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Concept Collaboration: “Step Into the Future”

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 22:38:25 +0000

Well hey there, guys! Are you a photographer? Do you believe in community? Do you believe that the world AND the photography industry can look a lot different than it does now? Then this message is for you! For August and September, Concept Collaboration collaborated on the theme “Step Into The Future” – in other words, what our futures look like for us, how we’re going to live out our dreams, and the emotions that come with that.

We’re excited – 3.7K photos have been submitted to the Concept Collaboration Flickr group! We extended the last concept across two months due to travel schedules, timing, and resources, so that more images could be submitted, but now we’re back on our month-to-month track. We encourage you to participate in this growing community of collaborators around the world and with our monthly concepts as they become available.

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For each concept we release, we usually have a few favorites. Here are some really beautiful images from “Step into the Future,” spanning August and September:

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For every concept created each month, Concept Collaboration looks for one outstanding photographer. We believe the photographer we choose has the most creative and promising approach to his or her art. This photographer wins a camera bag from our incredible sponsors at Vanguard, a company supporting photographers around the world with innovative camera gear. In addition, we feature this photographer in our monthly Flickr Blog post. This month, we’ve chosen Ryan Closson as our winner!

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Ryan’s image, “Divergence,” is an artful masterpiece of mindful trickery, using a gravity-defying image to represent his beautiful idea. In Ryan’s words, “We all know struggle. There is always a struggle. Some seem to plague us forever and burn with intensity, others are subtle, yet so seemingly cruel. It is undeniably true that without struggle there is no progress and with every breathe that we breathe we find ourselves moving forward toward the future. While it may be that the future lies in the shadows it always comes the opportunity to change. We may not be able to change the wind, the seasons, or the circumstances of this life we must take personal responsibility to be our own guiding light and to reassure ourselves, Do Not Fear The Future!” I love how the image shows the main subject of the ground, but with his hands tied, seeming to break through by defying gravity, regardless of being tied down.

The Concept Collaboration movement believes in a ripple-effect of friendships, business partnerships, and new ideas growing forth. After 9 months of meeting up, we strongly believe our in-person meetups achieve this purpose. Our most recent meetup was in Perugia, Italy. Sign up for future meetups here.

Our concept for October is “The Foreigner’s Journey.” Read more about it and submit your images to the Concept Collaboration blog and our Flickr Group.

St. Louis Buses Run with LHP Telematics and Hortonworks

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 16:00:44 +0000

Metro Transit of St. Louis (MTL) operates the public transportation system for the St. Louis metropolitan region. The organization’s mission is “Meeting the region’s transit needs by providing safe, reliable, accessible, customer-focused service in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Meeting the Challenge to Provide Safe, Reliable Public Transport

To ensure the safety of passengers and the proper use of public funds, MTL has always performed regular maintenance on its bus fleet. But lacking detailed data on how bus components were actually performing, the agency maintained vehicles retroactively. It replaced parts after they failed, or simply bought new buses.

Register for the Webinar, Hear MTL Tell Their Story

This supported MTL’s objective of assuring the safety of its passengers and the reliability of its service, but the team suspected that it often replaced parts or discarded entire buses even when replacement wasn’t necessary.

A lack of ongoing, reliable machine data from its buses forced a tradeoff between the two parts of MTL’s mission. “Safe, reliable and accessible” goals conflicted with its mandate to be “fiscally responsible.”

MTL decided to address that conflict by building a proactive bus maintenance program, and in 2002 the city developed the “K Plan” to consolidate its various maintenance divisions. Prior to 2002, each division reported to a different facility.

The specific goals for this K Plan consolidation included:

Reduced maintenance time for buses
Accurate predictions for the life spans of different components
Accurate inventories of required parts to have on hand when needed
Balanced maintenance workloads so that buses could come in for maintenance at preset, predictable intervals
Reduced costs for parts and labor

Combining all the historical data on bus component failures

With the K Plan’s new consolidated structure, MTL also wanted to consolidate its historical data on component failures across all buses and all divisions. The goal was to identify predictable patterns amongst all the bus parts and then derive warning signals that might indicate likely failure and the need to replace something before it broke.

However, data collected from the distinct maintenance centers was managed manually in spreadsheets. This approach was inefficient and antiquated, and MTL systems for failure prediction began to break down—to say nothing of the buses they were supposed to maintain.

Complying with changing emissions standards

Another challenge that the K Plan promised to address revolved around understanding constantly changing emissions standards and the controls necessary to meet them. For example, in 2007 stringent emissions specifications drove up the cost per mile driven to 92 cents/mile. Subsequent emission standards for 2010 and 2012 proved to be increasingly strict. MTL needed a way to control the increasing costs of driving its buses, while still complying with the emissions standards.

Adjusting to a smaller work force

Another key challenge MTL faced was the reduction in its available labor force. A smaller number of skilled laborers meant that MTL needed a way to do more maintenance with fewer people while maintaining the same service levels.

In addressing these three challenges, MTL wanted a strategy to fit all districts and maintenance centers – they needed a “cookie cutter” solution. That solution needed to provide a consolidated view of the maintenance centers across all districts with the ability to proactively report status to the Chief Mechanical Officer.

Partnering with LHP Telematics and Hortonworks for Proactive Maintenance

As MTL developed its proactive approach to bus maintenance, it focused first on performance enhancements. MTL leaders wanted to reduce the labor needed to do costly in-field maintenance, with a particular emphasis on reducing the amount of time that mechanics needed to repair a bus in the field.

To meet this goal as a critical component of the K Plan, MTL developed a new “Smart Bus”. The Smart Bus generates machine data as it operates. That data helps the Smart Bus predict and schedule its own maintenance work. After other Smart Bus approaches stalled, MTL chose to partner with LHP Telematics (LHPT) and Hortonworks to enhance their maintenance program and bring the Smart Bus idea to fruition.

MTL currently leverages the existing multiplex and I/O as well as data from all of the main bus subsystems. The LHPT system uses the existing CANbus to gather over 330 data points taken at 10-second intervals from various components. The data is compressed, transferred into the LHPT backend system, and then stored on Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP™).

Using HDP, the LHPT data science team runs algorithms for pattern recognition to correlate events to component failures and weed out maintenance inefficiencies. The data scientists look at fault codes collected from the bus and then match the codes to failure events on the bus. With this process to recognize recurring patterns among the day-to-day driving events, MTL is able to better predict when a component on a particular bus will fail, which allows them to proactively service the bus prior to any component failures. This prevents a bus from being taken out of service long term due to unscheduled maintenance events.

Currently, over two-thirds of the MTL buses have been equipped with the LHPT and Hortonworks solution, with complete implementation expected in 2018.

The Results: Average Time Between Bus Failures Improved By a Factor of Five

“We did not expect to get as much information as we did with access to data from HDP,” says Darren Curry, Chief Mechanical Officer for MTL. “We are always finding something new, finding things that we didn’t know about.”

MTL is now able to run highly granular reports that give their maintenance centers an unprecedented level of visibility. MTL migrates more and more data into HDP, including telematics functionality for predictive analytics. The algorithms now run automatically and can look at much larger amounts of data than they ever had before.

According to Curry this access to machine data brings three important benefits to MTL:

It allows them to make the best business decisions possible
It reduces their operating and labor costs
It improves safety for their customers

For example, before implementing this solution MTL faced an average Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of 4,000 miles. Today with the K Plan, the MTBF has been improved to 21,000 miles and MTL estimates that with the LHPT and Hortonworks solution on the Smart Bus, the MTBF can be further extended to 30,000-35,000 miles.

With these results, MTL soon realized that they could run the buses for much longer, thereby increasing their return on investment in their fleet. Previously, buses were being retired after 35,000 miles per year at 12 years and currently MTL is able to continue using the buses up to 60,000 to 70,000 miles per year at 15 years. This is a 2x improvement on mileage and 30% increase in bus lifespan.

Originally MTL thought the K Plan would cost more to install, because it involved retrofitting their existing buses with new hardware, but the investment has been more than offset by savings in other areas. MTL was able to cut its original operating, maintenance and fuel costs by 50%. With the newer solution from LHPT and Hortonworks on the Smart Bus, operating costs have decreased from 92 cents per mile to 43 cents per mile, and MTL estimates that it will be able to reduce costs by another 20-30%.

The K Plan and Smart Bus have not only enhanced MTL’s maintenance program, they have changed the way MTL does business.

Next Steps: Buses Submitting Their Own Work Orders, Ordering Their Own Parts

Curry sees these benefits continuing to grow. “I believe that we will not only sustain our current performance, I still believe that we will be able to increase our performance with LHPT and Hortonworks another 2-3 times on top of what we have achieved,” he says. “Everything is very positive and I am really excited about how we move forward from here. This solution will give us a lot of tools to analyze data and look at things differently than what we were doing before. This really changes everything.”

MTL envisions a series of next steps to help refine the Smart Bus implementation. Using machine-learning algorithms, MTL wants to isolate the important events on its buses and create a predictive model for these events.

This will allow buses to:

Make their own work orders with detailed troubleshooting steps
Order required parts and have them shipped to where the bus is housed
Alert maintenance crews as to when a major failure is likely
Report on overall health of components on a regular, proactive basis to help avoid a catastrophic failure
Change fueling procedures based on how much time buses spend idling

Eventually MTL would like to extend their K Plan to other fleets for vehicles such as para-transport buses and service vehicles.

About Metro Transit of St. Louis

Metro Transit of St. Louis provides one of the nation’s top-performing transit systems with best rankings for on-time performance, vehicle reliability and safety. MTL prides itself on its improvements in vehicle maintenance that have saved taxpayers more than $2.5 million per year by doing more with less.

Metro Transit of St. Louis is committed to making its community a better place to live and work.

About LHP Telematics

LHP Telematics is an industry leader in creating custom telematics solutions for the heavy equipment OEM marketplace, transportation, service, and construction fleets. LHP Telematics offers the most configurable end-to-end monitoring platform on the market. A deep understanding of the equipment in the field, scalable cloud services and Big Data analytics capabilities sets LHP apart from the competition.

More About Hortonworks Solutions for Connected Vehicles

Learn how Hortonworks DataFlow captures data for real-time analysis and streaming into HDP
Read the Diginomica article: Using Hadoop inside Jaguar Land Rover, Zurich Insurance and the Home Office
Download the White Paper: The Connected Car and the Data Supply Chain

The post St. Louis Buses Run with LHP Telematics and Hortonworks appeared first on Hortonworks.

The Path to Wellness through Big Data

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 15:00:37 +0000

The Personalized Medicine Initiative (PMI), based out of the Life Sciences Institute of the University of BC, has deployed HDP and PHEMI Central Big Data Warehouse to collect, store and manage genomic and clinical data for Molecular You (MY).

PHEMI is a Hortonworks Technology partner and in this blog, Richard Proctor, General Manager, Global Healthcare at Hortonworks interviews PHEMI’s Roy Wilds, Dir. of Product Management, along with PMI’s Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of Molecular You, Rob Fraser, to discuss this groundbreaking work.

Join the webinar on Thursday October 8 at 10 am Pacific time to learn more: Register.

Richard Proctor, Hortonworks: Tell us more about Molecular You.

Rob Fraser, PMI (Molecular You): Molecular You is an exciting project that will provide 20,000 participants a molecular level understanding of themselves over the next 20 years. It will provide scientists, clinicians and participants with new information necessary to detect disease risk and initiate early intervention to avoid disease manifestation before it becomes dangerous and costly. This project is being executed and run by the Molecular You Corporation in partnership with the Personalized Medicine Initiative (PMI), based in the Life Sciences Institute of the University of BC.

We are creating a health guidance system based on the participant’s molecular makeup, clinical evidence and body of scientific knowledge. This “user’s manual“ will contain molecular level information (like genetic information, blood proteins and metabolites, gut microbes) combined with vital sign information collected from wearable technology (such as heart rate, blood pressure, activity level monitors) and environmental conditions. This data will be securely stored in a PHEMI Central data warehouse, then integrated and analyzed using computational biology approaches cross-referenced with the latest scientific and clinical findings to objectively characterize health status and to identify potential transitions from health to disease using various molecular metrics.

Richard Proctor, Hortonworks: So, how is PHEMI Central and HDP being used for this project?

Roy Wilds, PHEMI: The power behind this exciting project is PHEMI Central’s data management solution, tightly integrated with Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP™). These solutions bring the scale, performance and rigorous privacy, security and data governance required for precision medicine applications like this. For Molecular You, it means volumes and varieties of data will be collected and managed – from gene sequences to clinical care notes to personal activity tracking.

Rob Fraser, PMI (Molecular You): This is an exciting time for medicine. With new technologies that quickly and affordably sequence a person’s genome, and big data technologies that enable us to make the most of our data, we are in the position to significantly improve individual patient outcomes, save millions in healthcare costs, and open the doors for new discovery, prevention and treatment methods.

We have a mission to introduce technologies for personalized medicine into the frontlines of healthcare, and we realized that big data could give us the ability to rapidly adapt to the pace of innovation needed in this space. Molecular You Corporation, as a spinoff of the PMI, will sequence and analyze each participant’s genome for disease risk factors. In addition, it will collect proteome, metabolome, microbiome (and other Omic data), physical activity and other health indicators on a regular basis.

Richard Proctor, Hortonworks: Tell us about how PHEMI Central & HDP work together.

Roy Wilds, PHEMI: PHEMI Central leverages HDP, which provides an open platform that supports existing IT investments and unlocks the broadest opportunities from Hadoop, by indexing and cataloging features to deliver a system that scales economically, allowing Molecular You to more effectively collect and analyze data over time. PHEMI Central and HDP streamline big data collection, management, analysis, and application development. PHEMI Central combines full-life cycle data management and fine-grained access control with HDP, a combination ideal for, production-ready big data in healthcare and other data-driven markets.

Richard Proctor, Hortonworks: We know privacy and security is a massive issue in precision medicine. Can you comment more on this?

Rob Fraser, PMI (Molecular You): As you can imagine, genomic information is about as personal as it gets. Privacy for the individuals in the program is critical for Molecular You, and PHEMI and Hortonworks are able to provide a secure big data solution that lets us easily collect and share data with the various research organizations contributing to this project and, at the same time, protect the privacy of our program participants. This opens the door to the broader healthcare ecosystem – including partner organizations conducting research on cancer, pharmacogenomics, and brain health studies – so that they can utilize our collected data to conduct research and find solutions that improve diagnosis, treatments and overall general wellness.

Roy Wilds, PHEMI: PHEMI Central applies a Zero Trust Data approach, giving Molecular You control over who can access what data for what purpose. Consent, data sharing agreements and privacy policies can all be enforced automatically within the system. Sensitive data can be dynamically de-identified before sharing. PHEMI Central allows Molecular You to automatically provide differing views to their various users and applications – from researchers only allowed access to de-identified data, to experts consulting on specific tests, to clinicians who need to view personal health information to provide participant consultations – all while protecting privacy and enforcing data sharing agreements.

Richard Proctor, Hortonworks: I’d like to close by adding that we believe PHEMI fills an important gap in the marketplace by bringing privacy to regulated industries like healthcare and life sciences, where protecting private and sensitive data is paramount. We’re proud to be part of the Molecular You project and we look forward to helping PMI and other life science leaders leverage Hortonworks Data Platform and PHEMI Central to realize the tremendous potential of precision medicine.

Learn more

Join PMI, PHEMI and Hortonworks in a webinar on Thursday October 8 at 10 am Pacific time. Register.

PHEMI’s vision and strategy for big data whitepaper Zero Trust Data: Solving the Data Dilemma. Zero Trust Data applied in the personalized medicine arena: PMI video.

Hortonworks and PHEMI Partnership page

PMI/MY (http://personalizedmedicineinitiative.ca)

The post The Path to Wellness through Big Data appeared first on Hortonworks.

Make Your Searches Matter With Yahoo and DoSomething.org

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 14:00:17 +0000

By Olivia Khalili, Director of Yahoo For Good

Our Yahoo For Good team is constantly looking for opportunities to leverage our resources and the talent of Yahoo employees to enable the next generation of creative doers and thinkers. We’re proud to announce a month-long initiative between Yahoo and DoSomething.org, a leading organization for social change in the world. We see this exciting campaign as a natural extension of our commitment to social impact.

Search from do.yahoo.com and DoSomething.org gets 10 cents!*

DoSomething.org tackles issues that are important to young people worldwide. From STEAM learning (a topic near and dear to our hearts), to global warming, to bullying, to texting while driving, DoSomething.org creates thought-provoking campaigns that affect millions and drive true impact at the community level.

As a knowledge partner, Yahoo will support DoSomething.org in two ways. First, we’ll highlight select causes supported by young people to our users, helping to drive awareness and support. Second, Yahoo will donate 10 cents to DoSomething.org for every eligible Yahoo web search you do on your mobile phone this month, up to $1 million*.

We partnered with DoSomething.org because they are experts at helping people take action. Action is also at the core of Yahoo Search; we’re focused on delivering search results that help you get things done immediately from your mobile phone. We both believe that to take action and make a difference in the world, you need access to the right knowledge.

Ready to act? Please go to do.yahoo.com on your mobile phone browser to make your searches matter this month. Every type of query will count, whether you’re trying to find volunteer opportunities or order a pizza.

Getting the right answers really makes a difference, so let’s do something together.

Visit do.yahoo.com on your mobile phone now!

*During October, Yahoo will donate 10 cents to DoSomething.org for each eligible search performed in the U.S., up to $1 Million. To initiate eligible searches, visit do.yahoo.com using your mobile phone and perform a query. Following your initial search at do.yahoo.com, each additional yahoo.com search performed from that mobile phone will also trigger a donation. See complete campaign details for more information.

Yahoo & DoSomething.org Collaborate to Make Search Matter

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 14:00:00 +0000

Yahoo & DoSomething.org Collaborate to Make Search Matter

Yahoo Style Expands to Include Decor

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 13:03:46 +0000

By Joe Zee, Yahoo Style Editor-in-Chief

For me, decor is not just about your house or the things in it—it’s the same way I believe that style is not just about the clothes you wear. Decor and style are a true reflection of your personality and, with that in mind, it is a natural extension for us to add the important category of decor to Yahoo Style.

Decor on Yahoo Style will bring to life some of the world’s most stylish spaces with contributions from top interior designers and home enthusiasts, including behind-the-scenes footage from inside celebrities’ and tastemakers homes, slideshows that highlight the most luxurious spaces to unwind, as well as practical expert advice and home hacks. Effortlessly linking personal and spatial style, Decor on Yahoo Style brings sophisticated home design to everyone across any price point.

In the past year I have moved four times, so I really understand that a home is more than just a coat of paint or a chair—it’s the special things that bring the comforts of home anywhere.

Whether it is your office, a hotel, or your home, the space you are in should evoke an emotional response. We hope this expansion into decor content on Yahoo Style will help you feel more connected to your surroundings.

InkTober 2015 – 31 Days 31 Drawings

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 11:57:53 +0000

Today is the first day of InkTober, an annual doodlefest where artists from all over the world share one ink drawing a day for a month. Feel up to the challenge? Check out the selection from previous InkTobers below (extended gallery here) and find out more at http://inktober.com/ Also check out InkTober founder Jake Parker’s photostream for more illustrations.

Curated by Liz Lapp for Flickr.

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Throwback Thursday: Wedding Day

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 08:00:11 +0000

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This week’s Flickr #TBT is all about weddings. We want to see the old pictures of your dress, your guests and the ceremony! Or that special picture of your parents’ #WeddingDay.

Share your favorite pics on our Facebook post, and we’ll show the best ones next week on the Flickr Blog.

And get to know the Flickr Commons! This photo is from Nantucket Historical Association – flic.kr/p/66YVay

Throwback Thursday: The Meals Selection

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 07:30:33 +0000

In last week’s throwback journey, we wanted to see your Grandma’s kitchen and we asked you to share your old photos of family #meals. Here is a selection of our favorites. Thank you for participating in our weekly challenge!

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Growing our Diversity Pipeline: Yahoo Expands Relationship with Howard University & The University of Texas at El Paso

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 16:01:23 +0000

By Don McGillen, Senior Campus Relations Manager

Diverse ideas and perspectives drive innovation, and at Yahoo we strive to attract a diverse workforce and community where all of our employees feel welcome and inspired. However, this effort extends beyond Yahoo’s walls; we are constantly working to develop and expand relationships with key universities whose mission is to educate talented, diverse student populations.

This week, Yahoo expanded our relationships with two universities: Howard University and The University of Texas at El Paso. Yahoo donated a combined 200 servers to both universities to provide their students, researchers and educators with enhanced computing capabilities, enabling new coursework in distributed and cloud computing and the processing power to pursue serious data-intensive research. We hope that these donations will encourage diverse populations at both universities to pursue careers in computer science and technology.

Yahoo’s partnership with Howard began in 2013, when it donated 125 servers to create the Yahoo Data Center at Howard. Yahoo’s initial server donation provided Howard’s Computer Learning and Design Center (CLDC) with “increased computational capacity enabling us to better train students on high performance computing usage and management,” said Sonya Smith Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Howard. From a research perspective, Dr. Smith said that it helped her and a team from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford, and University of Arkansas make a credible case to secure a $18.5 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center program. “We are grateful to Yahoo for our continued partnership, and know that the additional servers will help to advance our reputation in computational research and computer science education.”

Today’s donation to Howard will significantly increase Howard’s CLDC computing capacity, and will enable a host of new initiatives, in both education and research. The equipment will be used to implement and manage a flexible and highly reconfigurable “private cloud” of computing resources within the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Computer Science, supporting research in machine learning and big data analytics. The resource will also support two courses: an existing course in “Machine Learning,” and a new course in “Big Data Analytics”.

We also marked our first server donation to The University of Texas at El Paso, and that follows our recent donation of 480 servers to The University of Texas at Arlington earlier this year. We hope to expand partnerships with both universities in the future.

From new course work in distributed and cloud computing, to new data-intensive research programs in distributed systems and cybersecurity, these universities will have the resources to enhance their programs and train a new generation of world-class computer science students. There is outstanding talent at both of these universities, and we hope to cultivate interest among those students to pursue careers at Yahoo!

Catchy Colors: Yellow

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 16:00:34 +0000

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The theme for CatchyColors this week is Yellow. We look forward to see your submissions to the group. We’ll feature our favorites next week on the Flickr blog:

www.flickr.com/groups/catchy/

Photo CC by Georgie Pauwels
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Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Celebrity are Yahoo’s Newest Digital Magazines

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 13:02:40 +0000

By Martha Nelson, Global Editor-in-Chief

I’m pleased to announce that Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Celebrity are joining the neighborhood as our latest Digital Magazines.

On Yahoo Real Estate, you will have access to exclusive real estate listings coupled with the original editorial content Yahoo is known for. Led by Editor Jennifer Karmon, Yahoo Real Estate is a highly visual resource that helps you to personalize your home search. From the latest listings and high profile property transactions to lifestyle rankings and original slideshows, Yahoo Real Estate will have the tools you need to navigate the housing market and make finding your dream home a reality.

We’re also adding to our collection of entertainment magazines with the launch of Yahoo Celebrity led by Josh Wolk, Executive Editor of Yahoo Entertainment and Rebecca Detken, managing editor of Yahoo Celebrity. This new Digital Magazine joins Yahoo Movies, Yahoo TV, and Yahoo Music. We will continue to deliver the latest in entertainment news, reporting on everything from celebrity celebrations, scandals, and everything in between.

Whether you’re looking for the latest celebrity news or scouring the market for your next home, I encourage you to visit our newest destinations.

Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Celebrity are Yahoo's Newest Digital Magazines

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 13:00:00 +0000

Yahoo Real Estate and Yahoo Celebrity are Yahoo's Newest Digital Magazines

Hortonworks Big Data Scorecard for Accelerating Business Transformations

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:05:13 +0000

The journey to data driven business transformation can be confusing and challenging. At Hortonworks, we understand this, and are offering a number of tools that will help companies map out their journey to fully utilize the value of their Big Data.

The journey begins with understanding the opportunities unique to your business, and understanding how the maturity of your organization enables or inhibits your ability to strategically pursue Big Data programs aligned to your business goals.

Hortonworks Big Data Maturity Model:

At the top of our maturity model are businesses that are transforming through Big Data. These leaders embrace data as currency, and are creating new value streams through predictive analytics.
The second tier of our model focuses on companies that are optimizing operational performance across three dimensions: the customer lifecycle, product lifecycle and facility lifecycle.
At the lower rungs of maturity, we see companies exploring or merely aware of their Big Data opportunity. The exploring companies are seeing consensus emerge on the potential of Big Data and beginning to fund limited Hadoop experiments with localized intent.
Many newcomers to the Big Data space are simply aware of the Big Data opportunity, but have not taken meaningful steps to integrate data into business strategies or processes beyond historical analysis

The unique value in our approach to assessing Big Data maturity is that we help business leaders understand and evaluate the essential focus areas for accelerating business transformations. We couple the Big Data Scorecard with an opportunity to plot a strategic path forward.

To measure you maturity, we look at five different capability domains holistically across your organization. Companies need to understand where they stand in terms of big data maturity so that they can progress and identify the required initiatives.

Our Big Data Scorecard helps in assessing your company’s current state along five key capability domains:

Sponsorship;
Data and Analytics;
Technology and Infrastructure;
Organization and Skills; and
Process Management.

Within each of these capability domains, we identify four key focus areas that indicate maturity, and then assess each area according to their specific maturity level. Although the purpose of our framework is to evaluate your company’s maturity level in these areas, we believe it’s far more important to understand how to capitalize on your existing capabilities, and to invest in those focus areas where we can best maximize progress toward defined business objectives.

Post assessment, you would receive a detailed assessment of your company’s maturity vis-à-vis that of the current industry. As part of this survey, you will be able to score your current Big Data capabilities and identify where you would like your organization to be two years from now. Our analyses will then help you identify your current gaps with internal Big Data goals as well as look at the external gaps when compared to the industry’s current and future maturity across the same capability domains.

In addition, you will receive a detailed white paper that we have put together to help companies analyze and build a coherent strategy for advancing their Big Data Maturity. This white paper will also serve as a Big Data Maturity Model Guide, which will help you interpret your assessment scores.

Assessing your organization’s Big Data maturity and having a basic understanding of the opportunities in your industry are precursors to participating in a planning program like the Hortonworks Joint Innovation Program.

The Hortonworks Joint Innovation Program is designed to jumpstart the strategic planning process for your company’s Big Data roadmap, resulting in a Big Data vision, strategy and execution plan. The Joint Innovation Program is a co-innovation process led by Hortonworks Customer Innovation & Strategy team to help executive teams navigate their path to higher stages of Big Data maturity. We use a structured framework and holistic approach to help our customers refine their future “Vision” and define the business “Value” through business transformations. The program helps you:

Improve the success rate of innovation by applying Design Thinking methodology in Innovation Workshops
Identify transformational opportunities for your business
Define use cases and proof of concept plans
Identify value opportunities, barriers and risks
Create a value-based roadmap with defined milestones
Define an operating plan aligned to your scope

Hortonworks’ experience with the world’s largest enterprises creates a valuable base of knowledge that can be leveraged to benefit businesses in multiple industries. The Joint Innovation Program is a series of collaborative workshops focused on value discovery, roadmap development and executive planning for governance and operations. The business case that emerges from the program helps organizations align on the right reasons for investing in Big Data, the projected benefits and costs and the path to value realization.

Get Your Score Now!

About the Author

Vishal Dhanuka is Managing Director and Head of Customer Innovation and Strategy at Hortonworks, and is responsible for developing the Hortonworks value-based go-to-market strategy across industries, along with helping strategic customers refine their future vision and define the business value through Big Data driven business transformation.

The post Hortonworks Big Data Scorecard for Accelerating Business Transformations appeared first on Hortonworks.

Twitter Tuesday: The coffee selection

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 07:27:42 +0000

This #TwitterTuesday we asked you to show us your best shot for the theme #Coffee. Thanks for the great number of photos and all the delicious cups of coffee in our Twitter-Feed. Here are some of our favorites, hand selected by the Flickr team.

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Big Data Expo comes to Utrecht, Netherlands

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 02:58:27 +0000

There’s excitement in the air as one of Benelux’s largest Big Data conferences “Big Data Expo”, comes to Utrecht in The Netherlands.

We’re sponsoring and you’ll find our experts Chris Harris and Jhon Masschelein presenting such topics as “5 Steps for Effective use of Apache Spark in Hortonworks Data Platform 2.3” and “Lessons Learned: 5 Common Hadoop Use Cases”. You can register here.

As Hortonworks continues to extended its footprint in Europe, we’re seeing some exciting use cases and an increasing momentum of enterprise adoption of Hadoop. The Hadoop Summit that we organized in Brussels early this year showcased some of the great European use cases. Here’s a short overview of one my favorites:

ING Bank: Destroying Data Silos for Creating a Predictive Bank

Hellmar Becker a Utrecht resident discusses breaking down Data Sillos and creating a centralized Datalake at ING. He also discusses the modernization of their data centers, migrating away from legacy systems within their governance and security framework.

Bart Buter, Hellmar’s co-presenter discusses the banks steps into becoming a truly predictive bank. Bart also provides some do’s, don’ts and difficulties in this journey and talks about the future for the bank including “integrating analytics as part of data flows”, “showing interactive results to individuals without access to the cluster” and many more.

You can more videos listed here

To conclude, Big Data Expo, will showcase an array of new technologies, exciting case studies and organizations making the most out of data. Come visit us at Stand 21 as my colleague Alfie Murray-Dudgeon pictured below awaits.

The post Big Data Expo comes to Utrecht, Netherlands appeared first on Hortonworks.

Catchy Colors: Red and Black Selections

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 00:32:06 +0000

Last week we asked you to share your best shots for the theme #RedAndBlack for our #CatchyColors, and we have seen a lot of great submissions in the Catchy Colors group pool.

Take a look at our favorites here, and also the gallery for this fantastic color combination. Do visit the Catchy Colors group for more great photos.

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Taste of Autumn

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:48:56 +0000

Autumn tastes like roasted chestnuts, caramel apples and pumpkin pie. What a better way to celebrate Fall than sharing a new gallery of seasonal foods and drinks? Visit the full collection on Flickr and be sure to add your photos in the gallery’s comments section! Here are some of our favorites:

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The 10 things in advertising you need to know today (YHOO, MSFT, WMT)

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 09:07:00 +0000

Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today.

1. Medium, the blogging platform founded by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, raised $57 million from venture capitalists on Monday. The raise values the company at $400 million.

2. Marissa Mayer says "ads make content better." Yahoo's CEO was speaking about ad blocking during a keynote session at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual conference.

3. Microsoft's new financial structure indicates a huge change at the company. It has a new segment called "More Personal Computing."

4. Walmart Vs. Target: Which retailer is more powerful? We looked at everything from average employee pay, to ad spend, to the number of Twitter followers at each company to see how these two massive companies compare.

5. Check out these 26 sexist ads companies wish we'd forget they ever made. Vintage ads from Heinz, Unilever, Kenwood, and Volkswagen are all in there.

6. This 23-year-old model who was discovered on Instagram just made history for H&M. She became the first model to wear a hijab in one of the retailer's campaigns.

7. People are calling Kate Hudson's wildly popular clothing company a "scam." People are retaliating against her athletic-wear company Fabletics, and its parent company JustFab, which BuzzFeed claims avoid telling members they are opting into monthly subscriptions.

8. Publicis Groupe has struck an exclusive advertising launch deal with Verizon's internet TV service Go90, AdAge reports. Go90 will include a mix of live events, popular prime-time TV shows, and original web series.

9. Programmatic ad platform PulsePoint raised $30 million in debt financing. The majority of the funds will be used to acquire companies, AdExchanger reports.

10. Nielsen says total audience measurement is coming "by the end of the year," according to Adweek. The measurement company wants to provide a common measurement for TV and digital advertising.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Twitter Tuesday: Coffee

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 07:32:02 +0000

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Today is International Coffee Day, a day to celebrate the elixir that us be functional in the mornings.

Scan your archives, make your choice, and tweet it to @Flickr, adding #TwitterTuesday #Coffee. We’ll showcase the best ones on the Flickr Blog tomorrow.

www.twitter.com/flickr

Photo CC-BY from waferboard flic.kr/p/cirujw

Marissa Mayer: 'Ads make content better'

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 22:13:41 +0000

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer thinks the Internet is a lot worse without ads.

"I really believe that commercials and ads make content better. The experience on the Web [without ads] becomes a lot less rich in my experience. I personally think it is a mistake," Mayer said during a keynote session at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual conference, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Mayer's comments came in response to a question about Yahoo's response to software that lets you block ads on the web — a hot-button issue among news outlets since Apple introduced support for ad-blocking tools in the Safari mobile browser in iOS 9, the most recent update to the iPhone and iPad operating system.

Like many online publishers, Yahoo's business model is largely ad-supported across all of its services, including in its online video and digital news businesses. Ad blockers, which prevent advertisements from loading, present an imminent threat to digital media companies.

But Mayer thinks that people really enjoy watching ads, and that they play a crucial role in the development of the Internet.

“It is really important to keep that ecosystem vibrant. We need to make sure we have business models that work…I just think it makes the Internet better," Mayer said.

Still, Yahoo says that online advertising can be improved, especially with more tools that let people opt out of letting advertisers track their movements online.

Plus, she says that the future largely rests upon native advertisements — ads that look like content.

Join the conversation about this story »

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Yahoo says it will go forward with Alibaba spinoff even if IRS doesn't give approval (YHOO)

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:29:20 +0000

Yahoo said on Monday that it will go forward with plans to spinoff its Alibaba shares into a separate company even if the IRS doesn't provide a "favorable ruling" on the tax free transaction.

Yahoo said the transaction is still on track to close by the end of the year, sending Yahoo's shares up in after hours trading on Monday.

But while the filing showed that Yahoo intends to push forward with the spinoff of its 15% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, it also raised the possibility that Yahoo could go through with the deal even it it means incurring a hefty tax bill in the process.

The news comes a couple of weeks after the IRS declined to give its advanced blessing to the transaction in a so-called "private letter ruling" that Yahoo had requested.

Yahoo owns 384 million shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which it plans to spin off into a separate company (along with Yahoo's own small-business unit) in a tax-free transaction that will ultimately return much of the value to Yahoo shareholders.

Yahoo investors have long clamored for Yahoo to cash out its investment in Alibaba (and in Yahoo Japan) and give the proceeds back to shareholders. Doing the transaction in a tax free manner is a complicated process, but one which shareholders hope will maximize their return.

Yahoo said in the filing that the transaction will still be subject to "a legal opinion with respect to the tax-free treatment of the transaction under U.S. federal tax laws and regulations," though it did not clarify how that would work if the IRS were to rule against its tax-free treatment.

Yahoo also said that it still expects the transaction to close by the end of the year.

Yahoo shares were up 4% to $28.70 in extended trading on Monday. Shares of Yahoo are down more than 45% percent from their 52-week high on investor worries about the spin off as well as about the value of Alibaba's business and Yahoo's revamping its core business.

We've reached out to Yahoo for clarification and will update if we hear back.

Here's the relevant portion of Yahoo's filing:

On September 23, 2015, Yahoo’s Board of Directors authorized the Company to continue to pursue the plan for the Aabaco spin-off transaction as previously disclosed, except that completion of the spin-off will not be conditioned upon receipt of a favorable ruling from the IRS. The spin-off transaction will continue to be subject to certain other conditions, including final approval by Yahoo’s Board of Directors, receipt of a legal opinion with respect to the tax-free treatment of the transaction under U.S. federal tax laws and regulations, the effectiveness of an applicable registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and compliance with the requirements under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and other customary conditions, each of which conditions may be waived, in whole or in part (to the extent permitted by law), by Yahoo in its sole discretion.

On September 28, 2015, Aabaco filed Amendment No.1 to its Registration Statement on Form N-2 which is available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov using the name Aabaco Holdings, Inc.

Completion of the transaction is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2015, subject to the conditions described above.

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Why Hortonworks?

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 20:14:05 +0000

Career choices are hard to make. How do you make the call to step out of your comfort zone, move on from a team you have built, disrupt your family life… how do you know when it’s the right opportunity?

Find a company that is customer-first focused (this is especially important to me as I lead support organizations), has an incredible technology, and has a tremendous market opportunity.

Hortonworks made my decision easy.

Support alignment: At Hortonworks, Support is aligned under Development. Typically a company’s maturity is determined by the alignment of support to the go-to-market team. However, this eventually proves inefficient and creates tension that often translates poorly to overall customer satisfaction.

Hadoop is challenging in many ways – technology is still developing and most customers are still maturing – but there is a very high overall solution and delivery expectation. With such sensitive, high touch customer engagement, it is absolutely essential that we are nimble in catering to customer needs. Aligning support to Development is the winning solution to Hadoop and Opensource Technologies. RedHat realized this fairly early in their lifecycle as a company. Hortonworks, Inc. realized very early that putting ‘Customer First’ was the only winning model.

Solution focused: I believe there is a sense in the industry that any strategic alignment will take typically two years to yield results. With that framework in mind, we need to keep in mind that Hadoop is shifting from the IT World to the Business World very quickly. Businesses have problems and they need solutions to these problems, solutions that are “out-of-the-box” and give businesses a clear ROI. There will come a point when the industry will care less for the platform and more for the solution(s) we deliver as well as the ROI that comes with it.

Hortonworks invested early and invested right in a solution focused approach to business verticals. This is certainly the right market and the right time.

Company Growth: Constant customer focus and a solution-focused strategy have certainly proved to be a winning model for Hortonworks. The numbers speak for themselves, from earnings to customer growth, and I really believe in the potential of the company and its rapid growth plans.

Market Opportunity: The recent acquisition of Onyara also clearly cemented a foundation of what is to come. IoT is real and here to stay. Smart devices are here to stay. Wearable technology is here to stay. All of these will play a significant role in shaping consumer behavior in the years to come.

Big Data is booming, the Internet of Anything is the next big opportunity, and Hortonworks has the best strategy at play. Hortonworks was clearly a winning choice for me.

The post Why Hortonworks? appeared first on Hortonworks.

Rocana and Hortonworks Deliver IT Operations on an Open Platform

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:51:59 +0000

Our guest blog today is from Don Brown, COO and Founder of Rocana, Hortonworks Technology Partner, talks about our partnership, mainstream Hadoop adoption and the importance of global IT Operations management.

Our partnership with Hortonworks is another exciting step on the path to mainstream adoption of Hadoop as the critical platform for modern, global-scale IT Operations management. Hortonworks’ emphasis on a platform that scales with the demands of big data applications is a great fit for the IT Operations market and for customers looking for more reliable, extensible, analytics, and limitless solutions.

One of the first customer successes of Rocana Ops and Hortonworks Data Platform provides a great example of the importance of running IT Operations on big data. The customer, a very large retailer, was struggling with their legacy solution, which was simply incapable of cost-effectively handling their web-scale machine data. At just a couple TBs of data per day, the system license costs were overwhelming and the TCO was excessive as the solution required expensive hardware (fully loaded racks with enterprise grade SSDs) to deliver any kind of service-level. Already experienced with Hortonworks, they realized that a highly-scalable and reliable big data platform was exactly what they needed as the foundation of their next generation IT Operations solution. They tested and then adopted the combination of Rocana Ops and Hortonworks Data Platform as their new standard. With the Rocana and Hortonworks products this retailer is able to more than triple the amount of data captured — a significant benefit because they are able to monitor more failure points in their infrastructure than ever before. And at 1/10th the cost per TB, they can improve monitoring capabilities while reducing their TCO.

The benefits of the Rocana / Hortonworks partnership extend far beyond scalability and cost-savings. The hidden value is in the analytics enabled by an open platform. Customers can easily use their existing tools that work with Apache Hadoop for custom analytics. This capability is not just limited to search interfaces and historical queries; Rocana also supports real-time streaming analytics. At Rocana, we have taken advantage of these advanced capabilities of the Hadoop ecosystem to build an out-of-the-box anomaly detection feature that finds IT issues automatically.

We are very excited about our partnership with Hortonworks and the power this combination brings to IT Operations and security teams. With big data as a platform for IT Operations, customers are only limited by their imaginations. If you are interesting in learning more about Rocana and Hortonworks, contact sales@rocana.com or come see us in person at Strata Hadoop World in New York (Sep 29 – Oct 1).

Don (@tensigma) is a co-founder of Rocana and serves as its COO. As COO, Don is responsible for Rocana’s Sales and Operations. Throughout his career, Don has advised many Fortune 100 companies, assisting in both strategic and tactical aspects of their Big Data deployments.

Learn More

Rocana – Hortonworks partner page

Rocana

The post Rocana and Hortonworks Deliver IT Operations on an Open Platform appeared first on Hortonworks.

Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse 2015

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:50:54 +0000

The Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse is a rare astronomical phenomenon that produces a slightly bigger and reddish hued view of the moon and won’t happen again until 2033.
View our Super Blood Moon gallery with a selection of photographs taken by the Flickr community.

Curated by Liz Lapp for Flickr.

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Where is Hadoop and YARN technology going in the next 10 years?

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:50:31 +0000

In a world that creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every year, it is extremely cheap to collect, store and curate all the data you will ever care about. Data is de facto becoming the largest untapped asset. So how can organizations take advantage of unprecedented amounts of data? The answer is new innovations; and new applications. We are clearly entering a new era of modern data application

I would like to take the opportunity to share my Hadoop journey in the past 10 years, and discuss where I see the Hadoop technology going in the next decade.

To celebrate ten years of Hadoop with me, please go to http://hortonworks.com/10yearsofhadoop/ for more information.…

The post Where is Hadoop and YARN technology going in the next 10 years? appeared first on Hortonworks.

Microsoft Azure HDInsight on LINUX Providing Choice

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 13:00:42 +0000

Today Microsoft has announced the Generally Availability of Azure HDInsight, with Apache Hadoop 2.6, available on Ubuntu Linux clusters. Azure HDInsight is a Hadoop managed service in the cloud and uses the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP).

This release is a direct result of the commitment that Microsoft has to Open Source. Microsoft has worked along with Hortonworks® in the community to contribute towards Apache Hadoop and related projects, including Apache Ambari.

HDInsight on Linux, built with the core HDP platform utilizes Apache Ambari to provide seamless and comprehensive deployment, management and monitoring of Apache Hadoop platform components in Azure.

Enabling the ecosystem

There is a large and growing ecosystem of applications provided by ISVs that are certified for the Linux Hadoop environment. These ISV offering expand the Hadoop platform by providing key functionality such as Security and Governance, Data Preparation Data Visualization functions.

Users of Azure HDinsight can now leverage this growing ecosystem of applications directly on Azure HDInsight on Linux. Supporting this large ecosystem enables Enterprises to run their end to end analytical processing in Azure, and will drive more workloads to the Azure cloud.

Enabling the hybrid cloud

There are many enterprises that have started their journey with Hadoop on premise on Linux commodity servers. With Azure HDinsight on Linux, these enterprises can now expand their analytics footprint into Azure seamlessly by moving the same applications and ISV software that they run on premise to Azure HDinsight. Hadoop Operators can now leverage the same toolsets – Apache Ambari and SSH based remote access – to manage and monitor Hadoop in Azure.

Microsoft’s deep commitment to open source enables a greater choice for Azure users, supports a growing ecosystem and encourages the use of familiar toolsets.

Get started today with:

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Yahoo Unveils New Technology Offerings at Advertising Week

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Yahoo Unveils New Technology Offerings at Advertising Week

Unique Big Data Needs of the IoAT

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 10:00:07 +0000

Today, I’m excited to share that we have released the GA version of Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF), a new offering that directly addresses the unique big data needs of the Internet of Anything (IoAT). Hortonworks DataFlow is powered by Apache Nifi a top-level open source project made available through the NSA Technology Transfer Program.

By making this technology a commercial offering, we now provide our customers the ability to connect, collect and curate data from a broad spectrum of connected yet disparate data sources – sensors, machines, geo-location devices, social feeds, connected cars, web clicks, server logs and more. These are forming the Internet of Anything (IoAT) and have the potential to create unprecedented opportunities for business innovation, optimization and efficiency.

To realize the potential from the massive and dynamically changing data stream generated by IoAT systems must be able to ingest and process this information in a timely fashion – before its value perishes. To derive value and insights from data in motion from the IoAT must be treated as dataflows—from source to destination—so that modern analytical applications can collect, conduct and curate the data in a secure, scalable and reliable manner.

Consider the case of the connected car or perhaps a fleet of trucks as a microcosm of the IoAT. Each vehicle generates a constantly updated data feed about location, velocity, engine performance, local weather, music preferences and more. Consistently and reliably collecting this data in a timely manner supports two-way communications to be conducted to/from the vehicle about preventative maintenance, location based offers and decisions about localized, real time traffic redirection and more. Of key importance is that the data collection and consequent decision making must be within a practically useful timeframe – after all, finding out about inclement weather conditions causing a traffic jam after being stuck in it for 10 minutes isn’t very valuable. This is the nature of a perishable insight.

At the same time, physical conditions can cause connectivity to fluctuate; determining whether a single “engine maintenance” signal is simply a temporary warning signal for preventative maintenance or if it was the last critical signal before a vehicle became impaired is crucial for accurate decision making. The ability to curate the dataflow; zooming in to relevant and pertinent signals over the last 48 hours in a secure, scalable and reliable manner is necessary to provide the correct context to determine the appropriate course of action.

Addressing these three problems of a) collecting vast amounts of data from disparate, distributed data sources, b) timely processing and distilling this data into relevant and meaningful signals, and c) reliable, bi-directional communication to and from the jagged edge are all critical to the accurate decision making and dynamic responses that support the transformative opportunities of the Internet of Anything.

Hortonworks DataFlow, powered by Apache NiFi, supports the IoAT with the following key capabilities:

Collect any and all IoAT data from dynamically changing, disparate and physically distributed sensors, machines, geo location devices, clickstreams, files, and social feeds via a highly secure lightweight agent.
Reliably conduct secure point-to-point and bidirectional data flows in real time
Curate data via tracing, parsing, filtering, joining, transforming, forking or cloning of dataflows to generate holistic context and support appropriate responses.

These capabilities are designed to address the unique requirements of the Internet of Anything, and enables data stewards to construct secure and reliable data grids as continuous dataflows for on time processing—from anything, from anywhere—at scale. As a result, Hortonworks customers can now securely and easily collect, conduct and curate any type of “data-in-motion” with HDF as well as view leverage traditional data at rest with HDP, which together can now be blended to provide both historical and perishable insights.

To find out more about how Hortonworks DataFlow is complementary to the Hortonworks Data Platform powered by Apache Hadoop and supports collection of data-in-motion from a wide array of disparate data sources click here.

About the Author

Matthew Morgan is the vice president of product and alliance marketing for Hortonworks. In this role, he leads Hortonworks product marketing, alliance marketing, vertical solutions marketing, and worldwide sales enablement. His background includes twenty years in enterprise software, including leading worldwide product marketing organizations for Citrix, HP Software, Mercury Interactive, and Blueprint. Feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn or visit his personal blog

The post Unique Big Data Needs of the IoAT appeared first on Hortonworks.

Countdown to Kickoff: New Destination Just For NFL Fans

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 17:38:06 +0000

By Matt Edelman, Product Manager

We’re a month away until the Buffalo Bills take on the Jacksonville Jaguars in London for the first ever, free, global live stream across all devices. To get NFL fans around the world revved up for October 25, we’re launching a destination dedicated to everyone who loves football. Fans can check-in daily to see the latest behind the scenes content, team stats, and videos produced by both the NFL and Yahoo Studios.

As we announced this past summer, on game day fans around the world can tune in here - across Yahoo, on phones, tablets, laptops, consoles and connected TVs.

So what are you waiting for? Go check out the site and start getting pumped up for the game. And if you’re like me and can be forgetful, we can help you set a reminder to tune in for this historic kickoff.

Internet connectivity is driving the biggest in-car business opportunity in years

Fri, 25 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Automakers are in a rush to add internet connectivity to cars. They're doing this for a number of reasons, including to collect data from the vehicle, push over-the-air updates, and improve car safety.

But one of the biggest ways automakers are leveraging connection in their vehicles is by selling connected car products and service. By 2020, revenues from connected services are expected to top $152 billion.

They're offering a selection of connected features in cars, with a special focus on entertainment apps and safety-management features.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at revenue from the various connected-car internet services, as well as consumer attitudes to these services and how they want to pay.

The report serves as a companion to our connected-car market forecast report.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Full-Access Trial>>

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Connected-safety features bring in the most revenue of all of today's connected-car services, at $13 billion. These features alert customers of road conditions, such as severe weather or an approaching hazard, as well as collision-avoidance.
Entertainment is one of the most popular features available for the connected car, but it is not a major revenue driver. The category will account for only $13 billion in revenue in 2020. Entertainment features include integrations with apps such as Pandora, Yelp, and Facebook.
People who actually use connected car services are satisfied with them. About half of those who have a connected car actually use the car's connected features, and those who do use many of these features shows high levels of satisfaction with them.
Consumers are pretty split on how they want to pay for these services. 25% of global consumers would be willing to receive in-car advertising if it meant they got free basic services in exchange. This means marketers are likely to have a big opportunity to tap into the connected-car market.

To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a full-access 14-day trial here. Full-access members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry.

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Yahoo stock sinks to a 52-week low (YHOO, BABA)

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 17:24:03 +0000

Yahoo stock sank to a new 52-week low on Thursday, as worries about its Asian assets continue to weigh on the stock.

Shares of Yahoo fell to $28.85 in midday trading on Thursday, amid a broader market selloff in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 200 points.

While just about all tech stocks got whacked in Thursday's down market, the selloff took Yahoo's stock to a new low.

Yahoo is struggling to boost its revenue and traffic, three years into a turnaround effort led by CEO Marissa Mayer.

While Yahoo's business has stalled, investors have bid up the stock because of Yahoo's 15% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group.

But as China's economy has stumbled, investors have become more bearish on Alibaba's stock, which has in turn weighed on the value of Yahoo's stock.

More worrisome for Yahoo, its plans to do a tax free spin off of its Alibaba stake — a move long clamored for by investors — has been called into question. Earlier this month the IRS declined to give its advanced blessing to the transaction in a so-called "private letter ruling" that Yahoo had requested.

The IRS did not outright reject the transaction, but Wall Street is worried that the deal is no longer a sure thing.

Shares of Yahoo are now down 45% from their 52-week high in November 2014. That said, Yahoo stock is still up roughly 85% from when Mayer took over as CEO in July 2012.

Join the conversation about this story »

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YARN – What’s the big deal

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 17:01:48 +0000

Since the partnership between Hortonworks and SAS we have created some awesome assets (i.e., SAS Data Loader sandbox tutorial, educational webinars and array of blogs) that have enabled Hadoop and Big Data enthusiasts’ hands-on training with Apache Hadoop and SAS’ powerful analytics solutions. You can find more details around our partnership and resources here: http://hortonworks.com/partner/sas

To continue the momentum, we have Paul Kent, Vice President of Big Data at SAS, share his insights on the value of YARN and the benefits it brings to SAS and its users- this time around SAS Grid and YARN.

On my travels and in the SAS Executive Briefing Center, it has become more obvious that many folks have grabbed on to the idea that Hadoop will allow them two things:

to assemble a copy of all their data in one place
to provide enough processing horse power to actually make some sense (business value) of the patterns contained in a holistic view of said data

As they get closer to this goal they realize what a valuable resource the data lake has become. They need an effective means to “share nicely” – its not likely that every department is going to have the resources to establish their own data lake, and even if they do, you’ll be back to arguing about which version of the truth is the correct one.

YARN is the component in the Hadoop eco-system that helps folks share the value gained from building a shared pool of the organizations data.

Move the work to the Data

As the data volumes and velocities grow it has become important to find a strategy that minimized the number of hard (permanent) copies of data (and inherent reconciliation and governance). YARN allows Hadoop to become “the Operating System for your data” – a tool that manages and mediates access to the shared pool of data, as well as the resources to manipulate the pool.

Yarn allows the various patterns of work destined for your cluster to form orderly and rational queues, so that you can set the policy for what is urgent, what is important, what is routine, and what should be allowed to soak up resources so long as no one else requires them at the moment.

Expand then Consolidate

Disruptive technologies like Hadoop are often deployed “at the fringes” of an organization (perhaps in an Innovation Lab). Initial ROI is often found by attacking new ground – problems the organization had not attempted to handle (or handle at scale) before. When these early projects succeed I’ve seen many customers ask themselves “well, that worked OK; is there some way to consolidate the older ways of doing things into this new world?” – Simplifying and modernizing their Analytics Landscape as a delightful side effect!

In reality the blue box for “SAS” above is really a few distinct patterns of work for the Hadoop Cluster

Long Running Server (sometimes called Daemon) processes. The SAS LASR server is purpose built to load your important data into distributed memory and provide low latency actions to service requests against that data rapidly.
Resource Intensive single user tasks that require distributed computing. Each Invocation of a SAS HPA procedure (to build a regression model, to train a neural network, or to determine a decision tree) needs memory and CPU cycles from several cluster nodes to perform its task, and those resources are returned to the pool immediately after the task completes.
Traditional Grid Computing where jobs from many users are distributed over several servers to improve availability and ultimately response times. This is not distributed (Massively Parallel) computing in the sense that several computers attack one problem, but it is a form of sharing the load where several computers attack the tasks of several users in a divide and conquer style.

The first two patterns above are examples of new world Distributed Computing. The third is an example of using the newer infrastructure to replace (at a lower cost) the hardware used for a previous generation Analytics Landscape. Also SAS Grid Manager is the only product to provide horizontal scaling of an application where some parts of the application need to operate on all of the data, such as a Monte Carlo simulation. The “cherry on top” is that you can combine these technologies such that a single SAS Grid job running on a Hadoop data node could kick off an HPA job that would distribute vertically to send processing to each node to operate on the local data.

I asked Cheryl Doninger, who leads the development for SAS Grid Manager, why customers should be excited about this new flavor of SAS Grid Manager and she said – “SAS Grid Manager for Hadoop is a perfect fit for our customers who have, or plan to implement in the near future, a multi-application data operating system, as described by Arun. Now they can co-locate all of their SAS Grid jobs on the Hadoop cluster and manage them with YARN along with any other analysis being done on the cluster. The SAS Grid jobs can leverage any of the SAS integration points to Hadoop to maximize the value of this shared pool of data and all through direct integration with YARN or by leveraging other components of the Hadoop ecosystem that are natively managed by YARN.”

All this effort was a result of tightly integrated joint Engineering collaboration with Hortonworks and the Apache YARN team, including committer, Arun Murthy.

To learn more about SAS Grid Manager for Hadoop visit the SAS support site here, or click https://support.sas.com/rnd/scalability/grid/hadoop/index.html

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Yahoo Updates Transparency Report

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:27:00 +0000

Yahoo Updates Transparency Report

Yahoo Transparency Report Update

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:23:22 +0000

By Aaron Altschuler, VP & Associate General Counsel

Today we’re issuing our fifth transparency report, continuing our efforts to provide as much information as we can about government requests for our users’ data and government requests to remove content.

This latest transparency report contains information covering the first six months of 2015 (January 1 - June 30, 2015). This includes National Security Letters (NSLs) and law enforcement data requests (such as search warrants, court orders, and subpoenas issued in criminal investigations). FISA requests included are from (July 1 - December 31, 2014), as they are subject to a six-month delay under U.S. law.

An important example of how we put users first is our success in helping to protect our users by ending bulk data collection and significantly reforming U.S. government surveillance programs and practices by pushing Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act. Yahoo is also advocating to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which requires the U.S. government to obtain a warrant in order to access the private communications of our users. We will continue to push for legislative reform - both in the United States and around the world - that protects user privacy.

In July, we were honored to be one of the few technology companies recognized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its annual survey Who Has Your Back? 2015: Protecting Your Data from Government Requests for earning 5/5 stars for protecting user data. Because we never take the relationship we’ve cultivated with our users for granted, over one billion people around the world place their trust in us to provide them with Internet services across mobile and web.

As always, we will continue our efforts to protect our users’ information from unclear, improper, overbroad or unlawful government requests.

Locations

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 19:25:07 +0000

Our History

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:50:53 +0000

In the summer of 2005, a small group of leaders from some of the world’s most prominent industrial research institutions were afforded the privilege of starting something new at Yahoo–senior management had decided that the company was mature enough and the competitive landscape was challenging enough that Yahoo’s products needed to be more informed by, if not driven by, advanced scientific thinking and cutting-edge technology. And Yahoo Labs was born.

Yahoo Labs started out as Yahoo Research. In July of 2005, recruited by Usama Fayyad (formerly of Microsoft Research), who was Yahoo’s Chief Data Officer, Prabhakar Raghavan and Andrew Tomkins (both formerly of IBM Research) joined a few Yahoo employees (Kevin Lang among them) who were with Yahoo working for the erstwhile “Yahoo Research Labs” organization, and formed the brand new research team. Prabhakar was named as Head of Yahoo Research. Ron Brachman, just finishing a term as office director at DARPA and a long career at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs, joined as the head of worldwide research operations in early September. The pioneering team was soon joined by a key set of additional leaders, including Andrei Broder and Ricardo Baeza-Yates. With that outstanding foundation, the group was able to build an incredible talent base of top scientists and research engineers in a remarkably short time.

In 2008 Yahoo Research merged with the Search and Advertising Applied Science organization and came to be known by its modern name, Yahoo Labs. In 2012, Ron Brachman took over as Head of Yahoo Labs and also became Yahoo’s chief scientist.

Over the years, the Labs became more and more essential to Yahoo’s products while maintaining a core scientific identity. The balance of the closeness of the team’s partnerships with Yahoo’s product and engineering groups, and the excellence of the external academic work achieved, is unparalleled in the industry. The research scientists and engineers at Yahoo Labs contribute critical insights to Yahoo’s most important products; in many cases teams are actually fully embedded in the workspaces of their product partners. All the while the Labs continues to maintain extraordinary standards of technical excellence through rigorous interviews with candidates, top-notch publications in the best venues, and senior leadership positions in various scientific fields.

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About Us

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 22:50:29 +0000

Yahoo Labs is the scientific engine guiding Yahoo innovation while powering impactful products for Yahoo’s users, partners, and advertisers. We serve as Yahoo’s research arm–its incubator for bold new ideas and laboratory for rigorous experimentation.

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We’re Excited to Kick Off Advertising Week!

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 19:20:18 +0000

By Lisa Utzschneider, Chief Revenue Officer

With Advertising Week just around the corner, we’re excited to kick off an exciting and packed schedule of events with our our ad industry partners. At this year’s IAB MIXX, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will sit down with Jacob Weisberg for a conversation about where Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue meet on September 28. Follow us at @YahooAds for updates!

Here’s a preview of where Yahoo will be during the week:

Monday, September 28:

I will join a session about how data is helping advertisers to better understand their consumers and drive results in The Currency of Data: Why it Matters for Marketers on the Times Center Stage.
Yannis Dosios will address key opportunities for advertisers on the From Aspirational to Operational: Putting Native and Programmatic to Work For You panel.
Katie Couric will sit down with Spotify CEO and Founder Daniel Elk for a fireside chat at IAB MIXX.
Marissa Mayer will join Jacob Weisberg on stage for a fireside chat at IAB MIXX at the Crowne Plaza.
I will sit down with CNBC’s Michelle Castillo and other industry leaders for the annual Masters of Monetization panel at the Liberty Theater.
In Are You Measuring User Experience?, Dennis Buchheim will share insights on the metrics that matter most when evaluating campaign success at IAB MIXX.

Tuesday, September 29:

In Masters of Monetization: Video, Dan Mosher will discuss trends in video advertising across screens at the Times Center Hall.
At IAB MIXX, Leo Polanowski will offer insights on the power of native in mobile for Big Wins on the Small Screen: Why Winning at Mobile is Native.
Prashant Fuloria will address the tales and travails of marketers in their hunt for ROI for The Marketer’s Dilemma - Premium Publisher or Programmatic Platform? at the Times Center Stage.

Wednesday, September 30:

At the Brand Innovators Mega Trends Summit, Kathy Kayse will share perspectives on how brand marketers are creating effective campaigns in Digital Mega-Trends Circa 2015: How Social, Mobile, Content, Video and Data Drive Brand Marketing.
Leo Polanowski will participate in a conversation about the native ad transformation in The Second Coming Of Video: Native, Instant, In-feed at the Liberty Theatre.
Tumblr’s David Hayes and Yahoo’s David Dembowski will join two top brands on stage for Get Inspired: Content Marketing That Works at the Liberty Theater.
Tumblr’s Jeff D’Onofrio will sit down with Campaign’s Doug Quenqua to discuss what the Post-Millennial generation wants from media and technology in Decoding the Digital Habits of the Post-Millennial Generation at the Hard Rock.
In Going Vertical…3 Seconds to Video Success at Times Center Hall, Clare Dunnett will share thoughts on the constantly evolving world of video advertising.

Thursday, October 1:

Rita Drucker will share perspectives on digital storytelling and live experiences in The Holy Trinity: Experience, Technology & Influencers at the Hard Rock.
Mark Jones will discuss the latest features and tools for search advertisers in All Your Questions Answered: Google, Bing & Yahoo Talk Ads at Javits Center. He’ll also share perspectives on new trends and developments in the Paid Search Roundtable at Javits Center.

Stay tuned for timely updates during Advertising Week from @YahooAds and check out the Yahoo Advertising Blog for more!

Social networks are falling over themselves to join the billion-dollar rush in mobile-app advertising

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 14:55:00 +0000

The mobile app-install ad — an ad unit that directs users to download a mobile app – is closely identified with Facebook, the largest social network. But these ads have become so lucrative — driving one-third of all mobile ad revenue — that virtually every other internet property has created their own version.

Mobile app-install advertising is already found on Twitter, YouTube, and mobile ad networks like Millennial Media. Pinterest opened the door to the ad format recently with "app pins," and no online publisher wants to be left out of the rush.

Exclusive data from BI Intelligence finds that US mobile app-install ad revenue will top $4.6 billion this year and grow to $6.8 billion by the end of 2019, increasing by a compound annual growth rate of 14% from 2014. We believe mobile app install ads accounted for about 30% of mobile ad revenue last year.

Access The Full Report And Data Sets By Signing Up For A Full-Access Trial»

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Mobile app-install ads are becoming extremely popular ad units among different types of app publishers, not just game-app developers. App marketers — including e-commerce companies and a few brands — like these ads because they result in significant downloads and measurable ROI. Social networks and ad exchanges like them because they can sell the units at significantly higher prices than other ads.
Easy-to-measure ROI drives demand. In many cases, once an app-install ad generates a download, everything a customer does in the app, such as "lifetime customer value," can be attributed back to that specific ad.
On Facebook, mobile app-install ads cost significantly more than standard units, due to performance and targeting capabilities. The report includes CPM pricing and CTR rates compared to the average Facebook ad.
Prices will hold relatively steady as supply and demand rise in tandem. The mobile install ad is a fairly mature ad unit at this point, and a good deal of competing supply is now available from Twitter and Google. But continued increases in demand for these ads among app marketers will keep prices from declining.
Top mobile publishers and ad networks are competing fiercely for mobile app-install ad dollars, and for the favor of app developers. Twitter and Facebook are doing their best to lure app builders to their platforms and app-install ads with advanced ad analytics and developer tools. We estimate that mobile app-install ads drive one-third of all mobile ad revenue.

In full, the report:

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Bethany Mota Has A Legion Of 10 Million Fans Waiting For Her Next YouTube Video

The mobile web is slowly dying as people spend nearly all their time in apps

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 16:47:13 +0000

People who run ad-supported web sites are freaking out over new technology in Apple's latest mobile operating system that makes ad blocking software easier to build.

But it may not matter that much, as people have already turned away from browsing the web on their phones. In the last two years, the average amount of time Americans spend on their smartphones every day has grown dramatically, from 2 hours 38 minutes to 3 hours 40 minutes, according to data from Yahoo's mobile analytics subsidiary Flurry, charted for us by Statista.

But the amount of time they spend browsing the web has shrunk from 32 minutes (20% of total time) to 22 minutes (10%).

In other words, the mobile web is already dying as people are spending more time in apps like Facebook and Twitter. Instead of freaking out about mobile ad blocking, publishers should be racing to partner with the app makers who already control the mobile experience.

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This is what consumers want from their connected car — and how they want to pay

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 16:47:04 +0000

People spend an average of six and a half hours per week in their cars, and as dashboards become digital platforms, a massive new market for carmakers, digital-media companies, and even marketers is being created. Revenues from connected services are expectd to top $152 billion by 2020.

Carmakers are offering a selection of features in their connected cars, with a special focus on entertainment apps and safety-management features.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at revenue from connected-car internet services, consumer attitudes to these services and how they will pay for them (including getting ads in return for free content), and the potential for self-driving cars.

The report serves as a companion to our connected-car market forecast report.

To Access The Full Report, Sign Up For A Full-Access Trial >>

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Connected-safety features bring in the most revenue of all of today's connected-car services, at $13 billion. But safety will lose its spot as the top revenue stream to driver-assistance in 2017. Connected-safety features will bring in $44 billion in 2020. These connections include alerting customers of road conditions, such as severe weather or an approaching hazard, as well as collision-avoidance.
Entertainment is one of the most popular features available for the connected car, but it is not a major revenue driver. The category will account for only $13 billion in revenue in 2020. Entertainment features include integrations with apps such as Pandora, Yelp, and Facebook.
But there's still a ways to go before mainstream consumers really understand how they can benefit from the connected car. About 80% of consumers have either never heard of connected cars or are unsure what the term refers to.
People who actually use connected car services are satisfied with them. About half of those who have a connected car actually use the car's connected features, and those who do use many of these features shows high levels of satisfaction with them.
Consumers are pretty split on how they want to pay for these services. 25% of global consumers would be willing to receive in-car advertising if it meant they got free basic services in exchange. This means marketers are likely to have a big opportunity to tap into the connected-car market.

Join the conversation about this story »

Performance is the biggest reason mobile app-install ads are so popular

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 13:05:00 +0000

Performance is the biggest reason mobile app-install ads are so popular.

On Facebook mobile app-install ads far outperform the average CTR across all ad types on the social network.

This format performs well because it's easy to understand, is native to mobile, and has a very low-friction call to action.

Data from BI Intelligence finds that the average clickthrough rate (CTR) for this ad type was 0.98% during the first quarter of 2014, compared to an average CTR of 0.24% for all Facebook ad types across desktop and mobile, according to data from a selection of marketers studied by AdParlor and Nanigans.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For Full-Access Trial »

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Mobile app-install ads are becoming extremely popular ad units among different types of app publishers, not just game-app developers. App marketers — including e-commerce companies and a few brands — like these ads because they result in significant downloads and measurable ROI. Social networks and ad exchanges like them because they can sell the units at significantly higher prices than other ads.
Easy-to-measure ROI drives demand. In many cases, once an app-install ad generates a download, everything a customer does in the app, such as "lifetime customer value," can be attributed back to that specific ad.
On Facebook, mobile app-install ads cost significantly more than standard units, due to performance and targeting capabilities. The report includes CPM pricing and CTR rates compared to the average Facebook ad.
Prices will hold relatively steady as supply and demand rise in tandem. The mobile install ad is a fairly mature ad unit at this point, and a good deal of competing supply is now available from Twitter and Google.
Top mobile publishers and ad networks are competing fiercely for mobile app-install ad dollars, and for the favor of app developers. Twitter and Facebook are doing their best to lure app builders to their platforms and app-install ads with advanced ad analytics and developer tools.

In full, the report:

To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a full-access 14-day trial here. Full-access members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts and datasets, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry.

Join the conversation about this story »

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App Transport Security 101 for Yahoo Developers: Improving Security of the Overall Internet Ecosystem

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 16:06:28 +0000

yahoodevelopers:

By Daryl Low, Tech Yahoo, Architect

At Yahoo, we’re committed to protecting our users’ security, and we’re proud that our network supports HTTPS across the board. That’s why we commend Apple’s decision to roll out a new feature called App Transport Security (ATS), which requires iOS developers to build their apps with secure HTTPS connections baked in. Leading up to the release of iOS 9, we’ve been hard at work to ensure Yahoo’s apps and products are fully ATS compliant. Overall, we see this as an important step forward to ensure a more secure experience across the entire internet ecosystem.

We want to make sure developers using Yahoo APIs and services take the necessary steps:

If you’re already using HTTPS, fantastic. Keep it up!
If you’re not yet using HTTPS, start doing so, and strategize the best way to migrate your apps – in whatever stage of development – to move toward ATS compliance.

Most important: Test your apps against iOS 9 / OS X 10.11, especially Yahoo services (e.g., Yahoo Hosted Search, Flurry Analytics) called directly from those apps. See full details in the Apple Technote on ATS.

We also want to give our partners a heads up that, because many third-party ad networks and other partners are not yet using HTTPS, some third-party content – including ads – may not be served with the new ATS standard for iOS. Since we first began deploying encryption technologies across our network, we’ve worked with thousands of our partners across all of Yahoo’s hundreds of global properties to make sure that any data that is running on our network is secure. This continues to be an area of focus for us, and we’re in a unique position to move the needle by encouraging our broad array of partners to move to HTTPS.

Our broader mission remains to not only make Yahoo secure, but improve the security of the overall web ecosystem. We look forward to seeing what you build – with security built-in – for iOS 9!

Yahoo Announces New Original Video Content Across Digital Magazines for Fall 2015

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:14:00 +0000

Yahoo Announces New Original Video Content Across Digital Magazines for Fall 2015

Yahoo’s Fall 2015 Video Program Line-up, Including “SuperFan Live” on Yahoo TV

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 13:30:06 +0000

By Lisa Licht, SVP Media Marketing

As the air turns crisp, we’re looking forward to a new season - premiere season, that is. As we promised you at our NewFront back in April, Yahoo will bring you some of the best entertainment, news, finance and lifestyle programming on the web.

If you are a super fan like me, you are counting down the days until your favorite show returns! In that spirit, we’re premiering a new aftershow series SuperFan Live on Wednesday, September 23. The first episode is dedicated to FOX’s smash hit, Empire, and you can catch it immediately following the Empire premiere at 10 p.m. PT.

Then, on September 28 at 7 a.m. PT, we’re partnering with Sunday’s highest rated Sunday night drama, ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and highly acclaimed series, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., on September 30 at 7 a.m. PT.

We’re also premiering more new programs across our Digital Magazines, as well as continuing to bring you some of the best live programming of the fall. Check out all our new offerings below!

Upcoming Live Programming

Yahoo’s upcoming live event coverage includes:

September 13, 2015: Fantasy Football Live on Yahoo Sports: The award-winning fantasy broadcast celebrates its 10th season with industry leading expert analysis and up-to-the-minute injury reports every Sunday morning to help set your roster and win your league. The series will begin September 13, 2015.

September 18 - 19, 2015: iHeartRadio Festival: The mega-concert event live streamed from Las Vegas, featuring Kanye West, Jennifer Lopez, Sam Smith, Coldplay, Demi Lovato, David Guetta, Kenny Chesney, The Weeknd, Tove Lo, Lil Wayne, Fall Out Boy, Disclosure, Hozier, Jason Derulo, Duran Duran, Prince Royce, Diplo, Trey Songz, The Killers, Blake Shelton, Nick Jonas, Janet Jackson and more. The show will be live on September 18 and September 19 beginning at 7:30 p.m. PT.

September 20, 2015: 67th Emmy Awards Pre and Post Shows on Yahoo TV: Catch all the stars on the red carpet and recap the night with host, Yahoo Fashion Editor-In-Chief Joe Zee, along with fashion correspondent, June Ambrose and arrivals correspondent, Amy Paffrath. Live pre and post shows will be held September 20, 2015, beginning at 3:30 p.m. PT and 8:00 p.m. PT, respectively.

September 26 - September 27, 2015: Landmark Music Festival: Yahoo and Live Nation’s music festival live stream series presents Landmark from Washington, D.C. to celebrate our diverse musical heritage and energize the movement to restore our nation’s common ground. The festival will live stream on the Live Nation Channel on Yahoo on September 26 and 27.

October 25, 2015: Yahoo presents the first-ever NFL free global live stream between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars from London, UK. The game will live stream beginning at 9:30 a.m. ET.

October 30 - November 1, 2015: Voodoo Music + Arts Experience: Yahoo and Live Nation’s music festival live stream series presents Voodoo from New Orleans, LA, a multi-day music and arts festival. The festival will live stream on the Live Nation Channel on Yahoo from October 30 through November 1.

Upcoming Digital Magazine Video Series

Yahoo is currently developing multiple new series for the Digital Magazine properties, including:

October 4, 2015: What It’s Like on Yahoo Parenting: Unique and extraordinary experiences of parenthood in an intimate documentary format. We’ll learn what it’s like from experiences such as a single father with full custody, delivering a child at 25 weeks, raising a son with Down syndrome, as well as many other powerful experiences. The series will premiere on October 4, 2015.

Date TBA: Tip of the Day on Yahoo Tech: Tips and tricks focused on the most popular consumer products like Facebook and Netflix, and IT emergency tips for times when software crashes or you’ve been hacked. The series will premiere in late 2015.

The New Veterans ERG @ Yahoo

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:23:07 +0000

lifeatyahoo:

By Jeff Zingler, Investigator for the E-Crime Team

Last week our newest employee resource group had its official kickoff event with several branches of the National Guard and Reserves and the Department of Defense employer support group know as the “ESGR.” The Veterans ERG was created to provide opportunities and activities for Yahoo veterans and supporters, and to attract, identify and retain veteran employees for their unique skills and life experiences.

The group aims to build community and raise awareness of issues that soldiers face as they transition out of the military and into civilian life. I personally had a very difficult time transitioning from the military to civilian life. In 2012 I had just finished my master’s degree and was having difficulty finding employment. I was at a conference with no resume in hand and met a few Yahoo employees, including a veteran, who decided to take a chance on me and bring me in to interview because they saw something in me that no one else did. This commitment to hiring based on the merits of a person, and not of a resume, showed me that Yahoo is a leader in hiring the right people, regardless of background.

The “Statement of Support” that was signed by Andy Wiktorowicz, California State Chair of the ESGR, and John DeVine, executive sponsor of the Veterans ERG and Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Yahoo, and veteran of the U.S. Navy submarine force. The Statement of Support commemorates Yahoo’s commitment to the men and women of the National Guard and Reserve and to all who have served in the United States Military and foreign militaries. This plaque will hang proudly at the Sunnyvale Campus.

Yahoo's CMO is out, and a shake-up in the company's media unit is brewing (YHOO)

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:01:19 +0000

Yahoo's CMO and head of media has left the company amid a report of a big shake-up brewing in Yahoo's media group.

Kathy Savitt, who was one of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's first big hires three years ago, will become president of digital for the Hollywood studio STX Entertainment starting next month.

Savitt's exit comes as Yahoo's media unit is about to undergo a major shake-up, according to a report by Re/code.

The news is the latest sign of turmoil at Yahoo, three years into a turnaround effort that has yet to show any real signs of success. And it comes as investors appear to be losing patience with Mayer's efforts to rebuild Yahoo into an internet power that might rival the likes of Google or Facebook.

Shares of Yahoo are now down roughly 40% from their 52-week high of $52.62.

Savitt has been responsible for Yahoo's marketing efforts as well as for Yahoo's media unit, which includes a growing array of digital magazines and video efforts that feature high-profile stars such as Katie Couric.

When Mayer took over as CEO of the struggling Yahoo in 2012, Savitt was one of her first big hires. Before coming to Yahoo, Savitt had founded the e-commerce rewards company Lockerz and had also had big roles at American Eagle Outfitters and Amazon.

While Savitt enjoyed increasing responsibility at Yahoo under Mayer, Re/code says the relationship between the two is not as close as it once was. According to the report, which cites anonymous sources inside and outside the company, Savitt's tenure at Yahoo has attracted increasing scrutiny within the company. And it comes amid some broader changes in Yahoo's top ranks.

Savitt tweeted about her departure on Friday:

Love and gratitude for 3 amazing years @Yahoo. Excited and humbled to soon join STX Digital to build an audience-first content force.
— Kathy Savitt (@ksavitt) September 11, 2015

Yahoo's revenue remains stagnant, and the company has not been able to create a new hit web service or mobile app that matches the popularity of rivals such as Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat.

Worse, Yahoo's planned tax-free spinoff of its 15% stake in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has recently run into trouble as the IRS declined to give the deal the advanced blessing Yahoo requested. Yahoo is still pushing ahead with the spin-off, which has been one of the main appeals of Yahoo's stock for investors, but analysts say there is now an increased risk that the spin-off may not happen.

A Yahoo representative said the company appreciated Savitt's contributions to the company over the past three years and wished her well.

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NYU professor says the only reason Yahoo hasn't fired Marissa Mayer is that she just announced she's pregnant with twins

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:14:54 +0000

In the wake of Yahoo’s stock slide yesterday, NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway had harsh words this morning for CEO Marissa Mayer, calling her "the most overpaid CEO in history" and claiming she would be fired if she hadn’t recently announced she was pregnant with twins.

On Tuesday, Yahoo stock tanked after unfavorable news about its planned tax-free Alibaba spinoff. While the maneuver could still go through, the IRS declined to give Yahoo a “private letter ruling,” which would have guaranteed the spin-off would satisfy IRS requirements.

In short, it’s still up in the air.

Galloway lambasted both Mayer and Yahoo on Bloomberg this morning, both in regards to Alibaba and in more general terms. He claimed Mayer had made some of the worst acquisitions in tech, and that Yahoo is now simply an "accidental hedge fund" that should get "a bullet in the head."

His most controversial comments came when discussing Mayer’s pregnancy. Galloway said if she hadn’t announced that she was pregnant with twins, she would be out of a job within six months. He called her pregnancy a “reprieve from death row.”

Galloway has never been shy about speaking his mind. An irate email he once sent to a student who was late to his class, telling him to "get your s--- together," went viral a few years ago.

Business Insider has reached out to Yahoo for comment and will update this post when we hear back.

Watch the full segment from Bloomberg below:

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Yahoo's stock is getting hit after an unfavorable ruling on its Alibaba spinoff (YHOO)

Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:49:51 +0000

Yahoo's stock is sliding after an unfavorable ruling on its planned tax-free Alibaba spinoff. Yahoo shares are down about 4% in after-hours trading.

The IRS did not outright reject Yahoo's plans to do a tax-free spin-off. But the agency, which has been reconsidering its policy and requirements for such transactions, declined to grant Yahoo's request for a "private letter ruling" that the planned Alibaba spinoff would satisfy the IRS requirements.

In other words, the IRS is not telling Yahoo it can rest easy about the deal getting approved.

"On September 2, 2015, the IRS notified Yahoo’s counsel that it had determined, in the exercise of its discretion, not to grant the requested ruling. At the same time, the IRS indicated that it had not concluded that the proposed spin-off transaction was taxable and therefore was not ruling adversely on the request," Yahoo said in a filing with the SEC on Tuesday.

Yahoo has previously said it expected the spinoff to be completed by the end of the year. Yahoo noted in Tuesday's filing that its lawyers continue to believe the proposed spin off will satisfy the IRS requirements.

"Work proceeds on the pending Aabaco spin-off plan. Yahoo’s Board of Directors will continue to carefully consider the Company’s options, including proceeding with the spin-off transaction on the basis of an opinion of counsel," Yahoo said.

Yahoo investors have long clamored for Yahoo to cash out its investment in Alibaba (and in Yahoo Japan) and give the proceeds back to shareholders. It's crucial for Yahoo shareholders that the Alibaba spin-off get tax-free treatment. Otherwise shareholders might lose up to a third of the payoff from Yahoo's monetization of its Alibaba stake in tax payments.

The news comes shortly after Yahoo announced in another filing that its global controller and chief accounting officer will be leaving the company on September 11.

Yahoo did not immediately return requests for comment.

Here is what Yahoo said in a filing on Tuesday:

On February 26, 2015, Yahoo submitted to the IRS a request for a private letter ruling with respect to whether Aabaco’s ownership and operation of ASB would satisfy the active trade or business requirement (the “ATB Requirement”) under Section 355 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”). On May 19, 2015, the IRS announced that it was reconsidering its ruling policy with respect to the ATB Requirement. On July 31, 2015, the IRS formally announced that it was studying potential new administrative guidance with respect to certain issues under Section 355 of the Code, including the ATB Requirement. On September 2, 2015, the IRS notified Yahoo’s counsel that it had determined, in the exercise of its discretion, not to grant the requested ruling. At the same time, the IRS indicated that it had not concluded that the proposed spin-off transaction was taxable and therefore was not ruling adversely on the request. Following receipt of such notification, Yahoo withdrew its request for a ruling on September 2, 2015.

Subsequent to the IRS’s decision with respect to its ruling request, Yahoo confirmed with its tax counsel, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP (“Skadden”), that the discretionary decision by the IRS not to grant Yahoo’s ruling request with respect to the ATB Requirement did not reflect any change in U.S. tax law with respect to the tax-free treatment of the proposed spin-off and would not affect Skadden’s ability to render an opinion that, under current law and subject to certain factual representations and assumptions, the currently proposed spin-off will satisfy all of the requirements for tax-free treatment under the Code, including the ATB Requirement.

Work proceeds on the pending Aabaco spin-off plan. Yahoo’s Board of Directors will continue to carefully consider the Company’s options, including proceeding with the spin-off transaction on the basis of an opinion of counsel.

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The car is becoming the next major battleground for digital media companies

Tue, 08 Sep 2015 16:14:00 +0000

People spend an average of 6.5 hours per week in their cars, and as dashboards become digital platforms it's creating a massive new market for carmakers, digital-media companies, and even marketers. Revenue from connected services are expected to top $152 billion by 2020.

Carmakers are offering a selection of features in their connected cars, with a special focus on entertainment apps and safety-management features.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at revenue from connected-car internet services, consumer attitudes to these services and how they will pay for them (including getting ads in return for free content), and the potential for self-driving cars.

The report serves as a companion to our connected-car market forecast report.

Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Full-Access Trial >>

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Connected-safety features bring in the most revenue of all of today's connected-car services, at $13 billion. But safety will lose its spot as the top revenue stream to driver-assistance in 2017. Connected-safety features will bring in $44 billion in 2020. These connections include alerting customers of road conditions, such as severe weather or an approaching hazard, as well as collision-avoidance.
Entertainment is one of the most popular features available for the connected car, but it is not a major revenue driver. The category will account for only $13 billion in revenue in 2020. Entertainment features include integrations with apps such as Pandora, Yelp, and Facebook.
But there's still a ways to go before mainstream consumers really understand how they can benefit from the connected car. About 80% of consumers have either never heard of connected cars or are unsure what the term refers to.
People who actually use connected car services are satisfied with them. About half of those who have a connected car actually use the car's connected features, and those who do use many of these features shows high levels of satisfaction with them.
Consumers are pretty split on how they want to pay for these services. 25% of global consumers would be willing to receive in-car advertising if it meant they got free basic services in exchange. This means marketers are likely to have a big opportunity to tap into the connected-car market.

Join the conversation about this story »

Why Google's logo-rollout went more smoothly than Yahoo's

Sun, 06 Sep 2015 15:48:36 +0000

We’re uncomfortable with change.

From a cynic’s perspective, the bevy of adages embracing it (flashback to high school yearbook opening page: “The only constant is change”) is evidence: it’s as if we’re trying too hard to convince ourselves.

Perhaps the most illustrative phenomenon of this aversion is the logo switcheroo.

Remember Gap’s logo disaster in 2010?

Oh wait, you probably don’t; they reverted back to their original logo only four days after the rollout.

And more recently, after spending five months and more than US$125,000, Penn State’s new logo had disenchanted students and alumni taking to Twitter in droves.

So it’s no surprise at all that Google’s new logo has ruffled some feathers: an informal Ad Age poll shows a majority dislike it.

Yet, at least anecdotally, the Google logo unveiling has not solicited quite the vitriol that Yahoo did when it rolled out a logo redesign in 2013.

Why was this the case?

On the face of things, there are plenty of similarities: Both Google and Yahoo are tech behemoths that have been around since what seems like the beginning of the internet – long enough that each likely had its respective logo done by a developer experimenting with CorelDRAW in a nondescript Northern California garage.

But this is not really about design.

Yahoo’s final product could have been the 21st century’s answer to the Mona Lisa, but I suspect reactions would have been the same.

When it comes to logo redesigns, it’s not what’s done so much as when it’s done and how it’s rolled out.

Tech years are like dog years

Brand scholars posit that brands age much like humans: there’s birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage (mergers and acquisitions), parenthood (brand extensions), aging (market share decline) and death.

Yahoo, which launched in 1994, had four real years on Google, which appeared in 1998.

In the tech world, that’s at least a generation. So while Google is arguably somewhere around marriage/parenthood, Yahoo was already well into the aging stage when Marissa Mayer (formerly of Google) became CEO in 2012.

Let’s face it: staging a late-life comeback is tricky (see: Arby’s and IHOP). On the other hand, making significant changes is baked into the marriage and parenting “life stages” of brands.

It’s all in the execution

In 2013, crowdsourcing was a hot (kinda) new thing, so it’s no wonder Yahoo jumped on the train. The company pushed out 29 versions of its logo – the reason for which is still unclear to me. I do believe the public was under the impression that it had a say. But then Mayer announced she and a team had spent the past weekend hammering out the new logo. It’s like we got all riled up and then learned, post-hoc, that we didn’t score an invite to the slumber party.

Yahoo’s roll out video.

Google, on the other hand, incorporated its change in a way that felt organic.

Google Doodles – those delightful animations that often stand in for the organization’s logo on the Google homepage – have been around nearly as long as the company itself.

So to introduce the new logo in a way that was consistent with previous Google Doodle animations was genius; I might be thicker than most, but I didn’t actually realize a logo rebrand was going on. I just thought it was kind of cute how the hand reached up and tilted the last “e” ever so slightly.

Google’s roll out video.

The aspirational unveiling

Both companies announced the logo changes via blog and video channels, but that’s where the similarities stop.

Mayer’s blog post gives a rational appeal, outlining a step-by-step explanation of the design choices in detail that only an engineer could appreciate. The video is equally mathematical (news flash: Americans are terrified of math), with music that, inexplicably, sounds like it should be blaring in a Gap store, circa 1999.

Meanwhile, the Google post, signed by the VP of product management and director of user experience, is emotional without being at all personal, and the video is simply a multimedia translation of this message (though it does feel a bit like a frenetic timeline of Dr Evil’s mounting world domination).

It’s a rallying cry for where Google has been and where it’s going.

Yahoo, once the leading search engine, made a huge fanfare of its intent, and the rollout was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affair.

Google, on the other hand, has been evolving since nearly Day 1, so the new logo felt like just another iteration; its communique stayed consistent with this theme.

After all, for Google, the only constant is change.

Kay Tappan is Lecturer of Public Relations at University of Florida

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Yahoo's Marissa Mayer is a symbol for American working mothers, whether she likes it or not

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 16:00:00 +0000

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's recent decision to take "limited parental leave" after the birth of her twins has reignited a long-standing debate.

Whether she likes it or not, Mayer has become a symbol for American working mothers.

On Monday evening, Mayer announced on her Tumblr page that she is due to have two baby girls in December. Mayer said that she will continue to work throughout her pregnancy and will take "limited time away" after the birth of her twins, just as she did after the birth of her son Macallister in 2012.

"I've shared the news and my plans with Yahoo's Board of Directors and my executive team, and they are incredibly supportive and happy for me," she writes.

As her previous decision did in 2012, Mayer's recent announcement that she plans to take limited time off has evoked a strong and mixed reaction.

In 2012, Mayer set a precedent as the first woman to ever become CEO of a major public company in the U.S. while pregnant, and many see the mom CEO as a symbol for women who can "have it all."

"She's really cutting some new road here, and I think it's really exciting," Betsy Myers, founding director of Bentley University's Center for Women and Business, tells Business Insider.

"She's a great role model for women who want to be leaders, women who are moms and leaders — I just think she's a terrific role model for us all," she says.

Others on Twitter concur.

@marissamayer @zackbogue A true leader: transforming @Yahoo while showing women what is possible #WomenLeaders #WonderWoman #Congratulations
— Mike Schiro (@MikeSchiro) September 2, 2015

As Mayer writes in her Tumblr post, the executive continues to balance her work-life and personal-life:

I'm blessed to have experienced some of my most extraordinary and proudest personal moments while being Yahoo's CEO. Moving forward, there will be a lot to do for both my family and for Yahoo; both will require hard work and thoughtful prioritization. However, I'm extremely energized by and dedicated to both my family and Yahoo and will do all that is necessary and more to help both thrive. The future looks extremely bright on both fronts.

Myers believes the Yahoo CEO demonstrates to women that you can be in a high position and have children, and there's choice about how you can do it. While some mothers choose to take their full parental leave, for example, others may choose to take less time, Myers points out, and while some women may be the breadwinners in the family, others may not.

"How leaders integrate their work and their home-life, everybody watches that," Myers says. "She's role modeling that, yes, you can have children and a successful career."

Myers says often low workplace morale comes from people feeling like they don't have a choice — instead, people want the respect to be trusted to get the work done and manage their personal lives.

"Those CEOs that are role-modeling different ways to show up gives comfort and assurance to other workers that they can live an integrated life, too," Myers says.

Some, however, would argue that Mayer is not, in fact, a realistic role model.

"We all applaud [Mayer]," Anne-Marie Slaughter told the Associated Press in 2012 following the news of Mayer's first pregnancy. "But she's superhuman, rich, and in charge. She isn't really a realistic role model for hundreds of thousands of women who are trying to figure out how you make it to the top AND have a family at the same time."

Others do see Mayer as a role model, but consider her leave announcement as setting a negative example.

Following her first pregnancy, Mayer increased Yahoo's parental leave policy to eight weeks paid leave for any Yahoo employee that has a new child while employed at Yahoo and an additional eight weeks paid leave for birth mothers. But in light of the recent news some wonder, what good is generous parental leave if your top people don't take it?

@marissamayer Moms with fewer resources than you have no paid maternity leave or work protection. Leadership would be advocating for them.
— Jenniferparker (@jparkerboulder) September 1, 2015

Mayer is a self-proclaimed workaholic — "I like to work," the then Google vice president who famously sleeps only a few hours a night and doesn't "really believe in burnout" said during a 2005 keynote talk at Stanford University — but some say loving work and not wanting to take time off aren't the only considerations for the CEO of a major company.

"When a senior executive, female or male, skimps on leave, it sets a very bad example for others in the company who may well feel that, should they take the full amount on paper, they will be seen as less committed, less dedicated, or less competent," Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values @ Work, tells Business Insider.

She notes that, according to data from the Department of Labor analyzed by Abt Associates, nearly 1 in 4 employed mothers return to work within two weeks of childbirth.

Extending parental leave policies isn't enough. "People need to see that there will not be repercussions for taking it, and often there's a subtle message given, 'Yes, this is the time we have, and you will certainly be sorry if you take it," Bravo says.

Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of the 600-person ads and pages team, previously told Business Insider that he strongly encourages all his dads and moms to take their full leave, and he's well known throughout Facebook for belief that the true test of a leader is how long they can be away from work.

"It's really irresponsible for any member of the company, parent or otherwise, to have information or an ability that [nobody else has], because that means it's a liability to the company," he says. "If you're a single point of failure, especially in an engineering organization like Facebook, that's strictly a bad thing."

That's why he and many executives like him at Facebook take the full four months of paid parental leave offered at Facebook, which the company has found encourages others to take leave, too.

Additionally, for her most recent child, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki took 14 of the 18 weeks of paid maternity leave that Google offers — employees there report on Glassdoor that they feel supported in their wish to take full leave.

"I took paternity leave last year and it was great!" wrote one employee. "Everyone was very supportive. My teammates picked up the slack with no complaints, and my director insisted that I take the full leave that we are allowed. Not only is the policy generous, but the atmosphere at Google is such that you can take the full leave and not hurt your career."

"I took paternity leave three times while at Google," wrote another employee. "Every time it was seamless and very generous!!"

As Bravo notes, "Everyone is special and no one is indispensable, and you design work that way."

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NOW WATCH: The 3 people Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer leans on for advice

Explore career opportunities at Yahoo Labs

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 21:21:58 +0000

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/careers

Request a dataset for academic use

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 21:21:35 +0000

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http://webscope.sandbox.yahoo.com

Engage with our Academic Partnerships team

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 21:20:57 +0000

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/outreach

Contact a researcher in your area of interest

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Yahoo Announces Completion of Polyvore Acquisition

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 20:05:00 +0000

Yahoo Announces Completion of Polyvore Acquisition

Go Behind the Scenes of TruTV’s “Impractical Jokers” 100th Episode with Yahoo Livetext

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 21:14:14 +0000

By Rachel Heit, Director, Product Marketing

Calling all fans of TruTV’s Impractical Jokers! This Thursday, September 3, during the Impractical Jokers’ 100th episode special, use Yahoo Livetext to go behind the scenes pre and post show. Just download Yahoo Livetext and add “Jokers” as a friend. Casey Jost, the host, and other special guests from the show will livetext five lucky fans between 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET and 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m ET.

Download Yahoo Livetext on your iOS and Android phone today and tune in for the 100th episode this Thursday at 10 p.m. ET.

Yahoo to Participate at the Citi Global Technology Conference

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:51:00 +0000

Yahoo to Participate at the Citi Global Technology Conference

A mom needed help understanding her teenage daughter, so she asked the internet if 'same' was a curse word

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 13:45:44 +0000

For many parents, understanding teenager-speak can be a challenge. One mom used Yahoo Answers to get some clarity about a new "curse word" her 17-year-old daughter had been using.

The word? "Same."

In case you're not familiar with the "same" joke, it's often an easy way to digitally nod in agreement. And the funnier the better. Tired on a Monday morning? Find a gif of a small puppy having trouble taking its first steps and falling down. "Same," you'll write next to the gif.

That dog is you.

Here's an example from Twitter.

#Same pic.twitter.com/jOK4su5Y3z
— Maddie☀️ (@pimpmaddie) August 24, 2015

Last week, after hearing her daughter use the "same" joke in their kitchen, a mom posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking for an explanation.

"I am a mother of two kids and my eldest daughter (now 17) is making me alarmed by the amount of times she is using the word same," she wrote in the post. "What does same mean? Is it a new curse word that I don't know about from that Tumbler website? Should I be punishing her for saying it in front of her sister?"

Obviously, there is no way to verify if the Yahoo commenter really is a concerned parent or just an internet comedian looking for a laugh. Either way, people online seem to be getting a chuckle out of the post.

Now a screenshot of the Yahoo Answers post has started making its way around Tumblr. It's already been shared over 100,000 times.

http://manifest-as-shrubbery.tumblr.com/post/127883269904/today-my-friend-sent-me-this-when-i-replied-same

If the post truly is from a confused mom, she's in luck. People on Yahoo Answers have been kind enough to clue her in.

"Same is just something someone says, normally on the internet, when they can relate to a picture or something. It's like short for saying 'I feel the same' or 'I feel like that item/person,'" wrote the top commenter.

Same.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How designers around the world photoshopped this model when they were told to make her beautiful

Happy personal news

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 04:38:03 +0000

marissamayr:

With great happiness, Zack and I have some exciting news to share – I’m pregnant! In fact, I’m expecting identical twin girls, likely arriving in December. The twins part was quite a surprise, because I have no family history of twins or any other predisposing factors. However, as I’ve now learned, identical twins occur by random chance in roughly 1 out of approximately every 300 pregnancies. Zack and I have embraced the surprise and are very excited about these new additions to our family.

Since my pregnancy has been healthy and uncomplicated and since this is a unique time in Yahoo’s transformation, I plan to approach the pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three years ago, taking limited time away and working throughout. I’ve shared the news and my plans with Yahoo’s Board of Directors and my executive team, and they are incredibly supportive and happy for me. I want to thank them for all of their encouragement as well as their offers of help and continued support.

Leading Yahoo in our renaissance, alongside a terrific and dedicated team, has given me tremendous professional pride in our accomplishments. I’ve never been more excited about our progress and the growth opportunities for our amazing company. At the same time, I’m blessed to have experienced some of my most extraordinary and proudest personal moments while being Yahoo’s CEO. Moving forward, there will be a lot to do for both my family and for Yahoo; both will require hard work and thoughtful prioritization. However, I’m extremely energized by and dedicated to both my family and Yahoo and will do all that is necessary and more to help both thrive. The future looks extremely bright on both fronts.

Our CEO Marissa Mayer is pregnant with twins. At the company, we are extremely happy for her and supportive of her plans and approach. Yahoo, as well as Marissa and her family, thank you for respecting their privacy during this happy, special time.

The SPLENDA® Brand Gives Consumers a Second Helping of SWEET SWAPS™ on Yahoo & Tumblr

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:03:42 +0000

By Lisa Utzschneider, Chief Revenue Officer

We’re teaming up with the SPLENDA® Brand to help people create a sweet life with the SWEET SWAPS™ program on Yahoo and Tumblr. The collaborative effort debuted last year, when the SPLENDA® Brand shared a new recipe every day in 2014 on Tumblr, and amplified these efforts across Yahoo properties - with exciting results:

Paid engagements on Tumblr (likes, reblogs or follows) exceeded the industry benchmark by 32%
The SPLENDA® Brand saw a 900% increase in engagement after running paid media on Tumblr
Syndication on Yahoo helped to more than double the campaign’s reach

“We are excited to continue our partnership with Yahoo and expand on last year’s successful campaign,” said Kim Holdsworth, senior marketing director, McNeil Nutritionals, LLC. “While the 2014 program focused on cooking and recipes, this year we are featuring exclusive content from industry experts that will help inspire and motivate people to make smart choices that support a balanced lifestyle.”

With a video series, photos, inspiring GIFs and original recipes, the campaign on Yahoo and Tumblr will feature content from: food expert and internet sensation Laura Vitale, host of the popular online show Laura In the Kitchen and of the Cooking Channel show, Simply Laura; certified nutritionist Dr. Janet Brill; and DIY expert and author of Homemakers: A Domestic Handbook for the Digital Generation, Brit Morin, founder and CEO of Brit + Co.

Content will be featured on the SWEET SWAPS™ Tumblr page throughout the year and the SPLENDA® Brand will also amplify the program with advertising across Yahoo to reach a larger audience. With Yahoo Splash ads within the digital magazines including Yahoo Food, the SPLENDA® Brand will share high-impact images and video from the program. The SPLENDA® Brand will also be able to engage new audiences with pre-roll video ads across our network and syndication of their video series.

Additionally, to increase the distribution of content from the SPLENDA® Brand’s Tumblr page, the brand will leverage Tumblr Sponsored Posts and native ads available through Yahoo Gemini, along with premium display advertising with dynamic creative.

Yahoo and Girls Who Code Partner

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 12:01:42 +0000

By Olivia Khalili, Director of Yahoo For Good

What would the technological world look like if was designed by females? With only 14% of the engineering workforce comprised of women*, and 1.4 million STEM jobs projected in the next 20 years*, conceivably, we might never know.

So yes, it’s a pipeline issue. And an awareness issue, but perhaps most importantly, one of identity. The interest in math and science that many girls display at an early age often becomes diluted amongst the aisles of pink toys, societal expectations that nudge them elsewhere or the lack of resources provided. With more awareness (and data) for this gender fallout, there’s a crop of organizations working to close the gender and minority opportunity divide in STEM.

How do you encourage interest from girls in coding? Give them the tools to imagine. Yahoo is partnering with Girls Who Code to develop new curriculum, based on the Tumblr and Flickr open-sourced APIs, that will roll out across 500 clubs this school year. Through these lessons, 6th-12th grade girls will learn to build queries to display the most popular content on Tumblr and Flickr - intermediate skills that build on students’ preliminary knowledge of website development.

Not only will participating girls learn to create using Tumblr and Flickr’s API, they will also have an opportunity to showcase their work during project demo days for local clubs in New York and the Bay Area. The partnership connects these young learners directly with the engineers, designers and project managers who work on Tumblr and Flickr products.

Following the course, students will have the foundational skills to continue to develop and create using APIs available through the Yahoo Developer Network.

Yahoo for Good works to enable the next generation of creative thinkers and doers by providing access to opportunities in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math). Through partners like Girls Who Code, we’re able to give more people the tools to imagine, driving a diversity of ideas and perspectives that may ultimately allow us to know what the technological world would look like if it were designed by females?

__________________

* STAT: Where are America’s Women Engineers?

* STAT: U.S. Department of Labor

Yahoo Holds Mobile Developer Conference in NYC to Announce Latest Updates to Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite!

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 14:32:15 +0000

By Simon Khalaf, SVP Publishing Products

Seven years into the mobile revolution, I’m excited to host hundreds of developers at the Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York. Today, I’m taking the stage with my amazing colleagues Lisa Utzschneider, Yahoo’s Chief Revenue Officer, and Tumblr CEO David Karp along with our invaluable partners and clients to take a look at the evolving mobile landscape, talk to developers about building their businesses and share updates to the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite.

For more on my portion of the morning where I discuss the growth and evolution of the mobile industry and app categories, check out my Tumblr post here.

As the world of mobile app usage changes, so do developers’ needs. At today’s conference, Yahoo announced updates to the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite developers use to analyze, advertise, monetize and enhance their apps and build their businesses as the industry evolves. Today we’re discussing the following updates, and more, with the New York City developer community:

Tumblr In-App Sharing: Developers can now let users share their creations with their Tumblr followers with one click. When a Tumblr user who doesn’t have the app sees the post, the ability to download the app will be a seamless part of their experience. App developers will also be able to see engagement on content shared by their users, such as how many times it has been reblogged, clicked on or liked. Today David Karp is sitting down with our launch partner, PicsArt, to talk about the initial success they’ve seen using Tumblr In-App Sharing.

Real-Time Metrics: Updating automatically every 15 seconds, developers can have instant insight into real-time app activity, completely for free through Flurry Analytics. Real-time Metrics will work at any scale, whether a developer has a hundred, a thousand, or a billion users.

Native Video Ads for Publishers: Yahoo can now help developers integrate an advertising solution into their app that is designed to increase monetization by combining native, the best performing ad format, with video, the best performing ad content.

There are a few more updates we’ll be sharing and then later in the day, after all the presentations and breakout sessions, we’ll be announcing the winners from yesterday’s Hackathon! There were so many great hacks, I’m so impressed with what was developed, and can’t wait to see which teams come out on top!

If you want to tune in, the conference is being live streamed here. You can also join in on the action by sharing your ideas with @yahoo and @flurrymobile, and be sure to use #mobileyodel for event-related tweets!

Yahoo Holds Mobile Developer Conference in New York City

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 14:30:00 +0000

Yahoo Holds Mobile Developer Conference in New York City

Seven Years Into The Mobile Revolution: Content is King… Again

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 14:01:04 +0000

yahoodevelopers:

By Simon Khalaf, SVP Publishing Products

Last year, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the mobile revolution, Flurry issued our annual report on the mobile industry. In that report, we analyzed time spent on a mobile device by the average American consumer. We ran the same analysis in Q2 of this year and found interesting trends we are sharing in this report.

After putting the desktop web in the rear view mirror in Q2 2011, and eclipsing television in Q4 2014, mobile and its apps have cemented their position as the top media channel and grabbed more time spent from the average American consumer. In Q2 of 2015, American consumers spent, on average, 3 hrs and 40 minutes per day on their mobile devices. That is a 35% increase in time spent from one year ago and a 24% increase from Q4 2014. In just six short months, the average time American consumers spend on their phones each day increased by 43 minutes.

To put things in perspective, there are 175 million Americans with at least one mobile device. This means that, in aggregate, since November 2014, the US connected population is spending an extra 125 million hours per day on mobile devices. This growth rate is especially astonishing after seven consecutive growth years.

The Browser: Sidelined

Looking at the chart above, today only 10% of the time spent on mobile is spent in the browser, down from 14% a year ago. The rest of the time, 90%, is spent in apps. Effectively, the browser has been sidelined on mobile. This has major implications on the digital industry in general and the content and media industry in particular. Historically, the media industry has relied almost entirely on search for user and traffic acquisition, building entire teams around SEO and SEM on the desktop web. But search engines are predominantly accessed from a browser. If mobile users aren’t using browsers, the media industry will have to look for new approaches to content discovery and traffic acquisition.

The Media Industry: Absorbed by Apps

The chart below takes a closer look at app categories. Social, Messaging and Entertainment apps (including YouTube), account for 51% of time spent on mobile.

Entertainment (including YouTube) grew from 8% of time spent last year, or 13 minutes per day, to 20% of time spent, or 44 minutes per day this year. This is 240% growth year-over-year, or an extra 31 minutes. That is more than the time it would take to watch an additional TV sitcom for every US consumer, every day!

Messaging and Social apps grew from 28% of time spent last year or 45 minutes per day to 31% of time spent or slightly more than 68 minutes per day this year. This is a 50% year-over-year increase. However, the majority of time spent inside messaging and social apps is actually spent consuming media, such as videos on Tumblr and Facebook or stories on Snapchat. A study by Millward Brown Digital showed that 70% of social app users are actually consuming media. While we can’t correlate the 70% directly to time spent, we firmly believe that media consumption, either articles read in the web view in app, or video consumed in the feeds, constitute the majority of time spent in social apps. This is a big trend and one that will be watched very carefully by traditional media companies. These companies have to adjust to a new world where consumers act as individual distribution channels. The growth in entertainment on mobile proves once again that content is in fact king and is beating the gaming industry in its own game.

The Gaming Industry: Time is Money

The completely unexpected result of our analysis this year is the dramatic decline in time spent for mobile gaming. Gaming saw its share decline from 32% last year (52 minutes per day) to 15% of time spent (33 minutes per day) this year. This is a 37% decline year-over-year. We believe there are three factors contributing to the decline.

Lack of new hits: Gaming is a hit driven industry and there hasn’t been a major new hit the past 6 to nine months. The major titles like Supercell’s Clash of Clans, King’s Candy Crush, and Machine Zone’s Game of War continue to dominate the top grossing charts and haven’t made room for a major new entrant.

Users become the game: Millennials are shifting from playing games to watching others play games, creating a new category of entertainment called eSports. This summer, Fortune named eSports, the new Saturday morning cartoons for millennials. In fact, some of the most watched content on Tumblr is Minecraft videos created and curated by the passionate Minecraft community.

Pay instead of play: Gamers are buying their way into games versus grinding their way through them. Gamers are spending more money than time to effectively beat games or secure better standings rather than working their way to the top. This explains the decline in time spent and the major rise in in-app purchases, as Apple saw a record $1.7B in AppStore sales in July.

What the mobile industry in general and the app industry in particular have achieved in the past seven years is amazing. Flurry now measures more than two billion devices each month and sees more than 10 billion sessions per day. That is 1.42 sessions for every human being on this planet, every day. And that is just Flurry! If there is anything to say about the mobile and app industry it is this: Mobile is on fire and it is showing no signs of stopping.

Yahoo Insights: Why Are Consumers Interested in Live Streaming?

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 13:52:53 +0000

By Lauren Weinberg, VP Global Research & Insights

Live streaming is on the rise with a variety of new and interesting content through multiple platforms and providers. When it comes to music, Yahoo has discovered a variety of reasons why millennials are tuning-in to watch their favorite artists live from their mobile devices, as opposed to attending in person.

Our Yahoo Insights team dug deeper into the behaviors of consumers and their music content preferences - from preferred platforms to the most popular genres.

Creamfields music festival will live stream this weekend on Yahoo, with EDM artists Tiesto, Steve Aoki, Armin Van Buuren, Kygo and many more. Even if you can’t be there in person, or can’t afford to get over to Cheshire (U.K.), we’re bringing you authentic performances from the top DJs around the world.

Yahoo is continuing to focus on live video, including the second year of our Live Nation partnership, Yahoo News Live and the first-ever live stream of an NFL game on October 25th.

TITLE: Music Genre & Live-Streaming Preferences Study

DATE OF PUBLICATION: August 2015

RESEARCH VENDORS: VisionCritical, via Yodeler’s Community Panel

COUNTRY: USA/Americas

Never Get Caught in the Rain or Snow Again - Yahoo Weather Brings You Near-term Weather Alerts

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 17:00:52 +0000

By Shenglong Gao, Associate Product Manager, Mobile Weather

Today we’re introducing new weather alerts around the world - you’ll never be stuck outside, unprepared again. Yahoo Weather, our beautiful and intuitive weather app, will alert you 15 minutes before rain or snow is expected, so you can grab your jacket, rain boots or umbrella!

Oh, and did we mention Yahoo Weather is even more accurate than before? We took some major steps to overhaul the way we determine and serve forecasts. The app will even zoom in on microclimates.

Update your app or download it in the App Store or Play Store today.

Martha Nelson Joins Yahoo as Global Editor-in-Chief

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 19:50:05 +0000

By Kathy Savitt, CMO and Head of Media

Yahoo Media, including Yahoo’s new Digital Magazines, are comprised of some of the media industry’s strongest editorial and publishing talent, and today I’m happy to announce our newest addition, Global Editor-in-Chief, Martha Nelson. Martha joins us on August 17th and will be based in our New York office, reporting to me.

As an accomplished editor, proven brand innovator and media veteran, Martha adds to Yahoo’s established media business to continue to elevate our world-class products and journalism. In January 2014, we launched our first Digital Magazines and have since built 13 in the United States and 30 globally, which are rapidly rising to the top of their categories. With her proven track record of building successful brands as the founding editor of InStyle and for the growth of People (and People.com) into a globally recognized brand, I’m excited to work with Martha to further grow our Digital Magazines.

Most recently, Martha was the first female editor-in-chief of Time Inc., where she oversaw the editorial content for the media company’s 21 brands. She has received many accolades for her outstanding work, including “Editor of the Year” by Adweek and Forbes Most Powerful Women three years in a row. She is a trustee of both the National Trust for Historic Preservation and The Actors Fund, serves as a judge for the Peabody Awards.

Yahoo to Acquire Polyvore

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 21:00:00 +0000

Yahoo to Acquire Polyvore

Introducing Yahoo Livetext - A New Way to Connect

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:05:00 +0000

Introducing Yahoo Livetext - A New Way to Connect

Small Business Blog has moved

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 23:57:19 +0000

We’ve excited to announce that the Small Business Blog has moved to Tumblr. Please visit us here for information on tools and products needed to attract new customers, increase sales, improve efficiency, and ultimately succeed. Tweet This Post

19 Easy-to-Fix Conversion Blunders Report

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 00:40:40 +0000

The Conversions on Demand team from Exclusive Concepts, a Yahoo Small Business partner, sifted through nearly 1,000 conversion tests to find common conversion blunders. They identified 19 such blunders where an easy fix could make a big impact on online sales. See what they found out in this free eBook, 19 Easy-to-Fix Blunders That Are Hurting Your Conversion Rates.

View it here.

New eBook helps you reduce holiday cart abandonment

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 19:41:01 +0000

Discover how to reduce cart abandonment this holiday season with these just-in-time insights. See what last year's best/worst cart abandonment days were, learn 7 tips like where to put your price guarantee to boost conversions by 9%, and more. This report is produced by Exclusive Concepts, a Yahoo Small Business partner, and is available on their Conversions On Demand website.

Click here to access your free report.

y.ahoo.it URL Shortener end-of-life announcement

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 22:19:24 +0000

The y.ahoo.it URL shortener powered by YQL will be shutdown on November 20th 2013 – a URL shortening service is not one of Yahoo!’s core competencies supporting our users’ Daily Habits.

As of November 20th, you will not be able to create short URLs using either the form at http://y.ahoo.it or the yahoo.y.ahoo.it YQL table available on the YQL console. The page at http://y.ahoo.it will redirect to http://www.yahoo.com.

Any short links you have already created will continue to redirect to the correct locations. We will provide at least three months notice before making any further changes to the service.

Using updated Reports feature can help reduce tax prep time

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:40:09 +0000

(The following is a guest post from Yahoo Merchant Solutions developer partner Kevin Richards on using the updated reports feature.)

For those of us who use the "Reports" feature of the Store, Yahoo has created a cleaner interface. Many store owners use this feature when it comes to tax time, as it's very easy to see the total value of orders were received. These totals are calculated based on the orders that were received, after deducting returns and fraudulent orders. At ScentsandSprays.com, we mark orders that are either not shipped or are returned in our Yahoo Store Order Manager. Regular "pruning" of the orders helps keep our reports accurate and makes tax reporting a little less stressful [...]

Free webinar to help you prepare for the 2013 holiday shopping season

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 23:22:18 +0000

On Wednesday, October 9, at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT, Yahoo Merchant Solutions developer partner Exclusive Concepts will host a special (and free) holiday-preparedness webinar with Google.

During the webinar, Exclusive Concepts and Google will cover insights to help you succeed during the 2013 holiday shopping season. These include:

Projections on this upcoming holiday season's ecommerce sales
Digital marketing strategies to help you stay competitive this year
Ways to help ensure you're investing in high ROI
A case to embrace mobile this year

Introducing Yahoo Commerce Central

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 17:21:28 +0000

Starting today, you have brand new ways to find customers and increase sales! Introducing Yahoo Commerce Central, your one-stop shop for simple, affordable, and effective tools for your store.

Find all of the marketing tools you need to help you increase your sales, efficiency and profitability in our App Gallery. We offer a host of apps to help you list and advertise on leading shopping and search engines, sell your products on Facebook, and much more. For real-time customer engagement and analytics, check out our free app, Live Web Insights. With Live Web Insights, you can [...]

Free webinar from comScore and UPS: Enhancing the online shopping experience

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 16:13:04 +0000

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT, comScore and UPS will host a free webinar. Choices, Channels, and Convenience: Enhancing the Online Shopping Experience will explore:

Which attributes of the online shopping experience customers care about most;
Areas in which customers would like to see process improvements, such as shipping and returns/exchanges; and
How mobile and social media can and should enhance the customer experience to drive sales.

Unified YQL Console

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 07:09:22 +0000

Introducing the new Unified YQL Console.

This new release combines YQL developer tools under a shared header. The YQL Console and YQL Editor are now updated with a new look and feel, easier navigation to these complementing products and some new features.

YQL Console

The YQL Console has been refreshed with a new look and feel that will unify the looks of the Console and the YQL Table Editor.

We’ve made a slight adjustment to the layout in order to make it easier for developers to get working right away. The list of tables, which originally sat in the bottom-right corner, was moved over to occupy the entire left-hand side, since this is where most developers start with the console. In addition, this change gives developers a lot more space to browse and try out the different tables.

With the new console, we’ll remember how you customized the console so you can start working even faster the next time you’re back. For example, if you prefer to work with JSON over XML and have both sidebars closed, you will get this layout every time you load the
console.

Last, but not least, there have been several improvements to performance. The tables index and search data is now cached server-side, which means you can work and search
tables faster.

YQL Table Editor

The YQL Editor was rebuilt using the YUI3 Apps Framework and now allows you to
dynamically save, load, and delete your data (versus a full page reload).

We’ve also upgraded our CodeMirror library to a newer version and added two
plugins to help developers write their YQL tables.

These plugins will close XML tags automatically and suggest tags and attributes based on the official YQL table schema. Like the Console, the editor features some basic state persistence including a backup of your data in the event your browser crashes.

Lexity Live begins phased rollout to Yahoo Merchant Solutions customers

Fri, 09 Aug 2013 18:00:02 +0000

We are excited to announce that just a week after our announced acquisition of Lexity, we have started a phased roll out of access to Lexity Live to Yahoo Merchant Solutions customers. Lexity Live is a free product that provides merchants with a real-time view of their website, including information about traffic and revenue, and delivers actionable insights to help them grow sales.

As part of the initial integration, some Yahoo Merchant Solutions customers are already seeing Lexity in their Store Manager. Merchants who don’t see the Lexity option, but would like to have it enabled, should contact their account manager or customer support to discuss options. For more information about Lexity and their products, visit the FAQ.

We plan to roll out access for all merchants in the coming weeks with [...]

Countdown to Merchant Summit 2013! What to expect.

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 17:54:01 +0000

The 5th annual Yahoo Merchant Summit is just a few days away! We are once again looking forward to sharing a little face time with our merchants.

The two days we'll spend together will be jam-packed with interesting and informative tips and tools to make sure you get the most of your time with us. Be sure to check out the full agenda for details on what to expect.

Some of the highlights you can look forward to:

Roundtable discussions (new!)

These structured, in-depth, "hands on" mini networking and learning sessions will [...]

We’ve Moved!

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 22:24:09 +0000

We’ve moved! As of today, the Yahoo! Policy official blog has moved to yahoopolicy.tumblr.com. Come on over and check out the new digs!

CSS Spheres, Tricky CSS Selectors Quiz and more

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 13:17:39 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. js-sequence-diagrams turns text into UML sequence diagrams. A comprehensive guide to becoming a WordPress developer to help you get started developing in … Continue reading →

Reclaiming Yahoo! Usernames In A Way That’s Secure: Require-Recipient-Valid-Since

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 18:51:32 +0000

As we move forward with making unused Yahoo! usernames available to new owners, we’ve always thought about making the process as secure as possible.

Hack India: Hyderabad — It’s a Wrap!

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:34:47 +0000

The energy at the 6th edition of Yahoo! Hack in India was electrifying as we counted down to the close of hacking at Yahoo! Hack Hyderabad, 2013. Over 250 developers from more than 20 states fought it out in the … Continue reading →

An Update from Hack India: Hyderabad

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 16:01:03 +0000

Hack India: Hyderabad is going strong! This hack is shaping up to be one of our most formidable, mirroring our current internal focus: collaboration, innovation and creating great products with speed. With roughly 2 million developers, India has one of … Continue reading →

Thirteen Tenets Of User Experience, DiagnostiCSS, Asynchronous JavaScript and more

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:54:30 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. 25 CSS3 animated button and menu tutorials for you to use in your next project or to help you improve your CSS3 … Continue reading →

Yahoo Merchant Summit — Early Bird Pricing Reminder

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 22:19:05 +0000

The 2013 Yahoo Merchant Summit is just a few weeks away on August 6 and 7 in Santa Clara, CA! As a reminder, the Early Bird registration offer of $249 ends this Friday, July 12, 2013. This exclusive, invite-only event has sold out every year so be sure to register today to reserve your spot. After July 12, the registration price will increase to the normal rate of $299.

Check out the Agenda for the 2013 Yahoo Merchant Summit

The latest version of this year's agenda is also now available, and the sessions will be packed with expert advice. Some of the topics and speakers include [...]

Babylon.js, Learn X in Y Minutes and more

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:54:42 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. The Changing Face of Web Development takes a look at how a web developer's role has changed in the past ten or … Continue reading →

Hadoop at Yahoo! Sets New Gray Sort Record – The Yellow Elephant is Getting Faster

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:27:04 +0000

We are proud to announce we used Apache Hadoop to set a new Gray sort record for the Jim Gray's Sort benchmark. We nearly doubled the rate of the previous Gray sort entry by sorting at a rate of 1.42 … Continue reading →

Changes for a few Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN) offerings

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:52:43 +0000

In a continuing effort to sharpen our focus, today we announced that we’re shutting down several products and services. You can see the full list of closures here. Three of these closures will impact developers, so we wanted to highlight … Continue reading →

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Encoding, Nifty Modal Window Effects and more

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:48:59 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. Videry.me is a growing repository of curate videos for Web designers and developers. The JavaScript behind touch-friendly sliders. A list of the … Continue reading →

Internal Hackday Produces Record-Breaking 300 Hacks

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 14:09:26 +0000

Yahoo! has been hosting internal Hackdays since 2005, and the tradition is very much alive and well, with Hackdays now happening quarterly and including many global offices. We’re especially proud of our most recent Hackday, which was the largest company-wide … Continue reading →

Quick Navigation Mode In VoiceOver Screen Reader for the Mac

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:19:57 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Yahoo! Accessibility blog. VoiceOver is a screen reading software built into the Mac OS and is available on every computer that runs this operating system. This means that any Mac user, accessibility tester or … Continue reading →

ASCII Art, Secrets of the Browser Developer Tools and more

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 13:48:45 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. CSSmatic makes it easier to code new features in CSS3 such as borders, shadows, textures or gradients. Build a Tetris-like game using … Continue reading →

Yahoo! Hack Europe: London Videos Available

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:29:51 +0000

In late April, YDN invited hackers from across Europe to join us at Hack Europe: London for food, fun awesome tech speakers and hacks. The two day event was attended by folks from as far away as Iraq, Turkey and … Continue reading →

Demand is High for Yahoo! Hack India: Hyderabad

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:38:53 +0000

Photo credit to Reid Burke Since 2007, YDN has been hosting amazing Hack Days in India. The first five open hack events in India have been held in Bangalore, and we’ll be back in Bangalore later this year. This is … Continue reading →

Here Is Today, Seriously.js and more

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:52:00 +0000

Every Thursday is Tech Thursday where we share a random assortment of technical links we found and liked. Front-End Developer reactions is probably the best Tumblr you will see today. To ensure a strong brand identity, every organization needs a … Continue reading →