Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day

We've talked about a bunch of Yahoo! Video updates in the past, but it's never really been our style to avoid repeating ourselves anyway. So, guess what? Yahoo! Video has been updated again! This isn't just a fresh coat of paint, though (as nice as that fresh paint looks). The video player supports fancy new 16:9 aspect ratios and the picture quality is superb. You can also group videos together and embed the playlists around the internet, which looks really fun. On top of that, there's a ton of content that's now being surfaced really well through all of the Networks -- check out all of this cool Sports stuff! In general, it seems like a really solid and exciting update. Read more about it here.

Ok, so I'm stealing from next again. Fine. Hey, it's one of the sites I work on so I'm kinda entitled. Sorta.

Still, when I hear about things like NewsGlobe, I gotta share.

Newsglobe uses the AS3 maps we've been talking about as well as a few other things to build a pretty addictive toy. It's takes a feed of the top news stories from News and uses the geocoder to render them on a spinning map of the earth. The best thing was that this was an internal hack presented just a few weeks ago.

Still, feel free to pop this on instead of the flying toaster screen saver you've been staring at. You'll be informed and possibly reaching an altered, zen like state in no time.

Thanks to yesterday's post, you know that we've upgraded our Flash Maps interfaces, but what does that mean for the non-programmers out there who can't put together their own cool applications? Well, more cool applications from other people, hopefully. You can get a bird's eye view of the news, for instance, or toss your map around at the flick of a mouse (shout-out to my friend Jon!). And of course, in case you are looking to get into your own hacking, as mentioned yesterday, the Developer Network website has plenty of other straightforward examples to get you started.

Ok, so you probably knew that we had a Map service that was flash based. You may have known that we since replaced that map with a Javascript one. That doesn't mean that we've abandoned the Flash Map at all.

In fact, after SIZABLE DEMAND, the new ActionScript3 API layer for our Flash Maps came out today.

Even better, instead of me talking about it, how about hearing from Allen and Zach:

It looks like we're making waves in the Finance world, and not just because of that 44.6 billion dollar elephant in the room. *grin* After moseying over to Yahoo! Finance to see how aforementioned pachyderm was affecting our stock price, I noticed a new tab in the top right for Tech Ticker, our long awaited finance blog/video series. With a seemingly experienced and engaging set of writers, a huge community of Yahoo! Finance users with which to interact, and a video module that floats around as you scroll down the page (hooray!), this could be something very fun to follow. There aren't any videos up just yet, but maybe they'll have a few interesting topics to report on next week.

Are you jealous of Justin? Ever wish that you too could be the star of your own internet access channel? Ever want to see what your friends are doing? Well, now you can.

Looks like Live.yahoo.com is, well, live. But it's more than just you teleconferencing with your cat, there's an API as well so you can control the player. Heck, you can embed it on your own page and build have the whole family teleconferencing with the cat on your own home page.

Go, check it out. It's fresh new and features you.

(ugh, tell me I didn't just say that. Geez, I need to get some sleep.)

First off, let's have a quick moment of silence for Yahoo! Music Unlimited's untimely demise. I always had a few issues with the player, but the service itself was great and really allowed me to explore a variety of different types of music. Given that the price is locked down for a while after we move over to Rhapsody, I suppose I'll survive, but still, we'll miss you, Y!MU.

[...]

Alright, but the good news, as mentioned in that blog post, is that we acquired FoxyTunes, which I had never used before and sort of wish I had. As far as I can judge, FoxyTunes is a browser plugin that hooks into any sort of music player that you care to name and allows you to control it from your browser as well as add internet context to whatever you're listening to (in a nutshell). There's still a lot more playing around for me to do, but one neat feature that you can start messing with without downloading anything is FoxyTunes Planet. It's a music search engine that eventually leads to highly customizable artist pages to pull in all sorts of content about the artist from all sorts of sources. The widgets that you can put onto the page are very interactive and very cool, and the ability to define which ones you see allows you to really create a search experience that works for you.

Amidst the various other bits of news coming out this past few days, Small Business Hosting has dropped the limits on disk space, data transfer and email storage on their hosted sites. There are a few minor stipulations (e.g. you don't get all the space right at once so don't plan on storing your multi-terrabyte collection of ripped DVDs there) but they do spell them out for you.

So if you've got a small biz and are looking for somewhere to set up shop, that's one more awfully big reason to at least check out our offerings.

Psst.

If you wanted to see what the MyBlogLog API can do for you, you now can. They've taken the locks off the documentation.

If you still want to try it out, feel free to sign up for the closed beta.

If you find yourself trapped in the Office, don't just stare out the Windows feeling sorry for yourself! Why not try the new Word puzzle from Yahoo! Europe? It's called PhotoSoup, it was developed as part of the Yahoo! Europe Hack Day, and it's now been pushed Live for all of you guys to enjoy. It's not easy but it certainly doesn't take an MS (Master's of Science) in Linguistics to have fun with it; if you Excel at spotting hidden words among a jumble of letters, then I'm sure you'll acquire a taste for it in no time.