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Here's Web 2.0 at its finest: A Yahoo programmer has combined his own project, Yahoo BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), with Twitter and Google App Engine to create a new way to determine what news is both new and important.

The service, called TweetNews, presents Yahoo news search results in a different way, using results from the same search on Twitter to determine what should get high placement, according to a blog posting about it by BOSS engineer Vik Singh.

BOSS supplies Yahoo search results in a form that can be repackaged, processed, and published for free, … Read more

Yahoo's Buzz service, which lets people spotlight and find interesting Web sites, is now getting a piece of the Yahoo Open Strategy action.

A new Updates section on Yahoo Buzz site now displays sites that a person's social contacts have buzzed, Yahoo announced Thursday. In addition, people can share a personalized Buzz page that shows activity such as what sites they've buzzed, the sites they've voted up or down, and the comments they've left about buzzed sites.

"Yahoo is committed to creating the most relevant experience by enabling social interactions inside and outside of … Read more

Note: this story was updated at 12:34 p.m. PDT with analysis and information about Google.

It's like watching a race between two glaciers.

Yahoo and Google are undeniably the two biggest powers on the Internet, each with a vast number of features and users. Each is trying to remake itself during a time when faster-moving start-ups show how hard it is for a massive site to transform itself.

But change is indeed in the works, and given the companies' scale, it's profound for both companies and for millions of people using the Internet.

On Tuesday, Yahoo … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Phase one came last week, when Yahoo launched its new profiles site. Phase two begins next week, when Web developers can start sinking their teeth into Yahoo's attempt to replace its present static design with one that's customizable, application-rich, socially connected, and woven into other parts of the Internet.

Developers are essential to what the company calls the Yahoo Open Strategy. Yahoo is building the foundation, but it will be the arrival of others' applications that will show whether Yahoo's transformation attempt is fulfilling those hopes.

"That starts changing Yahoo from a walled garden to … Read more

Yahoo has finished a redesign of its Flickr home page that emphasizes the photo-sharing site's social aspects.

The new home page shows off more of a user's own photos and more from the user's contacts, and it surfaces social activity such as comments on the user's photos, replies to comments the user made on others' photos, and new photos posted to the user's Flickr groups. (See a screenshot below.)

The move is part of Yahoo Open Strategy, which aims to expose Yahoo users' social activity across different Yahoo properties, let others build applications on Yahoo … Read more

Yahoo has broadened use of its SearchMonkey technology to spruce up search results with specific information from Citysearch and Zagat, the company said Thursday.

SearchMonkey draws upon "semantic Web" information used to help computers better understand the data on Web sites. SearchMonkey can build that data, such as movie ratings or restaurant phone numbers, into the search results Yahoo presents. (See an example below.)

But SearchMonkey-enhancd results won't show unless a user turns on a specific application--or unless Yahoo turns on that application by default. Now it has with the applications from Zagat and Citysearch, so some … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--On Friday, 300 programmers will descend upon Sunnyvale, Calif., to plant the seeds of what Yahoo hopes will be an answer to Google's Internet might.

The event is called Open Hack Day 2008, and at it the coders will be the first from outside the company to get their hands on a number of programming interfaces Yahoo is releasing in an attempt to enliven its stodgy but still powerful Internet properties.

There's no guarantee that the release, a key step in what the company calls its Yahoo Open Strategy, will improve Yahoo's financial misfortunes. But … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Yahoo showed its vision for what its Yahoo Open Strategy makes possible, demonstrating how it hopes to engage users more by enabling its existing sites to grow beyond their current confines.

Ash Patel, head of Yahoo's Audience Products Division, showed an example that endowed the company's home page, search, and mail sites with the ability to deal with the Netflix video rental site.

The home page was endowed with a new Netflix application that showed movies Patel has ordered and those recommended for him. A search results, augmented with SearchMonkey technology, let him add new movies … Read more

Yahoo has released an API (application programming interface) that lets outside Web sites automatically extract information such as top 10 lists from the Yahoo Music site.

For example, a programmer can use the service to search for the numeric ID that Yahoo gives a particular musician, then use that ID to retrieve all the albums by that artist or to retrieve a list of artists Yahoo deems similar, according to self-described Yahoo music nerd Jim Bumgardner on the Yahoo Developer Network blog. The item ID for a particular video can be used to retrieve a thumbnail image for the video … Read more