On the Yahoo! Messenger blog, one can read:

we launched a brand new Yahoo! Messenger website this week. Same URL and products, just a new look and feel including a feature comparison chart across versions, and a new import contacts wizard that lets you add or invite friends to Yahoo! Messenger from your Yahoo! Address Book as well as other email services like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and many more.

Indeed, after six month of hard work, and a last minute scramble to squash a mystery bug, we have released what has come to be known internally as Aurora, a complete redesign of all 29 localized versions of the messenger.yahoo.com website.

Credits where due:

• Ryan Doherty was instrumental in laying the groundwork before leaving for Mozilla
• Ryan Parman wrote most of the HTML and CSS
• yours truly tied all that together with an MVC framework, some Javascript, and lots of configurattion
• David G. and Jay K. tamed our servers
• Sarah B. and Lorraine H. guided us through the maze of requirements

Of course many more were involved, including QA, Ops, Marketing, IT, URL’s, BeanTrees, janitorial staff, Dr. Pepper, Runts, and Steve Ballmer.

Bravo to All !

And now for the obvious post: Anne and I are effectively married!

This has taken place on April 12th in Las Vegas. Yes, Elvis was there. All that could make it were welcome, but we both knew it was going to be a small committee and are fine with that since everyone is able to see the event ad-nauseam archived on the interweb.

Official photos are available from the chapel photographer.

We have been back in California for a week now, and are only now starting to recover from our emotions. Luxurious hotel rooms with view on the strip have been slept in, Jewelry has been purchased and is now being sized, surprise parties have been thrown, champagne as been drunk(!), candid photos/videos from the gatherings in both the US and France have been exchanged, cards and gifts have accumulated… It has been a crazy ride, and we must now push forward in the administrative matters which triggered all these precipitations in the first place!

Special thanks to Pete and Sylvia for being there for us at this special time. Thanks to my mom for letting us do this our way and hosting the live video watching party. Thanks to Arnaud and Olivier for their pleasant last-minute arrival. Thanks to Ryan for the most relevant Hallmark card. Thanks to all at Yahoo! for being so flexible even in these turbulent times. And thanks to Elvis for making this such a great event!

This will take place on April 12th in Las Vegas. Yes, Elvis will be there. All that can make it are welcome, but we both know it is going to be a small committee and are fine with that since everyone should be able to follow the events live on the interweb.

Yesterday I got to spend some time at a conference which took place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I just had to take a picture of this Minitel, which was exposed among a wide array of geeky memorabilia.
I especially liked the Kitchen Computer.

The event, eComm2008, goes on until tomorrow and is the result of Lee Dryburgh’s hard work and perseverance. A few month ago, O’Reilly decided to cancel the Emerging Telephony conference. The community that had crystalized around eTel - an oddball mix, I’ll get back to that eventually - was left without an event to congregate. Lee managed, in record time, to organise this alternative event. I was only there for the first day, and then I had to leave early so I missed the social event in the evening. No matter, the event was/is a success and Lee should be commended for pulling off such a feat in record time. Bravo!

Of particular interest to me was a speaker who likened Voice to Paprika. He claims, and I agree, that Voice - phone service - should be considered as a commodity. Telcos need to adapt to this new reality: stop the branding insanity, concentrate on delivering the fat pipe and let consumers develop the applications they need.

Later I got to catch up with Surj Patel who introduced me to a fun - and humbling - chat with Bob Frankston. We were talking about the concept of telcos as utilities - like the highway system. I pointed out that, just like internet access, roads were of relative poor quality here in Silicon Valley… so we agreed that telcos are to be akin to the sewer system.

Good times. I need to go to more events like this!

OMG, this game is SO AWESOME. I’m actually learning to play the drums!
Anne is a “guitar hero”, our band is named Zanker Chocolat, and we ROCK.

Look at how happy Benjamin looks. Did he take the blue or red pill?

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• Yahoo pink slips arrive
• Microsoft Deal or Not, Yahoo Is Cutting Jobs
• Brickhouse Head Leaves Yahoo
• Layoffs Across Yahoo — Finally

There is good coverage of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid on the techcrunch and (obviously) Yahoo! News.

As an employee, I cannot comment on any of these developments. I can however point you to fellow Yahoo! Jeremy Zawodny who outlines what the possible outcomes seem to be:

1. Microsoft actually does buy Yahoo for $31/share (or something in that ballpark). This is the default case in the minds of many people.

2. Another large company (or group of companies, possibly including private equity funds) makes a counter offer. This will ultimately only serve to drive the price up. Microsoft will outbid.

3. The Yahoo Board of Directors decides to outsource Yahoo’s search advertising (and possibly search) business to rival Google. This entails a long-term partnership for a number of years and is sufficient to send Microsoft back to Redmond to continue working on its own search and search advertising business. I imagine this would be a very tough call to make.

4. As a variation of #3, Yahoo may look to strengthen its display advertising (graphical ads) business and take some significant share of the DoubeClick acquisition as part of the deal. That makes Google the dominant contextual tetx advertising company and Yahoo the dominant display/banner and behavioral advertising company.

5. The board simply rejects the offer and decides to continue as is. This seems quite unlikely to me. Shareholders will insist that something big happen.

There are more pretty pictures on Flickr