Category Archives: Yahoo!

1. Aug28

   Flickr adds itself to your map and calendar

   • Yahoo!

   The Flickr team introduced new features today allowing its users to easily associate an uploaded photo with location and event information. The geolocation drag-and-drop interface and search (shown above) is powered by the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API. Event integration is handled through a special event tag generated by sister Yahoo! site Upcoming.org. The Organize interface is heavily influenced by Aqua Dock on Mac OS X. Photos dragged off the map disappear in a poof and the currently selected picture within an info is magnified relative to objects surrounding it. You can drag-and-drop images onto the map within Flickr's interface...

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2. Aug17

   Yahoo! Autos digging for feedback

   • Yahoo!

   A few members of the Yahoo! Autos team created a new feedback and suggestion system during a recent company Hack Day incorporating some of the bubble-up recommendation system to their own support and feedback loops. Instead of submitting yet another request for motorcycle coverage on the site, the existing request is shown on the Yahoo! Autos feedback page allowing anyone on the Internet to +1 the recommendation. (via Y! Cool Thing of the Day) I like the idea of the public-facing repository in an easy to browse and understand format. The multiple votes cast into a particular feature bucket should...

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3. Jul23

   NY Times on Google’s lack of focus

   • Google
   • Yahoo!

   Saul Hansell of The New York Times examines Google's current product offerings and feature gaps and comes away a bit puzzled. According to quotes in the article Google goes for the wow factor with stand-alone products that do not integrate well with the work of others. Marissa Mayer says it's a lot easier to get engineers to spend time developing new features than fill in a feature gap. Sergey Brin says he is now encouraging engineers to develop their ideas as add-ons for existing Google products instead of as stand-alone products. Former Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider is quoted saying Yahoo!...

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4. Jul19

   Panama is a bad code name

   • Yahoo!

   Yahoo's stock declined 22% today after the company missed analysts' quarterly estimates and announced its new advertising system, codenamed Panama, was delayed. I think of many failures when I hear the term "Panama" but the first thing that popped to mind in Yahoo's case is Scotland and its Darien scheme. Towards the end of the 17th century Scotland realized it was falling behind the rest of Europe and undertook a few initiatives to modernize the country and better compete with the new economies of Europe. The Company of Scotland was created to establish new trade routes with Africa and the...

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5. Jul13

   Taobao bridges online and offline retailing

   • Yahoo!

   Chinese online marketplace Taobao is lending its name to a new 12,000 square-foot shopping mall in Shanghai. Taobao, an eBay competitor with about twice the Chinese market share, will receive about $1.25 million a year for use of its name on the Taobao Cheng shopping center. About 300 retailers will be able to setup shops with broadband Internet access and discounted rent (about $22 a month) connected to their online storefront. Merchants can staff their brick and mortar store and fulfill orders placed online at the same time. Taobao is owned by Alibaba, which in turn is partially owned...

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6. Jun21

   Yahoo! Local adds microformats

   • Yahoo!

   Yahoo! Local has added microformats support -- including hCard, hReview, and hCal markup -- to almost all of its business listings, search results, events, and reviews. The new markup allows parsers of Yahoo! Local pages such as web browsers and search engine to automatically recognize the structured contact, review, and calendar data present on Yahoo! Local pages. Yahoo! Local is an entry point for small businesses on the web. The new markup should help Yahoo! market its listing services as optimized for machines and humans, giving businesses optimal exposure for their extended listings. The new microformats markup on Yahoo!...

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7. May18

   Flickr moving to San Francisco

   • Yahoo!

   Yahoo! is opening a big San Francisco office later this year and Flickr just announced they will be one of the teams making the move to the city. I know at least half of the Flickr team lives in San Francisco so it's a healthy move for the group and will probably mean more time working on Flickr things! Flickr is the first Yahoo! team I've heard of moving into the San Francisco offices. It was previously rumored these would be ad sales offices but it's good to see some product folk moving in. Tags: flickr...

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8. May18

   Yahoo! unveils video sharing site, Finance redesign at analyst day

   • Yahoo!

   Yahoo! presented its business strategy to analysts yesterday and gave the world a sneak peek at what's to come. A new advertising system is code complete and currently undergoing some testing and, if all goes well, will be rolled out later this year. Yahoo! plans to add advertising to it's new "coming soon" video site. The webcast was not working for me this morning; all my notes below are based on the slide deck. Yahoo! Video The new video site includes videos from around the web and a few from Yahoo! users as well. The top navigation bar references "My...

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9. May17

   Tetris using Yahoo! UI utilities

   • Web development
   • Yahoo!

   Yahoo! released the latest version of its UI utilities this week, including the components used in the new Yahoo! homepage design. You can use the various utilities to build your own website, but Dustin Diaz decided to build a version of Tetris. The game combines Yahoo's Event Utility and DOM Collection utility to create some cross-browser brick busting action. One of the good things about releasing your code to the world is you never know just how people will use it. I doubt anyone at Yahoo! thought about gaming when they released the UI widgets but developers are resourceful!...

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10. May16

    Flickr mutations and gamma rays

    • Yahoo!

    Flickr's gone gamma with a new site design and functionality. The new site packs more links into less space using JavaScript menus. It looks like Organizr has been completely rewritten in JavaScript with no Flash required. The site also features a new search results page sorted by relevancy, recency, and interestingness. The search index contains photo titles, tags, and descriptions but not notes. You can search for groups of interest and people with a much cleaner result page. Tags: flickr...

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