Yahoo

NEW YORK - Tom Hanks' long gestating Web series is coming to Yahoo. "Electric City," an animated futuristic series will premiere this spring. The series includes 20 episodes, each three or four minutes long. Yahoo, Hanks and production partners Playtone and Reliance Entertainment, announced plans for the series yesterday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For Hanks, the release caps the actor's efforts to find the right avenue for the project. He first tried to make the series using puppets.

When I heard that Australian movie star Yahoo Serious was doing a publicity tour for his new movie, "Young Einstein," I jumped at the chance for an interview. After all, how many opportunities are you going to have to start off an interview by saying, "So tell us, Yahoo . . . " His nationwide tour to promote the film, which opens here tomorrow, included a one-day stop recently at Philadelphia's Latham Hotel. Serious, known to Americans only as a guy with gigantic hair, goofy clothes and the occasional MTV appearance, greets visitors with a style that does not disappoint.

Philly.com, a division of Philadelphia Media Holdings that also hosts online content from The Inquirer and the Daily News, has joined a consortium of media companies partnering with Yahoo! to increase online advertising and job recruitment. The partnership relies on "behavioral targeting" to help boost revenue at a time when newspaper advertising is suffering as a result of the bad economy and a drop in retail sales. Print advertising at newspapers was down 17.7 percent last year compared to 2007, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The battle for control of Yahoo Inc. pits two billionaires against each other in a race to the Internet company's annual shareholder meeting on July 3. Investor Carl C. Icahn is threatening to oust Yahoo's board of directors - including Jerry Yang, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's chief executive officer. Icahn says Yahoo botched a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp., initially valued at $44.6 billion and later raised to $47.5 billion, or $33 a share. Yahoo wants $4 a share more.

Comcast Corp., seeking to become a major player in online advertising, said yesterday that it had signed a partnership that would give Yahoo Inc. marketing and sales responsibility for the Philadelphia cable giant's primary Web site, Comcast.net. The deal is the latest in Comcast's ongoing effort to dominate Web video, as it does cable television. Comcast has been able to turn Comcast.net into a popular Web site because it is the default page for the company's 12 million high-speed Internet subscribers.

The playing field began to tilt two years ago. The operators at MTV's popular countdown show TRL were being inundated with requests for Michelle Branch. Problem was, they didn't have any videos from the young Arizona singer. Her debut CD, The Spirit Room, wasn't in stores yet. So MTV called up Branch's record label, Maverick, wondering where in the world kids were seeing her clip. The answer was AOL Music. Along with Yahoo's similarly themed Web site, Launch, AOL Music has become a significant player in the music industry.

What are we to make of the decision of Yahoo, the premier Internet portal, to sell hard-core pornographic videos and DVDs in one of its online stores? Since its Web pages are viewed by 185 million people a month, this makes Yahoo a real dominatrix in the porn business. Yahoo used to point interested visitors to sex sites, but didn't promote or run any itself. No more. It's clear why XXXahoo will be more nakedly involved in the porn business. Pornographic sites are among the few that make money, and the precipitous decline in dot-coms is making even some of the most virtuous sites consider taking advantage of their popularity.

THE NAMES will continue to be floated out there as to whom the 76ers are going to interview for their vacant coaching position, many of the names listed here in the Daily News a couple of weeks ago. But the main priority right now is to solidify the front office, whether it is keeping who is there (such as general manager Tony DiLeo) or cleaning house. As majority owner Josh Harris said the day after the end of the season, "Everything is on the table. " And right now the main dish on the table is the front office, with the coaching decision a side dish.

Do you Yahoo? Do you eBay? Buy.com? Do you surf CNN.com? If you're a devotee of any of these Web services, you may have been getting a nasty surprise the last three days. Very nasty. As in no Yahoo! Nay eBay. No see CNN. Bygone Buy.com. In one of the most vicious and pointless gang-ups in hacker history, cybervandals figured out a way to paralyze these much-frequented sites. Their success helped propel the Dow into a 250-plus point free-fall yesterday. This e-prank was pretty easy to do. And there may be no defense.

"Young Einstein," one of the biggest box office hits in Australia's history, has made its way to the States - brazenly prepared to take on some of the biggest-grossing movies in U.S. history. It is, I'm afraid, a koala bear in a forest full of grizzlies. While Americans took to the droll, conventional humor of Aussie comedian Paul Hogan with gusto, they'll not warm up to the unconventional yet often boring comedy of Yahoo Serious, the writer, director and star of "Young Einstein.

THE NAMES will continue to be floated out there as to whom the 76ers are going to interview for their vacant coaching position, many of the names listed here in the Daily News a couple of weeks ago. But the main priority right now is to solidify the front office, whether it is keeping who is there (such as general manager Tony DiLeo) or cleaning house. As majority owner Josh Harris said the day after the end of the season, "Everything is on the table. " And right now the main dish on the table is the front office, with the coaching decision a side dish.

The best part of the Philadelphia Zoo's new KidZooU exhibit, at least in the eyes of my two nieces, was the barnyard. As the two stood in the exhibit, they were surrounded by colorful (goat) kids, all nuzzling them in an attempt to reach the brushes the girls held. A short distance away, they marveled over the sheep wandering in their pen. An extremely loud donkey - which made the girls think of Shrek - let it be known that he needed some attention. Lest this sound like a typical children's petting zoo, realize this: KidZooU is all that you expect - and then a little more.

What if solvent Germany stops bailing out Europe and goes back to its own, stronger money? That would make German products cost more. But privately owned German industrial-sensor and controls maker IFM Electronic GmbH won't have that problem. The company dedicated its new factory and labs in Malvern on Monday, and is adding more abroad. "We make eight million sensors a year," said Roger Varma , head of the $700 million (in yearly sales) company's IFM Prover USA Inc.me off the line at IFM's factory in Tettnang, Germany.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — When Facebook goes public — as it's expected to do this week in what is almost certain to be the biggest stock debut for an Internet company — it will be more than a financial milestone. It will also reflect how tightly a company launched eight years ago in a college dorm room has been woven into the fabric of society. In its ability to shape how people around the world communicate, debate, shop, entertain, and inform themselves, Facebook may be the biggest technological advance since broadcast television.

Yahoo Inc. director Patti Hart plans to leave the board of the biggest U.S. Web portal amid questions over her role in hiring chief executive officer Scott Thompson. Hart said she won't seek reelection to the board, citing her duties as CEO of International Game Technology. She was asked by that company's board to step back from Yahoo because her work there could become a distraction, according to a statement from Hart and IGT chairman Philip Satre. Hart was a member of the Yahoo committee responsible for hiring Thompson, whose biography falsely stated he held a degree in computer science.

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock and three longtime board members are stepping down, fulfilling the wishes of many frustrated shareholders who believe the directors have been part of the problem that has dragged down the Internet company's revenue and stock price. The shake-up announced Tuesday continues a drastic makeover of Yahoo's leadership during the last month. After Yahoo hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO a few days into the new year, cofounder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and severed all other ties with the company, which he helped start in 1995.

Yahoo Inc. cofounder and former CEO Jerry Yang has resigned from the Internet company's board of directors and will no longer be a part of the company in any fashion, Yahoo announced Tuesday. "My time at Yahoo, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life," Yang said in a news release. "However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo. " Yang founded Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo, and the company soon became one of the greatest success stories in the early days of the Internet.

NEW YORK - Tom Hanks' long gestating Web series is coming to Yahoo. "Electric City," an animated futuristic series will premiere this spring. The series includes 20 episodes, each three or four minutes long. Yahoo, Hanks and production partners Playtone and Reliance Entertainment, announced plans for the series yesterday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For Hanks, the release caps the actor's efforts to find the right avenue for the project. He first tried to make the series using puppets.

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo's stock rose more than 5 percent Wednesday after the company fired its chief executive officer following more than 21/2 years of financial lethargy. Investors had seemed convinced that Carol Bartz could not steer the Internet company to a long-promised turnaround. To fill the void, Yahoo's board named Tim Morse, its chief financial officer, as interim CEO. Bartz, who became CEO in 2009, lured Morse away from the computer-chip maker Altera Corp. two years ago to help her cut costs.

Technology-company troubles and renewed concerns about Europe's debt dragged stocks lower for a second day Monday. European finance ministers approved $110 billion in rescue loans to Portugal, but they have yet to decide on a second rescue package for Greece. The arrest of the head of the International Monetary Fund is expected to make solving Greece's problems more difficult. The official, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had been heavily involved in trying to fix the debt crises in Portugal and Greece.