In only six short weeks since Livestand’s debut in the App Store (picked as one of Apple’s featured apps), we’ve added in more entertaining features and popular titles to give you an even more personalized digital newsstand. And we’re still not finished – we’ll continue to iterate the app as we hear back from users like you!

In that spirit, here’s a look at what is new in the app today. To download the updated app or try it out for the first time here, visit the App Store for Livestand.

• A new recipe finder in Shine from Yahoo! so you can browse recipes and create handy shopping lists. Cooking for a holiday celebration? This is a great time saver.
• Local deals from your favorite sites like Groupon, LivingSocial or Bloomspot are now seamlessly integrated into Yahoo! Today and Shine from Yahoo!.
• New Guest Mode to allow you to take a tour and experience Livestand without signing in.  It’s now a lot easier for your friends and family to take a peek at what Livestand would be for them. Just make sure to get your iPad back when they’re done!
• Twitter integration to share articles, videos and more with a few taps. Simply log into your Twitter account through “Settings” on your iPad and start socializing.
• New publications, including:
  • Shine from Yahoo!
  • Technology Review published by MIT
  • The Ticket from Yahoo! News (a new title focused entirely on the 2012 Elections)
  • Minyanville
  • Victorian Christmas
  • Big Think

We have big plans for Livestand in the coming year and will always be creating new ways to more relevant, more personal for you.  We’ll be adding new capabilities (many of which you’ve let us know you want), and of course, a lot more great content that you’ll want to jump into every chance you get. 2012 will be a busy year!

Have a healthy and happy holiday season,

The Livestand team

For those of us looking for a way to share what we’re watching with friends, IntoNow, acquired by Yahoo! last month, has a hot iOS app that makes it super simple to connect with friends while watching TV.

Recently, IntoNow was awarded the “Most Significant technology, platform or product” award by TV of Tomorrow, for inventing the most innovative and disruptive tech platform or product of the past year. IntoNow lets you tag your favorite shows in real-time to engage with friends and check out other TV recommendations.

And just last week IntoNow introduced their latest release (IntoNow v 1.2) to the iTunes app store.

Welcome to the Yahoo! family IntoNow – we can’t wait to see what else is up your sleeves!

As we head to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, we will have much more to say about Livestand. We hope to see you there and until then, stay tuned to hear more about Livestand.

Cheers,

Irv Henderson, VP of Product Management, Yahoo! Mobile

Just last Friday, our team faced the restaurant picking problem for the nth time – ten minutes before piling into our cars, we started wondering where to go. A frenetic debate ensued in the parking lot, fancying a new place, a new cuisine, or a hot restaurant that no one could remember the name of.

In this kind of situation, there simply isn’t enough time to fire up a laptop or troll through 100’s of user reviews, or to check if a reservation is required. Thankfully, I had our beta version of Sketch-a-Search on my iPhone, and ended up picking the Faultline Brewing Company – a fine place for a large team lunch. We were able to do this by sketching along Lawrence Expressway area, and filtering by cuisine, Zagat ratings, and user reviews.

Our Yahoo! Mobile Search team is looking to solve uniquely on-the-go information discovery problems for you – just like this one.

With our new Sketch-a-Search, we first improved the quality of our data to ensure we’re including the freshest local information possible. We also partnered with Zagat, a leading provider of consumer survey-based information with thousands of restaurant reviews worldwide, so that you can quickly discover the top restaurants in your area. Search results can now be filtered to show only ZAGAT-RATED restaurants, and the reviews from Zagat users are shown alongside reviews from our huge community on Yahoo!. Once you pick a restaurant, you can make a reservation right through the app using OpenTable.

When you have a bit more time to pick your restaurant, try our new iPad Sketch-A-Search app. It is optimized to take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen size and landscape mode. The app is also available on the PC as a Quick App in Yahoo! Search – try a restaurant search (e.g. “faultline brewing”) at Yahoo.com to check it out.

You can download both apps today – bon appétit!

Author: Anil Panguluri, Director Yahoo! Search Products

For those of you who haven’t checked out the Social Pulse feature before, it’s our mobile one-stop shop for all of your favorite social networks. You get real-time updates from Facebook, Twitter®, Flickr, MySpace, Friendster®, Last.fm®, Bebo®, Dopplr™, and Yahoo! Buzz™. So even if you aren’t at the computer, you can still find out what your friends are up to.

You can also post your status from here, too. There’s no need to go to each individual network, because Social Pulse lets you update once and publish to one or all sites.

Check it out here, or by going to “Social Pulse” in the “My Favorites” tab from the Yahoo! Mobile homepage at m.yahoo.com.

Lee Parry
Yahoo! Mobile product manager