Delivering on Yahoo! Mobile’s promise of globally accessible products, a few weeks ago we released Yahoo! Go 3.0 in 6 new countries. Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy and Canada can now get a fully localized Yahoo! Go 3.0 experience in their native language. Yahoo! Go asks the mobile user to select their country when they use Yahoo! Go for the first time. This country information means that developers can build widgets with local awareness. The country and language information is included in a page request sent by Yahoo’s mobile application server.

• Accept-Language
  This HTTP header contains the RFC 4646/4647 language code. For a US user this language code is mainly “Accept-Language: en-US”. For a German user the header would contain “Accept-Language: de-DE”. Yahoo! Go also supports multiple languages in the one country. For instance, in Canada, the user has the choice to choose between Canada/English (en-CA) and Canada/French (fr-CA).

• Geo-Country
  This header contains only the country setting as an ISO 3166 country or UN M.49 region code. A sample header would look like this for Canada: “Geo-Country: CA”.

This language and country information can be very useful to you when deciding which language, or what type of content your widget should offer. Especially if you offer default values in your widget (like default currencies, cities or formats) you can now provide a better user experience by showing country and language specific content.

For our friends in other countries, we have not forgotten about you! We continue to work hard to roll out Yahoo! Go 3.0 to new countries and new devices, so stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates.

Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Adios, Ciao, until next time!

A few days ago saw the Mobile Widgets team at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas where we spoke to mobile developers, operators and publishers about the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform. Apart from Yahoo’s announcements regarding the revolutionary new Yahoo! oneSearch 2.0(tm) featuring Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice, the Mobile Developer Platform area also attracted a lot of attention at the Yahoo! booth. We heard many questions from developers and publishers about our Mobile Widget approval process and thought many of you might have the same questions. We thought we’d answer one of the most frequently asked questions here:

Q: Does Yahoo! have a Mobile Widget approval process before the Widget goes live in the gallery?

A: Yes, there is an approval process. Here it how it works:

• You start developing a Widget using the Blueprint SDK. Once you are ready to test it, you simply put together a zip package and submit it on the Test Widget page. Immediately after uploading, your widget will appear on the carousel in our Java client, or on your “My Widgets” page on the mobile home page (you must be signed in to view it). It is only visible to your Yahoo! account - no one else can see it during this phase. You can submit your Widget for testing as often as you like, but generally you don’t need to submit again unless you need to change your images or aspects of your configuration file.

• Once you are done coding and testing, you submit the zip package via the Submit Widget page. Once uploaded, the Yahoo! Mobile Widgets team can see and test your Widget. Our goal is to ensure that your Widget works, is not broken, does not contain offensive content and complies with our Yahoo! Mobile Widget Developer Terms of Use. These terms can be viewed and need to be accepted before you upload your Widget. The approval process is very straight forward and should not take longer than a couple of days. If we have any questions regarding your submission we will get in touch with you via email. Once your Widget is approved you and the rest of the world will be able to see it in our Mobile Widget Gallery, both in Yahoo! Go 3.0 and through Yahoo’s new mobile home page.

As always, if you have any questions regarding Mobile Widgets, Blueprint or the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform, please feel free to ask at the Yahoo! Mobile Developer Group.

Happy coding!