.

Reviews are mixed-to-negative. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter was clearly impressed with the film and with Pattinson's performance. Mr. Honeycutt calls the film "a strong romantic drama in which Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin really shine." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times also gives the movie a favorable review. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist gives the film three out of four stars, calling it "a well-made movie." Ebert continues, "I cared about the characters. I felt for them."

Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum would have to disagree with Ebert's assessment. Strongly disagree. Giving the movie a "D+," the critic calls "Remember Me" a "shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people." Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe is even harsher. The movie, he argues, "crassly repurposes tragedy to excuse its clichés." Morris' ranking: half a star out of four.

Green Zone
Matt Damon reteams with director Paul Greengrass, who helmed two of the "Bourne" films, for this action flick with a political point of view. The film takes place during the quest for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a quest that, it turned out, was just a wild goose chase.

Mr. Ebert is a believer in the film's vision. Awarding it four out of four stars, Ebert remarks that it "looks at an American war in a way almost no Hollywood movie ever has." Online critic James Berardinelli was also impressed, giving "Green Zone" three and a half stars out of four. It's "a high energy thriller," he writes. The critic also compliments Damon: "Damon's prior appearances as Jason Bourne make him credible in this role. There's never a disconnect to see him in this heroic, action-oriented part."

Taking the praise down a couple of notches is Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly. She gives the movie a modest "C+" and describes it as "strangely dated" and "foolishly grandiose." She continues that Damon boasts an "understated efficiency and physical stolidity," but argues that the film feels like it should have come out two years ago.

She's Out of My League
What happens when a "hard 10" (the luminous Alice Eve) falls for a "5" (Jay Baruchel)? That's the question that "She's Out of My League" aims to answer. A male-insecurity comedy in the tradition of Judd Apatow's "40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up," the critics have this film closer to a 5 than a 10. Lucy Barber of The Boston Globe gives "League" two out of four stars, noting that while the movie's premise is "as tired as the Fray songs littering the soundtrack," snappy dialogue saves the movie.

Matt Pais of Metromix is less generous with his grade. Giving the flick just one and half stars out of five, Pais argues that the movie is "mean-spirited" and "unbelievable." Baruchel's character is just too pathetic, he argues. Nobody wants to date a "spineless dope," let alone a bona fide bombshell. Mr. Ebert concedes that the movie "is not a comedy classic," but it is better than average. Using the film's own scale of worthiness, he gives it a 6.5.

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The Invisible Hand of Machine Learning

Key Scientific Challenges, Entry #6: Machine Learning

On January 27, we announced the kick-off of our 2010 Key Scientific Challenges Program.  To highlight the scientific challenge areas included in the program, we launched a series of guest blog posts on Yodel Anecdotal. Our most recent post covered Web Information Management.

Another big challenge our Yahoo! research scientists are continually examining is machine learning. In this entry, John Langford from Yahoo! Labs shares some thoughts on how Yahoo! is driving research into machine learning and why it’s a fascinating field.

When I wake up in the morning, I can’t resist checking my email and browsing the Internet to see if anything has come up. Then I get to work thinking, writing, searching, finding, and learning various things, all using an Internet that’s powered by machine learning in dozens of ways. When I go to sleep at night, I smile because I know that in addition to using machine learning throughout my day, I’ve also done my part to advance machine learning technology, many others have done likewise, and that by doing so we’re making a major impact on people’s lives.

Even though machine learning has such a broad influence on the Internet, it can be quite difficult to recognize. This is primarily because machine learning’s benefits are often hidden — they are the spam emails you don’t see, the uninteresting news articles you don’t see, and the irrelevant search results you don’t see, just to name a few. In this sense, machine learning is like an invisible hand. It’s also sometimes easier to recognize the flaws in a machine learning system – like “Why did my email end up in my friend’s spam folder?” – than it is to notice its benefits. But despite these quirks, machine learning is one of the best technologies we have for solving some of the biggest problems on the Web.

The problem of spam is representative of why machine learning is so effective. Spammers are constantly changing and adapting their strategies and technology to evade even the most capable filters. Machine learning attacks this problem by aiming to build an automatic system able to stay ahead of the game and continually refine itself in response to its environment. We haven’t completely achieved that goal yet, but progress is steady. Machine learning systems can always get better, learn more, work faster and in ever more ways, because people will always want less spam and more interesting and relevant news articles.
Naturally, this reality means we’re constantly running into both the empirical and theoretical boundaries of machine learning and statistics. How do I learn from so much data that we can’t fit it on a machine? How do we extract evidence of what the best decision was? What if the best decision changes? How do I minimize the need to know the best decision? How do I effectively use the incredibly large quantities of information available on the Internet? And how do I fit it all together in an automatic way that is useful to someone? And how do you know it’s useful?

Good answers to these questions can improve the life of just about everyone, which is the core reason why Yahoo! is sponsoring the Key Scientific Challenges Program. If you are a graduate student working on these questions, you understand how exciting and challenging this field is. And if you aren’t, consider the satisfaction associated with changing fields. :-)

John Langford

Yahoo! Labs

by Claudine Zap

Seems that some people can't stop talking about the Amanda Knox murder case. Even if those people are already in prison for murder.

Here's the quick recap: Known by the press as "Foxy Knoxy," the American study-abroad student and her then boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted, along with local resident Rudy Guede, of the 2007 sexual assault and murder of  college student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy.
Learn more about the murder case.

End of story, right? Not even close. Knox and Sollecito have always maintained their innocence, and their lawyers are working to overturn the case. And now this: A prisoner, Mario Alessi, went on record to deliver new testimony that he says exonerates the two. But as always with this case, nothing about the information is clear-cut.

The convict is serving his own life sentence for a vicious crime. Alessi bunked with Rudy Guede, who was tried for Kercher's murder separately from Knox and Sollecito and supposedly confided in his cellmate.

The latest bombshell: Alessi says that Guede confessed to him that the other two were not present at the time of Kercher's murder. News of the taped testimony caused searches on "amanda knox" to immediately skyrocket.

Reactions predictably fell into Amanda or Meredith camps. Kercher's family called the claim "groundless," while Knox's mother said she was "encouraged" that her daughter's conviction could be overturned.

Meanwhile, Guede denies he ever spoke to Alessi about the case, saying his were the ramblings of a "sick and twisted mind." Stay tuned.

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Six steps you can take to help search engines find and index your content

You’re trying to get your website noticed and search engines are an excellent channel for visibility. In this article, we’ll look at some basic things you can do to make sure your content is being indexed by search engines. The more of the items you can implement below, the more noticeable your site will be to the search engines. 

1. Check your “Robots.TXT” file
One little line of code in a simple txt file can be very costly if it’s blocking your site from search engines. A robots.txt file allows you to tell search engines to crawl or not crawl certain directories or files in your site.

For example, this simple line of code disallows all crawlers (a.k.a. robots):

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
To find your robots.txt file simply type in your domain followed by /robots.txt. For example, here is the robots.txt file for the W3C: www.w3.org/robots.txt. For more details on what can be in this file and how search engines treat it visit robotstxt.org.

2. Make sure your content is indexable
Although search engines have come a long way over the years in terms of indexing all kinds of content on the web, there are still some types of content that may not be fully indexed or not indexed at all. If you are seeing missing content when you look at the search engine’s cache of your page, you may want to check if the content is presented in one of the tough-to-index ways below.

This is also true for people using screen readers due to a disability. A screen reader “sees” the page much in the same way a search engine crawler does – by crawling content and deciphering the elements.

JavaScript
Some JavaScript is crawled by search engines today and more will likely be in the future, but JavaScript (including its related scriping technique AJAX) can still present an issue.  Because most content in JavaScript is usually not indexed, things like navigation, on-page apps, and any other content presented by using JavaScript may not be seen and therefore cannot contribute to the context of the page (or sometimes cannot be followed, in the case of links) for search engines.

Flash
With better indexing capabilities coming about recently, Flash sites are becoming more prevalent in SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), although a site built entirely in Flash is still probably not the best idea if you care about search engine traffic.

Today search engines primarily attempt to index links and text from Flash files. While this is better than it used to be, 100 percent of content still may not be indexed depending on how your Flash site is created. Navigation through “pages” in a Flash file is all contained within a single swf file that lives on one URL, eliminating separate topical content for separate pages.  This can be problematic when you’re up against competitors with much more targeted topical and sub-topical content living on distinct URLs (with links to each of those specific URLs providing even more context).

To minimize indexing difficulties, try to use Flash in smaller pieces. Make sure each topical page of your site has its own unique URL first, then put Flash elements on each page if you like.  Beware though—the more of your content you put in Flash, the less content and context you may be providing to the search engines. 

Image Text
It’s rare to see the entire content of a page posted as a .jpg or other image these days, but it still happens. And when it does, a crawler goes through the code and just sees an image instead of seeing all of the pictures, content, and link text on the page. Search engines simply cannot read any textual content you present in an image, whether it is the entire content of the page or just titles or headers.  You will see the images displayed when you check the cached version of a page.  This is because it is displaying the actual image that is cached, not reading the text content within it.

3. Strenghten your link structure
Links to and from your pages are very important for the “findability” of your pages.  If a page has no links connecting it with any other indexed pages on the web, it may not be found by search engines, since they follow links to discover new content. 

Internal links
Make sure you have a sensible linking structure in place on your site that is crawlable, links to top level as well as deeper level pages, and links to content relevant to the page the links are on.

Crawlable links are links that can be seen by search engines, meaning they’re not in JavaScript or in unindexable links within a Flash file. Also link to different pages within your site, not just from the home page, but all pages. Deeper pages in a site tend to be tougher to find and index, since they are linked to less often, or from more obscure pages in a site. Try to include links to pages most relevant to the content of each page, to give the search engines better context, and to provide a good mix of deeper links. 

You can also include a sitemap page on the site (similarly named xml sitemap files are discussed later).  Provide the sitemap link from your home page and/or from a header or footer on all pages.

External links
If you provide worthwhile content, your site and the pages within it will attract links naturally.  These links from external sites help search engines find and classify your site, especially if your site is newly published. To kick-start your visibility,you can add your site to  trusted directories like The Open Directory Project and Yahoo! Directory.  If it is relevant, you can also add your site to online local listings pages like Yelp, Yahoo! Local or CitySearch. 

Promote your website in your advertising campaigns, add it to your business card, and provide any other means for visibility that you can. If people find your site interesting and useful they will link to it.

To see what your inlinks looks like, go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and type in your URL. Click on the Inlinks button.  Use the dropdowns to look at links to one page or the entire site, or to look at links from all pages, all pages except that subdomain, or all pages except that domain.

4. Create a  sitemap XML file
The major search engines we’re addressing here all support xml sitemap files. These sitemap files are different from the onsite sitemap pages previously described. They are xml files that contain a list of the URLs on your site along with a small amount of information about the URLs that is placed on your server and crawled by search engines. This allows you to tell search engines about your URLs, even if they haven’t crawled them naturally by following links on the Web.

Visit sitemaps.org for more information, or see Yahoo!, Google, and Bing’s support of sitemaps.

5. Verify your “nofollow” and “noindex” tags
Noindex and nofollow tags can be used to block search engines from crawling specific links or content. 

Noindex
The noindex meta tag tells search engines not to index a page.  It looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

To check for noindex tags on any of your pages, right click on the page in the browser and choose “View Source”.  Search for noindex on the page.

For more information on the search engines’ support of noindex, see these Yahoo!, Google and Bing pages mentioning it.

Nofollow
Nofollow tags can be found in a robots meta tag at the page level, or within the <a> tag at the link level.

Nofollow at the page level tells search engine robots not to follow any of the links in the body of the page that the nofollow meta tag is on.  It looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” />

Nofollow at the link level tells search engine robots not to follow that particular link that the nofollow attribute is applied to.  It looks like this:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>link text</a>

To check for nofollows on any page, you can look at the source code of the page by right clicking on the page and choosing “View Source.” Then do a search for the word nofollow in the source code.

For more information on nofollows, see this Wikipedia article, or see Yahoo!,  Google and Bing’s  support of nofollow.

6. Specify your site’s language
You can also help search engines by specifying what language your site is written in. This is a simple meta tag that looks like this:

<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en”>

See all ISO codes at the Library of Congress site for more information.

To check for language meta tags on any page, you can look at the source code of the page by right clicking on the page and choosing “View Source.” Then do a search for the word language (or content-language) in the source code.

Still having problems?
If you’ve tried everything above and believe you still have indexing issues, browse the webmaster guidelines below for more information, troubleshooting, and contact information for the search engines. 

Search Engine Guidelines for webmasters

• Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Bing guidelines for successful indexing

For more on getting your site noticed, refer to Laura Lippay’s previous post “Is Your Site Invisible?”

— Laura Lippay, Director of Technical Marketing

(Image by Kapungo via Flicker, CC 2.0)

Hey Guys,

Anyone who has seen “Mary Poppins” might think that “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is the longest word in the English language. And, if it were a real word, it might be the longest. But gibberish does not a word make. So, what is the “real” longest word in English? Let’s consult our old all-knowing friend, the Web.

A quick Yahoo! search on “longest word in English language” led me to this page from the Oxford Dictionary. The language enthusiasts listed a slew of candidates for the longest word in the English language. Some contenders: radioimmunoelectrophoresis (length: 26 letters; definition: no clue, but probably something medical), floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters; “the estimation of something as valueless“), and antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters; “opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established church“).

All hilariously long words, but according to the Oxford Dictionary, one word trumps ‘em all: the little used “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” That’s 45 letters, kids. Dictionary.com explains that it refers to “a lung disease caused by silica dust.” The word is, thankfully, quite obscure, so some might argue that it doesn’t count. However, Oxford explains that the word (which I refuse to re-type) is included in its dictionaries. So, I say the title belongs to it.

How about the longest English word that’s only one syllable? Again, I turned to the Oxford Dictionary, and it didn’t let me down. Apparently, there are several nine-letter words that hold the record. They are, in no particular order of loquaciousness: screeched, scratched, scrounged, scrunched, stretched, straights, and strengths.

Phew, got all that? Do you guys have a favorite word you like to drop in conversations to make you seem smart? Whenever I’m looking to impress somebody I like to haughtily say the word “thus” whenever making my point. When I want to be passive aggressive, I drop the word “actually” as often as possible. Got any other tricks for impressing and annoying others with language? Please leave a comment below. And thus, you will be heard.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

Using YUI 2 components in the context of YUI 3 implementations is important for some implementers making the transition between YUI 2 and YUI 3. In some cases, we simply want to transition our code in stages, but we want to do so within the context of a YUI 3 implementation pattern. In other cases, we may be relying on high-level components like YUI DataTable that aren’t yet present in YUI 3.

As part of the upcoming 3.1.0 release, Adam has improved the experience of using YUI 2 components from within YUI 3. To this end, he’s added some intelligence to YUI 3’s loader that allows you to load YUI 2 modules directly from your YUI().use() statement:

YUI().use("yui2-button", function(Y) {

	//YAHOO is not a global object; it is sandboxed along
	//with the rest of your YUI 3 functionality.  This line
	//is necessary if you want to use existing implementation
        //code:
	var YAHOO = Y.YUI2;

	//YUI 2 implementation code
	var button = new YAHOO.widget.button("mybutton");

});

You’ll find this functionality in the YUI 3 codeline as of build 1933, and we’ve deployed an experimental YUI 3 build (nominally “yui3.1.0pr2″) and an early build of YUI 2.8.0 functionality wrapped for use in YUI 3.

When you download YUI 3’s latest source from GitHub you’ll find some working examples in sandbox/loader (look for files with the 2in3 prefix). These examples demonstrate the use of a number of YUI 2 modules. We’ve posted a simple live example that shows how to use YUI 2 DataTable within YUI 3, which is one of the most frequently requested transitional features.

Key points about the YUI 2 in 3 effort:

• This work is available in the latest builds of the upcoming 3.1.0 release (build 1933 and later). It is not available in 3.0.0 or in the 3.1.0pr1 preview.
• The project is in an experimental state. Neither the yui3.1.0pr2 build nor the wrapped YUI 2 builds from which it pulls have been extensively tested, although we’ve staged them on the CDN to make it convenient to explore the implementation.
• Download the latest build for examples. You’ll find a few of Adam’s proof-of-concept files in sandbox/loader — other than the simple example above, those are the best code references available until the official 3.1.0 release (which is still about a month out).
• Your feedback in the forums is welcome — and, if you find problems, we’re interested in hearing about them.
• When used this way, YUI 2 does not create a global YAHOO object. YUI 2 components are wrapped in YUI 3 module definitions and they stay contained in the YUI 3 sandbox to which they’re attached. The line from the codesample above, var YAHOO = Y.YUI2;, is needed in order to cut and paste YUI 2-style implementation code — or you can change YAHOO references to Y.YUI2.
• YUI 2 releases are supported back to 2.2.2 — the latest bug-fix release for every minor version is supported (2.2.2, 2.3.1, 2.4.1, 2.5.2, 2.6.0, 2.7.0, 2.8.0). You can specify the YUI 2 version to use as follows: YUI({yui2: '2.7.0'}).use('yui2-button', ...). The goal here is to allow you to avoid migrating to 2.8.0 (or later) prior to a YUI 3 migration.

Gallery Is Easier To Use, Too

Adam’s enhancements to YUI 3’s intrinsic loader have improved the experience of working with the rapidly growing YUI 3 Gallery, too. As of 3.1.0, you’ll be able to bring gallery modules into the page from the use() statement without additional configuration — the loader will be able to determine and resolve dependencies for you and will do the right thing with respect to combo’ing the gallery source code with other YUI files. Here’s an example Dav Glass put together for 3.1.0 that demonstrates the use of his YQL Query gallery module in combination with a pre-release build of 3.1.0.

by Vera H-C Chan

Weak warbling has made the male competitors look like the weak sisters in this season's "American Idol." But in the anchor spot, Big Mike belted out a ballad that brought judge DioGuardi to tears and vaulted him as the man to beat. Check out how the boys' Buzz ranked on performance night.

 

1. Michael Lynche. Last week we joked that he should put his baby girl on stage to get the female vote. The savvy new daddy metaphorically put parenthood front and center with "This Woman's Work." The ballad—and that range of falsetto to big notes—got plaudits and tears. Big Mike went from likable to formidable, and leapfrogged all other male contenders to the top.


2. Casey James. The pretty boy tied his hair back and stripped down to musical basics with a gee-tar and Keith Urban. His "honesty" got him some relieved compliments — but really, with his blond tresses and that audition striptease, he could sit on his haunches, howling at the spotlights and still get a pass. And probably a "Twilight" cameo.


3. Tim Urban. The baby-faced Texan took on "Hallelujah" (which, as Time rightly and rioteously points out, "has become 'And I Am Telling You' for the boys"), and the "Idol" judicial chorus saw the light. Sure, they were grading against his own curve, but a puppy dog who rescues himself is hard to resist.


4. Alex Lambert. A natural talent but achingly petrified, Lambert delivered a decent rendition of "Trouble" underneath all that stiffness. The performance, though, made the panel feel so tense that judge Cowell suggested imagining Jackson in a bikini, thereby ruining the appetites of "Idol" watchers everywhere. 


5. Andrew Garcia. Can someone really peak during Hollywood week? That's what the judges fear for this musician. If you add in searches for "andrew garcia straight up," his cumulative Buzz number would be higher than Casey James. But his "Genie in a Bottle" was no savior, so his chances for a Top 12 spot rides on past glory... and the benevolent spirit of Paula Abdul.


6. Lee Dewyze. The second-best performance started off the night. His "Fireflies" didn't set off any sparklers, but it was enough for the panel to declare him a strong contender. Then again, his weekend-construction-job look of plaids and light blue jeans does cry out for a little makeover. His searches may be lower because people aren't that worried about him — but he may not be wowing audiences either.  


7. Aaron Kelly. Arguably among the most assured of the males, the 16-year-old has been cursed with making bad choices. He too went for a parenthood theme with "I'm Already There" (actually a fascinating choice given his childhood problems), but judge DioGuardi felt a big disconnect. Despite his boy-band potential, he's in the danger zone.


8. Todrick Hall. Run for cover—in this case, a cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love," a move so bold, so out-of-whack, that Hall knows it's his make-or-break moment. He wrung out the rock and shoved the song up to the rafters for a soaring Broadway gospel number. He got kudos for bravery and Judge Cowell commended him for revealing his aspirations (the stage). Looks like the move got Hall some decent Buzz compared to previous weeks — but he's still dead last.

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Some of you may have heard about the Yahoo! – Twitter agreement that was announced a couple of weeks ago. The deal complements the Facebook agreement that we announced in December last year. Both these agreements are key enablers the Yahoo! Open Strategy, which is all about opening up Yahoo like never before to help our users connect with the best of the web. In particular, these partnerships with Facebook and Twitter will help us do several things:

1. Aggregation of social activity from across the web into Yahoo! Updates to enrich products like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! Messenger other content experiences across Yahoo!
2. Distribution of Yahoo!’s social activity and content (we call this, collectively, Yahoo! Updates) from Yahoo! out to Twitter, Facebook, and the web at large (think of Yahoo! as a massive client for updating your status out to your network(s) of choice).

We’ve been working towards enabling our social APIs to support these objectives and today we have accomplished a major milestone by launching a release that upgrades most of our social platforms. We’d like to share with you some specific features we’ve released this week. Many of these won't directly affect you, as developers, but we're excited that our social platform now supports these key capabilities:

1. In order to enable social aggregation, we’ve built a platform that allows us to centrally store credentials issued to Yahoo! by third parties such as Facebook & Twitter. This central platform provides a secure and scalable way for us to aggregate social across all of Yahoo!. Users will soon be able to link their Yahoo! account to Facebook & Twitter thereby making their Yahoo! ID a gateway to their accounts on these third party networks.
2. We’ve upgraded our Updates API such that updates that are inserted into Yahoo! using our default update types will be broadcast to all third party networks that the user has linked their Yahoo! account to. This provides a single entry point to distribute updates to all third parties. As soon as we enable users to link their accounts to third parties across Yahoo! in near future, you will be able to get more distribution by using the Updates API without the need to integrate with multiple third parties. Users will also be able to syndicate their Yahoo! activities, like buzz, ratings, reviews etc to these third party networks.
3. Similarly, you will soon be able to use the Status API to syndicate status updates to all networks, including Yahoo!, in one API call. You don’t have to worry about publishing to multiple third party APIs.
4. You can easily allow your users to login to your site with their Yahoo! ID and request access to submit Updates and Status to Yahoo! (and again then out to Facebook and Twitter), all in one flow via our Hybrid Auth interface.
5. We’ve added the ability for Yahoo! users to import their Facebook friends into their Yahoo! Contacts. The imported friends are available through our Contacts API which significantly increases the number of social relationships and the amount of data you get from the API.
6. We’ve added the ability to add comments & likes on Yahoo! Updates in Profiles and we will soon be enabling this feature on other destinations such as Yahoo! Mail & Homepage. We expect to see a significant improvement in the consumption experience of Yahoo! Updates as we continue to iterate with features such as this which will drive more clicks per update inserted into the Updates API.

We're committed to continuously enhancing our social APIs to provide you with the necessary tools to build innovative and engaging applications. To get started, visit the Social API documentation. Suggestions? We're all ears! Leave them in the comments below.

Shirish Anand Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo! Social Platforms #yui-main ul,#yui-main li{list-style:square;}#yui-main ul{margin-left:1em;}

Efficient Frontier offers insights

Recently, we introduced some new features and functionalities that make it easier and more efficient for you to manage your account and better target your campaigns. These were pretty much a hit with the search marketing cogniscenti.

So how are these updates performing? Pretty well, according to Efficeint Frontier’s Shay O’Reilly. He offers several tips on how to make them perform even better.

— The Team

by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Marion Jones (Searches increased by +9,079%). The former track star, stripped of her Olympic medals for steroid use, has a new career with the WNBA.
2. Tasmanian Devil (+2,527%). A colony of the species that is immune to a contagious cancer could save the population.
3. Botox (+2,476%). Really, we get the treatment for medical purposes.
4. "Twilight Saga: Eclipse" (+1,958%). The movie isn't out till June, but the trailer is here.
5. Soda tax (+1,947%). The latest theory on how to slim people's waist lines: Go through their wallets.

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The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race started on March 6. During the course of the race, teams of dogs and mushers will cover 1,161 miles (1,868 km). To see more photos as they come in try a search for Iditarod sorted by most recent.

Photos from pwrplantgirl, Alaskan Dude, uzumewinter, auroraanc, Cold Press Publishing, and akphotograph.com.

Advertisers and agencies have questions; we have answers

A few weeks ago, we announced U.S. and E.U clearance for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This was, naturally, big news in the search marketing world. That post garnered some 60 comments from our engaged advertising and agency customers. Most of these comments were positive.

Understandably, some of you had questions and concerns about your accounts. But the most important fact for you to know regarding the search alliance is that, as noted in our FAQ’s:

We will begin with the algorithmic search transition, with a goal of completing transition of at least the U.S. market by the end of 2010. We also hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers in 2010 prior to the crucial holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if we determine that the transition will be more effective after the holiday season. All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

What do I do now?
This naturally invokes the question, “So what do I, as an advertiser, need to do in the meantime?” The short answer is “nothing.” Keep on doing what you’re doing. During this time, we’ll continue innovating and we’ll ping you when routine updates and enhancements are made available—just as we do now. When the time comes to transition your account to Microsoft adCenter, you’ll be informed about what you’ll need to do, with instructions on how to do it.

What about all of Yahoo’s bells and whistles?
Several of you asked, in short, if all the bells and whistles that you have come to expect from Yahoo! will be ported over to your future Microsoft adCenter account—things like negative keywords, character length of ads, and so forth. Our answer:

As you might expect, Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search platform and Microsoft’s adCenter platform are not identical, but they offer many similar features, tools and reports. Before any advertiser transitions begin, Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together so that our advertisers have a high-quality product that is as familiar as possible and easy to use.

Finally, here are answers to some of your very specific questions:

Nick Gowdy asks: Are we still going to be able to choose the networks on which we advertise? E.g. Yahoo! Search, Bing Search, Yahoo! Search Partners, Bing Search Partners, etc.

Answer: Once Yahoo! Sponsored Search advertisers are transitioned to Microsoft’s search platforms, advertisers will not be permitted to select traffic solely from Bing or solely from Yahoo!

Avromie asks: Anybody know what will happen with SearchMonkey results?

Answer: Yahoo! and Microsoft are sharing ideas for how to advance the SearchMonkey vision of building an ecosystem for developers, publishers, and the semantic web. The landscape is complex, so we’re working hard to determine which path provides the best value for site owners and end users.

SEM All Stars asks: I use YWA (Yahoo! Web Analytics). Is that still going to work?

Answer: Yahoo! and Microsoft plan to provide high-quality, competitive search analytics, but the details are still being determined. As transition plans are established, we will communicate more detail about what you can expect in terms of analytics tools.

Jo asks: Why not give people the choice—those who want to switch can, but those who want to stay with YSM should be able to have that option as well. Is this possible?

Answer: Sorry, no: All Sponsored Search advertisers will use the adCenter platform for their paid search campaigns following their transition, and the “Panama” system will no longer be available. The post-transition unified search marketplace will provide numerous benefits to advertisers, including increased volume, greater ease of doing business, and increased innovation.

Brett West asks: When the alliance takes effect, will it be necessary to maintain advertising accounts with both Yahoo! and Bing/Microsoft or will they be merged somehow?

Answer: Approximately three months in advance, advertisers will receive multiple communications from Yahoo! and Microsoft that will provide details on what to expect during the transition process. When the transition date arrives, Yahoo! and Microsoft will work together to transition your account to the adCenter platform. You will have flexibility to keep your existing adCenter accounts or create new accounts for the unified search marketplace.

Was your question not answered?
As the agreement between Yahoo! and Microsoft only recently received regulatory clearance, we have not had the opportunity to fully discuss every one of your questions with Microsoft and make a determination on each. But we will certainly provide more details to both agencies and advertisers before the transition occurs. Stay tuned.

For more, visit the Yahoo! Transition Center.

— The Team

Key Scientific Challenges, Entry #6: Machine Learning

read more

Tired of spending countless hours on cleaning up those emails that have piled up over the years? Spring is just around the corner and you know what that means – spring cleaning. Don’t suffer from the stress and get a jump-start on spring cleaning with an organized Yahoo! Mail inbox.

We understand the drill. Make a New Years resolution, and then somehow, months go by, and it gets lost in the chaos of life. But if your resolution was to finally have an organized inbox free of all the clutter, then we can help you!

One of our Yahoo! Mail partners, OtherInbox, created the Automatic Organizer app found right in the handy Applications box on the lower left-hand corner of your inbox. This app allows you to keep your “clean inbox” resolution. Automatic Organizer prioritizes your Yahoo! inbox by automatically filing messages that aren’t from real people into pre-defined folders (Travel, Auto, Social Networking), while leaving you with a clean and clutter-free inbox manageable on your own schedule. Easy enough, right?

So try Automatic Organizer for free and feel good about spring cleaning for a change.

It is tech Thursday and here is a random pick of cool technical links from our bookmarks collection:

• The difference between article, div and section - semantic HTML5 info
• CSS3 Please is an interactive demo of CSS3 features with live rendering
• The graph of the water consumption in Edmonton during the Canada vs US Olympics hockey final is interesting. Guess when the advertising breaks occured.
• USB battery chargers can contain Trojans - another reminder that hardware is as suspicious as software when it comes to security
• Many eyes is a visualization engine by IBM.
• Pure CSS3 speech bubbles is a CSS include to turn any DIV into a speech bubble without any images
• Twitter Quiz is built 100% in YUI and allows you to post little multiple choice quizzes on Twitter
• If you want to re-live the birth moments of the web, you can now download NCSA mosaic on GitHub
• Jonathan Snook explains the ins and outs of background-position-x
• What the JavaScript RegEx engine got wrong and how to fix it has some very good information how to avoid frustration when you come from Perl or PHP to JavaScript

The Pakistan Cricket Board has taken the task of disciplining their players for recent infighting during Pakistan’s tour of Autralia, rather seriously; issuing lifetime bans from international Cricket for former captains, Younus Khan and Mohammad Yousuf.

It is reported they were charged with bringing the game into disrepute over their bickering and attitudes, which in turn affected the entire team and their performance. Other players have been issued with fines and bans ranging from six months to a year.

Speaking to the Cricinfo website, the PCB’s legal adviser Taffazul Rizvi explained the ramifications for Khan and Yousuf.

“They will not be part of any Pakistan team in any format from here on,” he said, adding that the PCB had stopped short of imposing a so-called life ban.

“A life ban means they cannot play domestic cricket or any other similar cricket, but we are not stopping them from that. They can play domestic cricket or county cricket here and abroad.”

Source: Yahoo!7 Sports News

We’d like to know your thoughts on this controversial move by the PCB:

• Is the banning of Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan from playing for Pakistan for life, a fitting penalty?

Leave a comment below or on the question above!

Kate
Community Manager

This morning’s headlines brought news of the passing of Hollywood actor, Corey Haim. Aged 38, it is suspected he died from an overdose after a long battle with substance abuse.

Corey rose to fame in the 1980’s alongside actors such as River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Kiefer Sutherland; the heartthrob of millions. He is best known for his films “The Lost Boys” and “Lucas”, but has starred in countless TV shows, movies and specials in a career spanning almost 20 years.

He has a number of projects currently in post-production and recently returned to fame with fellow actor Corey Feldman in their TV series, “The Two Coreys”.

• What is your favourite TV show or movie starring Corey Haim?

What’s your favourite role played by Corey? Leave a comment below or answer on the question above!

Kate
Community Manager

by Claudine Zap

Just in time for the next season of the hit AMC show, it's "Mad Men" Ken and Barbie. That's right, you can play out all your favorite scenes: Break down the picture-perfect marriage of Don and Betty Draper, or reimagine the workplace flirtation of ad man Roger Sterling and the curvy office manager, Joan Holloway. Martinis and cigarettes not included. What are: girdles, pearls, and overcoats.

The collectors' items are clearly not for the tweener set, who would probably find all that adult stuff boring in the soap opera of a show. The '60s-era drama covers issues like divorce, adultery, drinking, and sexual harassment — and that's just a typical episode. As the New York Times reports, the toy line is part of the premium-priced "Barbie Fashion Model Collection." With a suggested retail price of $74.95 each, you can practically see the unopened toys tucked out of a child's reach.

The dolls' launch will be timed with the premiere of the show's fourth season in July. Fans are already looking on the Web for when to watch. Increases on "mad men tv series" are up 500% in the last week. People want to know about the "mad men season 4 premiere," "mad men's red-headed actress" (that would be Christina Hendricks), "cast of mad men," and "mad men merchandise." Aside from playing with the coolly iconic figures, you yourself can dress the part in a Brooks Brothers "Mad Men" edition suit.

The toy company Mattel said the appeal for a "Mad Men" collection was the carefully constructed time-capsule of the early 1960s, also the time when Barbie was first introduced to the world. We can admit that Betty Draper is a ringer for Barbie but also represents, as one culture professor notes, "the wife who lives in her dream house whose soul is eaten away." And scene.

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Natively, JavaScript has a very limited set of functions for working with numbers located on the global Math object. Mostly these functions are for working with exponents, trigonometry, and rounding. And while these functions are needed and efficient, the Math API has remained unchanged for years, and probably won’t be improved anytime in the near future. So it is up to the developers of JavaScript libraries to create and maintain a component for working with numbers.

The Number component in the YUI 3 Gallery, derived from work originally used on Mint.com, aims to fill in missing number-related functionality. It provides a light-weight set of static functions for working with numbers. The Number component weighs in at about 1.8kb after minification and before gzip; it’s supported by all A-grade browsers.

One of the features in Number that I use the most is the format() function, which injects a formatted number into a string by evaluating the format of the placeholder number in the string. (Note: This is similar to the formatting support Y.DataType.Number currently provides, but rolls up the separate configuration properties which Y.DataType.Number.format accepts into a single formatting pattern string.) The function works with all symbols, but it formats numbers according to the English standard. Here are a few example of how to use format() from its unit test:

var n = 1111.11,
	formatDollars = "$0,0.00'" // use comma and decimal when formatting
	formatPercent = "0.00%", // use decimal when formatting
	formatRound = "0,000", // use comma when formatting
	formatText = "Please add the $0,0.00 to my tab!";

Y.Assert.areEqual("$1,111.11", Y.Number.format(n, formatDollars));
Y.Assert.areEqual("1111.11%", Y.Number.format(n, formatPercent));
Y.Assert.areEqual("1,111", Y.Number.format(n, formatRound));
Y.Assert.areEqual("Please add the $1,111.11 to my tab!", Y.Number.format(n, formatText));

Other useful functions include:

• random(): provides an easy API for getting random whole numbers;
• isBetween()/isNotBetween(): simplifies the evaluation of number ranges;
• radian()/degrees(): when working with the Math trigonometry functions (such as Math.cos()), which expect radians instead of degrees, both radian() and degrees() are useful for converting values.

To use the Number Gallery component, first include the script:

<script
src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?3.0.0/build/yui/yui-min.js&
gallery-2010.02.22-22/build/gallery-number/gallery-number-min.js"></script>

Then include 'gallery-number' in your use() function, to get the following functions:

YUI().use('gallery-number', function(Y) {
	Y.Number = {
		degrees(number),
		format(number, format),
		getPrecision(number),
		isNotBetween(number, number, number, boolean),
		isBetween(number, number, number, boolean),
		isPrime(number),
		radians(number),
		random(number, number),
		roundToPrecision(number, number)
	};
});

These functions were modeled after the native Math functions and, like the Math functions, the functions on Y.Number return NaN if the value provided is not a number. If you would like to contribute to the development of or require new features added to Number, please leave a message on the Forum.

The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms.  Similar to previous updates, you may notice some ranking changes and page shuffling during the process, which we expect to complete over the next few days.

To share your thoughts on this latest update, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

Dan Rampton
Program Manager, Yahoo! Search

by Mike Krumboltz

Toyota's ongoing safety troubles with its vehicles have led to deaths, injuries, and an incalculable amount of bad press. Now, it looks like the embattled car company will be facing class action lawsuits that could cost the company a staggering $3 billion.

These lawsuits aren't from those who were injured or from the relatives of drivers who lost their lives. Rather they come from Toyota owners whose cars have lost a significant amount of value due to the company's high profile problems.

In the past Toyotas were known for their high resale-value. Nowadays, not so much. A buzzy article from Yahoo! News explains that at least 89 class-action lawsuits have been filed. Toyota drivers have contended that the company knew about the safety issues but "concealed them from buyers."

Kelley Blue Book, a guide that lists values for new and used cars, has listed the resale value for recalled Toyotas "by an average of 3.5%." If every Toyota owner was able to sue the company for this decrease in value, well, Toyota could be looking at a serious problem.

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Yahoo’s March Madness hoop dreams; recession brand lessons; data’s not everything; 2010 looking up, and more

Calling all bracketologists
March brings with it green beer, spring flowers and, of course, three weeks of hoops hysteria in the form of the NCAA college basketball tournament. This year’s Yahoo! Sports March Madness line-up is stronger than ever, beginning with our seasoned veteran, Tourney Pick ‘Em. The contest pits Yahoo! users against each other and the “experts,” with cash prizes of up to a million dollars on the line. Something new and cool for this year’s tournament is “Predictalot,” an experimental app from the brainiacs at Yahoo! Labs: Predictalot enables fans to make all types of prestidigitations, then assigns odds and lets users buy and sell them like stocks. Yahoo! has also created a dedicated mobile site just for your tournament picks, as well as a new web show, “Bracket Madness Live.” Picking begins this Sunday after the match-ups are announced, and the usual bracket-busting begins Thursday, March 18.

JWT’s top ten lessons recession brand lessons
Those JWT guys sure are into their “top tens.” The global agency spent a year surveying brand and consumer response to the recession, and came up with ten key brand lessons for surviving a downturn. And then they put them all in a book, which you can download for bupkis—well, in exchange for the usual name/rank/serial number data, anyway.

It’s not all about the data?
Yep, that’s what Dax Hamman says in AdExchanger.com’s Displaying Search column. Hamman, the VP of Display Media at iCrossing, says that “Search and analytics data has helped define media programs for some time…Data is essential to this evolution in media.” But, he also says, “As an industry we must remember that we are talking to real people, not just pixels, and real people will always respond better to something that is visually exciting, has sizzling copy or simply makes them say ‘wow’.” In short, creativity’s still king, kids.

High Standards
It may still seem like the Wild West when it comes to digital advertising but, rest assured, the frontier days are over. Today we have high standards, as ClickZ’s Hollis Thomases explains.

2010 looking up for marketing execs
According to a recent survey of more than 400 North American marketing execs performed by the research firm Frost & Sullivan, marketing execs are viewing the glass as at least half full. Budgets remain flat, staffing and processes remain an issue, and the biggest challenge remains the global recession. But, nevertheless, marketers are finding that life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street.

— Michael Mattis

(Hoops image by Ryan Fung via Flickr, CC 2.0)

by Vera H-C Chan

Was there a calculated generational appeal happening on "American Idol" during the ladies' round? Tuesday night's repertoire included crusty classics from the Animals, Fleetwood Mac, Carole Bayer Sager, Patsy Cline, and even one Charlie Chaplin-penned ditty.

The strategy's not necessarily bad, aside from the risk of being compared to the original. After all, the "Idol" core Search audience are ladies in their late 20s through the 50s. As we've seen in tracking the numbers, whoever the ladies like usually wins the season.

Below, we list the top 8 ladies according to their performance in Yahoo! search.

 

 

1. Crystal Bowersox. The sympathy vote and her assured performance of "Give Me One Reason" (1988) continue to put the dreadlocked mom in the lead. But as "Idol" trackers know (and judge Cowell keeps forgetting), being dubbed the frontrunner can be a curse. (Recall the premature love showered on Danny Gokey, Michael Johns and Melinda Doolittle.)


2. Siobhan Magnus. If the note heard 'round the reality TV world didn't do it, then her acappella lead-in to "House of the Rising Sun" (1964) cemented the Massachusetts contender as the "unique" and "unlikely" one to look out for (except for judge Cowell, who longed for another glass-shattering "moment").


3. Didi Benami. Trembling at the precipice two weeks in a row, she improved this week with the Fleetwood Mac number "Rhiannon" (1976). Sticking with Stevie Nicks (a la "Landslide" from Top 20 week) can eventually pay off.


4. Lacey Brown. Working the Betty-Boop eyes, Brown pumped some vim and vigor into "The Story" (2007), which Judge Randy dubbed a "boring" song (but not Brown's rendition). Her improvement and her underdog status may have helped boost Brown's following.


5. Katelyn Epperly. Her keyboard shrunk from grand to stand-up, but her plastic take on "I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet" (1971) left the panel unmoved. However, never underestimate an Iowa girl's Midwestern appeal.


6. Katie Stevens. The full-throated 17-year-old had the most youthful song with "Breakaway" (2004), and a tune from Idol alum Kelly Clarkson at that. Still, regretful judges saw an identity crisis.


7. Lilly Scott. Among the panelists' favorite, she updated "I Fall to Pieces" (1961) but judge Cowell worried about her risk. Another thing to worry about: For voters who rely on Tivo, her telephone code was cut off at the highlight recap.


8. Paige Miles. The singer went somber with "Smile" (1936) and got a universal kiss of death from the judges. Once again dead-last in Web curiosity, the Florida girl may be singing the classic as her encore song.

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Child safety seats. Toyota cars. Pringles potato chips. All three have been the subject of recent recalls because of concerns about consumer safety. But if you hadn’t watched the news to learn about the Pringles recall, how would you know whether the snacks in your pantry might make you sick? 

Fortunately you can subscribe to feeds from various consumer watchdogs and monitor them on your My Yahoo! page. Here are some good examples to consider:

• The Food and Drug Administration — Recalls/Safety Alerts: This information from the U.S. government keeps you current on a wide range of possible food safety issues.
• Safercar.gov — Vehicle Recalls: This roundup from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration includes announcements about specific car models and components that may have safety concerns.
• Justia’s Auto Recalls Homepage: You can actually browse and select an RSS feed that is specific to your vehicle’s manufacturer by going directly to the website.
• Household Product-Related Recalls: This feed from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission covers possible safety issues on everything from window shades to tea kettles.

You can also explore the sites above for specific recall updates on drugs, dietary supplements, or children’s products, among others.  Subscribing to any of the above feeds will make it much easier to keep tabs on safety information for everyone in your household.
 
Apps mentioned in this post:

• Add Food and Drug Administration — Recalls/Safety Alerts
• Add Safercar.gov — Vehicle Recalls
• Add Justia’s Auto recalls Homepage
• Add Household Product-Related Recalls

Tom
- My Yahoo! Editorial

by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Census jobs (Searches increased by +655%). Out of work? The government is hiring 700,000 door-to-door census takers this summer.
2. Gabourey Sidibe (+264%). The Oscar-nominated actress has a new job: A recurring role on the new show "The Big C," starring Laura Linney.
3. Vote for the Worst (+256%). A new season of "American Idol" means strategies to game the system have begun.
4. Asperger's Syndrome (+233%). The drama "Parenthood" featured a 13-year-old character with the symdrome.
5. Michelle Obama (+219%). The first lady's inaugural ball gown made its museum debut.

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by Mike Krumboltz

There was always something tragic about Corey Haim, even before he died Wednesday at the age of 38. A cautionary tale of the highest order, he reached career heights at a young age, only to see his success undone by addiction.

It was impossible to talk about one Corey without mentioning the other. The day after troubled actor Mr. Haim died at 38, Web searches on his former costar and friend Corey Feldman immediately soared into the stratosphere.

The two Coreys, as they were commonly known, had starred in a slew of films together. Nearly every one of their efforts experienced a boom in the buzz following Haim's death. During their '80s heyday, the pair co-starred in hits like "The Lost Boys," "License to Drive," and "Dream a Little Dream."

As the years went by and their star power faded, the two remained good friends, as well as collaborators. Throughout the '90s, the Coreys starred in several films, albeit films of a markedly lower quality. Efforts included "Blown Away" (an "erotic thriller" costarring Nicole Eggert), "Dream a Little Dream 2," and "National Lampoon's Last Resort."

More recently, two two Coreys appeared in an A&E reality series, appropriately titled "The Two Coreys." The program focused on their quest for work as well as their friendship and bond. The show ran for two seasons, and gave viewers an inside look at the sometimes difficult, sometimes humiliating life of a former child star.

After Mr. Haim's death hit the news wires, Feldman released a statement. In part it read: "This is a tragic loss of a wonderful, beautiful, tormented soul, who will always be my brother, family, and best friend. We must all take this as a lesson in how we treat the people we share this world with while they are still here to make a difference."

Other celebrities tweeted their thoughts on the actor's untimely passing. Haim's former girlfriend Alyssa Milano wrote: "Just woke up to the sad, sad news that Corey Haim passed away. RIP sweet boy." Christina Applegate, Melissa Joan Hart, Ashton Kutcher, comedian Sinbad, and director Kevin Smith also posted their condolences.

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YQL is easy to use. How easy? Check out these three examples:

1) Fetch Twitter search results using YQL + JSONP + a simple JavaScript handler function

Feed readers, see the code on Github.

Run this query in the YQL console:
select * from json where url="http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=puppy"

Note: You could also use YQL’s community table for Twitter search

2) Scrape content off the World Wildlife Fund site and pass it back to a jQuery handler

Feed readers, see the code on Github.

Run the YQL query in the console:
select * from html where url=”http://www.worldwildlife.org/sites/photos/galleries.html” and xpath=’//div[@class=”narrativeText”]/h4|//ul[@id=”speciesList”]’

Note: instead of running all this on the page, you might consider using YQL execute to generate your HTML on Yahoo! servers and pass it back to the handler for insertion into the page. You could also create an adhoc API that leans on Yahoo!'s cache to reduce WWF's bandwidth costs.

3) Convert XML to JSON in your sleep

This script instructs YQL to fetch the “UN News Centre - Top Stories” RSS feed and return it as JSON, and then drops the data on the page using YUI.

Feed readers, see the code on Github.

Run this query in the YQL console:
select * from rss where url=’http://www.un.org/apps/news/rss/rss_top.asp’

Erik Eldridge (@erikeldridge)
Yahoo! Developer Network

Remember having to print out your March college basketball tournament bracket to carry around in your pocket and then having to check off which picks you chose correctly and incorrectly?  Or how it was 10 times worse if you managed the office pool and had to do it for everyone?  Well now there’s no reason to worry about that – your phone will do the work for you.

As millions of college basketball fans feverishly keep an eye on the latest matchups, scores and team standings they’ll be able to get live updates as they happen with the new mobile Tourney Pick’em site, available at http://m.yahoo.com/tourneypickem.

Getting started is easy.  Just fill out your bracket for Tourney Pick’em on your PC starting on March 14, then pick your teams and compete with your friends to see who has the best bracket.  When you track your brackets on your phone, you’ll be able to see live scores and a quick view of your teams’ standings along with how your score measures up to your friend’s.

Also, with integration into the mobile College Basketball site, you’ll be able to get all the news, expert analysis, blogs and tons of Yahoo! Sports content to keep you informed on the tournament results.

The site is available across over 2,000 different phones, so be sure to sign up for Tourney Pick’em on your PC so you can get all your tournament updates on the go too!

Check out what Yahoo! Sports Analyst Greg Anthony has to say about using Yahoo! to keep up with the NCAA Championship Tournament on your PC and mobile device.

Carl Teeple
North America product lead, mobile media products

March is here, which means college basketball tournament time, one of my favorite times of the year, when even the mildest of fans start keeping up with every single game. When the Virginia Techs and the Daytons are crossing their fingers every single week that they stay inside that coveted bubble. When Facebook and Twitter status updates explode every time a top-10 team gets stunned or a star player makes an amazing dunk.

Facebook and Twitter—those sure weren’t around when I was playing in the Championship game 20 years ago against Duke. I’ll never forget the thrill of that victory, all the memories from the entire season, playing alongside Stacey Augmon and Larry Johnson—broken jaw and all.

I’m not on the court anymore, but that’s one of the beautiful things about the NCAA Championship Tournament: With every correct pick, every upset we call, every favorite team that advances, we (the fans) get to share in the thrill. One million dollars certainly doesn’t hurt, either—which is what Yahoo! is offering one lucky fan for submitting the perfect bracket. No perfect bracket in the end? No problem. The best bracket in the KFC- sponsored Yahoo! Sports Tourney Pick ‘em contest wins $10,000 (just ask Michael Lemon—he’s been enjoying his winnings from last year), and there’s even a second-chance contest from TIAA-CREF for the majority of us that must reluctantly accept our busted brackets.

Starting today, on-the-go fans will have access to a great new mobile experience for staying on top of their bracket selections. Yahoo! has created a mobile site where fans can play the Yahoo! Sports Tourney Pick’em game right on their mobile device at m.yahoo.com/tourneypickem. In addition, they’ll be able to get live scoring, game stats, updated schedules, news, and expert analysis from the Yahoo! Sports editorial team.

And it’s even easier these days to get your friends involved (and we all know the real satisfaction comes in beating that one friend who is so sure he’s going win) with Facebook and Twitter integration. Plus, you can be a die-hard fan without having to invest all the time and research. Yahoo!’s Bracket Wizard and Scenario Generator help fans with those quick decisions and allow them to see at a glance which teams to cheer for along the way to ensure that big W.

One of the perks of being a member of the Yahoo! Sports team is that I get to pitch in and offer my best (and presumably spot-on) advice to the masses. For those last-minute updates, fans can tune in to Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Bracket Live, a live and interactive web-show from the folks who brought you the Emmy®–nominated Yahoo! Fantasy Football Live. Tune in on March 17 as Jason King, Brad Evans, Larry Beil and I give you a final rundown on all the immediate updates affecting your teams. Viewers can even send us their bracket, and there’s a chance we’ll help you out with it on our show.

I know you guys are as excited about the next few weeks as I am. If you haven’t already, you better get in the game soon. Tip-off is only 8 days away, and it can’t get here soon enough!

-Greg Anthony, Yahoo! Sports College Basketball Analyst

Take a look at 3 Flickr viewers, each of which displays Flickr photos “on black”, offers continuous scrolling, and allows you to authenticate with your Flickr account to comment or favorite to enhance your Flickr experience. Of course, each app is showing photos that are hosted on Flickr, with attribution and links back to the photo pages on Flickr.

Fluidr presents photos quickly and seamlessly. It even includes some EXIF data, the description and geodata as a map right next to the photo. Our favorite feature? Surprise! It gives you a random selection from one of the 4 billion photos in the Flickrverse. It couldn’t be easier to discover something new.

Darckr delights in its wealth of photo viewing options, from being able to see photos large to creating a skinnable background. We enjoy the ease of which you quickly add links to your photo’s descriptions to view them on black in Darckr. You can even quickly catch-up on your contact’s recent uploads with comment boxes built right into the page and one-click commenting on multiple photos.

Flickriver is a classic. Alex continually updates this application, adding new features which are sure to delight. Besides excellent and uncluttered browsing, you can also get a dynamic badge to display on your profile or website, showing off your own or your group’s photos. We really enjoy pulling up random selections from groups to find hidden gems buried in the pool. The map integration is stellar; search for a place and the map appears at the top of the page.

Learn more about the App Garden in our FAQ.

Photos by spieri_sf, Warriorwriter, anda74, Abizeleth, dog ma and iceman9294.

Applications by haelio, Laurent Henocque and iosart.

Following our changes to the Search experience on Answers last week we received a lot of feedback from you, the community, around the changes we had made.

We’ve reacted to your feedback to make changes that now allow you to add parameters to the URL, which will enable you to sort the search results to your preference. In order to do this, here are the parameters you would need to add:
&orderby=+date (to sort by most recent)
&orderby=-date (to sort by oldest)
For example a search for `dogs` gives this URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs

If you want to sort search results by the most recent, simply add `&orderby=+date` to the end of the URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs&orderby=+date
We will look to add these filters within the page itself over the coming months.

In addition, we have noticed that search terms within quotation marks (“ and “) were returning no results. A few code tweaks later and hey presto – results have now returned!

Further changes

Last but not least, we’ve also taken this opportunity to fix some other bugs on the site:
- For Internet Explorer users we’ve fixed the layout issue on the Ask/Answer/Discover banner.
- We have also made changes to content deletion. Previously, when you deleted your question or answer, it was still showing in the public view of your profile page. From now on when you delete a question or answer, it will be entirely removed from your public profile page

Keep the feedback coming!

I'm pretty excited about heading back to Blighty for Web Directions @media. I've been living in the U.S of A for a couple of years but there isn't anything quite like the Big Smoke. So if you are in London on June 10th-11th why not join me for an amazing line up of speakers?

Our friends, John and Maxine, from Web Directions have kindly given YDN a discount code, "Yahoo", that you can use to get 50 quid off the ticket price. The conference will cover a huge range of the hot topics including:

• HTML5 for web designers
• CSS3
• Server-side JavaScript <--- yours truly
• HTML5 for web application developers
• Geo enabling your web sites and applications
• JavaScript testing
• Designing for the web with grid systems
• Building native mobile apps with web technologies
• Improving your sites' performance

So what are you waiting for? Sign up today and we'll have a pint when I get there.

Web Directions @media
Southbank Centre, June 10 + 11
Just £449+VAT with YDN discount code: Yahoo

Tom Hughes-Croucher (@sh1mmer)
YDN's #1 British Expat

As you know, people from all over the world use Delicious. Although our interface is still English-only (thinking about new languages for the roadmap but nothing concrete yet), you’ll see that our bookmarks, tags and comments appear in many different languages.

Today, we have a brief note to our Australian users that sign into Delicious with a Yahoo! account.

You guys have been selected for a dry-run of the initial integration of Delicious and Yahoo! Messenger. If you move your mouse cursor over any link in your conversation window you’ll see the Delicious logo appear. Click that and we’ll open a ‘Save’ window for you.

Now you can easily save links to review later without interrupting your instant message conversations. Yah!

What about the rest of us? Once we gather some data, have a few cups of coffee, cram in some Foosball action and ensure we have enough machines to handle the traffic, we’ll enable the feature for other English versions of Yahoo! Messenger.

What else are we working on? We can’t tell you, it’s a secret. :p

Following our changes to the Search experience on Answers last week we received a lot of feedback from you, the community, around the changes we had made.

Advanced search changes

We’ve reacted to your feedback to make changes that now allow you to add parameters to the URL, which will enable you to sort the search results to your preference.  In order to do this, here are the parameters you would need to add:

• &orderby=+date (to sort by most recent)
• &orderby=-date (to sort by oldest)

For example a search for `dogs` gives this URL: http://au.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs

If you want to sort search results by the most recent, simply add `&orderby=+date` to the end of the URL:  http://au.answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs&orderby=+date

We will look to add these filters within the page itself over the coming months.

In addition, we have noticed that search terms within quotation marks (“ and “) were returning no results.  A few code tweaks later and hey presto – results have now returned!

Further changes

Last but not least, we’ve also taken this opportunity to fix some other bugs on the site:

• For Internet Explorer users we’ve fixed the layout issue on the Ask/Answer/Discover banner.
• We have also made changes to content deletion.  Previously, when you deleted your question or answer, it was still showing in the public view of your profile page.  From now on when you delete a question or answer, it will be entirely removed from your public profile page

Keep the feedback coming!

by Claudine Zap

Chuck Norris' birthday is afraid of Chuck Norris.

The action star, black belt and all-around tough guy is turning 70. Really. Not that age could put a stop to the actor -- or to searches on him. And yes, he probably was born with that beard.

The action hero's career started back in the '60s, but not as an actor -- as a fighter. According to IMDB, after helping his mom raise his two siblings and graduating from high school in Torrance, CA, Norris left for a stint in Korea. The Air Force vet returned to open a karate studio, winning championships and teaching the likes of Steve McQueen, Priscilla Presley, and the Osmonds.

Despite his movie track record in sporting weaponry of all kinds, as a tae kwon do black belt he emphasized "action and technique over violence." But what you should probably take away from this is that Norris became an unbeatable fighting force. Put it this way: This guy is so scary, the gossip site TMZ made a birthday video for him last year.

It's not surprising that the man has become a myth in his own time. The icon-turned-Internet-meme has gone up against Bruce Lee, kept order in the series "Walker: Texas Ranger," and starred in movies like "The Delta Force," "Missing in Action," and "Firewalker." And he lent his on-screen persona to shill for Republican Mike Huckabee during the most recent presidential race.

The secret to his long career may be new generations finding "serious" old TV shows to be seriously hilarious. Just look at the searches (yeah, yeah, we know -- you don't search for Chuck Norris,  he finds you). Lookups on "how old is chuck norris" have risen an awe-inspiring 2,700% in seven-day searches. Searches also include "chuck norris action jeans" (apparently a real thing sold in the 80s), "chuck norris birthday greeting," "find chuck Norris," "how tall is chuck Norris," and "chuck norris biography." Find more funny Chuck Norris facts.

But our favorite has to be the "chuck norris random fact generator" for nuggets like "Chuck Norris is so fast he can start a fire by rubbing two ice cubes together. "

He is also so old, the star will be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the first annual Actionfest film festival.

Chuck Norris isn't the only star whose age catches interest on the Web.

Here, the top 10 Yahoo! Searches on "how old is."

1.	How Old Is Miley Cyrus (17)		6.	How Old Is Meryl Streep (60)
2.	How Old Is Sandra Bullock (45)		7.	How Old Is George Clooney (48)
3.	How Old Is Justin Bieber (16)		8.	How Old Is Jeff Bridges(60)
4.	How Old Is Mariah Carey (39)		9.	How Old Is Hulk Hogan (57)
5.	How Old Is Kathryn Bigelow (58)		10.	How Old Is the Earth (older than Chuck Norris: 4.5 billion years)

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March 9, 2010 – The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Morgan as its first Executive Director.

As Executive Director, Ms. Morgan will be responsible for continuing to make GNI a leading voice in defending and promoting freedom of expression and privacy in the information and communications technology industry worldwide. Ms. Morgan comes to GNI at a pivotal time and will be focused on advancing GNI’s goals, including increasing membership, encouraging collective action, overseeing the learning and accountability framework, and acting as a public advocate and spokesperson for GNI.

“Technology has the potential to dramatically increase access to information and protect personal privacy. However, increasing demands from governments to limit content, restrict freedom of expression and monitor users represent a worrying threat to human rights,” said Ms. Morgan.

“GNI can lead the way in helping companies make thoughtful and responsible decisions that protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Internet and communications technology users around the world,” Ms. Morgan said. “I am delighted to join GNI and look forward to building its global leadership role as we encourage more companies and their stakeholders to join us in this multi-stakeholder effort to protect freedom of expression and privacy worldwide.”

Ms. Morgan expects to begin her role at GNI in May of this year, joining from British Telecommunications (BT), where she was head of corporate responsibility (CR) strategy, policy and business planning.  She played a key role in BT’s approach to external reporting and corporate accountability.  She also led work on assessing corporate responsibility risk and opportunity.  Ms. Morgan has more than fifteen years of experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors.

Today, GNI also announces the formation of its Board of Directors. The GNI Board of Directors consists of eight representatives from companies, four from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), two from the academic community, two from investment firms, and an independent Chair.  All the NGO, academic and investor seats on the Board are filled, and five company seats remain open for companies that join GNI.

Finally, GNI has published on its website a Governance Charter that establishes a formal decision-making and accountability structure for GNI.  The Charter describes how GNI will be governed in order to ensure integrity, accountability and effectiveness.

The Global Network Initiative is a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.  To learn more, visit our website at http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org

For media inquiries, please contact GNI at press@globalnetworkinitiative.org
About Susan Morgan: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/staff/index.php
GNI Board of Directors: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/board/index.php
GNI Governance Charter: http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/charter/index.php

Last week, we introduced you to some great search features to keep up with the 82^nd Academy Awards. The coveted statuettes have been distributed and the post-show analysis is in full swing!

The buzziest acceptance speeches of the evening:  Sandra Bullock and  Mo’Nique – although the story behind Elinor Burkett and her so-called “hijacked” acceptance speech blazed a path through search logs on Monday.

Best Motion Picture contender that is the most anticipated DVD in search: The Blind Side, followed by Avatar, Precious, and The Hurt Locker.

The buzz, of course, is never simply about who won.  One of our favorite ways to explore major events is to check out the questions they inspired in search.  One standout: “Are the Oscars the same as the Academy Awards?”  (Why, yes!)

A sampling of notable Oscar 2010 search questions:

• Who won Best Actress? – the biggest award category in search questions
• Has Meryl Streep ever won an Oscar?
• What does Hurt Locker mean? – a big theme in search, coupled with “What is The Hurt Locker about?”
• How tall is Kathryn Bigelow?
• Are Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal related?
• Who votes for the Oscars?

Check out The Buzz Log for more Oscar search trends and buzzing topics, courtesy of our friends at Yahoo! Buzz.

Andrea Sandke

Yahoo! Search

Following our changes to the Search experience on Answers last week we received a lot of feedback from you, the community, around the changes we had made.

Advanced search changes

We’ve reacted to your feedback to make changes that now allow you to add parameters to the URL, which will enable you to sort the search results to your preference.  In order to do this, here are the parameters you would need to add:

&orderby=+date (to sort by most recent)

&orderby=-date (to sort by oldest)

For example a search for `dogs` gives this URL: http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs

If you want to sort search results by the most recent, simply add `&orderby=+date` to the end of the URL:  http://answers.yahoo.com/search/search_result?p=dogs&orderby=+date

We will look to add these filters within the page itself over the coming months.

In addition, we have noticed that search terms within quotation marks (“ and “) were returning no results.  A few code tweaks later and hey presto – results have now returned! J

Further changes

Last but not least, we’ve also taken this opportunity to fix some other bugs on the site:

-          For Internet Explorer users we’ve fixed the layout issue on the Ask/Answer/Discover banner.

-          We have also made changes to content deletion.  Previously, when you deleted your question or answer, it was still showing in the public view of your profile page.  From now on when you delete a question or answer, it will be entirely removed from your public profile page

Keep the feedback coming!

– Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers team

    

Favorites are a great way to explore Flickr. You’ll almost always find jewels leading you to new photostreams and groups that you’d otherwise have never found. So next time you’re looking at someone’s photo, mouse over their buddy icon and click “Favorites”. The above photos were found by looking at one of my contact’s favorites, finding a photo, checking out that person’s favorites, etc.

Photos from Arman-h آرمان, Jim Patterson Photography, jasontheaker, LOlandeseVolante, Matilde B., and [Adam_Baker].

by Mike Krumboltz

Gay marriage continues to be a hot-button issue for many Americans. Whenever it's legalized (or banned) anywhere in the world, searches immediately soar. In Washington, D.C., gay marriage was recently legalized, sparking tremendous Web interest.

A lesbian couple who had been together for 12 years became the first same-sex couple to be married in the nation's capital. With the couple's union, Washington, D.C. joined New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, as the only places in the United States that allow people of the same sex to legally marry.

Of course, gay marriage is a specific definition. When things are broadened to include domestic partnerships or civil unions, the list of states grows substantially. According to About.com, California, Hawaii, Maine, Washington state, Nevada, Oregon, and New Jersey allow same-sex couples to "obtain some legal recognition for their relationships."

Interestingly, according to NJ.com, the upcoming United States census will allow same-sex couples in New Jersey to "identify themselves as married." This is significant in that the census is an official government document. The census will allow "same-sex couples [to] label themselves as husband or wife even if their relationships are not recognized by law."

While laws regarding gay marriage vary by state in the United States, other countries have clearer definitions. For example, in Europe, several countries have clear legal-marriage laws. According to an article from the BBC, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway, and Sweden all have legalized gay marriage. Additionally, Portugal, a primarily Catholic country, is expected to legalize gay marriage in the near future. Other countries that have done the same include Canada and South Africa.

As for where gay marriage is banned, the list is a bit longer, at least in the United States. The laws are complicated and can vary between statute bans and constitutional bans. States that have constitutional bans include, but are not limited to, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Michigan, Virginia, Mississippi, and Georgia. User-edited site Wikipedia offers up a complete list.

After Washington, D.C., legalized same-sex marriage, Web searches on "gay marriage states" and "where is gay marriage legal" both soared. Also gaining traction in the Search box: "differences between gay marriage and civil unions."

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