My Yahoo! Blog

I love books and there’s no time like the summer to catch up on my reading. The challenge for me is usually deciding which book to read. “Books weRead” is a new application on My Yahoo! that is helping me to find great books, more easily. weRead has an extensive searchable catalog of books across many of the most popular genres. It provides very useful reviews, ratings and even a list of “top books” recommended by weRead’s community of more than a million readers:

Some of my favorite aspects of the app are its social features. Using weRead, I can see which books my friends are reading as well as their reviews and ratings within the app. This is a very efficient way to get recommendations on what I might like to read, from people I know and trust. This has definitely helped me decide what book I’m going to read on the beach next month! I can also share my reviews with my friends as well as the larger weRead community:

It’s great to have an app on My Yahoo! that provides a useful and fun way to share my passion for reading with friends. With weRead, I not only benefit from reading reviews from a large community of book lovers, but I also get to keep in touch with my personal network of friends in a new way. Give it a shot.

Julie
Yahoo! Developer Network

One of the clearest signs that I’m getting older is how easily my two-year-old understands the smart phone and the laptop in our home. And how he doesn’t understand what a “record player” is. It’s easy, though, to grasp the power of the Internet to help organize your life as a parent and stay connected with your child. I have found the following apps extremely helpful.

Parenting Hacks constantly updates with ingeniously practical suggestions for making things more efficient or less expensive. And with a child, both time and money have a way of vanishing.

Babies Online is a fun source of unexpected information, whether it’s about a baby’s personality or some celebrity dad.

Sometimes you can feel like the only parent in the world having troubles with your kid. The stories in the parenting section of Shine are easy to relate to. There are great tips to be found there as well.

I love the simplicity of LifeTips Parenting Tip of the Day. One item daily, simple and specific. It’s easy to focus on, unlike the hectic fun of parenting.

- Jay
My Yahoo! Editorial

As a follow-up to last week’s post, I would like to share with you some quick tips on how you can vote and invite your friends to use the Whaddyathink? app.

So, how do you vote? There are two ways:

1) Click on the title of the app on the top left corner for the full view. Next, click the “Vote On Your Friends’ Polls” tab. Here you’ll see a list of polls, each identified by the profile picture of the person who created the poll, their name, and the question they are asking. Note: You can expand any of questions by clicking on it. To vote, simply click on the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon. You can always change your answer, so you’ve got nothing to lose!

2) You can also vote from the comfort of your My Yahoo! page. In the small view of the app installed on your page, click the “Vote” tab. This will create a list just like the one described above in the full view, and you can browse your friends’ questions and vote in exactly the same way.

Another cool tip is that you can share this app with your friend by using the “Recommend this app to a friend” invite box and enlist their help in making important decisions. Voila! No more indecision.

If your friend is not yet a “connection” on Yahoo!, bounce over to profiles.yahoo.com, click the “Invite” link in the “connections” area on the right side of the page, and enter their email address. Once your friend has accepted the invite, their name will appear in the invite box of the Whaddyathink? app. Alternatively, you can just send your friend the direct link to the app.

Now, are you ready to create a custom poll and vote? Try it out and let us know what you think.

- Erik
Whaddyathink? team member

Should I get the new iPhone 3G S? Hmm. I don’t know. One the one hand it has a lot of cool new features, but I’m still not sure about the cost. I have wanted one for a long time, though. But there’s a reason I haven’t taken the plunge … right?

End the indecision! Ask your friends what they think easily and efficiently using the new My Yahoo! app Whaddyathink?

How? Simply add the Whaddyathink? app to your page and then follow these simple steps:

1) Once it’s on your page, click the “Create A New Poll!” link to go the the app’s “full view”. This will take you to a page with the title “Create a new Poll”. Now you can create a simple opinion poll for our friends!
2) In the “What would you like to ask?” field, type a question that’s been on your mind. Let’s use the example above, “Should I get the new iPhone 3G S?”
3) In the “What category does your poll fit in?” section, pick a category that best suits your question. For the iPhone question, we’ll go with the “Computers” category.
4) In the “Choices” section, enter possible answers. For our example, “Yes” and “No” will be perfect.
5) When you’re satisfied with your settings, click the “Submit” button and you’re done!

After submitting this form, you’ll be taken to the results for your newly created poll. As expected (unless your friends with lightning quick reflexes have already voted), you will not see any results yet.

Now that we’ve covered voting, let’s explore the results this app delivers, starting with the small view. Click the “My Results” tab in app on your My Yahoo! page to see a summary of your results from the small view. If you want to dive deeper, including a breakdown of who voted and how, click the Whaddyathink? logo at the top of the small view, which will quickly take you to the full view of the app.

In the full view of the app, results for a poll are broken into three sections: categorical summaries, a graphical representation of votes, and a listing of who cast each vote. The categorical summaries include the “Most thumbs up”, “Most thumbs down”, and “Most controversial” results visible in the small view, and also “Highest participation”, “Lowest participation”, “Highest overall”, and “Top performer”. If the “Most thumbs up ” and “Most thumbs down” categories are equal, check the “Most controversial” section to help break the tie.

The graph portion of the results shows the total number of votes for each choice. Roll your mouse over the bars in the graph to get a reminder of what they represent. Roll over the points on the line to see the data represented by each point.

In the vote listings, the icon and name for the voter link to the voter’s profile page. A voter may vote up and down for different choices, and you can see these responses reading horizontally for each voter.

Now you know how to create a simple opinion poll on My Yahoo! and analyze your results, you can build your own! Check back next week for details on how to vote and invite your friends to participate. So, Whaddyathink?

Erik Eldridge
Whaddyathink? team member