My Yahoo! Blog

Plans for New Year’s Eve?

How are you preparing to celebrate New Year’s Eve? I’m planning to greet the New Year with good friends at a wine tasting party. Whether you’re spending the New Year with friends, family, or Dick Clark, here are some fun ways to usher in the New Year.

Countdown to the New Year

It’s not too late to plan a get-together to celebrate the New Year for just a small circle of friends or family. Make merry by throwing a party with simple potluck appetizers and drinks.

Making merry wouldn’t be right without raising a glass of sparkling cider, champagne, or some festive holiday cocktail. To find recipes for the latter, check out Webtender’s Recipe Exchange Forum.

For a daily list of delicious appetizer and snack recipes, check out All Recipes Daily Recipes for Appetizers and Snacks for their droolworthy tidbits.

Enjoy!

Helen
-My Yahoo! Editorial

Bargain shop ‘til you drop.

For those of us who still have last-minute shopping to do this weekend, bargain shopping for gifts is still possible.

Check out a shopping tab from Sammy, who responded to our invitation to share preloaded tabs. Sammy’s tab features a terrific assortment of shopping deal feeds from across the Web. Add it to your page!

Also, being frugal during the holidays doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Fun Being Frugal hunts down great holiday bargains and freebies.

We’ve got to give a shout out to Dealcatcher.com. Thanks to the amazing community of users updating the site, you can score some great discounts and deals.

Happy Holidays from the My Yahoo! Team!

Open up and say apps!

We have some exciting news to share. Starting today, you’ll be able to add a cool new kind of content to your My Yahoo! page. We call ‘em Open Apps (or “apps” for short), but you may also know them as “widgets” or “gadgets”. There are a few things that make Open Apps especially exciting:

• Open Apps give you more interactive tools for your My Yahoo! page. Any developer with a great idea can create a useful Open App for you to add to your page. For example, our friends at LabPixies have created a nifty Calorie Calculator app that lets you set a daily calorie target and then make a note of the things you eat during the day (try it out).

• Open Apps can help you keep up with the people you care about. As you set up your connections with friends and family through your profile on Yahoo!, these new apps can use those connections to enrich your My Yahoo! experience. For example, the fine folks at Flixster have created Flixster Movies, which gives you all the info you’d expect for top movies and new releases, plus a view of your friends’ ratings & reviews. You can even see which movies your friends want to see!

• Open Apps can connect you to people with similar interests. Let’s say you’re a diehard fan of the Green Bay Packers or the TV show “The Office”. Question: Where do you go to find other Cheeseheads or show off your Dunder Mifflin trivia knowledge? Answer: Open Apps. For example, our partners at Watercooler have built a whole bunch of “Addicted to…” apps for popular TV shows and a complete series of “Fans” apps for NFL and NBA teams. Each of these apps gives you access to episodes, quotes, trivia, quizzes, discussion – pretty much everything you could ask for when you want to immerse yourself in your favorite obsession.

These are just a few examples of the Open Apps that are available today. You’ll be able to find more by browsing the new Open Apps category in our content gallery or by searching in the gallery for “Open Apps.” You can also give and get apps from friends. To share an app, click on the “Options” menu in the app and choose “Share this application”. Over the next few months you’ll start seeing messages in more places around Yahoo! that say things like “James is now using Addicted to The Office”– click on one of these to get the app for yourself.

Before I go back to playing, err…working with apps, I should tell you that each app on your My Yahoo! page has a corresponding full-page view where you get access to even richer functionality for that app. Sometimes, when you interact with an app on your My Yahoo! page, it will take you to its full-page view. You can go to the full-page view by clicking on the app’s “Options” menu and then choosing “Zoom In”. To get back to My Yahoo!, click on the “Options” menu and then choose “Zoom Out”. If you end up on the full view of an app that you’ve never added to your My Yahoo! page, just look for the “Add to My Yahoo!” link towards the top right.

That should be enough to get you started with Open Apps. Remember, today is only the beginning—in the coming weeks and months we expect hundreds, even thousands, of open apps to become available for you to add to your My Yahoo! page.

Oh, if you’re a developer and would like to create your own app to share, see our guidelines on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

–james
My Yahoo! Product Lead

Holiday tips and advice.

Helpful tips and advice can simplify the holidays and ultimately help your bottom line, and the advice from these sources are worth their weight in holiday gold.

With the help of Christmas tips and tricks from Organized Christmas, you’ll be able to countdown the days to Christmas with holiday cheer.

For the latest news on all things Hanukkah, along with holiday tips and advice, you’ll want to check out Hanukkah News.

And for the latest news on all things Christmas, check out Christmas News. It’s a round-up of interesting Christmas news from thousands of sources.

If you’re still feeling the “bah-humbug” creeping up on you (even after all I’ve shared!), the Flickr Christmas Lights photo pool is sure to banish any hint of the Scrooge spirit.

Happy Holidays!

Helen
- My Yahoo! Editorial

Make it a homemade holiday.

The holiday season of lights, trees, wreaths, and gift-shopping is upon us. With the current state of the economy, there’s the temptation to say “bah-humbug” to it all, but even if you’re on a budget, there are still ways to share holiday cheer and goodwill.

With just few weeks to the holidays, there’s still ample time to create meaningful, homemade gifts for friends and family.

Getting crafty is easy with CRAFT Magazine’s Paper Crafts feed. They’ve got wonderful paper craft suggestions for the holidays. From a cool snowstorm paper garland to modern, paper ornaments, the ideas are fresh, stylish, and limitless.

Another great craft resource is FamilyFun.com. They’ve got a wide range of holiday crafts and recipe ideas that are fast and easy to make for kids and adults.

Also check out Suite 101.com’s Kids Crafts Articles feed which features a fun assortment of easy holiday projects for kids.

Now is also a great time to select Holiday themes for your My Yahoo! tabs. There are plenty of them to choose from: Gifts Galore, Hanukkah, Holiday Wrap, Sleigh Bells, or simply Winter. From Choose Theme select Seasonal, and you can view the available options.

Happy Holidays!

Helen
- My Yahoo! Editorial