Yahoo Buzz Launches

Yahoo have today launched Yahoo buzz the Internet news and trends tracker. The service tracks content from around the internet and a story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives. Stories with the highest Buzz Scores may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!

Check it out at buzz.yahoo.com

Tags: Yahoo, Buzz, Beta

Yahoo! Video Gets a Facelift

Putting all this silly business about the potential buy out from Microsoft to one side for the moment, Yahoo! seem to have taken this time and the extra coverage to promote the new and revamped services they have to offer.

Hot on the heals of Yahoo Live, the video side of things is next to get an update, here is what they have changed…

• A wider viewing experience: Yahoo! Video supports a 16:9 cinematastic player that’s far ahead of what most sites are offering. And the video looks great.

• More content: Yahoo! Video is now about the whole spectrum of video found throughout Yahoo!, including music, movies, TV, news, sports, and a whole lot more. And we’re still committed to featuring the best videos from our talented community of independent video creators.

• Bigger files: Speaking of our creators, we’ve raise the max file size to 150 megabytes, so you can upload longer, higher quality video.

• An expanded browsing experience: Discover more video through networks, playlists, and related videos.

• More sharing: Not only can you embed individual videos on your blog or site, you can create your own curated video experience with embeddable playlists. Take a look at this example.

• More in-depth profiles: Your profile page now says a lot more about you. Pick your own nickname, fill the page with your favourite playlists and videos, add contacts and fans, and read and write comments.

As well as removing some of the stuff that Yahoo say you won’t miss such as…

• Comment titles: You no longer have to title your comments and you can reply to other people’s comments. You can also delete comments you’ve made, as well as unwanted comments on videos you’ve uploaded.

• Blank video players: Our embeddable player now carries the keyframe of your video, and it has a full-featured related-videos carousel. With our 16:9 aspect-ratio, I think it’s probably the best embeddable player out there.

 

Tags: Yahoo!, Video, Update

Digsby is here…well almost

Thats right after 2 years of development Digsby has arrived. The service is an IM client that helps you organise everything under one roof! It lets you log in to your existing AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk and Jabber accounts, merging everything into one buddy list. Add your email and social network accounts and almost everything you need to know about your online world is just one click away!

Here is the current feature list for the download.

Instant Messaging

One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber Accounts. Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag + drop tabs out into their own windows for important conversations. Rename contacts with an alias so you don’t have to remember buddy names like “giantsfan123″. If one of your friends has more than one IM account you can combine them into a single merged contact to eliminate duplicate buddies. Send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window. The InfoBox lets you check everyone’s status message and profile just by moving your mouse down the list. Changing your status has never been easier - just one click right on the buddy list! Multitask while you chat. Minimize the IM window and you see popups of new IM’s. Best of all, you can reply right from the popup and get back to what you were doing. Log conversation history and find the information you need in our search enabled log viewer. And so much more.

Email

Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby. Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts. The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click. Perform actions such as “Mark as Read” or “Report Spam” right from the email InfoBox. Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.

Social Networking

Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook or MySpace account (other network support coming soon). Receive alerts of events such as new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc. The social network InfoBox gives you a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to. Everything from new photos, to status updates, to upcoming birthdays is just a click away.

Personalise

Customise digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel. Change the way your conversations look with themes - everything from simple AIM style windows to 3D conversation bubbles. Complete control over the layout of buddies on the buddy list. Change everything from buddy icon size and position to whether or not to show a snippet of a buddy’s away message. Sort your buddy list how ever you want! You can organise buddies manually, by status, by service, by name or by log size to place those you communicate with most at the top. You can even choose a secondary sorting method. Customisable notification system lets you choose what events you want to be alerted about and how.

Other

Digsby offers complete synchronisation between computers and installations. Everything from the skin you choose to your pre-defined status messages follows you from place to place. You can place a widget on your blog, website, or social network profile and chat with visitors right from digsby. Manage multiple simultaneous file transfers from one simple transfer manager.

Having said all this however digsby is still currently in private beta so if you do want to try this out drop them an email and they will send you an invite.

Tags: digsby, IM+Client, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google+Talk, Jabber, Facebook

Yahoo! Gives Small Businesses Room to Grow Online

Yahoo! Small Business today announced a new service that gives small businesses unlimited room to grow online. The new Yahoo! Web Hosting service includes unlimited disk space, data transfer, and email storage space, for one low price of $11.95 per month. The new plan offers small businesses a simple, inexpensive solution for launching a new business or growing an existing one online, while eliminating worries about bandwidth and storage limits. With more than 1.5 million customers, Yahoo! Small Business is one of the world’s leading providers of reliable, secure hosting services for small businesses.

Yahoo!’s unlimited hosting service has “easy-to-use web” site design tools that allow business owners with little or no technical knowledge to quickly create professional-looking web sites. Yahoo!’s service also includes a free domain name, 1,000 personalized email accounts, live 24-7 toll-free customer support, and a new 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

To help small businesses generate leads and get noticed online, Yahoo! automatically submits its customers’ web sites to top search engines. In addition, web site building tools automatically optimize customers’ sites to be found by search engines. Other features help convert site visitors into customers including automatically generated maps and driving directions, business contact information on every page, compelling content guides, and lead submission forms. Yahoo! Web Hosting also makes it easy to quickly attract web site traffic by providing discounts on marketing services such as sponsored search advertising and email marketing.

“Yahoo! has taken a major step forward in delivering more value to small business owners looking to grow through the Web. Whenever you reduce costs and complexity for small business owners, you add tremendous value to their companies by freeing them to focus on their core businesses, and not worry about technical issues like bandwidth and storage — which they don’t understand,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president for SMB infrastructure solutions at AMI-Partners. “This is an aggressive move to lower the barrier to entry for small business owners, and significantly boosts the value Yahoo! offers small businesses looking for complete solutions for getting online.”

The unlimited-service offer follows a series of significant enhancements to Yahoo!’s hosting solution that focus on making it increasingly easy for entrepreneurs to quickly create attractive, high-quality web sites, including:

• Award-winning tools that guide small business owners through a simple, step-by-step process to open their businesses online;
• Web sites that are optimized right out of the box for lead generation;
• High-impact, professional site designs created with specific types of small businesses in mind, from attorney’s offices and home-repair services to accountants and spas;
• One-step email setup and an award-winning online email interface;
• A lead-capturing tool that automatically sends the business owner an email whenever potential customers submit contact information or request service from the business;
• Detailed guidance on how to develop compelling content for each page of the small business owner’s web site

Tags: Yahoo

Microsoft to buy Yahoo?

The BBC are reporting that Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company for $44.6bn in cash and shares

The BBC go on to say The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo’s board, is 62% above Yahoo’s closing share price on Thursday. Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company. It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft.

“We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.

 

More news to follow

Tags: Microsoft, Yahoo

Yahoo! Announces Support for OpenID

Yahoo! today announced its support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. OpenID, an open framework based on proven Internet technologies, enables users to consolidate their Internet identity, eliminating the need to create separate IDs and logins at all of the various websites, blogs, and profile pages they may visit in the course of their online session. In addition to the many leading Yahoo! services users already enjoy, anyone with a Yahoo! ID will be able to use the same ID for easy access to any sites that support OpenID 2.0.

Yahoo!’s initial OpenID service, which will be available in public beta on January 30, enables a seamless and transparent web experience by allowing users to use their custom OpenID identifier on me.yahoo.com or to simply type in “www.yahoo.com” or “www.flickr.com” on any site that supports OpenID 2.0. Alternatively, web sites that accept OpenID 2.0 will be able to add a simple “Sign-in with Your Yahoo! ID” button to their login pages that will make it even easier for their users. Yahoo! is working with several partners, including Plaxo and JanRain, to make it possible for users to access these sites with their Yahoo! ID from the first day of the public beta.

“A Yahoo! ID is one of the most recognizable and useful accounts to have on the Internet and with our support of OpenID, it will become even more powerful,” said Ash Patel, executive vice president of platforms and infrastructure at Yahoo!. “Supporting OpenID gives our users the freedom to leverage their Yahoo! ID both on and off the Yahoo! network, reducing the number of usernames and passwords they need to remember and offering a single, trusted partner for managing their online identity.”

“Yahoo!’s commitment to an open web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement and Yahoo!’s adoption of the standard today immediately triples the total number of people able to use OpenID,” said Scott Kveton, chairman of the Board of Directors for the OpenID Foundation. “With Yahoo! actively engaged with the OpenID Foundation and its community to promote OpenID, Yahoo!’s users will be able to more easily access the many sites across the web that support the standard, and the potential for access to Yahoo!’s vast international user base will create an even more powerful incentive for additional websites to begin accepting OpenID users.”

Yahoo!’s implementation is based on the OpenID 2.0 specification, which Yahoo! worked closely with the OpenID foundation and community to finalize in December 2007, and includes new features that improve security and usability of OpenID, making it the most user-friendly single sign-on and online user-authentication standard. Yahoo! users who log in with their Yahoo! ID on OpenID sites will have the added protection of Yahoo!’s sign-in seal wherever they go on the web. In addition, no email or IM addresses are revealed or disclosed as part of the login process, which further helps protect users from phishing or other attacks.

“Plaxo believes that users should be able to carry their identity and personal information with them wherever they go across the social web,” said Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect of Plaxo. “Yahoo! is making that vision a reality by becoming an OpenID provider. Yahoo! users will be able to easily access Plaxo and other services without having to create and remember yet another password. This also paves the way for a secure approach to data portability between the various services people use across the web.”

“At JanRain, we believe the evolution of the Internet and the next generation of web applications hinges on universal adoption of a secure, portable digital identity,” said Larry Drebes, founder and vice president of engineering for JanRain. “JanRain is a leader in OpenID libraries, tools and applications, and has worked closely with Yahoo! to integrate its new OpenID offering into our services. The addition of 248 million Yahoo! users to the OpenID ecosystem will be a tremendous milestone in expanding the user base for OpenID.”

Yahoo! will continue to improve the OpenID user experience and to educating its users. In addition, Yahoo! intends to expand its support of OpenID by adopting other elements of the program as the service evolves. More information and updates can be found at http://openid.yahoo.com.

Tags: Yahoo, OpenID

Yahoo! and Belo To Offer Local Video Online

Belo and Yahoo! today announced an agreement that designates 13 of Belo’s television stations as the exclusive provider of local news video to Yahoo! News in their respective markets. Yahoo! will host dozens of local news video clips each day, provided by Belo’s television stations, which will run within the local news pages of Yahoo! News. Local news video will also be available to all Yahoo! users when major news breaks in local markets.

“Video usage is one of the fastest growing areas in the online space and Belo’s television stations and Web sites produce some of the most compelling video in their respective markets. Given Yahoo!’s leadership in online news, this partnership is yet another way for both companies to offer users a richer online experience while jointly creating business models which recognize that value,” said Dunia A. Shive, president and Chief Operating Officer of Belo Corp.

The video partnership between Yahoo! News and Belo’s television Web sites adds to the previously announced agreements between Yahoo! and Belo’s newspaper Web sites. The companies will share advertising revenue generated from the video clips under the new agreement, which encompasses all Belo television markets except Dallas and Boise, including:

    -- Austin                              -- Portland
    -- Charlotte                           -- San Antonio
    -- Hampton/Norfolk                     -- Seattle/Tacoma
    -- Houston                             -- Spokane
    -- Louisville                          -- St. Louis
    -- New Orleans                         -- Tucson
    -- Phoenix

“For many consumers visiting Yahoo! News, there’s nothing more relevant than local updates. The addition of local news video from 13 new markets is a huge win for the people who have made Yahoo! News the number one news site on the Internet,” said Alan Warms, vice president and general manager of Yahoo! News. “Given the surge in demand for online video on Yahoo! News, and across the Internet, this deal with Belo’s television stations makes a lot of sense for our users.”

The addition of Belo news video expands the local news TV coverage on Yahoo! News, to now include local news video in 18 of the top 25 markets in the country. Belo’s television stations and associated Web sites are among the most viewed on-air and online in their respective markets, operating the first or second ranked television station and television Web site in 11 of the markets covered under this agreement.

The current partnership between Yahoo! and Belo began in 2005 with a job posting distribution agreement between Belo’s newspapers and Yahoo! HotJobs. Over the years, the two companies have discussed other ways of working together, including distribution of Belo news video, which has culminated with today’s announcement. Yahoo! and Belo also partner as part of a larger newspaper consortium that involves Yahoo! and 22 newspaper publishing companies representing about 550 daily and weekly newspapers. That partnership encompasses graphical advertising technology, cross-selling online advertising inventory, content distribution, and search.

SOURCE: Yahoo!

Tags: Yahoo, Belo

Microsoft, Google, & Yahoo! Pay Millions to U.S.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have entered into settlements with the US to resolve claims that they promoted illegal gambling. The total amount of the three settlements is $31.5 million.

Microsoft’s settlement, totalling $21 million, consists of $4.5 million to the US and a $7.5 million to the ICMEC

The Google Settlement of $3 million, was for on-line gambling advertisements between 1997 and December 2007.

Yahoo agrees to $4.5 million worth of online ads (Valued at $1.5 million per year) for a public service advertising campaign. To begin in Jan 2008 it will be designed to inform and educate users that use online or telephone sports book making in the United States may be subject to arrest and prosecution.

Tags: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, ICMEC

PDFs to get contextual ads

The deal offers publishers an opportunity to monetise their PDF files and could provide a sizeable new audience for advertisers - Adobe claims that 90% of PCs have one of its readers.

The contextual, clickable ads will appear in a panel to the right of the content, and will be served dynamically. Yahoo! will sell the placements on a CPC basis, sharing the revenue with Adobe and the publisher.

Users of PDFs could provide a valuable audience for advertisers, according to Adobe’s Rob Tarkoff:

“By partnering with Yahoo! on this innovative advertising service we are creating opportunities for publishers to build new businesses around unique content that previously was just given away or not available to a mass online audience.”

The scheme launches in beta today, with IDG InfoWorld, Wired, Pearson’s Education and Meredith Corporation the first publishers on board.