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Google isn't the only search engine introducing innovative features today. In an effort to be more accessible to international users, especially those new to computing, Yahoo has made it possible for Chinese users to enter searches with their own handwriting. Visitors to Yahoo! Taiwan and Yahoo! Hong Kong can now use a special handwriting panel to draw out characters in order to conduct a search, making it easier for those unfamiliar with Chinese typing to more easily browse the Web.

Google has announced that Yahoo users will now be able to quickly and easily sign up for Google products using their Yahoo email address. The feature, according to some in the industry, will be a boon for Google and OpenID, the Internet standard behind the feature. But what benefit does this provide for Yahoo?

Will making it easier for Yahoo users to sign in to Google - a direct competitor - draw users away from the portal, search and mail provider, or will it help create an overall better user experience? According to Yahoo, making a process that users were already engaged in simpler will provide a better user experience and keep them interested in one of its most solid products - Yahoo Mail.

While Facebook might have won praise from locals with its construction of a data center in Prineville, Oregon, it has sparked the ire of the environmental activists at Greenpeace.

Yesterday, Greenpeace posted on its blog a letter from its director to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which the environmental organization took the social networking company to task for the energy consumption and the energy source for the new Prineville data center. The facility will be powered by "dirty coal-fired electricity from PacificCorp, which runs an electricity mix that is disproportionately powered by coal, the largest source of global warming pollution," and as Facebook has announced that the data center will be double the size initially planned, Greenpeace objects to this doubling of the demand for "dirty coal energy."

If you haven't played with YQL before, put down that Hot Pocket and head over the Yahoo Developer Network. At the YQL console you'll find a collection of resources to quickly attack problems with cut- and-paste simplicity instead of having to digest several pages of API documentation. You'll also find examples with source code for putting your queries to work.

Below are five great YQL one-liners to get you thinking about the possibilities.

Email is old fashioned, right? Not so fast - that rich source of data about your personal connections and interests is finally emerging as a platform for some really innovative services.

Yesterday we saw the launch of Gmail's new Priority Inbox, which automatically sorts inbound messages by priority. That's something we've been expecting since hints of it emerged 18 months ago. This Spring, Gmail began offering secure, programatic access permission for the contents of your inbox - a move we said heralded a new era of inbox applications. Now we're finally seeing that flood of services emerge. Here are three of the best new email apps that you don't want to miss. Following screenshots and a screencast, we discuss what it all means and how these are just the beginning of the coming era of email as a platform.

After about a week of testing, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced that they have now finalized the transition from Yahoo's own search engine to Microsoft's Bing. Microsoft now powers all of Yahoo's free, organic Web, image and video search results in the U.S. and Canada, though Yahoo will continue to offer its own set of search tools like Site Explorer and Search Monkey. The fact that Yahoo search is now "Powered by Bing" marks the end of a one-year transition period. Last July, after two years of back and forth, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed on a 10-year search and advertising deal.

One year ago, Yahoo announced that it had signed a deal to replace its own search engine with Microsoft's Bing - but the big question for us was what that meant for all the incredible search-related programming infrastructure Yahoo makes available to outside developers. Today Yahoo began offering the beginning of an answer to that question.

In a post on the Yahoo Developer Network blog, VP Social Platforms at Yahoo Neal Sample broke the news.

Advertising network Chitika has released some surprising search engine statistics today, putting Microsoft Bing ahead of long-time runner-up Yahoo in the number two spot behind (still dominant) Google.

While other services, like StatCounter have the two engines neck in neck, Chitika's latest stats put Bing ahead of Yahoo by 4.5%.

The architectural style of a data center is not what you would think as being unique.

But data centers can have a certain style as illustrated in a recent post on Data Center Knowledge, which put together a collection that shows a level of creativity in how data centers are being designed.

Rob Snevely is the author of Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology. He says the primary function of building a data center is in the detailed mechanical process of laying out the building for maximum density and equipment loads.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that the two companies have begun testing the partnership originally inked a year ago, which will bring Bing search results to Yahoo.

The testing is currently affecting a quarter of Yahoo's search traffic and, while not site-wide, Microsoft is warning on its blog that webmasters should be diligent in making sure that their sites are showing up in search results correctly, lest they be left behind. To that end, Microsoft is releasing a completely redesigned version of its Bing Webmaster Tools.