Job Opening: Commissioning Editor for Yahoo! Southeast Asia
To anyone in Southeast Asia looking for work in the online industry, specifically in editorial, here's another cool job opportunity for you. Reposting this verbatim from the Y!SEA Blog.
Yahoo! Southeast Asia is looking for a Commissioning Editor to help support the production of English-language custom-branded micro-sites.
You’ll be required to identify and commission bloggers/writers to produce a variety of articles ranging from finance to event guides. That means you’ll need both an extensive list of contacts as well as a broad knowledge of various subjects.
The role also requires you to have strong editing skills to draw out a distinct and engaging editorial voice to satisfy the Yahoo! audience. Just as important — you need to be able to recognize this quality in other people’s writing.
Given the high expectations of our users, the role requires a professional with at least five years in an editorial role.
The job will also involve:
- Identifying strong bloggers and building a strong relationship with them
- Assessing pitches from bloggers
- Editing article submissions
- Commissioning photographers and illustrators
- Issuing contracts to bloggers
- Paying bloggers
The ideal candidate will have the following skills:
- More than 5 years in an editorial role, preferably in the magazine industry
- Strong relationships with prominent bloggers
- Ability to write and re-write in an engaging style
- Strong copy editing skills, knowledge of AP style is preferred
- Strong attention to detail
- Nurturing skills to help develop bloggers
In terms of personality, we’re looking for someone who is able to juggle multiple assignments and roll with the punches. You must be able to work independently. You need to be comfortable with technology and internet publishing tools, and if not, you should at least be a quick learner.
Interested? Please send your resume and a cover letter to:
Alan Soon
Managing Editor
Yahoo! Southeast Asia
Email: alansoon@yahoo-inc.com
SearchMonkey arrives in Southeast Asia
This was my post that got lost last week due to server problems. It's a week late but still blog-worthy, especially if you're based in Southeast Asia.
After making much noise in different tech blogs last year, Yahoo! SearchMonkey quietly launched in the Southeast Asia market last February 12, 2008, specifically in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
In a nutshell, SearchMonkey basically opens up Yahoo! Search for users, developers and publishers to make search results more useful and visually more compelling.
Check out this before and after image:
BEFORE
AFTER
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, there are various SearchMonkey applications that transform your Yahoo! Search experience to provide you with highly relevant content and the best user experience at the same time. In other words, it makes search fun, productive and exciting! Check out these examples:
Play videos on the search results page: http://ph.search.yahoo.com/search?p=yodel+contest+video.
Add the latest Flickr photos to all Wikipedia results:
Go here (http://ph.gallery.search.yahoo.com/application?smid=JrLH) to add the application.
Show any geo-encoded Wikipedia content on a map:
Try it yourself by adding http://ph.gallery.search.yahoo.com/application?smid=2D1e.
It’s up to you how you wish to flavor your search experience. And given that this is an open platform, there are so many ways this will grow and continue to improve, it just depends on how users, developers and publishers will build on it. I can just imagine, being able to see what’s being tweeted about a keyword you’re searching for, or being able to see if a person you’re searching for is online and immediately chat with them.
Like I said, the possibilities are tremendous, and you can start experiencing it now by adding more SearchMonkey applications from this gallery: http://ph.gallery.search.yahoo.com. You can also contribute apps by heading over to http://developer.yahoo.com/search/.
You’ve Got Better Mail!
I’ve got two email-related news that I picked up from the press room that’s both Purple in nature and definitely worth checking out.
Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop – your one stop shop for all email needs
Zimbra, a Yahoo! company known for its open source, next-generation messaging and collaboration software, announced a few days ago the release of Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop Beta. The cool thing about Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop is that it allows you to access a simple, centralized place to manage your emails even if you’re not connected to the Internet. Through POP and IMAP protocol support, you can access your Yahoo! Mail, GMail or AOL Mail (not sure if anyone I the Philippines has this one, hehehe) offline at the same time, from the same place. Zimbra also allows you to use the iCal standard to bring your calendar offline.
The Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop gives users the same sleek Zimbra experience and showcases the latest technologies that have until now only been available via Web-based applications including:
- "Mash-ups" with other services; for example, when viewing an e-mail, users can see their schedule by hovering over a date, or see the status of a flight by looking at a flight number;
- Powerful search that can quickly scan a user's e-mail and pull up relevant content;
- Built-in organization capabilities including automatically converting e-mails into conversations and advanced tagging; and
- Advanced calendaring that gives users access to their most important appointments and schedule even when they are on the go.
Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop also includes a number of features designed to help users stay organized, such as document creation, spreadsheets, task management and document storage, giving users a robust alternative to other desktop applications. New features include online and offline access to:
- Zimbra Documents, a document and spreadsheet program, which gives users the ability to embed complex objects such as photos into documents and spreadsheets. With the addition of Zimbra Documents, Zimbra Desktop users can easily create and edit documents and simple spreadsheets without having to switch between desktop programs or e-mail large attachments.
- Zimbra Briefcase, which allows users to upload, store, and conveniently access any files including spreadsheets, documents, presentations and others. Instead of keeping all attachments in e-mail you can simply store them in the same place with Zimbra Briefcase, and access them from anywhere, online or offline.
- Zimbra Tasks, a task management system which allows users to manage to-do lists simply and easily by monitoring start and due dates, priority, progress and percent complete.
Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop Beta Version 3 is available for free download at Zimbra.com/desktop.
Yahoo! Mail – Numero Uno in Mobile
Excerpted from VentureBeat.
Mobile web usage grows, and it’s not led by the iPhone — yet.
It’s been known for a while that iPhone users in the U.S. love the mobile Internet, but that love is spreading to the rest of the population rather quickly, according to a new study by Nielsen Mobile.
Of the countries surveyed, the United States was first in mobile Internet penetration with 15.6 percent of all mobile users accessing the web from their devices in May. The UK was second with 12.9 percent followed by Italy at 11.9 precent.
The report notes that advertising has reached a critical mass in the U.S. with its over 40 million active mobile Internet users. Considering that China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, still have low mobile Internet penetration numbers at 6.8 and 1.8 percent respectively, the opportunities worldwide should only grow.
It’s interesting to note that this study did not include several countries including Korea and Japan, where mobile web usage is likely very high as well.
Another interesting tidbit from the report is that Yahoo Mail beat out Google Search as the top mobile web channel in the U.S. — and by a large margin. Overall however, portals were more popular than web-based email.
I’m not sure what the statistics are in the Philippines but I find it very convenient to be able to check my email through my mobile, I’m wondering if this is the same for you?
Yahoo! Philippines Job Openings!
This is a reprint of what I posted in the Yahoo! Philippines Answers blog. There are two job openings right now for Yahoo! Philippines, the first is Partner Account Manager and the other is Yahoo! Messenger Product Support Specialist. This just might be the job that you've been looking for. Check out the link below for the details:
http://www.yanswersblogph.com/b4/2008/07/11/yahoo-philippines-is-hiring/
New stuff in My Yahoo!
Small changes, big impact - this is what you can expect to some changes in My Yahoo!.
New features in the header will make it easier for us to find, discover, and add content to our My Yahoo! pages. Check out the My Yahoo! header and you'll see three new options:"Add Content," "Change Appearance," and "More Options."
Also, the new "tabbed" design will make it easier to distinguish and navigate among multiple My Yahoo! pages. Each page is still customizable making it easy for you to select a theme and layout for each unique page and adding a new tab is as simple as clicking "New Tab" at the right side of the page tabs.
Check it out now! My Yahoo! is one of those "must-haves" that I use since this is where I get updated on so many things - news, blogs, mail, etc. These changes sure makes it more user friendly. 
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, part of the obvious changes is the inclusion of a banner ad in the right side of each My Yahoo! page. Do you find it intrusive? It's really up to you although personally, I don't mind it at all.