• Toolbar tricks: Now, every browser comes with a toolbar, so why would you want the new one from Yahoo!? Does yours let you preview your email or content from more than 100 popular sites? Does it give you query suggestions as you search? Does it let you search directly within sites like Flickr or Wikipedia? I didn’t think so. Go download yourself the new Yahoo! Toolbar. It’s all about letting you do more faster. More here.
• Making the little guy feel big: If you own a small business, you know how much you covet the marketing dollars of the big dogs. Well, the playing field has officially been leveled. Our new My Display Ads let businesses of any size run affordable online display (or banner) campaigns that reach local markets on Yahoo!. How affordable? Let’s just say we can make thirty bucks go a long way. These self-service ads are easy to create - just pick from one of our 800+ templates; customize text, images, colors and add your company logo; select your target audience; and off you go. You’re guaranteed to feel embiggened. More here.
• Proud to have Pride: It’s LGBT Pride month and we’re doing it up big with this year’s Yahoo! Pride site. We’ve got news from the Advocate, a killer timeline that summarizes the last century in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender history, and an event finder for more than 1,000 Pride events around the world. But best of all, we might be sending you and a friend to Sydney for the LGBT Mardi Gras in February. But hurry, you have to enter by July 1st (or come meet us in San Francisco this weekend to enter in person). More here.
• Dog days of summer: The race is on and you’ve got about 11 weeks to make the most of it. It’s summertime and we’ve pulled together a little helpful microsite to keep you from squandering it. Need help with travel plans? Check out articles on getaways that involve beachs, golf, family, national park, or weekend furloughs. Want great recipes? We’ve got ideas for grilling, oven-free cooking, drinks, and chill-out treats. There’s also shopping ideas, tips on keeping that lawn green, kids activities, and giving your Avatar a more sunswept look. Check it out here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Rock on, iPhone: There’s just something about radio — that element of surprise, that anticipation of what’s coming next, that man-I-haven’t-heard-that-song-in-years sensation. That’s the promise of our new Yahoo! Music iPhone app. Powered by CBS Radio, it lets you browse through 300+ stations within more than 20 genres (from Bollywood to Goth to Naughty Comedy), skip up to six tracks an hour, find local stations via GPS, share stations with friends, and buy music you like via iTunes. Never get stuck listening to Muzak again. Read more here, then download the app.
• Cirrus, cumulus, Flickr: The fact that Flickr has democratized photography and turned many hacks into professionals is not lost on Getty Images, the legendary stock photo agency. So back in March, we debuted the Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com, allowing mere mortals to license their work for commercial use. Today, Getty has introduced “photo clouds,” a new way to navigate groups of related photos within the Collection. You can join the community and create your own cloud around topics like “winter,” “out of Africa,” “bizarre photos,” and “fishy.” (Note the spiffy massage music that soothes as you explore). But wait! There’s also a screensaver, desktop widget, and a new Facebook app that lets you create a photo cloud to reflect your status mood. Brings new meaning to cloud computing. More here.
• Go commando with Colbert: If you’re addicted to Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, you probably know Stephen Colbert has been broadcasting from Iraq this week in support of troops stationed there. But he’s also leading an effort to make sure the children of said troops are getting what they need from a public school education. He’s teamed up with DonorsChoose.org to raise funds for military-serving schools, pitting the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard against each other. You can help by making a donation or spread the word by sporting a Colbert Avatar, with critical accessories like an eagle, bear, Colbert Nation hat, Che Colbert T-shirt, fireplace, and a desk. More here.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Surf less, do more: In the spirit of helping you take productivity to the Nth degree, we’re sprinkling great new third-party apps and widgets across our site. Now you can interact with content and tools from providers like Youtube, Mint.com, eBay, WordPress, Showtime, Picnik, and ZumoDrive in places like Yahoo! Mail, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Connected TV and Zimbra email. We call it the gift of time. More here.
• Winning the email battle: If your email inbox has become your evil overlord, we’re empowering you with a great new weapon — new filters for Yahoo! Mail. Now you can basically snap your fingers and filter your inbox for the mail you actually want to read. Just click on “Contacts” above your inbox and presto, you’ll only see mail from people who are in your address book. The team is rolling this out to Classic and new Yahoo! Mail users in the U.S. and Australia over the next few weeks, with more countries to follow. More here.
• Sticky wickets: The ICC World Twenty20, the world championship of cricket, kicked off today in England and fans the world over won’t miss a single bowl-out, thanks to Yahoo! Cricket. Our T20 coverage includes exclusive cricket content, player chats, videos and images from the tournament. From history of the game to up-to-date statistics on cricketers, cricket.yahoo.com offers elaborate coverage — series stats and records, data on women’s cricket teams, coach interviews, fantasy game, and more. That outta get the Snick-o-Meter going.

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Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Photos without the jail time: If you’ve ever hesitated before throwing that copyrighted photo into a presentation or web page, you’ll celebrate this news. Yahoo! Search has added a Creative Commons license filter to Yahoo! Image Search to help you quickly identify photos that are OK to reuse or modify. No other search engine saves your bacon that way. Not only do we keep you out of trouble, you’ll never even the see the photos you don’t have permission to use — it’s like Eve didn’t even know the apple existed. More here.
• Search that sport: That little search box just made you a better sports fan. Yahoo! Search has added a sports team shortcut that helps you keep track of your favorite teams, leagues, and events simply by typing in a keyword or two. When’s the next Lakers game? Who’s winning the French Open? Just go to Yahoo! Search. The sports team shortcut covers the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA, and college sports leagues including the NCAAF and NCAAB. More here.
• 360 comes full circle: Yes, it’s official — Yahoo! 360 is coming to an end. We know, we know — it took us a while to pull the plug. But rather than rush the process and risk losing your precious photos and prose, we wanted to make sure we had a solution in place — Yahoo! Profiles. You can move your content over to your profile, where your connections can keep tabs on you, or take it to go. You can export your entries to blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and MoveableType. More here.
• Comments with a click: And in the hilarious third-party app category… Feeling too lazy, bored, tired, or uninspired to write a comment for that Flickr photo? Good thing some clever souls from Virginia have developed the Flickr comment generatr. You can choose between simple (”this is super :-p”) or verbose (”i eat up the framing and foto ;-) good job my friend”). Now you can be meaningless without even trying.

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• Buzzing the world: There’s news and there’s news people really care about. That’s what Yahoo! Buzz helps you filter. And now the site has made it even easier to keep tabs on what your contacts and the greater community find most interesting. As part of a fresh redesign, a new “Buzz Updates” tab surfaces the submitting, voting, and commenting activity from your friends and others. And given Yahoo! Buzz’s runaway success as the (insert shameless self-promotion) most popular social content service in the US, Yahoo! Buzz got its passport and just landed in India. Now readers all over India can keep tabs on what’s hot in everything from Bollywood to business in Bangalore. More here.
• Just tell me: The iPhone is truly the one thing I’d want on a desert isle, but let’s face it — its keyboard leaves something to be desired. That’s why Yahoo! Mobile just launched voice search for our Yahoo! Mobile iPhone app. Now you can search for anything — flight numbers, restaurants, gas stations, web sites — by just moving your mouth. You can also customize your “My Interests” tab with your voice — just click on “add anything” and say the topic you want to explore and add to your page. Our voice-enabled search is now available on more than 80 different devices/platforms - from Blackberry (including the newest ones) to Nokia to iPhone and Windows Mobile. Download the app or your update.
• Catch that play?: You can read about sports online, but it’s video that really gets the adrenaline flowing. Yahoo! Sports just revamped their video player so you can do more with the play-by-play. It now has a larger viewing window and you can watch videos in full screen. You can also share links or embed your favorite plays in your blog or what-have-you. And handy big thumbnails make it easier to browse through the video library. Check out this Lakers’ dunk. And then go get air sick.
• Group update: Six months ago, you might have noticed activity updates from your friends popping up in places like Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Profiles. They’ve included activity on Twitter, Flickr, Yahoo! Buzz, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Music, delicious, and more. This week, Yahoo! Groups joined the fray. Now the questions, answers, advice, and photos you share with your group can also become an update for your Yahoo! connections, offering more airtime for the content you’ve created. And don’t worry — you have complete control over what you want to share. Read more here.
• Make it green: If you fancy yourself a MacGyver type and have an idea for a great new “green” gizmo, get thee to Yahoo! Green’s new “Make It Green” campaign. We’re searching for the best new green products and do-it-yourself projects so we can turn them into real products. What’s in it for you? A chance to star on the PBS TV show Everyday Edisons, a check for $2500, and the glory of knowing that your little planet-saving idea is lining the shelves of stores. Not particularly inventive? That’s ok — just go give a thumbs up to whatever idea you like best. You’ve got until June 30th. Check it out.

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• Daytime drama: This whole working thing getting in the way of keeping up with great moments in soap operas, game shows, and talk shows? Yahoo! TV to the rescue with Daytime in No Time, a new daily video show that recaps the day’s most memorable daytime TV scenes in three minutes. Catch daily watercooler highlights from shows like Good Morning America, the Price is Right, the View, Rachael Ray, Ellen, and, of course, Oprah. The show follows in the footsteps of Primetime in No Time, whose late night TV recaps have earned it the distinction of the Web’s most watched original programming (~230 million streams to date!). Can’t hide the headphones from your boss? Read their daytime blog.
• Music videos get foxy: If you’ve discovered FoxyTunes, the toolbar that lets you control your tunes from within your browser, you know how excellent it is not to have to switch between apps when listening to music. Now you can use it to control YouTube music videos — from watching a single video to navigating video playlists. Do all this from the convenience of your FoxyTunes toolbar while you’re surfing in other tabs. More here.

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• Personal realtor: Home prices are lower than they’ve been in at least a decade - time for a deal! Good thing Yahoo! Real Estate just made house hunting a cinch. Scribbling down lists of listings? Bummed you missed that great new house when it came on the market? You can now save both your searches and your favorite houses with one click. You can also sign up for alerts for new pads that meet your criteria or when the price changes on a place you’ve been eyeing. What’s more, you can get listing updates via My Yahoo! or any RSS feed reader. If only we could figure out how to fix those banks! Check it out here.
• Summer flick fiesta: So many movies, so few summer nights. The new Yahoo! Movies Summer Movie Guide just hit the street and it lets you get a preview of the great new titles coming out this summer. Browse by month, genre, or popularity. Each movie summary includes a recap of the story, the release date, three good reasons to see it, and trivia you might not know. You’ll also find photos and video trailers and clips (many in HD). You’ve got a lot of popcorn in your future.

And finally, a plug for this weekend’s celebration of Flickr’s 5.25th birthday. If you’re in San Francisco, come by for cupcakes and divine photography from 4-8pm tomorrow. RSVP here. Can’t make it? Check out the photos we’ll be projecting on the walls.

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• Kittens vs. sunsets: This is the perfect Friday night distraction — Flickr Trends. A Flickr engineer mashed up the Flickr API with a trend chart, allowing you to compare the popularity (or in this case, the frequency of being a photo subject) of two terms. So go see which reigns supreme — blondes or brunettes, town or country, beer or fruit juice, mayo or ketchup, good or evil, boxers or briefs. Take it for a spin.
• Faretheewell Jumpcut: As we took stock of our myriad products, we determined it no longer made sense to maintain Jumpcut, the site that let you upload, edit, and share videos. So as of June 15th, we’ll shut its doors. We’ll soon offer a tool that lets you download your videos, which you might want to move over to Flickr or Yahoo! Video. We’re really sorry to see it go, but change we must.
• Get your vote on: This marginally qualifies for the Product Pulse, but it’s been a quiet week due to our pre-earnings quiet period! The nominees are in — the 2009 People’s Voice voting is now open for the Webby Awards and we’re honored to have omg, Flickr, Upcoming, and Yahoo! Go 3.0 in the running. Vote now!

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• Musical revival: Blowing its doors off their hinges, Yahoo! Music has fully embraced the open web with launch of its new Artist Pages. You’ll find downloads from iTunes; albums from Amazon; streams from Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody; music videos from YouTube and Yahoo!; photos from Flickr; and tickets from Ticketmaster – for more than 500,000 artists. And you call the shots on whatever modules you want to see. Eventually artists will be able to publish directly into their pages and developers will beef up our modules gallery. Music to our ears. More here.
• Instant iGratification: No need to get all twitchy when you leave your desk — Yahoo! Messenger is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Released into the wild this week, the free Yahoo! Messenger app can now be found in the iTunes App Store. It’s got a lot of the same bells and whistles — photo sharing, stealth mode, status messages, archiving, emoticons. More here. What?! You don’t have an iPhone? Lucky for you Yahoo! Messenger works with other phones, too — check the roster here.

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• Mobile home: As announced in February, we’ve collected all of our mobile offerings into one handy application called, succinctly, Yahoo! Mobile. And this week, it said “sayonara, beta!” You can now access Yahoo! Mobile for the Web on 300+ devices with HTML-enabled mobile browsers (http://new.m.yahoo.com/) or download the free Yahoo! Mobile app from the Apple iPhone App Store. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it’s open, so you not only get quick access to your favorite Yahoo! services (Mail, Messenger, News, Finance, etc.), you can check your Gmail, see Twitter and Facebook updates, read up on RSS feeds, and more. And, as an added bonus, iPhone users can also download Yahoo! Messenger. More here.
• Get a new image: Searching for an image? You might have noticed our spiffy new Yahoo! Image Search preview page, which is both prettier and more helpful. Click on that thumbnail of Vin Diesel and you get rewarded with a much larger image, along with thumbnails for other top image results and suggestions for related searches (ie, Dwayne Johnson, Brad Pitt, Paul Walker, etc.). More here.
• See attached: Yahoo! Groups is bringing back an old concept — the email attachment! Removed in 2003, we’re reviving this capability so Group members can share images and files and be able to retrieve them at a later date. That’s especially great news if you’re receiving digests. This new tool is currently in beta and will be rolling out to all groups over the next few weeks. Let the kitten photosharing begin! More here, including how-tos for moderators.
• On the Twitter sideline: Are you a Twitterholic looking for an easier way to monitor what’s being said about you or your brand? One of our engineers, playing around with Adobe AIR and the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), has created a nifty little desktop application called Sideline that lets you set up and save multiple tabbed search topics for Twitter conversations. Not bad for a side project. Take it for a spin here.

And, of course, don’t miss our new Ideological Search! ;-)

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• The Interwebs invade your TV: You probably won’t ditch your computer any time soon, but now your TV can do more than just coddle couch potatoes. The new Yahoo! TV Widgets are here, debuting in Samsung’s new LED TV 7000, letting you multitask with a vengeance as you watch the boob tube. Without interrupting your program, you can check out content from Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Weather, and Flickr as well as (coming soon) great third-party brands like Twitter, the New York Times, Netflix, eBay, CBS Sports, Showtime and MySpace. You’ll find these widgets on TVs and devices from Sony, LG Electronics, Intel, and VIZIO starting this summer. Watch a demo here.
• Inquisitor goes global: A few weeks ago, we rolled out the Inquisitor app for the iPhone for people in the U.S. Now the mobile search app is available in ten more countries, autocompleting keywords and making suggestions so you can spend less time fat-fingering your query. And according to the Twitterverse, it appears to be scoring a spot on quite a number of iPhone first pages. (Note that you’ll need to change the country default in the options menu if you don’t want U.S. search results.) More here.

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• omg! celebrity mamas!: The ever-popular gossip site, omg!, is giving you one more way to obsess about the lives of the rich, famous, and far-too-photographed. This week, realizing that you can’t seem to get enough of Katie/Suri, Gwen/Kingston, Angelina/(pick one) on omg!’s Goddess blog, the team has launched “Spotlight to Nightlight,” a biweekly video program that peers into the lives of celebrity mothers. Each three- to five-minute episode features host Ali Landry (former Miss USA and famed “Doritos Girl”) chatting up a different celebrity mom, discussing parenting tips or the latest mama making headlines. Ever wonder how much a starlet’s nanny makes? Get addicted here.
• IE8 4 Y!: Microsoft’s brand new Internet Explorer 8 browser launched this week. Minutes later, we made a Yahoo!-optimized version available. What’s in it for you? Easy access to Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, our toolbar, and our homepage. You’ll get instant visual results for weather, stock quotes, and movie reviews/showtimes when you use the browser’s search box (i.e., a three-day weather forecast shows up right inside a search pulldown menu). And, no matter what site you’re on, you can always access a preview window to check your Yahoo! Mail. More on the Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Mail blogs. Download IE 8 optimized for Yahoo! here. (Not available for Macs. Duh.)
• Find photos with fast filters: Ever searched for just the right photo but gotten lost in a sea of stuff you don’t want? Yahoo! Image Search has just added a few new filters to hasten your mission. You can now narrow your scope by selecting black & white vs. color, restricting results to images that are either from Flickr or not, or even specifying the dimensions of the shot you’re after. And they promise more cool stuff to come. More here.
• Sometimes it’s the little things: The Flickr team rolled out two small tweaks that mean so much. If you’ve often found yourself irked by the “loading…” message you got when trying to narrow down your list of contacts, behold the people picker! It’s now lightning-fast when trying to find someone in your Contact List, share an image, or send Flickr mail. But wait, there’s more. For Flickr Pro members, the Stats page now shows real-time data for the day (no more waiting til midnight) and lets you drill down for daily details on up to 28 of the last days. More here and here.

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• Video free for all: Flickr made several video headlines on Monday. First, they granted free video uploads to all users (hooray!). Then they introduced HD video uploads for Pro users (yahooo!), bringing the magical and glorious world of crisp, aperture-rich high-definition video to the viewing masses on Flickr. And, finally, they introduced Flickr Clock, a unique new toy that lets you explore videos taken across the Flickrverse by time of day. Oh! And unrelated to video, free Flickr users are no longer relegated to organizing photos into just three sets — let’s hear it for unlimited sets for your 200 most recent photos.
• In the loop on Mail: If you noticed something different when you logged into Yahoo! Mail, that’s because the team has been sprucing up the page with more new social features. As we said in December, we’re working on bringing you a “smarter inbox.” Initially, you could see your friends’ Yahoo!-related updates (i.e., stories they’ve buzzed on Yahoo! Buzz, hotels rated on Yahoo! Travel, etc.). But now you can see their updates from across the web — sites like YouTube, Blogger, Yelp, Picasa, and more. And there are many more Yahoo! sites now live, including Yahoo! Sports and Flickr. More here.
• Inquisitive iPhone: If you own an iPhone in the U.S., I suggest you run — don’t walk — to the App Store and download yourself a copy of the new Inquisitor app. This new mobile version of Inquisitor makes searching on your iPhone a breeze by autocompleting keywords and making search suggestions, so you can spend less time typing and more time finding. Here’s the buzz on Twitter. Obama’s not your president? Sit tight — it’s coming to your world soon.
• That’s my Mac calling: If you’re a Mac head and like calling your friends via Yahoo! Messenger, listen up. One of our engineers has written a plugin that lets you automatically dial a friend from within your Mac Address Book. Just install the script, open a friend’s contact card, right-click on the phone number, select “Call with Yahoo! Messenger,” and start gabbing away. Make sure you have Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 4. More here.

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• Mobile makeover: The gang at Yahoo! Mobile rolled out a beta program this week for a comprehensive new mobile service known as, simply enough, Yahoo! Mobile. It will come to a cell phone near you next month on the mobile Web, as an iPhone app, and as an app developed for smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola, as well as those running Windows Mobile. It will replace Yahoo! Go and packages a variety of great mobile offerings into one location — search, email, messenger, address book, calendar, news, social networks, and even managing all your favorite non-Yahoo! content. To sign up for the beta, just enter http://mobile.yahoo.com in your phone’s browser (and be patient — it make take up to a few weeks to be admitted to the program). Here’s the press release.
• Ogling at the Oscars: Let’s face it — next to finding out the Academy Award winners, we care most about how everyone looks on the red carpet. That’s why the Yahoo! Search team has built a new Oscar-related carousel for Yahoo! Image Search. After Sunday’s show and parties, enter keywords related to Oscar-nominated films or actors and you’ll find a rolling gallery of the newest photos above the regular search results. Toggle your way through Slumdog Millionaire, Mickey Rourke, and Kate Winslet eye candy. More here.
• Watch with me: Raise your hand if you’ve ever IMed a video link to share a laugh with a friend, only to be disappointed when it takes them a few hours to finally get around to watching it. Wouldn’t it be cooler to watch that video together, at the same time? The scientists and engineers at Yahoo! Research think so and have just released a piping hot new version of Zync, a synchronized video player for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 for Windows. You can now simultaneously view videos on Yahoo! Video, Flickr and, of course, YouTube — with Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! News to come next week. Just paste the video link into your conversation and click the “Watch With Me” button — share, watch, chat. No download necessary. Now go watch the woman who missed her flight in Hong Kong with someone.

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• Mobile search gets easier: The Mobile team just rolled out a bevy of updates to the Yahoo! oneSearch Shortcut to make searching on your cell even swifter. A new auto-locate feature uses cell tower triangulation and Wi-Fi to detect your whereabouts so you don’t have to do any work. They’ve spiffed up Search Assist so that it remembers your recent search history (big fingered people rejoice!). And finally, it’s now available for Windows Mobile devices. More here.
• Messenger for Mac mo betta: The latest beta release of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac came out this week with new features and squashes for more than three dozen bugs. They’ve fixed issues around file transfers, display images, voice, chat rooms, stealth settings, and webcam. When you report IM spam, the offender is also added to your ignore list. And you can now choose a new message style for your conversation windows, just to shake things up. More here.
• Honest Abe in pictures: Our 16th president hit the big two-oh-oh this week and to celebrate, the Library of Congress hooked up with Flickr Commons to give you a revealing look at Abraham Lincoln over a period of 20 years. You see him from the earliest known photo through to the Civil War years, along with views from his funeral. Born into the era when photography burst onto the scene, Lincoln has been called the most photographed man of his day. More on the Flickr blog.
• So long, MyWeb: With three bookmarking services, it was time to streamline. MyWeb will ride off into the sunset on March 18th, making room for Delicious (social bookmarks) and Yahoo! Bookmarks (private bookmarks), both of which have seen recent upgrades and new features. If you’d rather take your bookmarks elsewhere, you can also migrate to third-party services with our handy export tools. More on the Yahoo! Search Blog and our help pages.

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• Calendar gets cooler: Back in October, we brought you a Yahoo! Calendar revival. This week, it got a little louder. You can now search your calendar events and notepad by keyword, as well as print your calendar in a special print format for day/week/month/event for better readability. If you’re a list-maker, you can now create to-do lists by topic (i.e., “kids,” “work,” “groceries”) and share them with others. Not a to-do fan? Just drag the column shut to banish it. And finally, new right-click functionality lets you make quicker work of adding, editing, printing, and viewing events. Head to the suggestion board if you want to help steer future enhancements. Haven’t switched from Classic yet? What’s the holdup?
• Finer FoxyTunes: The popular music toolbar we acquired a year ago this week just got a refresh. The FoxyTunes team unleashed no fewer than 20 enhancements in their latest Firefox plugin release. They include a new switch menu that lets you multitasking music listeners jump between media players (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody, etc.) along with a bevy of smarter, simpler improvements for menus, buttons, and an overall streamlined design. More here.

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• Classic Mail gets chatty: If you’re a Yahoo! Mail Classic diehard but long for some of the less retro features of the new Yahoo! Mail, the product team has your compromise. They’ve just unveiled two chatty features that will be rolled out to mailboxes over the next few months. You’ll be able to send instant messages and SMS messages to your Yahoo! contacts right from the mail interface. Your contact list will highlight who’s online and who’s mobile so you can get to them faster than email (remember when we thought faxes were fast?). Read more on the Mail and Messenger blogs.
• Bye-bye Briefcase: We’ve decided to discontinue Yahoo! Briefcase, effective March 30th. When it was born nearly ten years ago, it saw great usage, but that’s been declining over the years as people turned to places like Yahoo! Mail (unlimited storage, yeah!) and Flickr, both of which make it easier to share things. We know that’s disappointing to those of you who still rely on it, but discontinuing Yahoo! Briefcase lets us focus on the products that are more broadly used. Please, please remove your files before March 30th as you won’t be able to access them thereafter — we wouldn’t want you to lose anything.
• Year of the ox: There’s nothing quite like the guilty pleasure of checking a horoscope. And this week, you need to make that a Chinese horoscope. In honor of the Lunar New Year, the team at Yahoo! Shine has pulled together this overview of what the year of the ox will bring to oxen (as well as goats, pigs, rats, monkeys, etc.). Gong hei fat choi!

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• What’s that on my TV?: With the impending digitization of U.S. televisions, many of you might be thinking about buying new sets. You might want to hold off until the new Internet-connected TVs hit the market this spring, fully loaded with widgets powered by the Yahoo! Widget engine. We’ve partnered with manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, LG Electronics and VIZIO to let consumers fire up cool new content while watching TV — everything from Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Finance and Flickr to widgets from providers like eBay, MySpace, CBS, The New York Times, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, Showtime, USA TODAY, and Twitter. More here.
• Researching your ride: Car on its last legs? Head to Yahoo! Autos, where the team has just spruced up its research pages for car makes, models and trim. Just in are bigger photos, virtual tours, comprehensive user and expert reviews, and pricing data (including the streamlined price-with-options feature). What’s more, they’ve introduced hundreds of new vehicle videos through WheelsTV so you can check out the car before you decide which one to test-drive. And if you’re strapped for cash, they’ve launch used vehicle research pages for cars dating back to 1997. Air fresheners not included. More here.
• It’s Obama TIME: In case you missed it before the holidays, TIME magazine appointed President-elect Barack Obama as the 2008 Person of the Year. Amidst the evidence of his groundswell support, the editors noticed that there were more than 100,000 Obama-related images posted to Flickr, validating the theory that Americans didn’t just elect a President, “they created an icon.” We partnered with TIME to cull the best Obama-related photos and artwork — here are the top 30. Only 11 more days to go!

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• Delicious movement: Yes, your tastiest bookmarks can now be found on your mobile device. The Delicious team just launched their mobile site — http://m.delicious.com. It’s still in beta but it lets you browse your bookmarks, tags, inbox, and other info. You can also browse popular and recent bookmarks and tags from the Delicious community. It also means that you have a good reason to 86 your phone’s bookmarks.
• Tasty noise: Of the hundreds of millions of bookmarks on Delicious, a considerable chunk are audio files. The team (they’ve been busy!) is now making it possible for you to listen to those files with a new integration with FoxyPlayer from Yahoo! Music. Even cooler, it turns bookmarks into a playlist that you can control from your browser. Check out samples for Beck, Chopin, and Christmas. More here.
• Finding Flickr friends: There are days when you totally welcome the opportunity to get lost in an aimless exploration of your Flickr contacts’ images, but sometimes you just want a little order. Thankfully, the team just updated your contacts list page, making it much easier for you to navigate contacts — especially if you have a bevy. You can sort by name, contact type, number of photos, when you added them as a contact, and their last upload.
• Messenger merriment: The Messenger team brings you holiday cheer in the form of Emoticarolers, a personalized singing telegram sung by four of your favorite emoticons. You can customize the lyrics to a popular holiday tune (from Jingle Bells to Auld Lang Syne) and send it off to your friends. Their harmony is impressive, albeit somewhat Hal-like. Create your own here.

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• T-Mobile triumph: If you’re a T-Mobile subscriber in the U.S., you’ll be spending a whole lot less time trying to find things with your mobile phone. That’s because Yahoo! oneSearch is now the default mobile search for T-Mobile’s new web2go service, serving up search results designed specifically for your cell phone. After all, it’s an awfully small screen and wading through a sea of links is downright irritating. More here.
• Sticky search: Faithful Product Pulse readers will remember when we unveiled Glue Pages in India, an experimental concept for search that sticks text, images, and video content together into a single results page. It’s now a U.S. import, available as a slightly different experience as Yahoo! Glue beta. It assembles content from across the Web into a veritable microsite about your query. Topics are limited for now (we’ll expand over time), but go check out how it handles popular people, places and things like cupcakes, Sarah Palin, Twilight, and Citigroup. More here.
• Feel-good news: Recession, deflation, layoffs, bank meltdowns. C’mon, isn’t there some good news out there? Why, yes, there is. And the good people at Sears want to make sure you see it. Head to Good News Now, a new video channel on Yahoo! News that sees the world through rose-colored glasses — spotlighting strictly uplifting stories in the news. You’ll find profiles of heroes, medical triumphs, baby Obamas, charitable neighbors, natural disaster survivors, and more. The channel will run through New Year’s. Maybe headlines will improve by January?
• Britney, Britney, Britney: Whether you’re a tabloid subscriber or just read copies at the dentist’s office, you’re all too familiar with the world’s fascination with Britney Spears. Well, the volume increases on Monday, when Yahoo! TV will premiere the exclusive trailer of MTV’s upcoming documentary, “Britney: For the Record.” Then we’ll spend the rest of the week gearing you up for Britney’s 27th birthday and the release of her new album “Circus” on December 2, with special coverage across Yahoo!. On Monday, check out “Britney’s 27 Wildest Moments” on Yahoo! Music; Friday, omg will share “Britney’s 25 Most Memorable Looks;” and next Sunday, Shine will take a look at Brit’s relationships. Mark your calendar!
• Big time in no time: And a final note… I’d like to congratulate the team behind Primetime in No Time, the show that gives you a rapid-fire recap of the TV you missed the night before. They’ve just served their 100 millionth stream since launching in March, becoming one of the most successful original programs in the history of the Internet. Hosted by comedian Frank Nicotero, the show is clearly addictive. w00t! More here.

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• Steals and deals: OK, so you’ve lost 40% of your 401K in the last month. Doesn’t mean you have to join the Grinch in denying everyone of Who-hash and roast beast, does it? Yahoo! Shopping will help your heart grow a few sizes with its new Yahoo! Deals site. There you’ll find exclusive daily deals, online coupons for thousands of big-name retailers (you can even save them for later), discount codes for all kinds of storewide sales, and virtual weekly circulars for those who insist on subjecting themselves to holiday crowds. Because at least being thrifty is better than having the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, right? More here.
• Calendar progression: The new Yahoo! Calendar Beta debuted a month ago and it’s already got a “new and improved” sticker. The team just released an update that addresses the most frequently reported issues, tunes up performance, and lets you switch back and forth between Classic Calendar and the beta. And they’re already hard at work on the next batch of features, including the top-rated requests from users via the Yahoo Calendar Suggestion Board. So weigh in if you want to get your feature on the roadmap.
• Venerable veterans: If you missed your chance to honor a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine (American and otherwise) for Veterans Day (which this year coincided with the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day, or the end of WWI), head over to the the Commons collection on Flickr to peruse its two newest members, the Australian War Memorial and the Imperial War Museum. Then check out all the photos tagged with Armistice Day for a fascinating look at the Great War. More here.

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

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• My Election: Want to effortlessly follow the final stretch of the (loooooong) road to the White House from your My Yahoo! with the click of a button? Add the new pre-loaded Election ‘08 tab. You’ll find the latest news from all the major news services via Yahoo! News and blog content from Washington Whisper, The Trail, RealClearPolitics.com, and FactCheck.org. And this being a non-partisan module, you’ll find both official Republican and Democratic party blogs (though you can easily ditch the one you most disagree with). You can even add messages from your favorite campaign HQ to your page. Get it here.
• Virtual voting: Bumper sticker? Check. Campaign button? Check. Window sign? Check. Just when you thought you’d done all you could to get people to vote, along comes Yahoo! Avatars election gear. You can outfit your Avatar with your favorite campaign t-shirt, an elephant/donkey hat or stuffed animal, an “I voted” button, and even put yourself in the Oval Office, the White House Press Center, or in front of Air Force One. (Green, Constitution and Libertarian parties, we’ve got you covered, too.) And if you use Messenger 9.0, you can fire up audibles from influential characters like Abraham Lincoln, Uncle Sam, and the Statue of Liberty. More here.

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• Shortcut to cheap gas: Ok, so crude oil may have dipped below $70 a barrel, but you know that won’t last. And in this economy, who wants to spend more than they have to on anything? Yahoo! Search just launched a shortcut to help you find the cheapest gas in town. Just type “gas prices” or “cheap gas” plus your city name or zip code into our search box, and you’ll get a comprehensive list of the cheapest local stations (courtesy of GasBuddy.com), their address, and even a map as part of your search results. Stuff the rest of your nickels in your mattress. More here.
• Inquisitor branches out: You know that really cool Safari browser plugin that we bought and then enhanced? The one that auto-completes search queries and previews results along with ideas to help refine your search? Well, it’s become an equal opportunity app, available now for Firefox and IE7 and 8 browsers. And now Inquisitor generates more personalized results (based on a crazy smart algorithm) and helps you find your bookmarks faster. More here.
• Color control freak: You love the different themes and colors available for personalizing your My Yahoo! page. But you fancy yourself a designer and wish that blueberry could be more aqua, that maraschino more salmon. Enter customizable colors! Just log in to My Yahoo!, click “Change Appearance,” and head to “Customize Color” and have at it. You can create up to nine different colored themes, picking hues for your header, sub-header, page background, and content area. Color me in charge.
• Halloween help:The countdown to All Hallows Eve is on, so head over to our Halloween microsite for helpful tips and advice for maximizing this most ghoulish of holidays. You’ll find things like pumpkin carving patterns, a compendium of the most popular costumes (it’s not too late), tips for a greener Halloween, a really scary movie guide (and recipes for pumpkin-y things to eat while you watch them), and a tag cloud with the most popular search terms o’ the season. But, sorry, no tips for toilet papering the mean guy’s house.

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• Snazzy schedule: Just like any tween, Yahoo! Calendar was worried about how it looked. So at age ten, it got a serious makeover, ushering this web calendar into a great new age of drag and drop, iCalendar integration, IM/SMS/email reminders, and Flickr loveliness. And coming soon are Outlook and iPhone synching and event discovery with Upcoming and other Yahoo! properties. Our little calendar — all grown up.
• Handsfree search: If you’ve got a certain BlackBerry or Nokia phone, it’s time to clear your throat. Voice-enabled mobile search is now available on multiple BlackBerry and Nokia devices. If you have one of a number of Nokia Series 60 phones (like the N95), you’ll find voice recognition in the home-screen shortcut of OneSearch 2.0 (get it here: m.yahoo.com/shortcut). And if you use Yahoo! Go 3.0 (get it here: http://get.go.yahoo.com/) and have select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, you’ll be able to find stock quotes, sports score, and just about anything else by simply yapping into your phone. And we know you know how to do that. It’s available in the US, UK, India, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada.

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• Searching for a president: With just 32 days to go until the next POTUS is decided, there’s no time to mess around. That’s why Yahoo! Search has launched a series of elections shortcuts. Want the latest on a particular candidate? Type in “Obama” or “McCain” and you’ll find links to the latest news, videos, photos, discussions, and poll results. Or type in “presidential election” for general updates as well as a link to register to vote. Curious about the contest from a state’s perspective? Type in “Iowa presidential election” and get the latest headlines and polling info for that state. More here.
• Mad dash to the finish line: Speaking of election polls and whatnot, Yahoo! News just updated its political dashboard. Just in time for the election’s home stretch, you can now see how the average poll numbers have trended over time, on a national and state-by-state basis. How has Obama fared in Ohio to date? Is McCain tracking up or down in Florida? Check it out and see if this race will be a photo finish.
• Cut to the chase: If there’s one thing we can thank the Internet for, it’s a short attention span. That’s why the new Yahoo! News beta, launched as an opt-in today, gives you just the first five paragraphs of a news story. Want more? It’s just a click away, although most people seem to drive on — proving the value of the news pyramid. (NB: If you’re a newshound getting your fix via news.yahoo.com, you’ll always get the full article.) You’ll also find relevant links to other stories and videos much higher on the page. And Yahoo! News is getting more and more open, providing links to outside sources like local newspapers, other news providers and bloggers through the Buzztracker tool. Was that short enough for you?
• Flickr’s mobile makeover: Attention iPhone-toting photographers: The new and improved mobile Flickr site (http://m.flickr.com) is now especially gorgeous for you too-cool-for-skool types. The site’s been refreshed with clearer navigation controls and puts your recent activity front and center. You can also browse sets more efficiently, thanks to arrow-topped thumbnails that help you move back and forth between photos. Trust me — it’s worth making room to your home screen.

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• Messenger Number Nine: It’s official. The newest version of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows XP and Vista is out of beta. And now you can enjoy things like a total of 12 different skins, better “ignore” capabilities, inline video and picture viewing, great new emoticons (and they’re small again), ability to add contacts from other online services like Gmail and Hotmail, friend updates in your contact list, call forwarding and new voicemail delivery, the return of Yahoo! Games, and more control over your look and feel. And introducing Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox, which lets readers of your blog, website or social network page send you an IM without having to download or sign in. More here.
• (Back)check the video: What’s better than Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Hockey becoming the official fantasy game of the NHL? Being able to watch videos of killer moves on ice while you play your fantasy game. That’s right — now as you manage your rosters, player lists and line-ups, you’ll be able to watch video highlights of your favorite players on demand. A great new tool as you build your hockey dynasty. Sign up here.

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• Buzz on the run: You’re about to walk into a really hot party and realize you have absolutely nothing to talk about. Whip out your mobile phone, fire up Yahoo! Go, and fly your way over to the new Yahoo! Buzz widget. You’ll find the top stories in various categories from the last 12 hours. What’s more, iPhone users can “buzz up” their favorite stories at http://buzz.yahoo.com/iphone. There. Now you’re armed and dangerous with the latest on Obama, McCain, Troopergate, and that giant insurance company you now own part of. More here.
• Call me Ishmael: The National Maritime Museum has made Britain’s finest archive of maritime photography available on The Commons on Flickr. You’ll find photos dating back to the beginnings of photography in the 1840s, including expeditions to the Arctic, exploring the Port of London, seaside images by Francis Frith, and turn of the century passenger ships. Know the names of the people depicted, or precise locations, or any other information? Get thee tagging. More here.
• Satisfy song hankerings: When you just have to listen to that song right now, and don’t feel like downloading a player, hauling out your credit card, and restarting our computer, turn to Yahoo! Search. It now offers full song playback directly from your search results page. For thousands of popular artists and songs. Just search for an artist’s name and expand the FoxyPlayer (our browser-based player) that’s peeking out from the left side of your browser, click on a song, and listen to the whole darn thing. High-fives to our buddies at Rhapsody. The only catch — you’re limited to 25 songs a month. But still, how cool is that? More here.

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• iPhone connection: You own an iPhone. Maybe you’ve downloaded apps for Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, Dopplr, etc. But you find yourself wishing you could just see ALL of your social network updates in one place. Introducing oneConnect for the iPhone. It’s a new iPhone app that gives you a single status dashboard for your bevy of connections — all from your snazzy little phone. But perhaps my favorite part is that you can now have bona fide IM conversations on your iPhone (and even see who’s online). One more reason your iPhone makes you the coolest person in the room.
• Your new home!: We know Flickr users don’t generally like it when we move their furniture around. But I think they’re going to like their new homepage setup. It won’t go live for a few weeks, but the sneak previews give you a good sense of how they’re using the space. It’s not radically different, but you’ll get more of a sense of activity, better view intro groups, and a lot more control over what you see, and what you don’t. More here.
• Wanna go Pro?: You really want that unlimited feeling of a Flickr Pro account, but you’re still paying off the airfare from your summer boondoggle? If you upgrade your account before the 30th, you can enjoy three months of free unlimited uploading goodness (or make somebody’s day by passing that code along to them). Not sure what Pro gets you? Check out the FAQ.

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