Yahoo today launched Shine, a vertical site that will cater to women in the much desired 25-54 age bracket, a group Yahoo believes has been underserved by them, in spite of the 40 million monthly visitors they receive from the demographic.

The site will feature original and syndicated content from the likes of Time Inc, Conde Nast, Hearst, and Rodale. There are nine categories that the site features, including Fashion and Beauty, Parenting, and Astrology.

Unlike some of Yahoo’s other efforts, the site has a very blog-like feel to it, and it looks very clean. The site also aggregates content from some of Yahoo’s other ventures, like Food, Health, Tech, and Green.
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This has to be about the most depressing story about hackers I’ve ever heard, unknown assailants have been uploading scripts to an epilepsy support site that is triggering debilitating seizures to members of the forum in question.

The non-profit Epilepsy Foundation, which has messages boards to support epilepsy patients, has been bombarded with scripts that reveal hundreds of animated messages that have been leading to painful seizures by those who click on them. One woman was rendered catatonic for a period of several minutes by what she described as one of the worst episodes she had ever encountered.
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Wordpress version 2.5 has hit the blogosphere with a healthy number of improvements to the previous version. Wordpress founder Matthew Mullenweg has a long post on the Wordpress blog that explains some of the changes, but I’ll go ahead and hit you with the highlights.

One of the main improvements is the elimination of dashboard clutter. One of the main complaints about previous Wordpress versions was the disorganized look to dashboard, and the developers took this to heart and streamlined it so you could focus on writing your blog.
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While there’s been nothing official announced, Bank of America analyst Scott Craig believes Apple will release 3 million 3G iPhones in May, with an additional 8 million coming in the 3rd quarter of 2008. This comes on the heels of a retraction of a comment by Ken Dulaney of Gartner where he stated that Apple had already ordered 10 million 3G iPhones.

Rumors had been swirling in Asia about the order, which has certainly not been scotched by Apple or anyone else. Gartner is just covering their butts in case it turns out to be false. But with Craig and others pointing towards a big 10 million+ push for the next generation iPhones, it’s looking more and more like a reality.
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2008 has not been a good year for Google’s US paid clicks. October and November of 2007 showed big growth over the previous year, the growth slowed in December and came to a screeching halt in January, with 0% change reported over the previous year.

Now that February’s report is out, reporting a 3% increase over last year (which is erased when one considers the leap day), concerns about paid click growth are intensifying. Google’s stock has thus far declined around 3% today.

This decline in paid click growth is counter to the upsurge in total queries. Queries were up 30% for the month in the US, so people were using the search engines more and hitting paid clicks less. If search growth wasn’t so strong, than the stagnation of paid clicks wouldn’t be such a concern.
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With an estimated 52 million children taking part in youth sports leagues, it was only a matter of time before a top social networking site for Little League, Pop Warner, and Soccer moms would spring up, and WePlay.com is looking to fill the void.

A look at the site offers different kinds of membership, for players, coaches, parents, and fans. Players will be able to communicate with teammates and share pictures and videos of the games, coaches do the same and perhaps lay out tactics and drills for the players, parents will be able to set up carpooling and rant at each other about Billy’s playing time, and fans will be able to give their encouragement.
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As expected, Yahoo joined the OpenSocial Alliance created by Google, but only under the condition that Google transfer control of the social media project to a non-profit organization outside of Google’s purview.

OpenSocial’s goal is to create a common Javascript/HTML powered API language that is applicable for all networks that are part of the alliance. So if you’ve got a great app, you don’t need to learn the API for MySpace, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc. This will help out smaller social networks who don’t get attention from top developers and make it easier for users to connect to friends in other social networks with their favorite apps.
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With the analog TV spectrum being abandoned in February of next year, Google is taking steps to utilize this spectrum with a new generation of hyper-speed mobile devices powered by Android.

With the possibility of billions of bits per second (instead of millions) being processed by mobile devices, you will soon be able to do some really heavy lifting with your mobile devices, including watching high-quality movies.

There is some concern that utilizing this spectrum will result in interference with other services, such as wireless microphones. Google is proposing devoting a few channels of the spectrum specifically for wireless microphones, medical telemetry, and other important devices.
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I’ve never been a big social network user, so it took me awhile to get an up close and personal idea of what Facebook is really like. I had used it and fooled around with it a little bit, but never spent a significant amount of time using it.

So for the last week, I got into Facebook. I actually added some friends, signed up for some apps, and checked the news feed religiously. I won’t deny it, it’s been fun, and I have a few rudimentary observations.

From what I can tell, Facebook’s best feature is that its apps allow you to aggregate your web experience into something easily accessible and viewable by your friends. I was hoping they had a decent Netflix app so my friends knew what I was watching, but the app is subpar and doesn’t really work. However, the Twitter and Digg apps are simple and good. If anybody wants to know what I’m Twittering or Digging, they can hit my Facebook page and it’s all there.
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Apple has a big portal into Windows users through their popular iTunes service. Anybody with an iPod or an iPhone uses iTunes, and for many it’s the only piece of Apple software they have on their PC’s. From experience, I can say that they update iTunes all the time, and that’s probably a good thing.

Recently, however, Windows users who are advised to update iTunes are also being offered Safari for Windows. It is an opt-out download where the user needs to check the box next to Safari in order to receive only the iTunes update.

Safari may be improving and Apple wants more Windows users going with their software (Safari is supposedly faster, but I find Firefox to be the more stable of the Internet Explorer alternatives), but many believe they are betraying their long standing trust and goodwill that has built up over the course of years.
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