Yahoo jazzes up home page with major makeover

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer - Tue Jul 21, 2009 6:37AM EDT

Yahoo Inc. is sprucing up its Web site's home page with a long-promised makeover that is supposed to make it easier to see what's happening at the Internet's other hot spots.

The revamped home page, scheduled to debut Tuesday in the United States, is part of an overhaul aimed at recapturing some of the buzz that Yahoo has lost to increasingly popular online hangouts like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Even as Yahoo's star has faded, its Web site has remained among the Internet's busiest. More than 570 million people worldwide came to Yahoo in May, according to the most recent data available from online research firm comScore Inc.

The retooled page will be introduced in the United Kingdom, India and France later this week. It will roll out to the rest of the world during the next year, with the option to retain the old design starting to phase out this fall.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is hailing the new look as the biggest change to its front page since Yahoo's Web site launched 15 years ago. It's the first time that Yahoo has overhauled its home page since 2006.

"Every pixel on the page is relevant now," boasted Tapan Bhat, a Yahoo senior vice president who oversaw the revisions. "We have taken out a lot of our own stuff that was creating a dead zone for our users."

After spending the past 10 months tinkering with the redesign, Yahoo has a lot riding on the new look. The company sorely needs a lift, with its profits mired in a slump that has led to three different chief executives since June 2007.

Carol Bartz, the latest CEO hired six months ago, has predicted the revised home page will help revive the company by re-establishing its Web site as an Internet gateway for more people. If she is right, Yahoo could get a better handle on its users' interests and ultimately sell more of the ads that generate most of its revenue.

Yahoo hadn't intended to take the wraps off the redesigned page until the fall, but apparently felt like it had all the pieces in place now.

While Yahoo was trying to figure out what it wanted to include in the new home page, other online social hubs have become even more deeply ingrained in people's lives.

Facebook, for instance, now has more than 250 million regular users worldwide, up from about 100 million last September when Yahoo first began to publicly discuss its vision for the home page. Meanwhile, Twitter has evolved from a quirky obscurity into a pervasive communications tool for passing along blurbs of personal information, as well as links to news stories and photos.

Yahoo is betting its home page will be more useful if it's easier for people to connect with information and services available elsewhere.

Users can plant a variety of applications from other Web site onto a "My Favorites" section of the redesigned front page. The 65 applications initially available on Yahoo's new page include competing e-mail services from Google Inc. and AOL as well as plug-ins for Facebook and MySpace.

Once the outside applications are set up, Yahoo visitors can scroll over their favorite sites to get a glimpse at what's happening elsewhere without leaving Yahoo.

The front page's news section will automatically feature stories from newspapers located in a user's area and enable people to broadcast what they are doing or thinking, just as millions already do every day on Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo isn't currently offering a Twitter application, but will eventually, Bhat said.

The home page preferences programmed on a computer can also be transferred to appear on mobile phones and other handheld devices.

iSchool happens ...

By Raqeebul I. Ketan,

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Class of 2011, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology.

I have some exciting updates for you regarding the progress of iSchool (interactive school). Probably the most important is that now we are at a stage of the iSchool project where each of you from any corner of the globe can take part in the iSchool project! So, please take a few minutes to go through the rest of this message. Also, if you would like to know more about the iSchool program and what its mission is please visit the link http://web.mit.edu/hov/www/proj_ischool.html

The results from last January and the second phase of iSchool:

Last January we launched the iSchool program for the first time in a remote village in Panchagarh district, Bangladesh with some 150 students. It was primarily a test of the suitability and sustainability of

this initiative. The outcomes proved to be highly encouraging. The core mission of the project; to devise a low cost sustainable solution, was achieved. Volunteers from IBA, Dhaka University compiled the animations, meaning that the administrative and design costs were null. The cost of blank DVDs added to the rental cost of DVD players and TVs was minimal. Most importantly, though, the animations proved to be highly effective with students showing improvements upto 35% in their test score. Professor Peter Dourmashkin of the department of Physics at MIT helped design the test questions and later performed a post program evaluation. We concluded that students in each merit category performed substantially better after watching the videos. The improvements were more marked in tackling the qualitative questions and were most significant among the lower merit group students. Hence, we are now ever more energetic and determined to carry our mission of iSchool-for a better learning experience!

Recent achievements and our mission this time:

Once again MIT has been generous enough to fund the future of iSchool and help ensure its sustainability. I am glad to inform you that I have been awarded the Peter J. Eloranta fellowship (http://mit.edu/eloranta/winners.html)and the David J Shapiro award (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/awards-aero-astro-tt0603.html) for my work with iSchool and to help me carry out the task of compiling an interactive lecture series (to be used as textbook supplement) for the SSC students in Bangladesh.

This time we are working with a much larger pool of volunteers that span students from IBA to BUET to BRAC University. Our goal is to compile the first version of interactive lectures for the SSC (grade 10) Physics syllabus. To this end we are using very basic computer programs, so that our volunteers do not require high end technical expertise (take a look at the sample video I have posted in our iSchool group, and note that we will have narration with the video). Added to this crude yet effective collection of animations will be videos of the most common lab experiments to help familiarize students with common lab procedure. If you are good with flash or comfortable using power point with an interest in physics, you can help!

We want your help:

You can help make a difference in the way secondary school students learn science. Please let us know if you would be interested in being a part of the iSchool team. You can help us either by attending our meetings or even from your home using the internet. We hope that soon we are going to launch an iSchool website, that will contain our animations and videos with both Bengali and English narration. We intend to have a provision for uploading files by anyone from any corner of the globe. This way you can help us with your expertise by designing something, anything that you believe will come handy for the students. Our iSchool team will make any necessary adjustment and will put it up as add ons along with the core videos. It is the collection of the core videos that we intend to distribute in the high schools. School authorities can use their existing facilities to show the videos to the students (say once a week as a supplement to their core curriculum). Until we have the website constructed we request you to send your work via e-mail (or you can upload them in any web host site and provide us the link). If you are interested in investing the bare minimum from your free time, please let us know and we will send you the required resources (the chapters from our standardized SSC physics book)

Once again for your convenience:

What: Genral body meeting a discussion session on iSchool; MIT funded project to improve the education system in Bangladesh.

Why: Serve your country and people!

MIT PSC letter of recognition.

All expenses paid

When: 13 July (Please reply at ketanbd@mit.edu with iSchool as the subject)

Where: BRAC University, Civil building Room# 603 (exact details will be provided later in another mail )

How: Powerpoint skills. (To work on the animations)

Volunteer to teach.

Finally, I would humbly request you to leave any word of opinion/comment at the iSchool group. Alternately you can e-mail us at ketanbd@mit.edu and mohibulslm@yahoo.com. We have taken it as our responsibility to do the best we can about our education system. We know that we are not alone :)