October 12, 2009 on 2:48 pm | In Fun Stuff, News | 6 Comments
This week, we’ve launched the first-ever Yodel Studio where Yahoo! users can come and record their personalized version of our famous brand sound.
That’s right, the catchy Yahoo! trademark, which is part song, part celebration shout, is ready for you to modify, mix and simply make your own. Be loud, be funny, be serious or be seriously silly, but most of all just be YOU! Just head over to the Yodel Studio, plug in your webcam, select a background track and…Yodel! If you need inspiration, there’s some samples to inspire you.
No webcam? Just use your video phone or camcorder to record your yodel, then upload it here. And if you want to really go all out, you can even download the backing tracks to edit and mix your Yodel at home. Then upload it through the site.
We’re also holding live events in New York, London and Mumbai with a little help from local (and famous!) musicians who will help coach eager Yodelers into giving their best performances.
Don’t think there’s much you can do with our Yodel? Check out the samples below by clicking the play button. Inspired? Record your own and share with your friends!
A Cappella
60’s
80’s
Big Band
Bluegrass
Bollywood
Country
Urban Hip Hop
Metal
Reggae
Techno
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
October 7, 2009 on 2:41 pm | In Avatars | 6 Comments
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Yahoo! has a lot going on across the network to support the effort.
For starters, you can change your Avatar to display a pink ribbon, the symbol of support for finding a cure for breast cancer. Just head over to the “Show your Support” section on the Avatars site and click on the third page of items.
We also started a campaign to get people to update their Yahoo! profile status message to show their support. When we launched it on October 1, we pledged to donate $50,000 to The National Breast Cancer Foundation once 50,000 Yahoo! users made their update. Good news! We reached that goal and as of this writing, we’re nearing the 80,000 mark.
Even though we’ve reached our goal, we hope you’ll still update your Profile status to support those affected by breast cancer.
Or click here to change your Yahoo! Messenger status to read “I support Breast Cancer Awareness Month”. Note that the link to change your status will only work if you have Yahoo! Messenger running. You could also change your Yahoo! Messenger skin to “twinkle pink”, just to show your desktop that you support the cause.
Need some retail therapy? Head over to Yahoo! Shopping and check out some items whose proceeds benefit breast cancer research.
While Yahoo! has always powered up the network to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this year is a little more significant as our own CEO, Carol Bartz, is a survivor.
Thanks for your support,
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
October 5, 2009 on 3:41 pm | In 10 version, News | 8 Comments
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to try out the new video call feature in Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta.
Last Friday, the San Jose Mercury News ran a story on Global IP Solutions (GIPS), the company that provides the video and audio technology that powers this new feature. Some of the article is reprinted below; read the full article here.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
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Video Chat Gets an Upgrade
By Mike Swift | San Jose Mercury News
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s a sparkling morning in the South of Market neighborhood, the city’s tech ghetto. But at Global IP Solutions, the light outside Niklas Enbom’s office is shading toward an evening blue.
Enbom is on a video chat to Global IP Solutions’ San Francisco headquarters from Sweden, where it is nine hours later and dusk is fast approaching. The company, which typically uses its acronym GIPS, provides the underlying video and audio technology for the newly released version of Yahoo Messenger video chat, the service the Swedish executive is using to connect from Stockholm. GIPS also provides the audio technology for Google’s competing service within Google Talk.
Enbom, GIPS’s vice president for software development, is saying that a $70 webcam connected to virtually any PC or Mac built in the last few years with a broadband Internet connection will produce a high-quality video chat experience, even to countries that lack the robust telecom infrastructure of the United States.
“A standard PC can do this in real time, with good quality,” Enbom says over the video link.
Even from Sweden, his lips move in almost perfect synchronization with his words, and the audio quality is comparable to a landline telephone connection. The video is good enough to notice that it’s around sunset in Stockholm, where a large portion of GIPS’s engineers are based.
In short, the technology is good enough that you start to forget about the technology, and concentrate on the conversation.
For decades, ever since Dick Tracy made calls through the video screen on his wristwatch, video chat has been a personal technology everybody could imagine using, but that — for an array of technology, standardization and sociological reasons — few have actually used. A survey this spring by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that only about 20 percent of adult U.S. Internet users have participated in a video chat… Read the full article
September 29, 2009 on 4:13 pm | In 10 version | 58 Comments
An update of Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta is now available (10.0.0.542). This latest version addresses a couple of video call bugs, plus some improvements in messaging about how it works. Changes in this latest version include:
- Improvements in the webcam detection logic. If you were able to use your webcam on 9.0 or other IM programs, but not on Yahoo! Messenger 10, this fix should take care of the issue.
- Explanation for grayed-out video call button. If your video call button is grayed-out when you’re IM’ing with a friend, it’s because they’re on an older version of Yahoo! Messenger. In order to receive your video call, they also need to upgrade to Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta. To help reduce confusion about this, we added an inline message explaining this.
- Smoother handling of unanswered calls. When you make a call to a friend but they don’t answer within 20 seconds, the call is automatically terminated. Previously there was no messaging about this, so we added one to let you know that your friend did not answer your call.
- Better explanation for downgraded video calls. In the event your internet connection can no longer support the full video call (e.g. video + voice), the conversation gets downgraded to a voice-only call. When this happens, the video picture disappears. This is the correct behavior, but we added some inline messaging so you’ll know when and why it’s happening.
We hope everyone is enjoying Yahoo! Messenger 10 Beta. If you have any feedback, good or bad, please be sure to submit it through our feedback form, available under Help > Send Feedback in the product.
And if you encounter any technical issues while using Yahoo! Messenger 10, go to Help > Report a Problem to Yahoo! to provide us with information that will help us troubleshoot the issue.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
September 28, 2009 on 3:52 pm | In Mac version | 30 Comments
An updated version of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 is now available.
This latest version includes a fix for a sign-in issue that some users have been experiencing. When we tested this latest version with some of those users, they found that it did correct their problem.
Download Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
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