Yahoo! takes special note today of the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The most sweeping and emancipating civil rights legislation ever passed on behalf of the 60 million kids and adults with disabilities in the United States, this landmark law recognizes that every individual must be able to participate fully in all aspects of society. For example, the ADA requires that brick-and-mortar locations that serve the general public be fully accessible to individuals with disabilities by making improvements like curb-cuts in the sidewalk (which, while commonplace today, didn’t exist when the ADA was signed), Braille labels on ATM machines, ramps, sign-language interpreters, service dogs allowed in restaurants, and so on.

But the ADA isn’t fundamentally about removing obstacles and ensuring access. It’s about the impact of accessibility on the quality of life of individuals with disabilities. It’s about dignity and respect. It’s about engagement and empowerment. It’s about opportunity and choice.

The ADA is a celebration of independence.

When he signed the ADA into law 20 years ago, President George H. W. Bush remarked from the White House lawn, “This is indeed an incredible day.” As we have worked with disabled individuals around the world to make Yahoo! as accessible as possible, we’re finding that for many, incredible days are now occurring on a regular basis.

We’ve been asked many times whether the accessibility mandates in the ADA extend beyond physical spaces to Internet places. Not surprisingly, they don’t. In fact, the Internet is not even mentioned in the ADA. Twenty years ago, few people grasped how central the Internet would become in the everyday lives of individuals. But Yahoo!’s Global Accessibility Team has never waited for legal requirements to ensure online accessibility. Together, with the hundreds of engineers and designers with whom we’ve partnered for the past five years, we’ve been working to make Yahoo! accessible for a different reason: It’s simply the right thing to do.  And today, we are proud to launch the Yahoo! Accessibility blog, which will highlight new accessibility developments and trends, perspectives from experts and influencers, and dialogue from the community.

So happy anniversary to the ADA, and congratulations to all who work tirelessly to make sure that individuals with disabilities—online or otherwise—are able to say, “Now I can do it myself!”

-Alan Brightman, Senior Policy Director, Yahoo! Inc.

It took a few years to grow Yahoo!’s network of 80 smart, savvy, influential women bloggers, but it took less than an hour for them to have two trending topics—Elisa Steele (proud mom and CMO keynote speaker) and #ymotherboard—on Twitter in San Francisco as they live blogged and tweeted from the Yahoo! Mother Board Summit on Friday, July 16^th.

For the first time ever, Yahoo! invited this diverse group of women—who cover topics ranging from living a vegan lifestyle to the impact of political issues on moms—from across the U.S. and Canada to Headquarters for a day (and a couple nights) of inspiration, education and fun. Dubbed “the mother of all conferences”, conversations were sparked between the 62 attendees and Yahoos from Shine, Flickr, Yahoo! Safely, Yahoo! for Good, Yahoo! Green, Social Products, Yahoo! Editorial, Yahoo! Accessibility and Ad Products.

The small group setting allowed for interesting insights, personally relevant conversations and honest, actionable feedback. Yahoo! was able to showcase practical products, services and areas of expertise that were immediately helpful to the bloggers. And the bloggers were able to connect with various Yahoos to tell us what they’d like to see from our products and how Yahoo! can be even more relevant to them as bloggers, moms and consumers. Like each moment of the day, the success of the event and Yahoo!’s relationship with this vital audience, was summed up in a tweet and a couple blog excerpts:

Caffandaprayer: Brands wanting to a) create brand enthusiasts & b) educate tech-savvy users about new/updated products could learn from Yahoo #ymotherboard.

Beccarama, a Yahoo! Mother Board member from New York wrote, “Yahoo! Takes Women Seriously. Yes they wanted to hear from us the mom-blogging community, but they also have an incredible amount of savvy, funny, smart women leading and managing their company.”

Suddenly Single Journey, a Yahoo! Mother Board member from North Carolina wrote, “Oh how I loved loved loved our morning breakout sessions. We worked with Flickr and Shine. How many people can say that? And everyone wants to help us be even bigger and better. How often do you have a corporation like Yahoo! urging you on to success, backing you and supporting you every step of the way.”

Read more about the event and see what the attendees had to say at YodelingMamas.

Another year, another reason to celebrate Yahoos giving back around the world! For the past 11 years, the Yahoo! Employee Foundation (YEF) has been empowering Yahoos to give back and make a difference in their community. The statistics below are a reminder of how much they’ve accomplished along the way.

• More than $10 million in grants have been given to 350 nonprofit organizations;
• More than 300 passionate Yahoo! employees have successfully championed grants for their favorite nonprofit;
• At least 1 in 2 Yahoos in the U.S. have donated to YEF.

These numbers blow me away every year because YEF is run solely by Yahoo! employee volunteers. Yahoos donate all of the money, champion all of the grants, and organize all volunteer activities, whether it is hosting a backpack drive or renovating homes. And YEF funds focus on the areas of youth and education, community building and families, and the environment, areas which were chosen by—you guessed it—our employees. One of the best parts of YEF is that by simply donating $50, an employee can champion their favorite organization for a grant of up to $40,000. That’s pretty amazing.

This summer, we’re celebrating YEF globally, in offices from Sunnyvale to New York to London to Taiwan. We’ll also have hands-on volunteer activities in most of our offices: Sunnyvale Yahoos will be putting together educational activity kits for Resource Area for Teachers, while New York Yahoos will be handwriting letters to terminally ill children for Make a Child Smile. This is our way of thanking all the incredible Yahoos who have donated their time and talents to support causes they care about. It is at times like these when I am especially proud to be a Yahoo.

Rachana Choubey
Global Front Doors

About This News Bytes Episode:

In this week’s Yahoo! News Bytes, Pamela Woon and the Digital Media Bureau take you behind the scenes at Frameline Fest to talk with James Franco, who portrays the late beat poet Allen Ginsberg in “Howl”.  Known for his roles in the Spiderman movies, “Milk” and the iconic series “Freaks and Geeks”, Franco is among the busiest men in Hollywood.  With upcoming roles in the prequel to “Planet of the Apes”, a starring role in “Eat Pray Love”, a recurring role on “General Hospital” and a teaching position at Yale University this Spring we will be seeing a lot more of Franco in 2010 and beyond.

Centering on the turbulent times surrounding the obscenity trial involving Ginsberg’s poem “Howl”, the movie  also features “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, “Weeds” actress Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeff Daniels.  “Howl” is  slated for theatrical release in September 2010.

Recent Yahoo! News Bytes Episodes:

• Yahoo! News Bytes July 16, 2010 (David Beckham + Yahoo! Mobile World Cup app)
• Yahoo! News Bytes July 1, 2010 (Yahoo! Mobile Android apps)

About The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau:

The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau is a team of Emmy-nominated, multi-platform content creators who innovate and produce original video content, from webisodes to webumentaries. The Yahoo! Digital Media bureau is responsible for the weekly feature, Yahoo! News Bytes, which peels back the layer on everything Yahoo! The Bureau also produces the weekly Yahoo! Trends segment, which focuses on what’s trending in entertainment, pop culture and tech. Yahoo! Trends is distributed on broadcast television and seen throughout the United States.

Yahoo! Indonesia also partnered with content providers KapanLagi, Tempo Interaktif, Antara, Okezone, Vivanews and AsianPlus, to provide comprehensive, up-to-date and exclusive celebrity entertainment stories and interviews.  On top of that, some popular Indonesian celebrities such as Maylaffayza, Joko Anwar and Raditya Dika are engaged to blog and provide Indonesian fans a glimpse of the latest and most exclusive celebrity news.

On 4 July, to celebrate the launch of OMG! in Indonesia, Yahoo! also bought to life the thrill and excitement of the World Cup season at an OMG! celebrity Shoot For Good (Gol Untuk Amal) futsal event. The event gave Indonesians the chance to team up with their favorite celebrities and raise money for charity by participating in various exciting events taking place in an OMG! themed celebrity village.

The OMG! themed village featured hands-on product experiences and guided tours to all things Yahoo!. Other exciting activities include fashion shows from Adidas showcasing the latest apparel, a chance at 5 seconds fame on the longest purple catwalk, plus opportunities to score goals with the National Futsal Team in a football clinic.

Watch video of the event:

Yahoo! pledged to raise a maximun of USD10,000 at the event with a donation of IDR100,000 going to Artha Graha Peduli, for each goal scored during the celebrity  game. Indonesians attending the event could also do their part to raise money for Artha Graha Peduli by participating in a separate penalty shoot-out against goalkeepers from the National Futsal team that ran thought-out the day.

Click to see more event photos. Enjoy!

Pontus Sonnerstedt
Country Manager, Yahoo! Indonesia

So what does this mean for you? If you are one of the 300 million Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger users worldwide, we’re making it easier to access feature-rich Yahoo! experiences on two of the fastest growing mobile platforms in the market, Android and HTML5-capable browsers.  Get more details on the Yahoo! Messenger app on the Yahoo! Messenger Blog here.

With the new apps for Android, we created fast, easy-to-use and visually stunning experiences for Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger, providing rich full-featured experiences right on your Android device, and built from the ground up for the Android platform. We also introduced a Yahoo! Search Widget for Android to provide quick and convenient access to Yahoo! Search, making search easily accessible directly on your home screen. Check out more details on the Yahoo! Search Blog here.

In another exciting new release, we’re leveraging the cutting-edge features of HTML5 and introducing a new Yahoo! Mail web-app, plus a Yahoo! News site, for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The new Yahoo! Mail for mobile web is the most advanced mobile web-app we’ve ever created, making full use of client side databases and advanced caching capabilities, we’re offering faster access, powerful search, and rich content & message previews surfaced directly in the inbox. This amazing new experience is available in 28 languages in more than 200 countries. Read more about the all-new Yahoo! Mail on the Yahoo! Mail Blog here.

Our enhanced Yahoo! News includes a new layout with animated visual effects and navigation that utilizes touch gestures to deliver a compelling news experience.

We’ve been working hard, and listening carefully to our users’ feedback to understand what our consumers want, how a sophisticated mobile experience should behave, and how we could harness the latest cutting-edge technology. The result is a collection of incredible new experiences that represent our continued commitment to provide best-in-class products, while creating a modern and flexible platform for continued innovation and development. We hope you’ll love using these new experiences as much as we’ve loved creating them!

Here is a video with more on Today’s news:

Jason Titus
VP, Yahoo! Mail & Messenger

Irv Henderson
VP, global, mobile products

Is it Web site, website, or web site? What’s the best on-screen placement for a lead story? How can you better know your site’s audience? Why should you?

The rapid growth of the Web has left writers and editors relying on editorial style guides that are intended for print publishing. But these guides do not focus on writing for the Internet. “The Yahoo! Style Guide” does. It is a must-have book that will help everyone who writes, edits, or creates content for the Internet accomplish their work with clarity and precision.

The seeds of “The Yahoo! Style Guide” were planted fifteen years ago, when writers and programmers at Yahoo!, faced with a lack of industry guidance, began assembling a set of guidelines for Web writing. Their first in-house reference grew in size and company importance as content creators added to it through the years.

Polished and expanded for its public debut, “The Yahoo! Style Guide” covers the basics of grammar and punctuation plus a multitude of topics with a Web-specific focus, such as how to write and edit for an online audience, streamlining copy, basic Web codes, Internet law, and search engine optimization. Before-and-after examples of how to clean up problem copy abound.

The companion website not only features content excerpted from the book but also offers more help and resources from Yahoo! editors.

“The Yahoo! Style Guide” is available in print and digital versions, such as iPad and Kindle. It will be available wherever books are sold beginning July 6, 2010.Read reviews, comments, and endorsements from academic and industry experts. And send us feedback about the Guide.

-Chris Barr, senior editorial director

I’m getting psyched for my first big developer event with Yahoo!. Tomorrow we’re hosting the 3rd Annual Hadoop Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. “What’s ‘Hadoop,’” you ask, and why is it so important as to have its very own summit? Hadoop is an open-source technology that lets companies like Yahoo! crunch unimaginable volumes of data — I’m talking about 16 terabytes every day. And why does that matter? Well, it’s what makes it possible for us to create highly relevant online and mobile experiences for the 600 million people around the globe who visit Yahoo! 11 billion times a month. In short, Hadoop is the magic behind every click at Yahoo!.

I’m honored to have the opportunity to stand in front of a thousand or so Hadoop technology leaders and developers to talk about how Yahoo! uses Hadoop and the cloud to deliver the right content and the right ads to the right people every second of every day. As the world’s largest user of Hadoop, there’s no doubt in our minds here at Yahoo! that it brings us significant value and is ready for mainstream, enterprise use. In fact, we believe Hadoop will play a big part in the future of the Web.

Everyone knows that the volume of content being published and shared on the Web is growing at a crazy pace. At Yahoo!, we want to help filter out the noise by bringing you the content that’s most personally relevant to you. But doing that requires us to make sense of this BIG data and do it superfast, which would simply be impossible to do if we didn’t have the major data processing power of Hadoop. In the amount of time it takes sunlight to reach the earth (8.3 minutes), Hadoop processes more than 300 million calculations with our data.

And that’s just one example of what Hadoop can do — we’re thankful for the passionate and brilliant Hadoop community and the supportive sponsors of this week’s Summit, all of whom are doing amazing things with this technology as well. Should be a great summit — for those of you who are just dying for more geeky details, follow #hadoopsummit on Twitter, or look for our photos on Flickr.

—Blake Irving, EVP, Chief Product Officer, Yahoo!

Follow Blake Irving on Twitter: @blakei

This weekend marks the 40^th anniversary of the first official gay pride celebrations – originally grassroots marches in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta, created to commemorate the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising.

Pride celebrations have come a long way since June 1970. What began as small, vocal demonstrations in a handful of large US cities has since grown to hundreds of major parades in most metropolitan areas around the globe, as well as countless smaller celebrations, film festivals and cultural events that attract people in cities and towns all over. To find events near you and to explore the most comprehensive online map of LGBT pride anywhere, head on over to the Pride Event Finder at pride.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! is celebrating Pride again this year with messages on our corporate billboards in Times Square, New York City and San Francisco. We’re also thrilled to be a Premier Sponsor of Frameline, the 34^th Annual San Francisco LGBT Film Festival. The Yahoo! logo has been up on the marquee of the historic Castro Theatre throughout the 10-day festival and we couldn’t be happier!

The past year has seen some important developments for Yahoo!’s tens of millions of LGBT users. In the United States, the nearly decade-old proposed legislation commonly referred to as the “Matthew Shepard Act” was enacted this past October, extending federal hate crime protection to victims based upon sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It was the first federal law of any kind to extend to recognition of transgendered individuals in the country.

Outside of the US, pride celebrations have continued to flourish, growing in number particularly throughout Asia and South America. Sao Paulo, Brazil continues its record of having the world’s largest LGBT Pride Parade, with an estimated 3.2 million attendees last month. It is second in popularity only behind the annual Formula One races in that city.

The LGBT community has also recently seen same sex marriage legalized in the state of New Hampshire, in Mexico City, and in Portugal and Iceland. India decriminalized homosexuality for the first time since British Colonial rule imposed the law in the mid-nineteenth century. Bans on gays in the military were ended in Argentina, Philippines and Uruguay. Iceland elected the first openly gay head of state in the world when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became Prime Minister. And Annise Parker was elected mayor of Houston, Texas, which made that city the largest in the United States to have an openly gay leader.

Congratulations on all the advancements for the LGBT community in the past year and we look forward to celebrating further improvements with you in the future.

Yahoo! wishes you and your loved ones a happy LGBT Pride season 2010!

When we took the photo of Ben, Elisa Steele and Jeff Goodby yesterday, we promised to donate to Ben’s StillerStrong charity a dollar per view up to $50,000, the cost to build a temporary school in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. And, whether it’s out of a desire to do good or just because they wanted to see Ben’s signature “Blue Steel,” the clicks came.

Blog posts on Yahoo! and Flickr, a video from Ben (see below) and tweets from Ben, Yahoo! and hundreds of people who liked the idea drove visitors to the photo. Within eight hours of being posted, we had already hit 50,000 views on the two sites where the image was being hosted, flickr.com/stillerstrongyahoo and flickr.com/yahooadvertising. As of posting, the photo has more than 100,000 views–double the views we were shooting for.

People seemed to love the idea, and Ben’s StillerStrong work in general. More than two hundred people commented, saying things like, “This is such a lovely project. Keep it up, man!” and, for the Zoolander fans out there, “Will this be a school for kids who can’t read good and want to do other stuff good too?” (Heh.)

Thanks for clicking and helping to raise money for the school. We hope soon to have another picture to show: a finished school!

—Jeff Sweat, blog editor

At the end of the session, Ben posed for a group photo with Elisa and Jeff and a crowd wearing StillerStrong headbands, and uploaded it to Flickr. He asked everyone to view it and share it with their friends. For every click, Yahoo! will donate a dollar, up to $50,000, to Ben’s StillerStrong charity. StillerStrong is raising money for the Haitian School Initiative, an effort to help provide temporary schools for Haitians displaced by the earthquake in January 2010.

$50,000 will pay for one temporary school. Your view pays for part of that school. So click on it, and pass it on!

About This News Bytes Episode:

*A new study details which parent is more likely to keep a watchful eye on their kids online behavior

*Yahoo! Fantasy Sports-women launching leagues of their own as the boys of summer heat things up

*Yahoo! Connected TV brings TV Widgets to more than 100 countries around the world

About The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau:

The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau is a team of Emmy-nominated, multi-platform content creators who innovate and produce original video content, from webisodes to webumentaries. The Yahoo! Digital Media bureau is responsible for the weekly feature, Yahoo! News Bytes, which peels back the layer on everything Yahoo! The Bureau also produces the weekly Yahoo! Trends segment, which focuses on what’s trending in entertainment, pop culture and tech. Yahoo! Trends is distributed on broadcast television and seen throughout the United States.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and Yahoo! Sports is the #1 destination, reaching more than 20 million users each month-it makes perfect sense to team up with the world’s leading soccer star-David Beckham.  Earlier this week, Yahoo! announced David Beckham would be Yahoo!’s global football ambassador throughout the World Cup. Beckham will be featured in our marketing campaign, provide content for Yahoo!’s World Cup site, tweet and post Yahoo! content on his Facebook page, judge a World Cup Flickr photo contest and more.

And at the conclusion of the Tournament, Yahoo! will host a live global press conference/Q&A with David Beckham in London, which will allow fans from around the world to ask questions of the superstar!  Finally, for several months following World Cup he will be a featured analyst for Yahoo’s football coverage as the world makes the transition back to the regional leagues and competitions.

Yahoo!’s World Cup program is a true global, integrated marketing campaign. It includes live kickoff events in various cities around the world, fun ways to share with your own social networks, a cool online interactive global game to play and a chance to WIN the first-ever Yahoo! Sports Pass (the ultimate prize for sports fans!).

This month, we have also begun launching even more exciting elements of Yahoo!’s campaign.  Our campaign is digitally led with a huge focus on and off the Yahoo! network across all segments with, of course, online activation as one of the major drivers to show the power it has to drive business and build brands.  We will execute a dynamic takeover of the homepage on June 17th illustrating Yahoo! properties in a 3D experience–entertaining, engaging and inviting users to make the web their own with Yahoo!.

Our TV spots, developed for video use on the Web as well, hit screens this week on MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central.  The “Entertainment” spot was also featured on the Glee finale!  Our campaign is cohesive and impactful, communicating one idea-Yahoo! brings Your World together with The World.  We’re continuing to focus on driving deeper engagement through unique demonstrations and trials of our products.

On the cusp of the launching the next release of our campaign, our creative advertising agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners has received some very special recognition in the industry. Not only have they been named “Agency of the Decade” by AdweekMedia, but recently, at the CLIO Conference Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein were honored with the CLIO Lifetime Achievement Awards, one of the most prestigious honors in advertising. It recognizes outstanding and ongoing contributions of individuals who lead the industry and gives public recognition of something that we already knew — that we’ve got some of the world’s most talented creative partners helping us continue to build the Yahoo! brand.

Here is a preview of the actual ads that you will start to see in major cities soon:

Look for lots more great stuff to come!

Elisa Steele, EVP & CMO, Yahoo!

The acquisition of Oztips is pretty serious stuff because overnight we DOUBLED Yahoo!7’s sport audience and skyrocketed to rank number one publisher for sports sites in Australia in just one day!

In the agreement with NextGen.Net Pty Ltd Yahoo!7 will acquire 100% of OzTips AND their loyal and passionate audience, many of which are totally new to our network and set to become highly engaged with Yahoo!7.  The acquisition will build on our existing Sports site, securing our leadership position in the Australian online sports publishers category – and let’s face it – we’re serious, and we’re playing to win!

Want some more hot tips about just how serious we are about sport? The stats from recent Yahoo! Study shows:

• Tipping audiences are highly engaged and passionate about sport – known as the ‘uber fan,’ they spend about 14.1 hours a week on sports websites – seven times more than a casual sports fan!
• 93% of ‘uber fans’ go online while watching a game
• 56% are more likely to pay attention to ads on sports sites than other general websites

Our acquisition of OzTips will complete in July, and with Yahoo!7’s innovative direction, we’re ready to take tipping to the next level! Now that’s a serious, hot tip.

Kath Hamilton
Director of Audience, Yahoo!7

In our earliest days of bringing the Yahoo! Widget Engine to TV, we knew that we had a compelling product to address a rapidly growing market of more than 70 million consumers that interact with Internet content while watching TV.  Addressing this consumer need also creates an economic opportunity for TV manufacturers, publishers, advertisers, and our more than 7,000 registered developers.

Launched in January 2009, we have distribution partnerships with five of the top 10 TV manufacturers around the world, including Sony, Samsung, LG, VIZIO and HiSense.  As we look to increase distribution and reach the broadest audience possible, we have partnered with silicon and integration partners including MIPS Technologies and Sigma Designs as well as new OEM partners like ViewSonic – enabling consumers to get the Yahoo! Widget Engine on set-top boxes, media players, Blu-Ray players, DVDs, DVRs and other devices that connect directly to the TV.

As we work to deliver innovative and compelling experiences to consumers, global partnerships, like this one with Sony, drive the industry forward and enable developers to achieve scale and reach engaged audiences on an entirely new level.

Here is a demo of Sony’s experience and more on the news with Roger Urrabazo, a product lead for Yahoo! Connected TV.

If you haven’t visited the new Connected TV blog – check it out today.

About This News Bytes Episode:
Hollywood comes to Silicon Valley as the producers of An Inconvenient Truth unspool their latest documentary at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, Ca. It’s called Countdown to Zero and it focuses on what the film calls the “extinction level threat” posed by nucelar weapons. News Bytes gets an exclusive interview with the movie’s producers, Jeff Skoll and Lawrence Bender. Also, Yahoo! gets social with new Facebook integration. Pamela Woon brings you the latest from inside Yahoo!

About The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau:
The Yahoo! Digital Media Bureau is a team of Emmy-nominated, multi-platform content creators who innovate and produce original video content, from webisodes to webumentaries. The Yahoo! Digital Media bureau is responsible for the weekly feature, Yahoo! News Bytes, which peels back the layer on everything Yahoo! The Bureau also produces the weekly Yahoo! Trends segment, which focuses on what’s trending in entertainment, pop culture and tech. Yahoo! Trends is distributed on broadcast television and seen throughout the United States.

Filipinos were already talking about a possible “Congressman Manny” ring introduction on social networks and the Philippine blogosphere as soon as Pacquiao took the lead in the congressional race. He eventually won in a stunning upset in the country’s first automated elections. Which means that after two attempts (his previous try in the 2007 elections suffered a horrible loss) Pacquiao can now add legislator to his long list of accomplishments as one of the all-time boxing greats.

It is a remarkable tale of a boy who grew up in poverty but overcame the odds to become one of the greatest boxers and richest athletes in the world. More than that, however, he is a national hero in the Philippines, where even criminals take a day off and the military and insurgents stop fighting, so they can stay glued to the screens and watch Pacquiao fight.

Yahoo! Philippines has chronicled through the Ringside With Manny microsite which has spread through word of mouth on social networks, such as the Ringside With Manny on Yahoo! Meme. Through Yahoo!’s Ringside With Manny, millions of fans in the Philippines and around the globe could keep themselves updated on latest Pacquiao news, while also participating in Yahoo! Philippines’ live blogs of the fights, such as Pacquiao’s encounters with Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey.

In fact, before Pacquiao’s historic win over Cotto – that gave him his seventh world title in seven weight classes – Pacquiao sat down with the Yahoo! Sports team for a Ringside With Manny interview.

More importantly, Yahoo!’s Ringside With Manny offered exclusive content that gave visitors a better glimpse of the man behind the great boxing champ. Whether it was a video of Pacquiao singing and playing the guitar, or answering trivia questions from Yahoo!, the goal of Ringside With Manny was to bring readers closer to the champion.

Yodel Anecdotal had the opportunity to ask Pacquiao a couple of additional questions. Check out his replies:

Yodel: What’s on your iPod playlist right now?
Pacquiao: Mostly love songs and Martin Nievera. My all-time favourite is ‘You raised me up’ by Josh Groban

Yodel: Will you allow your daughter Princess to join show business? (Ed: His three-year-old daughter Princess loves to perform in front of the camera)
Pacquiao: I am not against it. As long as she can finish her studies, I’ll support her on whatever she wants

When asked about his mum, Pacquiao has this message for her: “Thank you for guiding us. I pray to God that you’ll have a long life because we need you by our side…”

Fight fans are still praying that a mega fight between Pacquiao and undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. will still push through in what arguably will be the richest and most important boxing bout in history. Whether or not his opponent will be Mayweather, however, Pacquiao has said that he will retire after his fight in November.

In the meantime, check out Yahoo!’s Ringside with Manny to follow our latest updates on Manny Pacquiao.

Post contributors: Joey Alarilla, Priscilla Tan
Social Media Editors, Yahoo!

As Yahoo!’s head of Customer Advocacy, I would like to share another great online safety tool we’ve created to help protect your vital and private information while using the web.

Have you ever wondered how online hackers gain access to your personal information?  What if I told you that in many cases it was YOU who provided them with the information they need to gain access to the data you value most?  It’s true, but a free tool called the “sign-in seal” is one way to avoid becoming victim to piracy.

What’s a sign-in seal and why do you need one?  Great questions!

A sign-in seal is a secret message or image that you select to help protect your account from fraud such as password phishing. When you create a sign-in seal for your computer, you can be sure you’re on a legitimate Yahoo! site each time you use your computer to log in to your Yahoo! account. You’ll see the text or image you set up on your computer. If it’s not there, you might have landed on a “spoofed” site.

The sign-in seal you designated is only saved on the computer you created it on – therefore if you log in using a different computer, you will not see the sign-in seal. If you use more than one computer or browser, you can choose to create a sign-in seal for each.  If you don’t see your sign-in seal on the sign-in page, the webpage you’ve opened is likely a fake Yahoo! page. If this happens, you should report the incident to Yahoo! customer care immediately!

Another important tip: do NOT create a sign-in seal on a computer you share with strangers such as those in libraries, Internet cafes, and other public hot spots.

For more information on online safety, please visit: http://security.yahoo.com
Have a wonderful day!

Jeff Russakow
EVP of Customer Advocacy
Yahoo! Inc.

Since I’m a passionate soccer fan, I tend to gravitate toward the soccer community in each country I visit. In fact, I always pack a pair of cleats just in case I hang out with the locals and get the coveted invite to play in a Sunday match. Lucky for me, today I’m in South Africa where all eyes will be focused as the world’s largest sporting event kicks off. The FIFA World Cup is the greatest exhibition of athleticism, pride, nationalism, emotion, creativity and competition our planet will ever see. It’s a sensational moment for this place that I have grown to love – to be able to showcase to the world the refreshing beauty, diversity and culture that Africa offers.

It’s also an ideal time to get the world excited to tackle some of the most daunting issues facing the region – like the AIDS pandemic that continues to take the lives of nearly 4,000 people a day in sub-Saharan Africa.

The good news is that incredible progress has been made over the past 8 years and millions of lives are being saved. In 2002, nearly 29 million people in sub-Saharan Africa had HIV, yet only 50,000 people could afford the $10,000 a year treatment they needed to stay alive.  Today, because of political will, the efforts of global health organizations, like the Global Fund, and contributions from the private sector, the cost of antiretroviral drugs is now around 40 cents a day in Africa, and more than three million people on the continent are now receiving treatment.

This epidemic is not being stopped by treatment alone – education and prevention programs are also critical. Grassroot Soccer, which uses soccer programs to educate young people on the importance of knowing their status and how to stay HIV negative, is creating a generation that is more informed and better equipped to beat this disease.  In fact, we have just reached an inflection point where new infections are actually decreasing across Africa.

We are at a critical time where we must ensure the progress we’ve made does not slip away and, instead, use it as a foundation for reaching our goal of ultimately eliminating this disease.

Right now, Yahoo! is joining the fight by pledging to contribute USD $1, up to USD $100,000,  to the Global Fund for every penalty kick scored in the Yahoo! Penalty Shootout game, on June 11.  100% of this money will go to the Global Fund, the organization that receives (RED) funds, and will help finance AIDS programs in Africa to provide access to treatment, prevention and education programs, testing and more.  To date, (RED) has generated over $150 million to support Global Fund-financed AIDS programs like this in South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Rwanda, Lesotho and Swaziland.  100% of this money is put to work in these grants, no overhead is taken out.

I’ll be one of the first to try my penalty kick as I sit in Cape Town, South Africa getting ready to start one of our Grassroot Soccer Skillz camps in partnership with (RED). This is one of more than 40 programs Grassroot Soccer will be hosting throughout South Africa during the World Cup to give kids, who will be out of school, a healthy option for the day and a strong foundation on how to live HIV free.

The beauty of soccer is that away from professional stadiums, monster lights, and perfect grass fields, there’s another side of the sport. Hidden away on alleys, dusty fields and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Simply arriving on a street with a ball instantly grants you many new friends. But the one thing that remains the same no matter where you find yourself playing, is that decisive moment right before scoring the epic penalty shot.

Be decisive and join me in playing the Yahoo! Penalty Shootout for (RED) on June 11 and help kick HIV out of Africa and take a step to get involved everyday. Learn more at www.joinred.com.

-Ethan Zohn was a professional soccer player for the Hawaii Tsunami and Cape Cod Crusaders of the United Soccer Leagues and in Zimbabwe for Highlanders Football Club.  He is also the co-founder of Grassroot Soccer, which uses the power of soccer to provide African youth with the knowledge, life-skills and support to live HIV-free.

Twitter:  twitter.com/ethanzohn
Facebook: http://www.hs.facebook.com/pages/Ethan-Zohn-Fan-Page/246625727842?filter=3

Online safety is always top-of-mind at Yahoo!, and to honor June as National Internet Safety Month, we are sharing interesting data from a recent survey of 2000 U.S. Internet users to gain insight into consumers’ behaviors and perceptions around online safety.  The survey data provides insight into how parents monitor children’s online behavior and how people manage their personal reputations online.  As a result, we are giving parents a B+ for taking action to protect children online, with a special shout-out to dads!

Below are the key findings.

Parents take action

We are encouraged to learn that parents are taking action to actively monitor their kids’ online activity.

• 70% of parents talk to their children about online safety at least 2-3 times a year; 45% talk to their children least once a month.
• 74% of parents are connected to their children’s profiles on social networking sites.

• 71% of parents have taken at least one action to manage their children’s use of the Internet or cell phones.  Parents are checking to see where children are searching online, setting time limits, setting parental controls on video sites, and using filters to limit where their children go on the Web.

Dads are doing their part and then some.

• 71% of dads (compared to 63% of moms) say they are taking at least one action to help manage their children’s online behavior, including having conversations about respecting the privacy of others and checking their children’s privacy settings.
• Fathers more often check to see what personal information can be easily found about their children by searching their names online.
• 53% of dads surveyed told us they plug their children’s names into a search engine at least 2-3 times per year (compared to 38% of moms), and 33% of dads told us they search at least once a month.

“Digital footprint” is a mystery to many

Do you know what your “digital footprint” is?  If not, you’re not alone.  65% of people are not sure what a digital footprint is.   I define a digital footprint as the data trail (i.e. photos, profile information, comments, and blogs) that you leave through your activity in a digital environment. The survey unveiled that:

When was the last time you conducted an online search of your name or your child’s name?  We found that only 20% of people plug their own name into a search engine once a month or more, and 49% of people do it 2 – 3 times a year or less.  That’s not enough.  This is not about doing a vanity search; it’s about learning what’s out there and ultimately taking control of your online image.

What to do:

Yahoo! believes that education is key to empowering people to be proactive in managing their online image.  To keep you and your children safe in a digital world, take action.

• Know your connections: Only connect with people you know offline.
• Think before you post: Once something is posted online, it’s virtually impossible to take back because words, pictures, and videos can be easily forwarded, copied, and taken out of context.
• Protect your personal information: Posting personal information or photos can identify you to strangers. Never reveal personal information to people unless you are friends with them offline. 
• Configure your settings: Take the time to understand the profile settings that are available to you on websites and social networks, and tailor those settings for you.
• Understand your digital footprint: On a monthly basis, search for your name on search engines (like Yahoo! Search) and social networks to understand what type of content is associated with you.

The reality is that we live in a digital world where our photos, videos, words, and actions continue to live online long after they are originally communicated. With the continued growth of the Web — particularly social networking sites — digital-reputation concerns will also continue to grow.  We applaud the parents who are taking an active role in keeping their kids safe online, and we encourage parents to use Yahoo! Safely as a resource for relevant, up-to-date strategies and tools to help foster safer online experiences for their families.

Catherine Teitelbaum, Yahoo!’s Director of Child Safety and Product Policy

Partnering TNS (Kantar Media), Nielsen and Synovate, Net Index 2010 sets Internet media currency for the coming year. The research offered strategic insights for industry decision makers and tapped into the massive Internet opportunities available in the country of study and throughout Southeast Asia.

Top line trends from the country studies were presented at the recent ad:Tech Media and Advertising industry conference held in Singapore on 3 June, where Yahoo! Southeast Asia hosted the launch of the Yahoo! Regional Net Index insights.

Keynote at ad:Tech. (second from left, Ken Mandel from Yahoo!)

Highlights from the research were presented to gathered media, industry advertising executives, marketers and media planners from around the region.

Some key findings:

• Indonesia, the largest and fastest growing online market in Southeast Asia, has recorded a jump from 22% (2009) to 48% (2010)
• Internet cafés in Indonesia are gradually losing ground to Mobile as dominant Internet access point. A decline of 19% has been recorded in Internet access through cafes; 83% in 2009 to 64% in 2010
• In Vietnam, mobile Internet access is picking up fast, nearly doubling year-to-year, from 10% (2008) to 19% (2009). Popular activities are searching for information and listening to music
• User generated content and community building is driving this trend in some markets like Vietnam, where it occupies the largest share (47%) among social media activities.
• Search, in the Philippines has grown significantly from 58% to 76% to become the dominant online activity, surpassing email and instant messaging
• Social media in the Philippines is primarily used to stay in touch with friends and family (66%), send emails (64%) and for online chats (63%)
• Spread of digital media is changing the way Malaysians are consuming information, particularly news. Key news sources are; online newspapers (53%), Internet portals (47%) and local news sites (46%)
• In Malaysia, online music and video has attracted significant interest with 51% uploading/downloading music files online and 54 % watching video clips online. Over a third of users also play games online – dominated by younger males.

To capture the fast moving changes in mobile use in Indonesia, a Mobile Index study was also conducted.  The Mobile Index provided  a broader study on internet trends in Indonesia which indicated the explosive growth of mobile internet in Indonesia primarily driven by cheap and unlimited data plans with bundled offerings, improved mobile user interfaces, and industry wide marketing, mobile internet penetration has expanded by 26% points from 22% (2009) to 48% (2010).

Key findings of Mobile Index 2010 Indonesia include:

• More than half of mobile internet users belonging to SES A (social economic status-A) or in the age group of 15-24 years use mobile internet everyday
• Mobile Internet usage is predominantly from a mobile phone with advanced features rather than a smartphone as only 11% own a smartphone
• 41% of people surveyed have looked up content or searched for information in the past month; out of those who searched for content, News (54%) and Facts / Trivia (47%) were the most common searches
• Social networking is the key activity with 89% of mobile internet users accessing it in the past one month; 47% access social networking sites at least once a day

Together, the five comprehensive Net Index research studies, sponsored by Yahoo!  have provided the Southeast Asian media, advertising and marketing industries with essentials tools to value the power of the Internet in Southeast Asia.

Stay tuned for more insights and studies that we’ll be releasing in upcoming months!

Ken Mandel
Regional VP Advertising Marketplace, Yahoo! Asia Pacific

As a star of three World Cups, David is looking forward to sharing all the excitement of the tournament with the Yahoo! family of readers. Beckham brings a wealth of experience, real-life history, and enthusiasm to Yahoo!’s coverage of the World Cup. His exclusive content thoroughly enhances our already stellar line-up of offerings, including 16 global soccer sites, mobile experiences in 40 markets, rich search tools and a comprehensive writing and video crew in South Africa.

You won’t be able to miss David’s involvement with Yahoo! as he’ll be fronting the company’s World Cup advertising campaign. I offered my own face for use on the billboards, but we decided it was better to stop traffic for all the RIGHT reasons. I’m certain soccer fans everywhere will appreciate learning how one of the biggest names in soccer uses Yahoo! for news, views and up to the minute information when the big events happen.

As I write this in the shadow of Soccer City, the showpiece stadium which hosts the final on July 11, the vibrant and mystical nation of South Africa is raring to showcase its passion for life and soccer to the world. With David joining our award-winning group, Yahoo! Sports is the only place to be for World Cup coverage. Check out our in-depth stories, features, columns and videos, and try your hand at the Yahoo! Sports World Soccer 2010 fantasy game.

And most important of all, enjoy the World Cup, the tournament where the beautiful game captivates a global audience for one wonderful month.

Martin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports

David Seaman and Pontus Sonnerstedt, Country Manager of Yahoo! Indonesia

The atmosphere at the event was electrifying as Seaman represented Yahoo! in bringing the passion and spirit of the upcoming football season to life for Indonesian fans.  The goalkeeper took a total of 103 penalties from fans, Yahoo!’s partners and members of the media.

The Penalty Shootout event marked the launch of Yahoo!’s dedicated website for Indonesia featuring coverage of the 2010 World Cup, Liputan Piala Dunia 2010, the groundbreaking on-line Penalty Shootout Game and the hugely popular Fantasy Football game from Yahoo!, Piala Fantasi 2010

David Seaman and Indonesian fan at the Yahoo! Penalty Shootout

At the same time, Yahoo! in Southeast Asia also launched dedicated websites featuring coverage of the 2010 World Cup for Singapore , Malaysia and Vietnam.  Football enthusiasts in these markets can also stay on top of all the latest action from wherever they may be with specially-designed, easy-to-navigate mobile versions of these websites.

Exclusive Interview: David Seaman talks to Yodel Anecdotal and Yahoo! SEA editorial team about  things you might not know about him! Watch video interview:

More interviews with David Seaman can be found here and read more to find out what he thinks of England at this year’s World Cup.

Starting this week, we will be bringing this vision to life in the Yahoo! products you use every day.  We are starting to integrate Facebook in a big way, a result of the agreement we first signed with Facebook last December. People who use Yahoo! and Facebook can now link their accounts to view and share updates with friends across both networks.  This means you can see your Facebook News Feed from your Yahoo! homepage, Yahoo! Mail, and other favorite Yahoo! sites and services.  When you create and share content on our properties – including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Answers, and many of our entertainment sites, such as omg!, Yahoo! TV, and Yahoo! Music – you can share that content on Facebook.

Beyond Facebook, your activities on Yahoo! are another important way of bringing social experiences together. Globally, Yahoo! now has more 80 sites producing socially infused content, including three million photos and videos uploaded daily to Flickr, 1.1 million answers provided daily on Yahoo! Answers, and thousands of comments posted daily on articles across Yahoo! sites. These social actions – what we call Yahoo! Updates – can be found in many places across Yahoo!, within products you use and on Yahoo! pages you visit every day.

Our vision is to provide a central hub for people’s online lives, and we understand that requires a Web you can trust.  That’s why this week Yahoo! is making privacy settings even easier to use with a central dashboard.  Rolling out this week as a re-fresh of Yahoo! Profiles, Yahoo! Pulse is a dashboard that makes it simple to set and manage your activities and privacy on Yahoo!.

Expect more to come and until then, share, update your status, and tell us what you think.

Jim Stoneham, Vice President of Communities

Cody Simms, Senior Director, Yahoo! Social Platforms and Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN)

We ran the first version of Predictalot in the U.S. for the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament known as March Madness. Nearly 50,000 people placed 100,000 predictions. To our delight, we found that people went well beyond picking ordinary things, like who will win, to construct a huge array of highly customized predictions — selecting 10,000 different kinds of predictions, including almost 4,000 “3-D” predictions that compared one team against two others, like “Butler will advance further than Kentucky and Purdue.”

The latest version of Predictalot, now available for the global audience of World Cup fans, has several new features:

• You can create a group and challenge your friends to play, or join an existing group of like-minded players.
• You can track how your predictive acumen stacks up in each group you belong to and overall across the globe.
• You can watch streaming updates of what other people are predicting in your social circle and around the world.
• You can view live match updates right within the app for your convenience.
• You can choose from millions of predictions, but don’t worry, the on-screen wizard guides you to easily find and customize the exact prediction you want.

Our goal with Predictalot is to take the wisdom of crowds to the extreme by computing what all these different predictions, taken together, say about the likelihood of each of the 28 trillion possible ways the tournament could unfold. Predictalot is an example of what is technically called a combinatorial prediction market, a new kind of market made possible only now that computing power has increased so massively. Predictalot represents the evolution of markets in the digital age, empowering users – in this case football and soccer fans, though this could apply to other types of users like online advertisers –  with extreme customization. More and more, matching buyers with sellers — the core function of markets — requires sophisticated algorithms, including machine learning and optimization. Predictalot illustrates this trend in an entertaining way.

Bringing Predictalot to life has been a truly interdisciplinary effort. On our team we have computer scientists and economists to work out the market math (see our previous write-up for a look under the hood from a science perspective), and engineers to turn those equations into something real that is fast and easy to use. Predictalot is built on the Yahoo! Application Platform, an invaluable platform (open to any developer) that makes it easy to create engaging and social applications for a massive audience.  Yahoo!’s extensive cloud allows us to pull our global content and deliver it quickly to our worldwide audience.

And we owe a great deal of our success and exposure to the cooperation and support of other well-established Yahoo! properties like Fantasy Sports and Games.

We’re excited about this version of Predictalot and hope you join us as the matches begin in South Africa. We invite everyone to participate, though please do keep in mind that the application is in beta, or experimental, mode. (If you prefer a more polished experience, check out the official Yahoo! Fantasy Sports World Soccer game.) We hope Predictalot is both fun to play and helps us learn something scientifically interesting.

Check out the screencast here to see how it works:

Thanks,
David Pennock, Yahoo! Labs

and the rest of the Predictalot team: Mani Abrol, Mohammad Mahdian, Mridul Muralidharan, Sudar Muthu, Navneet Nair, and Daniel Reeves

Today, we give a big Yodel to an exceptional tech Yahoo!, Raymie Stata, who today was named Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President. Raymie joined Yahoo! in 2004 and has led major tech initiatives across Yahoo! from re-imaging our technology stack, to spearheading search and advertising development work and architecting our massive private cloud.

As Yahoo! has grown, so has the company’s infrastructure needs. As Chief Architect, Raymie led transformative efforts to rewire Yahoo!, moving from a set of vertical silos to a horizontal platform infrastructure. As this strong foundation is laid, we’re ready to leverage the world’s most diverse collection of content to create innovative, more personalized consumer and advertiser experiences around the globe.

And as our business has expanded in scale and complexity, Raymie has provided technical insight and direction throughout the engineering organization. With his leadership, technical Yahoo’s have focused on core challenges like creating a stable, agile development environment, extracting value from masses of unstructured data, developing scalable global experiences, and architecting a cloud to serve as the foundation for every click across our network.

As CTO, Raymie reports to our Chief Products Officer, Blake Irving and will drive technology roadmaps in partnership with both Chief Scientist Prabhakar Raghavan, who oversees science and research at Yahoo!, and David Dibble, who leads Service Engineering and Operations.

First launched in 2002, the awards encourage internet users to vote online and give recognition to their favourite local and international brands. An independent market research firm was engaged to conduct interviews with advertisers and brands to come up with the nomination list.

After six weeks, we gathered two million votes.

The Yahoo! Emotive Brand Awards ceremony in Hong Kong was held on 19 May 2010 at the Four Seasons Hotel and was attended by more than 200 advertisers, brand representatives, luminaries and media.

The top three winning brands are: Canon, Cathay Pacific Airlines and the Hong Kong Ocean Park.

Elisa Steele, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Yahoo! joined winners at the awards ceremony

Following the great success of the initiative in Hong Kong, this year, Yahoo! Kimo in Taiwan launched the same awards in the market and introduced a new category – ‘Yahoo! Asia Emotive Brand Award’ to find the brands consumers in both Hong Kong and Taiwan love. The top three winners for this category include 7-Eleven, Sony and Sony Ericsson.

Check out the event videos:

As the leading online advertising platform in Asia, Yahoo! in Hong Kong and Taiwan continue to help brands leverage the online medium to better connect and interact with their consumers. Stay tuned for more exciting initiatives and campaigns from Yahoo! in Asia!

Jeff Han
Vice-President, Marketing, APAC Region

Yahoo! has always offered the best content on the Web and allowed people to publicly interact with it by sharing their own unique contributions and content. You can rate songs, review movies, Buzz articles, share photos on Flickr, post remarks on message boards, ask questions, and provide answers. Some of the best content on Yahoo! comes directly from you. We want to make it simpler and easier for you to find out about things that other members of Yahoo!’s vibrant global community are contributing on our network every day. We do this through a feature called Yahoo! Updates.

Yahoo! Updates is simply a stream of people’s activity, based largely on public content they’ve created on Yahoo!.  For some time now, we’ve been adding Yahoo! Updates into more of our products like Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Profiles. This phased integration has been happening over the past year so we could understand what users like and don’t like and then integrate feedback. Our users are using Updates and we’re happy to report that we have had overwhelmingly positive feedback.

With each new roll-out, we have been evolving and improving the Updates feature. For example, in Yahoo! Messenger, people can see Updates from all their Messenger friends.  However, in Yahoo! Mail, people have only seen content from their Connections across Yahoo!. In the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding Yahoo! Updates in Yahoo! Mail to enable you to see public updates from some of your Messenger friends and Yahoo! Contacts in addition to your Connections. Before long, we’ll also allow you to start sharing your Updates with friends on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks if you want – another great improvement and big step forward.

Before Yahoo! Updates is expanded to Yahoo! Mail where many more people will see their Contacts’ activity, we want you to explore your Updates settings and make sure you know who can see what you’re publishing. Even if you are among the many Yahoo! users who haven’t ever generated an update, we want to encourage everyone to actively manage these settings. Because the majority of events listed within Updates are inherently public activities, our defaults are set to allow anyone to see them (that is, for people over 18; we have different defaults that are age-appropriate for people under 18 – learn more in our FAQ). But you can easily limit who sees your Updates stream either by editing the controls for each specific activity (i.e. sharing photos on Flickr or commenting on Yahoo! News articles) or by turning your Updates stream off entirely in one simple step. We’ve made sure this control is easy to find by putting it at the top of the page and that there is a single on/off check-box, with more granular controls for people who want their settings somewhere in between.

We’ve also been placing reminders across our site in the places where you do or share something that will be visible through Yahoo! Updates. We provide links for you to manage who can see them right where you publish the content.

Our commitment at Yahoo! is always to give you great products, and we know that great products include a foundational commitment to your privacy.  We’ve created an FAQ page that answers not just what Yahoo! Updates is but also explains what it isn’t, and we welcome your continued feedback.

Anne Toth, Vice President, Global Policy & Head of Privacy
Cody Simms, Senior Director, Yahoo! Social Platforms and Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN)

Here at the Feel Your Boobies Foundation (www.feelyourboobies.com), nothing makes us do a Yahoo! Yodel more than knowing we reminded someone to “feel their boobies”!  That’s our whole mission…finding unexpected and unconventional methods to remind young women to “feel their boobies”.  And we couldn’t do it without Yahoo!

I started the Feel Your Boobies Foundation in 2004 after I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33. My goal was simply to remind as many young women as possible to “feel their boobies” because it’s something that saved my life.  We’re now an international non-profit foundation and Yahoo! enables us to spread our message far and wide… and that’s certainly worth a big Yahoo! Yodel.

Feel Your Boobies is 2 employees strong and runs out of a small garage in Central PA.  We are still so tickled pink (of course!) about our business relationship with Yahoo! and are so thankful for the personal support we have received during our growth.

When we say “unexpected and unconventional methods” it means you probably won’t see a “feel your boobies” brochure at your doctor’s office…but you sure as heck might pass the Boobies Bus® on the freeway, or you might be laying at the beach and see an airplane towing a banner with our logo during our Boobies @ the Beach promotion, or, you just might be lucky enough to claim a free car magnet or sticker during one of our Facebook and online promotions.

And that’s where Yahoo! comes into it.  We’re using the Yahoo! Store to give away free ‘feel your boobies’ swag to help remind people about this lifesaving habit with a little humor to boot. We also leverage the Yahoo! Store to accept donations and of course we sell plenty of funky apparel emblazoned with our slogan as well, which is the primary way we fund the “Are You Doing It?”® Reminder Campaign.

The overnight success (literally) of our first free magnet promotion in early 2009 caught us by complete surprise.  In fact, it was a personal phone call from a Yahoo! customer support person who alerted us to the massive volume we were experiencing.  He was not only as excited as we were, but also made himself available over a holiday weekend to provide us with tips to leverage the Yahoo! store to manage the increase in orders more efficiently.  Being a grassroots organization, this spike in traffic was something we dreamed of having, but nonetheless were quickly overwhelmed by the reality of it all.   Fortunately, the free magnet giveaway also triggered a large amount of unexpected donations and merchandise orders that have allowed us to extend the free giveaway program.  We have also decided to incorporate this into our annual campaign because of the exposure it has brought to our organization.

Learn more about our campaign, shop, and signup for our email list at www.feelyourboobies.com.

Leigh Hurst

Founder/President; Feel Your Boobies Foundation

Earlier this week, Yahoo! participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.  The conference brought together web innovators, thought-leaders and executives to talk about the constantly changing web and how to turn this “disruption” into opportunity.  Even our fearless leader, Carol Bartz, spoke in a fireside with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

Most fascinating was the Startup Battlefield, where 20 new companies competed in front of influential judges over the course of three intense days for the chance to win $50,000. Yahoo!’s Chief Architect, Raymie Stata, was on the judging panel. While there were many interesting start ups, it was art.sy, a place to discover and share fine art online, which deserves the Yahoo! Rookie Award!

Yahoo! is a company that was started fifteen years ago by two rookies, Jerry and Dave, who created Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle during their graduate days at Stanford.  They were two people who saw a need, jumped in and created something that worked for an ever growing group of people. Today, Yahoo! is a multi-billion dollar media company that uses technology to push the boundaries of the digital landscape, creating captivating experiences, content and programming.  We support innovators with big ideas and determination; we’ve been there!

During TechCrunch Disrupt we wanted to find a startup that showed promise to succeed where others have tried and failed.   This industry is about success and yes, failure.  Creating technologies and products that allow people to do things they didn’t know they wanted to do and to do things online that they traditionally did offline – like buying fine art.

We believe the marrying of online and offline behavior is one huge area for disruption. Carter Cleveland, founder of art.sy, has demonstrated a passion and a purpose for his startup.  It’s evident that he has passion for art, as does everyone on his team, and the product they’ve created demonstrates a new approach to tap into an industry that has traditionally resisted disruption AND that shows great promise to marry online and offline behavior.

Congratulations to Carter and the art.sy team who received the Yahoo! Rookie Disrupter Award and the opportunity to exhibit at the next TechCrunch event in San Francisco. Disrupt away!