Google recently made a gift of free WiFi to 47 airports across the US. Now Google’s nemesis Yahoo, also wants to be a part of the free Wi-Fi game, so they are offering it up in New York’s Times Square next year.

Yahoo says: “While Yahoo! is the place where your world meets the world online, over 500,000 of you take in Times Square each day and it’s become a central spot for New Yorkers and people around the world. We and our partners at the Times Square Alliance think it’s the perfect place to bring you free Wi-Fi service.”

It seems more than a bit odd to me that many, myself included, consider Yahoo to be down and out despite the fact that it sits comfortably in the second place spot for search. Google may be far above the competition in the search market, but Yahoo is still doing well.

Yahoo has announced what it calls the most significant redesign since the search engine launched nearly a decade ago. The new home page offers users a less cluttered look with less Yahoo services grafted on to muddy the waters.

Since Yahoo and Microsoft broke off acquisition talks over the summer, Yahoo’s stock price has been tanking. Yahoo is working on an advertising deal with Google it hopes will help its stocks. In an effort to woo new users to its Yahoo Mail service, it has introduced a new feature.

The new feature is called Yahoo Calendar and it is a popup feature within Yahoo Mail. The application is built on the Zimbra platform, which is technology Yahoo acquired with the Zimbra purchase last year. Zimbra uses open standards allowing Yahoo Calendar to be compatible with other calendar services online.

This is one of a small fleet of GPS and cameraphone equipped bicycles that Flickr has deployed in select cities around the world. It’s purple, solar powered, pedal powered, GPS powered and it probably needs a little basket with a bow to complete the girl’s bike look. The bikes have handlebar-mounted cameraphones (Nokia N95s, based on the metadata in the Flickr photos) that will snap a shot every 60 seconds while the bike is in motion. Then the photos get uploaded with the geodata, to a special Flickr account.

I have no idea what the purpose is, other then publicity. I suppose they could partner with Nokia etc and start selling these bikes. They are likely to be a nice collectible in a few years, so if you have one keep it safe. And try not to get into too much trouble snapping pics of drug dealers and uploading them.

Yahoo has a new social networking site in the works called Mash, which is has similarities to popular sites such as MySpace or Facebook along with some “added twists” according to Will Aldrich, the team lead for Y! Mash.

Yahoo Mash is just in beta right now and is available by invite only but Will provided some scant information about the service along with letting us know that there are still some things in the works for the site. What seems to set Mash apart from the others mostly revolves around the ability for users to start and edit profiles of their friends.

Yahoo today put into general availability a new version of its Web-based Yahoo Mail. The online giant said it will also continue to make available the traditional interface many of its users have used for years.

The new Yahoo Mail, said Yahoo, offers new speed and performance enhancements. Highlighted new features include the ability to send free text messages directly to mobile numbers in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines as well as instant message interoperability with Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Yahoo! has introduced a new online service called Pipes that allows you to create unique mashups of RSS feeds by manipulating and aggregating feeds to create a new feed that is more useful and relevant. For example, you could combine the feed from the NewYork Times with Flickr and see Flicker images relating to the articles.

To create a Pipe, you use a visual editor to edit and filter different types of feeds. Pipes consist of pre-configured modules which are drug onto the editor’s canvas and then wired together in a chain in which one module’s output becomes the input for the next module. Each module performs a single, specific task. For example, the Fetch module will retrieve a feed URL, while the Sort module will re-order a feed based on criteria you provide. There are currently over 20 different …

Yahoo! is looking to capture the eyeballs of saavy investors with its recently launched Yahoo! Finance, a new personal finance portal containing a slew of new tools and information ranging from “Banking & Budgeting” to “Retirement.” to help consumers manage their personal finances.

Yahoo! has a continued strategy of aggregating the best tools and information from the industry’s leading providers for a given topic. Yahoo! Finance will include several new “financial centers” as well as tools to help users manage their money. The new Yahoo! Personal Finance features include:

Nine resource centers covering every major area of personal finance. These “financial centers” include: Banking and Budgeting, Taxes, Career & Work, College & Education, Family & Home, Insurance, Loans, Real Estate, and Retirement.
Content from 25 industry leading providers including: CNNMoney.com, Consumer Reports, Kiplinger, The Motley Fool, Smart Money, and The Wall Street Journal.
48 …

Four of the leading technology companies in the world have come together to announce an agreement along with human rights groups for a working set of principles addressing freedom of expression and human rights.

Google, Microsoft, Vodafone and Yahoo along with the Berkman Center, Business for Social Responsibility, the Electric Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders among others were all involved in the creating the code of conduct, which is designed to hold the participants responsible in these areas. There would still be a number of questions involved with this agreement, the largest of which is the deterrent to keep companies in line with the agreement.

This agreement comes after multiple technology companies being scrutinized for providing hardware or software that allows the government to censor or monitor information running through them. A prime example is …

Google and Yahoo! continue to erode U.S. Web Search market share from the competition according to a December 2006 analysis from comScore Networks.

In December 2006, Google increased its share of Web Search by capturing 47.4 percent of the U.S. market. This marks a gain of 0.4 share points from November and continues Google’s impressive run of gaining share in 16 of the last 17 months. Yahoo! continued to maintain its second place ranking by growing 0.3 share points and capturing 28.5 percent of U.S. searches.

Some of the competitive Search entities didn’t fare so well, suffering from falling market share. Microsoft slid 0.5 percent to 10.5 percent, while Ask Network’s share dipped 0.1 percent to 5.4 percent and Time Warner Network dropped 0.2 shares to 4.9 percent.

The study also reported that Americans conducted …

Yahoo introduced its “Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0″ mobile tools collection at the CES yesterday. A key component to Yahoo’s mobile strategy is search and Yahoo hopes to gain ground in the crucial search market with its OneSearch product.

The product is still in beta, it is available for download. The Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 is an application that consists of a series of “widgets” that are built for easy usage on a mobile device. Besides search, users can access other Yahoo services like Flickr, e-mail, maps, weather and finance each have a dedicated widget.

Although less than 5% of mobile users surf the web from their phones, many companies are trying to position themselves for the anticipated rapid growth in the mobile applications market. Some experts believe growth of mobile …

According to a recent study by Hitwise, Yahoo! Answers is dominating all of the pure Q&A websites by capturing 96.1 percent of the US market. The nearest competitor was Answerbag with 2.1%, while the remaining competitors garnered less than 1% of the market share.

Wikipedia still has the lead in the Education - Reference category, receiving a commanding 1/5 of the visits, with Yahoo! Answers ranking #2.

The study also found that Yahoo! Answers was the 100th most visited domain out of over 500,000 websites tracked by Hitwise. 52% of visitors to Yahoo! Answers were female and 22% were between the ages of 18 and 24.

Yahoo! Answers received 53% of its traffic from search engines which was nearly evenly split between Yahoo! Search and Google. This traffic consisted of 42,087 search terms with the leading search term, “yahoo answers”, capturing only 0.59% …

IBM and Yahoo! Inc. have announced their collaboration on a new, free enterprise search software solution. The search service is powered by Yahoo! Web search services and enables businesses of all sizes to quickly and easily find and access their disparate information.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a free, entry level search product developed to help eliminate the barriers of entry to enterprise-wide search. The new service can be downloaded for free and will work with existing hardware. According to the press release, a simple three-click installation process takes customers only minutes to go from download to live search.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition supports up to 500,000 documents per server and over 200 file types in more than 30 languages. The service fully integrates with Yahoo! Search and offers features such as automatic spell correction, support for synonyms, wildcards, query reporting, and one-click access to send …

Mobile phone giant Nokia and Yahoo! announced today that they will be expanding their partnership to include Yahoo! branded internet services including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger on Nokia mobile devices.

The services will be made available on Nokia phones running Nokia’s Series 40 platform. Series 40 is the software system that powers many of Nokia’s mobile devices. With Series 40, users are able to access a broad range of applications and features, including messaging, browsing, music and video standards as well as personal information management.

Yahoo! internet services will initially be available on the new Nokia 6300 (pictured), the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5200. These services and the ability to synchronize Yahoo! contacts, tasks and calendar on the PC and phone will eventually be added to an even wider range of Nokia’s Series 40 devices.

The Nokia and Yahoo! partnership dates back to …

Vodafone and Yahoo! have formed an alliance which pools their collective expertise to create a new advertising service for mobile devices. The partnership names Yahoo! as Vodafone’s exclusive display advertising partner in the UK.

Yahoo! can leverage its sizeable sales force and technology team to drive the most benefit from Vodafone’s unique mobile advertising opportunities. Yahoo! will use its ample advertising prowess to provide a variety of mobile advertising formats across Vodafone’s varied content services.

The new service is planned to be initiated in the UK in the first half of 2007. Certain plans are structured to give savings on certain Vodafone services to customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display advertisements. This service could extend to other Vodafone mobile assets including the Vodafone live! portal, games, television and picture messaging services.