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Yahoo Messenger for Vista preview available

Yahoo is set to release a preview of Yahoo Messenger for Vista on Thursday.

It's just a preview, or a very early version, so it doesn't have all the features other versions of Yahoo Messenger do, such as voice, Webcam, chat rooms, text messaging to mobile phones, easy photo sharing and conferencing. Those features will come later.

What it does have is a new interface, and it lets you organize conversations into tabs and drag and drop tabs out to create a new window. You can also keep favorite contacts by dragging them into the Windows Sidebar gadget, … Read more

Yahoo Local tests community suggestion board feature

Yahoo is testing a community suggestion board feature on its Local site for two California cities where people can discuss local issues.

For instance, on the Sacramento "Neighbors" site, people have suggested that the city needs more downtown gas stations, more urban farms, and a dog park. It turns out the Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen is seeking volunteers and a group is volunteering to help with painting projects.

People can vote the suggestions or posts up or down, comment on them, and subscribe to posts about particular issues.

The pilot test is also running for San Carlos, south of … Read more

Celebrity downslides, final farewells top Yahoo search

What do Saddam Hussein, Britney Spears, and Harry Potter have in common? They were the most-searched names in news, celebrity meltdowns, and final farewells on Yahoo in 2007. NASCAR and recycling were top searches, too.

Read the full story at Yahoo.

Oops! Yahoo dumps Britney

Update 2:20 p.m. PT with Google list of fastest rising search terms.

You've got to give Yahoo credit for trying drag the collective mentality out of the celebrity gossip gutter.

Every year, the company releases a top 10 list for Web searches. Last year, Britney Spears was the No. 1 most popular search term.

But Yahoo is doing things differently this year, notably by promoting lists of top trends in search grouped in certain categories. The topics include not only top news stories (led by Saddam Hussein) and tech trends (no surprise here, YouTube), but also trends … Read more

Salary jumps for Decker with Yahoo promotion

Being Yahoo president sure pays well.

Susan Decker made $500,000 in salary last year as chief financial officer of Yahoo. In her new role as president, she will make $815,000 a year, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Her annual target cash bonus will be 150 percent of her base salary, or $1.2 million, but her actual bonus for any year will be determined based on her job performance.

In addition to salary and bonus, Decker has been granted a stock option to purchase 300,000 shares at an … Read more

Google and a beginning to a new era of enterprise software innovation

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will definitely be bidding for US wireless spectrum in January.

If it wins a wireless license, Google would be in a position to become a provider of mobile phone and Internet services, to partner with others interested in doing so or to lease the spectrum to them. The company has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions.

Let's hope it wins. I've been critical of Google in the past, but one thing is clear: Google is an innovative company that builds useful things. Google continues to push the envelope on what we can do with our computers and with our phones. Look around and count how many truly innovative companies there are among the big software and telco companies. Not many.

In fact, Google may be the first of the next generation of software companies.… Read more

Episode 613: Don't believe the lies

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Yahoo, Adobe team on PDF ads

Yahoo and Adobe are bringing pay-per-click ads to Adobe's Portable Document Format so that publishers can serve up ads inside PDFs distributed on Web sites and over e-mail that are contextually relevant to the content.

The text advertisements appear in a panel to the right of the content in the PDF and are subject matter matched using keywords and analysis of associated concepts. The ads are dynamic, meaning different ads can pop up at different times and clicking on an ad takes you to the advertiser Web site.

Publishers upload their PDF content into Yahoo's ad serving system … Read more

My Yahoo adds a Facebook module, snubs Mash, 360, and Kickstart

A post on the My Yahoo! Blog today informs us of the availability of a nice new Facebook module for your page. We all know that Facebook is the social network of choice right now, but what bugs me here is that the My Yahoo team chose provide first party support for Facebook prior to supporting their own social networks. If they are not willing to get behind their own offerings, how can consumers be expected to do so?

That said, the actual module fits in nicely on the page and is very informative. It's also nice to see … Read more