My Yahoo! Blog

Coming soon, new Today App!

If you’ve seen the new Yahoo! Homepage, you’d be familiar with the fantastic new design of the Yahoo! Today App that showcases content that keeps you on top of what’s happening. In a few days, we will adopt this new design and automatically upgrade the current My Yahoo! Today App. Even better, you’ll be able to use all the great My Yahoo! customization tools you currently enjoy to tailor the App for your page.

Since you can adjust the width of the columns on your page, you’ll be able to expand or contract the column the Today App is in to change how many stories display. It’s up to you! Check it out…

Another feature for the new Today App (and my personal favorite) is that you’ll be able to watch many of the videos featured in the App without leaving the page. That’s a big deal for me because I’ll be able to tune into a video while browsing my other feeds on the page!

Stay tuned as this upgrade will be released in a few days. If you have the Today App on your page already, you don’t have to do anything but sit back, relax, and enjoy the new App. If not, be sure to add it to your page. We’ll re-post to let you know it’s live and tell us what you think!

Adam
- My Yahoo! Marketing

The World Weird Web

My late grandfather witnessed in his lifetime the spread of radio, TV, cameras, cinema, Betamax, microwave ovens. One day I went to show him this exciting thing called the Internet. He asked me “how is this different from all the other technological wonders of the past 100 years?”

Well we can all agree that a 2-minute video of a cat playing piano watched by millions of people is different .Not necessarily better or worse, but a new way to collectively find ourselves bored or entertained or just wasting time. I take in on the weirdness of the Web through a number of sites that I trust to find the viral and conspicuous bits of content for me.

Yahoo! Buzz offers almost too much good stuff, if one is trying to lead a productive life, but many of the gems of the online world can be found here first.

You can follow some of the Web’s strangest phenomena at your own pace, like LolCats, UFO fanatics, footage of wacky stunts, or rumors about TV shows.

Sometimes I like to dip into some of the Web’s esoteric subcultures, like a comic book fan message board, a group of people who focus on the political implications of what they eat, or motor scooter enthusiasts.

Some general blogs that do even more of the work for you include Boing Boing, Top 10 Viral Videos, and the Slashdot . Please leave us a comment on any other feeds you think are great for following what’s unique about the Internet.

- Jay
My Yahoo! Editorial

Your summer reading list inspired.

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

My Yahoo! — a parent’s best friend.

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

So…Whaddyathink? Part 2

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