Hasta La Gadget!

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has joined the board of portable gadget specialist Jawbone – known for its UP fitness monitor, headsets, and speakers – it’s reported, reigniting chatter that the search company might look to leveraging wearables along the lines of Google’s Glass. Mayer had apparently been in talks with Jawbone about a director’s position prior to joining Yahoo back in July 2012, so AllThingsD reports, and has already attended at least one board meeting sources at the company claim.

Mayer’s roles while at Google, where she climbed to the position of Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services before leaving to join Yahoo, included work on product design, usability, and engineering. That is likely to be a large part of her appeal to Jawbone, a privately-owned company which has raised more than $200m from venture capitalists and other firms.

However, Jawbone itself – and the company’s existing footprint in wearable technology, most recently the UP fitness monitoring band, but also including a range of Bluetooth headsets with voice-activated controls and limited app support – is likely to have been particularly appealing to Yahoo. The company has made it known that it is looking to raise its game in mobile, initially with redesigned smartphone apps for weather and email.

However, Yahoo’s senior director of product management, mobile communications, Lee Parry, also confirmed that the company was looking at the growing wearables market. “It would be crazy not to be looking at Google Glass or Apple’s watch” he conceded in an interview back in April 2013.

Whether Yahoo will aim quite so high as Google’s head-mounted computer is unclear, though the wearables market itself is predicted to surge with more simplistic gadgets – like UP – initially driving demand. However, increasingly complex devices such as wearable displays are tipped to play an increasing role in the market, as prices fall, capabilities increase, and battery life extends.

It’s likely early-days for any sort of Yahoo Glass rival, but there’s plenty of scope for Mayer to help guide the company through the growing marketplace, as well as ensure Yahoo itself gets a foot in the door. Neither Jawbone nor Yahoo have commented on the leak.

Mayer reportedly new Jawbone director as Yahoo eyes wearables is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Do you enjoy Saturday Night Live? If so, you’re in good company, with Yahoo‘s CEO Marissa Mayer revealing in a blog post earlier today that she is also a fan. That’s not all she revealed, however, expressing her fondness for the show amidst a bigger announcement: Yahoo has struck a deal with Broadway Video to exclusively offer Saturday Night Live content later this year.

According to the announcement, the agreement between the two companies allows Yahoo to exclusively provide Saturday Night Live’s archive of video content from the last 38 years. Full video content from the current season will not be offered by Yahoo, but it will feature clips from the season, with Mayer specifically listing Coffee Talk, Wayne’s World, Coneheads, and Pat being among them.

The announcement doesn’t give us much more detail than that, simply saying that it will be available “across Yahoo!’s sites,” implying that it won’t be all aggregated in a single location. Mayer says that another announcement will be made once the video content is available, and we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it, with more details to follow.

In other Yahoo news, we reported earlier today that Yahoo Japan and Softbank Capital have joined forces to create a $20 million fund aimed at helping U.S. startups get a foothold in the Japanese market. In addition, Yahoo Japan also appointed a new U.S. operations head, Toshiaki Chiku, who said that the Japanese market can be a hard place for US startups to succeed, but this program aims to change that.

[via Yahoo]

Yahoo strikes deal to exclusively offer Saturday Night Live content is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In a move that will hopefully attract U.S. startups to the Land of the Rising Sun, Softbank Capital and Yahoo Japan have created a $20 million fund geared towards helping U.S startups, with a focus in mobile applications, e-commerce, and web advertising, get started in the Japanese market. The fund is designed to help out early-stage startups who still need to get their foot onto the ground. Alongside the new fund, Yahoo Japan has also assigned a new head of U.S operations, Toshiaki Chiku, who will be working out of Softbank’s New York City location.

The new $20 million fund wil be added to Softbank Capital’s current $100 million Technology Fund’10, which is also aim towards startups looking to breaking into the Japanese market. Softbank Capital also has a $250 million PrinceVille Fund, that is set aside for startups who are in the later stages of their development. The fund is for startups that are geared towards mobile applications, social media, e-commerce, online advertising, gaming and cloud computing, and more.

In a statement released by Chiku, he says that Japan can be a difficult market to enter for many U.S. companies, but thanks to the collaborative efforts of Yahoo Japan and Softbank Capital, U.S. companies will have the support it needs to “grow and succeed”. In an interview, Joe Medved, a partner at Softbank capital, stated that this is Yahoo Japan’s “first investment in the U.S. market in its history.”

Softbank had made several investments in early stage startups before, including Bluefin Labs, Buddy Media, Buffington Post, Hyperpublic, and OMGPOP. Bluefin Labs was sold to Twitter, Buddy Media was sold to Salesforce.com, Huffington Post was sold to AOL, Hyperpublic was sold to Groupon, and OMGPOP was sold to Zynga. Softbank Capital was also an early investor in Yahoo, and it currently owns a 40% stake in Yahoo Japan. With the new funding, Softbank capital hopes to see a huge increase in growth opportunities in Japan, which would in turn help develop international business for its early-stage investments.

[via All Things D]

Softbank Capital and Yahoo Japan aim at bringing U.S. startups to Japan is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Summly, a mobile news app developed by a British teen, was acquired by Yahoo for a reported sum of $30 million. Nick D’Aloisio, the developer of this app, is ranked among the world’s youngest self-made millionaires. After teaching himself to write code just when we was 12 years old, he developed this app at the tender age of 15. Today Yahoo has updated its main iPhone app which now comes with Summly integrated.

Yahoo says that the new mobile app for iPhone is all about delivering the best of web. It capitalizes on Summly’s natural language algorithms to quickly deliver summaries of stories to the user. The company says that it is thrilled to introduce this “game changing” technology in their first mobile application. The app features extensive personalization options, users can decide the type of stories that they’re interested in and would like to stay on top of through this app. The search experience has also been improved with better image and video search. Currently the new Yahoo iPhone app is only available for users based in the U.S., it can now be downloaded from the iTunes App Store.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Ultra Mobile Offers $19 Monthly Plan, Nokia Wins Preliminary Injunction Against HTC In The Netherlands,

Today marks the launch of a new Yahoo news app for iOS that integrates Summly, its recent acquisition from a certain industrious young entrepreneur , that’s made specifically “with smaller screens in mind.” In other words, it’s only available for iPhone and iPod touch for now. More »