May 9, 2008 on 1:26 pm | In Features, Fun Stuff | 20 Comments
We launched a new IMVironment this week called “Emoticats”. Imagine your favorite emoticons but with a distinctly feline feel to them.
You can play with the Emoticats by clicking the IMVironment button in your IM window during a conversation. Look for the ‘Emoticats’ listing in the menu. Or click here to launch it now if you’re on Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or 9.0.
Once the IMV is running, you can use your mouse to browse through the Emoticats gallery that displays portraits of cats in various behaviors – Yawn, Cat Nap, Scratch that, Talk to the Paw, I need a vacation and more. Double click on the cat’s portrait and then click the “Insert” button to send the animated emoticat to your friend. There’s also a small Emoticats menu in the lower left corner of the IMV window.
Feeling catty yourself? Click the “Adopt” button instead to make that Emoticat your display image. My personal favorite is the Bling Emoticat – I suspect the model for this one probably auditioned for those old Fancy Feast commercials.
And if you want to share Emoticats with other cat lovers on your friend’s list, click the “Accept” link in the IMV window to set your status message to “Got My Paws On The Emoticat IMV”. Your status will be clickable to friends that have you on their list so they can try it for themselves.
The Emoticats IMVironment is available in Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 and 9.0 Beta. Note that you can only send the Emoticats animated icons to friends when the IMV is running in your IM window.
Meooooow!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
April 21, 2008 on 10:59 pm | In Events, Fun Stuff | 12 Comments
Every year, Yahoo! gets into the spirit of Earth Day and educates our users about what they can personally do to make a difference for the environment. This year, our focus is on the “Reuse” part of the often heard “Reduce-Reuse-Recycle” creedo.
Did you know that there are reuse groups around the world whose mission is to give used items away for free to other people in their community who can use them rather than throwing them away? Items like furniture, dishes, bikes, and electronics.
You can find out more about Earth Day and how to become part of the worldwide reuse effort on the Yahoo! Earth Day website at http://green.yahoo.com/earth-day. You can even find a local reuse group in your area whose members may need some of those items that are gathering dust in your closet or garage. Plus you never know what free items you might come away with.
While you’re thinking green, why not get your Avatar in the mood too? Head over to the Yahoo! Avatars website to get decked out in fun Earth Day apparel. Then help spread the word about Earth Day to all your friends on Messenger!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 28, 2008 on 8:47 am | In Fun Stuff | 10 Comments
One of our team members, Mazi, got married last month under the rotunda at San Francisco’s City Hall. His wife, Mariana, is from Argentina and her family was unable to fly up for the wedding. So at their reception, Mazi and Mariana hooked up their laptop and webcam, signed into Yahoo! Messenger, and shared their live celebration with Mariana’s family thousands of miles away in Buenos Aires.
Bringing webcams along to big events seems to be a growing trend, especially in the delivery room. In August of last year, an airman stationed in Afghanistan was able to watch the birth of his baby girl back home in Oklahoma with the help of the hospital’s webcam live feed. Read the full story
Congratulations to Mazi and Mariana! Maybe they’ll inspire you to think of fun ways to include your far away family and friends in your next big event.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 18, 2008 on 10:15 am | In Avatars, Features, Fun Stuff | 4 Comments
It’s that time of year again when students, alumni and fans around the country put on their favorite college colors to cheer on their team in the NCAA College Basketball tournament.
Grown men will cry, women who don’t normally follow sports will become rabid with NCAA fever, and productivity in offices will take a hit as workers follow the games from their cubicles. Of course Yahoo! Messenger has a few items to further fuel your basketball obsession…
When it comes time to taunt your friends about their team losing or making a bad play, check out the NCAA audibles. There’s a referee ready to charge your friend with an offensive foul, a baseball cap-wearing superfan (complete with horn), and a laid back player who illustrates what it means when the defense is “taking a vacation”. To access the NCAA audibles, click the Audible icon in your IM window, click “More Audibles”, then “See All Audibles” and select NCAA Basketball (Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or 9.0 Beta only).
You can also show your team pride by dressing the part. Head over to the NCAA section on Yahoo! Avatars to find jerseys from over 25 schools including Duke, University of North Carolina, UCLA, Kentucky and more.
To find out more about the tournament and follow all the action, check out NCAA Basketball on Yahoo! Sports. You still have time to pick your teams before the first game – download the tournament brackets: Men’s | Women’s
And if you’re on the go and want to follow what’s happening, go to http://m.yahoo.com/ncaa from your mobile phone for the latest scores and highlights.
Go team!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
March 4, 2008 on 1:13 pm | In Events, Fun Stuff | 11 Comments
Back in September 2007, we told you about a celebration at Carnegie Mellon University that honored the Emoticon. Twenty five years earlier, Professor Scott Fahlman was the first to use the text version of the emoticon with his colleagues on a computer message board. To mark the anniversary, Professor Fahlman and his colleagues teamed up with Yahoo! to start an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication, now known as the Smiley Award.
Last week, “One Cold Hand” (http://onecoldhand.com), a website designed to reunite lost gloves with their mates, was named the winner of the inaugural Smiley Award. “One Cold Hand” was created by Jennifer Gooch, a graduate student in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art, and Turadg Aleahmad, a doctoral student in the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) – part of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. They will share the $500 first prize, and their names will be engraved on a plaque kept on permanent display at the university.
Winner Jennifer Gooch said. “A lot of my current work and research looks at how people use technology in order to connect. As a native of Dallas, we didn’t need gloves very often. When I moved [to Pittsburgh, PA] I noticed them everywhere, lying on the ground lonely and useless. I thought a site to reunite gloves — a dating site for gloves, as it were — would be an interesting metaphor for our attempt to find what’s missing.”
A Smiley Award honorable mention went to “Moodjam” created by doctoral student Ian Li. Moodjam is an online diary that allows people to express their moods and feelings using patterns of color. Another honorable mention went to “Buxfer” (http://www.buxfer.com), a free, Web-based application that allows its users to easily keep track of shared expenses, which is handy for roommates, student social groups and many others. Buxfer was created by computer science doctoral students Ashwin Bharambe, Amit Manjhi and Shashank Pandit.
The winning student projects were chosen by a panel of faculty and student judges at Carnegie Mellon and Yahoo! joined in the celebration held on campus last week (see pics here).
Congratulations to “One Cold Hand” for winning the first Smiley Award! We look forward to seeing even more innovation inspired by Smiley in the coming years.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Here are some photos of the Smiley Award party, held last week at Carnegie Mellon University (photos courtesy of Ralf Brown):
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