Recently some folks pointed out that Yahoo! Maps can show WiFi Hotspots. This is similar to the sponsored links you can see at the bottom, showing things like Denny’s or Holiday Inn. The HotSpots are sponsored by Intel and seem to focus on paid services, resulting in lots of hits for Starbucks and McDonald’s, for example. What interested me more was SmartView which can show businesses (from Yahoo! Yellow Pages I assume) on the same map. This is something I’ve been looking for and I’m surprised this didn’t come out sooner. For a given location, you can highlight various businesses…
Tonight we launched release 6.0 of the Yahoo! Messenger client! Going live to the web at 6pm this evening, this was a different sort of product launch than I'm used to, but it's definitely cool. I've only been here a month, so haven't really contributed to this release at all. But, it's been a good learning experience to watch the very end of a release cycle. Here's a quick rundown of the new features: LAUNCHcase Radio — integrated into the IM client Yahoo! Games — integrated into the IM client Yahoo! Avatars Display Images Audibles — send talking animated characters…
The Collings Foundation is a non-profit group that has restored and maintains in flying condition several World War II aircraft. Recently their B-17 and B-24 bombers made a visit to Moffett Field here in Silicon Valley and I took a few pictures on the ground.
One of the cool features of Yahoo! Messenger is “IMVironments™ — or simply “IMVs”. IMVs are kind of like a skin for your IM conversation window, but can also include interactivity and links to more content on the web. (See the full list of IMVs.) Today I was playing around with the Spider-Man 2 IMV and noticed a link to the official Spider-Man 2 blog which includes a “how to blog” section, templates for Blogger and LiveJournal, and a “production web log”. The latter is kind of spotty and the RSS feed is out of date compared to the live…