yahoo

On Wednesday or Thursday, Yahoo is going to revamp its directory of desktop widgets for the Yahoo Widget Engine. This is warm-up for a whole new version of the Engine, Yahoo Widget Engine 4.5, that arrives the week of November 27.

End users won't see much that's new in the engine itself, but they'll see a shift in how it is pitched. The new directory should be easier to navigate and more approachable. Yahoo, instead of trying to sell end-users on the engine and then push the widgets, will instead begin to pitch the utility and … Read more

The New York Times is reporting that iGoogle and Yahoo Mail could be at the core of social-networking plans for the two search companies.

"Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph--the connections between people," Saul Hansell writes in his blog posting. "Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts."

Hansell says he's heard from several Google executives that that's their plan. "We believe there are opportunities with iGoogle to make it … Read more

UPDATE: 11:30 a.m. PT Adds background on proposed Smith law prohibiting U.S. companies from cooperating with governments to censor the Internet.

Yahoo listened.

A week after being excoriated by lawmakers over supplying information to the Chinese government that landed two journalists in jail, Yahoo has settled the lawsuit filed by the journalists.

Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, both serving 10-year prison sentences, sued Yahoo in April alleging that Yahoo Hong Kong willingly provided their e-mails, IP addresses, and physical addresses to the Chinese government. The men were arrested for allegedly leaking state secrets, code language that should … Read more

As expected, Flickr has retooled its photo printing abilities to make it easier to print batches of photos.

The new print ability is now available in the Organizr tool, which already was available to help users group photos into sets, change viewing permissions, add tags, and otherwise manage their photos. Flickr's Eric Costello announced the Flickr printing move on Yahoo's blog Wednesday.

I loathed Flickr printing in the past, and the new option worked much more smoothly for me. I suspect I'm not alone here in my dislike--Flickr this year got a major influx of new members … Read more

Tuesday should have been a day of celebration for Yahoo founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang.

Alibaba.com, a business-to-business site of which Yahoo owns nearly 30 percent, went public on the Hong Kong market and nearly tripled in price. And Yang turned 39.

Instead of partying in the halls of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo, Yang, and Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan were in Washington, D.C. getting called moral "pygmies" in a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives.

Their crime? Providing information to the Chinese government about a Chinese journalist that landed him in jail … Read more

Tom Lantos' very public upbraiding of Jerry Yang and his legal consigliere was every bit the Washington kabuki stage show I expected.

The California Democrat was at his overdramatic best, raining torrents of verbal brimstone on the chastened heads of the Internet execs testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Tuesday morning.

Going into today's hearing, Yang and Yahoo's General Counsel Michael Callahan had to know that they would be forced to dodge one salvo after the other. The last time Callahan was in front of Lantos, he assured the committee that Yahoo did not knowingly collaborate … Read more

Members of Congress on Tuesday showed almost no mercy for top Yahoo executives attempting to smooth over accusations about the company's role in the imprisonment of Chinese dissident journalists.

Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan endured nearly four hours of tongue-lashing from Democrats and Republicans alike on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

The subject of the hearing: Allegations that Callahan provided "false information" to the panel last year regarding a case that landed 37-year-old Shi Tao a 10-year prison sentence. A related case involving an online writer named Wang … Read more

The U.S. House of Representatives is holding a hearing titled "Yahoo! Inc.'s Provision of False Information to Congress." With a title like that, you can be sure this particular event will be be fair, neutral, and objective.

What led to Tuesday morning's hearing are two events. The first: information Yahoo provided to Communist authorities was allegedly used to convict Shi Tao, a 37-year-old journalist, of leaking "state secrets." The second: Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan may have given not-entirely-accurate information to the House when testifying during the last time Yahoo was dragged onto … Read more

Last night, Yahoo's quasi-independent technology incubator, Brickhouse, launched a new social network for college students and college alumni: Kickstart. It is a professional network for the college crowd: it's supposed to help students, alumni, and recruiters all connect to share job information. It looks like the strict Venn intersection of Facebook and LinkedIn. (News story: Yahoo Kickstarts a social service aimed at college grads.)

It's a good idea, but only in a vacuum. If there were no LinkedIn, and Facebook were tiny, and Mash (see Yahoo finally gets a good social network) didn't exist, it might … Read more