Archive for December, 2007
Yahoo! today announced that it has become a platinum sponsor of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Continuing its dedication to open and collaborative computing and research, Yahoo!’s financial sponsorship of the non-profit, volunteer-run foundation will help provide much needed working capital, hardware infrastructure, and support resources required to serve the ASF’s industry-defining projects and incubating initiatives.
Yahoo!’s support of the ASF stemmed from its work with the Apache HTTP Server and Lucene projects. Today, several members of Yahoo!’s development teams are active, long-term code contributors to Apache Hadoop, the open source platform that makes it possible to efficiently process vast amounts of data on a cluster of commodity hardware.
Leading the industry in supporting free and open software for building the next-generation of Internet-scale web services, Yahoo! is contributing to an open source version of these powerful tools which are freely available to anyone who needs them. In addition, Yahoo! is committed to advancing the state-of-the-art in distributed computing through the incubation of new Apache projects.
Yahoo! has embraced, adopted, and contributed to community-driven initiatives and related open source technologies. This, in turn, enables engineers and researchers around the world to cost effectively tackle the most challenging problems in computing today, including search, analytics, machine learning, scientific modeling and more.
“Yahoo! is one of the few companies in the world that has the necessary resources, expertise and experience to build software of this quality and scale,” said David Filo, Yahoo! co-founder. “Sponsoring the ASF demonstrates our commitment to quality open source infrastructure. Both Yahoo! and the open source community have benefited from collaborating with the ASF, and we’re proud to be able to give back - by sharing our expertise and technology, as well as on a financial basis. We look forward to furthering our participation with the ASF in years to come.”
“Sponsorship is key to our financial viability, which, in turn, benefits the open source community at large,” said ASF President Justin Erenkrantz. “Yahoo!’s participation helps ensure that both our developer community and distributed computing projects continue to grow. We are thankful for Yahoo’s generous support and welcome them into our sponsorship program.”
Yahoo! joins current ASF sponsors Google, HP, Covalent, Tetsuya Kitahata and Two Sigma Investments.
December 13th, 2007
Today Google announced the latest version of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. The beta version is now available in US-English at http://toolbar.google.com/T5. This release is about improving the way the millions of Toolbar users can engage with content on the web and personalize the browser experience.
Google Toolbar now lets you:
- Add Google Gadgets
- Fill in forms with a single click
- Access your Toolbar from any computer
- Clip and collect content as you browse
- Get suggestions for broken links
- Add your favorite Google Gadgets
Google made a number of announcements over the last few months about Google Gadgets to make them universally available and today’s release is no exception. Universal Google Gadgets now work from Google Toolbar and give users access to additional tools, functionality and content right from the browser. For developers, Google Toolbar is now an additional channel to distribute gadgets, especially ones designed to interact with the websites users visit.
For example, one is the Google Product Search gadget. After adding this gadget, users can select the name of a product on any web page, hit the ’shopping cart’ button on the Google Toolbar, and see purchase options for that item sorted by price. Users can click on any search result link to go directly to the merchant’s site.
Fill in forms with a click
Holiday online shopping is also easier with the Toolbar’s AutoFill feature, which lets users fill out web forms with a single click using address and contact information saved with the Toolbar. This new version has better accuracy, allows users to preview the filled-in form and even maintain multiple profiles. For example, someone who gets packages shipped to both home and office can set up a different profile for each address.
Access your Toolbar from any computer
Now Toolbar settings are not locked to a single computer: users can save them online and access bookmarks, custom buttons and other preferences from any Google Toolbar. Users who move between home and office, or are installing Toolbar on a new computer, can retrieve all their settings instantly by signing in to their Google Account.
Clip and collect content as you browse
Saving links is a great way to be able to keep track of key pages, and now with Google Notebook as part of Toolbar, users can collect, organize and share more information from the web including text and images. This integration makes it easier and more efficient to do all kinds Internet research from planning a vacation to comparison shopping.
Get suggestions for broken links
Instead of getting the usual 404 or DNS error page if they mistype a web address or if a site is down, users will see suggestions for top related pages. This feature is similar to the “did you mean?” function when you do a Google search.
This new version of Google Toolbar 5 also includes full keyboard access and support for Windows accessibility API’s.
December 12th, 2007
CNBC and Yahoo! Finance, today announced an agreement to distribute content from CNBC, CNBC Europe, CNBC Asia, and CNBC.com to Yahoo! Finance users in the United States and worldwide. The announcement represents CNBC’s first global online alliance, and Yahoo!’s first global finance video agreement.
Under the terms of the agreement, CNBC will provide video clips from its global networks and articles from CNBC.com. The content will be available to Yahoo! Finance users in the U.S. (http://finance.yahoo.com), and will also be available to Yahoo!’s 21 international financial news sites. The video clips will encompass commentary and analysis of the day’s top business stories, pre-market opening buzz, interviews, investing and stock-picking segments from CNBC programs including “Mad Money w/Jim Cramer” and “Fast Money” and international market news and analysis from CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia.
“This agreement brings together two global market leaders to meet the growing demand for online business and financial information,” said Mark Hoffman, CNBC President. “This alliance draws on the strength of CNBC’s global assets and expands the reach of our unparalleled content to Yahoo! Finance’s worldwide user base. It reaffirms our commitment to providing fast, accurate, actionable and unbiased information to our audience.”
“In an increasingly globalized economy, it’s essential that Yahoo! Finance offer investors news from the major global financial markets,” said Scott Moore, senior vice president and head of media, Yahoo!. “The addition of CNBC video content will help Yahoo! Finance users from around the world make more informed financial decisions.”
December 12th, 2007
Yahoo! and Cars.com today announced the launch of a strategic partnership to deliver comprehensive new and used vehicle listings on Yahoo! Autos. With this launch, Yahoo! Autos users now have easy access to the best selection of more than 2.4 million new, used, certified pre-owned, and private-seller vehicle listings from Cars.com dealers and private-party sellers nationwide. The launch marks the first time new car listings will be available on Yahoo! Autos to help vehicle shoppers go the extra mile in their search.
The enhanced vehicle listings on Yahoo! Autos will deliver increased relevance and expanded search results to the 83 percent of consumers who use the Internet to research vehicles before visiting a dealership.
“We’re focused on providing optimal depth, breadth and relevance of vehicle listings to our valued consumers on Yahoo! Autos. It’s important that we deliver an effortless experience to help people find the right car based on their particular location and specific vehicle needs,” said Michael Yang, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Autos. “By teaming up with Cars.com, we are marrying our best-in-class user search experience with their strong dealer and auto manufacturer relationships and access to new and used car listings.”
Dealers advertising on Cars.com will benefit from exposure on Yahoo! Autos, resulting in an effective way to reach in-market shoppers with the right message at the right time. With 87 percent of its audience unduplicated from Cars.com, Yahoo! Autos delivers an entirely new, in-market audience of used and new vehicle shoppers with one ad buy on Cars.com. This alliance also allows Yahoo! Autos to leverage Cars.com’s comprehensive editorial content in addition to enabling Cars.com’s vehicle listings to generate relevant display ads through Yahoo!’s Smart Ads.
“As we look to provide our advertisers with the broadest reach and access to the most qualified buyers, Yahoo! Autos is the clear partner of choice as the fastest growing site for in-market vehicle shoppers,” said Mitch Golub, president of Cars.com. “In addition to an unduplicated audience, Yahoo! Autos complements Cars.com in its commitment to deliver serious shoppers to our vast network of dealers. In fact, nearly 73 percent of Yahoo! Autos shoppers intend to purchase, a number in keeping with the 75 percent of Cars.com shoppers who intend to buy.”
December 11th, 2007
Almost 500 photographs by French photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand have been unveiled in Google Earth today. The photographs are presented as a layer in Google Earth with striking facts and figures about the state of the globe today. Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his non-profit organization GoodPlanet.org aim to promote environmental sustainability by highlighting the beauty of the planet and the issues it faces through his photography.
The layer, which is called “Earth from Above,” will be regularly updated with new photographs plus facts and figures by GoodPlanet.org, using data from various agencies around the world. It will be accessible from the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth, home to a number of layers highlighting environmental and humanitarian issues. To access the Global Awareness folder, users should go to the Layers folder in the left hand toolbar in Google Earth.
The stunning Yann Arthus-Bertrand photographs can also be accessed on iGoogle, the personalized Google homepage. By adding the “Earth from Above” gadget to their homepage, users can discover a new photograph each day and pinpoint its location on Google Maps.
The layer, iGoogle gadget and introductory video can be accessed from the “Earth from Above” microsite: www.google.com/earthfromabove. The Earth from Above will be available in 14 languages: French, English, German, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Czech and Russian.
December 11th, 2007
UNICEF, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and Google today announced the launch of “Our Stories” (www.ourstories.org), a joint initiative to preserve and share the histories and identities of cultures around the world by making personal stories available online in many languages.
Using laptops, mobile phones and other recording devices, children will record, in their native languages, the stories of elders, family members and friends. These stories will be shared globally through the Our Stories website, where they can be found on a Google Map.
By making these stories accessible around the world, the Our Stories project hopes to contribute to a better understanding of our shared humanity across countries and cultures, across religious traditions, across languages, and across generations.
“Information technologies can help young people around the world learn more about each other,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “Our Stories will promote dialogue across borders and cultures and give young people a voice on a wide range of issues.”
Low-cost XO laptops by One Laptop per Child will serve as a foundation to help build this digital archive of personal stories by providing children in developing countries with easy-to-use technology to record their stories and interviews.
“One Laptop per Child is very excited about partnering with Google and UNICEF to capture the thoughts and feelings of children and their communities around the world,” said Walter Bender, President of Software and Content/COO, One Laptop per Child. “The XO laptop is a tool for sharing and collaboration and this project is a great way to build a global community.”
The Our Stories website will initially include stories collected by Brazil’s Museum of the Person and stories recorded for UNICEF by young people in Ghana, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Our Stories has taken inspiration from the StoryCorps® project in the United States founded by MacArthur Fellow Dave Isay. “StoryCorps is proud to lend its experience in recording the conversations of nearly 30,000 Americans to this global undertaking,” said Isay. “These efforts teach us that the lives of everyone“ whether they are in New York or Nairobi“ matter, and that they will not be forgotten.”
More stories from more countries will be added to the site every month in an effort to preserve an oral history of humanity in the 21st Century.
“Google as both a company and as a culture loves a good story,” said Elliot Schrage, Vice President of Global Communications and Public Affairs for Google. “We’re proud to support the Our Stories global initiative and we hope that this collaboration will not just encourage better storytelling but better listening to stories.”
Leading figures have already lent their voices to the project: Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan and UNICEF Eminent Advocate for Children, and Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War and best-selling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, have all recorded messages welcoming users to the site and encouraging them to share their stories.
Listen to a story today at www.ourstories.org.
December 8th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced support for tags that give webmasters even more flexibility over which pages and documents are crawled and indexed by Yahoo! Search. Specifically, they are extending their support of page level exclusion tags — NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET, NOFOLLOW — to provide additional control for archiving and summarization of ANY file type. Previously, these page level tags could only be expressed within html pages through the META directive (for e.g. <META NAME=”Slurp” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”>), but based on feedback from webmasters, Yahoo! now enables these tags to be expressed through X-Robots-Tag directive in the http header, giving webmasters the flexibility to achieve exclusions on PDF, Word documents, PowerPoint, video, and other file types, including html files, and increasing their coverage through a simplified process. Additionally, webmasters no longer need access to html templates in order to express exclusions for html files. To take advantage of this feature, simply add the following page level tags to the X-Robots-Tag directive in the HTTP Header. Here are a few examples:
X-Robots-Tag: NOINDEX — If you don’t want to show the URL in the Yahoo! Search results.
Note: Yahoo! will still need to crawl the page to see and apply the tag, so if you don’t wish to have the page crawled, use robots disallow on robots.txt.
X-Robots-Tag: NOARCHIVE — If you don’t want to display cache link in the search results page.
X-Robots-Tag: NOSNIPPET — If you don’t want to display summary in the search results page.
X-Robots-Tag: NOFOLLOW — If you don’t want Yahoo! to crawl links in the page.
Along with this change, Yahoo! will be rolling out additional changes to site crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days.
December 6th, 2007
Today, Google announced the release of a new iPhone application that integrates its multiple services into a single interface, making it easy for iPhone users to find, use and switch between Google search, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, and more. To use the application, iPhone users simply point their web browser to http://www.google.com.
To accomplish this, Google is taking advantage of browser technologies (like AJAX) that made Gmail and Google Maps possible on the desktop. In supporting these advances in web technology, the iPhone’s Safari browser not only delivers an excellent mobile Internet experience; it enabled our product and engineering teams to create an optimal Google experience on a mobile device.
Google’s overall goal is to provide users with access to information, wherever they are. This commitment is device-independent, and we are working to develop new mobile technologies that are faster, easier to use, and available on more devices. A recent example is My Location (http://google.com/gmm/mylocation.html), a Google Maps for mobile feature that shows users their location directly on the map with or without GPS. To see the full range of mobile products and services available from Google, visit http://mobile.google.com.
December 5th, 2007
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