Yahoo has launched Yahoo Mail Beta, which the company boasts is twice as fast and offers more social networking connectivity from directly within the inbox.

 Users can opt-in to try Yahoo Mail Beta.  The new mail service allows users to view and share updates from Twitter and Facebook without having to leave the inbox. An automatic slideshow feature allows people to see photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube from within their email messages.

Yahoo has introduced new search features with an emphasis on helping users access  entertainment and news content in a more streamlined fashion.

Yahoo has added slideshows above search results for topics on its Trending Now lists, an app for Netflix members to add DVDs to their queue directly from the search results page and shortcuts for entertainment related topics that include images, articles, videos, tweets, event listings and ratings.

Users of Yahoo’s popular photo-sharing site can now more easily interact with it through Google’s mobile operating system.  Today, Flickr made it possible for Android device owners to bypass the old upload-by-email approach to transmitting pictures.

A Yahoo spokesperson explained in an email to WebProNews, "Flickr has introduced new browser-based photo uploads on Android 2.2 today to enable more seamless uploading from your mobile device to the Flickr site."

Update: After several weeks of pubic preview, the new photo pages are now being rolled out to everyone.

Original Article: Flickr has launched a new photo page. Some elements of the page have been enlarged, or "embiggened" as Flickr puts it. Photos are now displayed in a bigger 640 pixel width and the photo page itself is wider.

The British Royal Family has launched a photo account on Flickr.

The British Monarchy Flickr accounts features up to date images of royal engagements and archive photographs from the Royal Photograph Collection.

Flickr has released an updated version of its iPhone app, specifically targeting new features of the iPhone 4 like multi-tasking and support for HD-video uploads.

I saw an article on the the San Francisco Chronicle web site today entitled “Oakland Police Looking for Looting Suspects.” The article reports on the Oakland Police Department’s latest efforts to prosecute looters who participated in last week’s Johannes Merserle protest that turned violent with rioting and looting taking place after dark. Oakland PD has now released a number of photos of alleged looters from that evening’s protest.

Typo-prone photographers appear to owe Yahoo a "thank you."  After making at least one generous offer and then resorting to a lawsuit, the company’s acquired Flicker.com, presumably for the sake of saving people who misspell "Flickr" from visiting the wrong site.

Yahoo has been integrating Facebook into its properties more deeply, and Flickr is no exception. The company announced that it is launching a new and improved way to share Flickr photos on Facebook.

Users can simply connect their Flickr and Facebook accounts, and Flickr will automatically send updates to your Facebook feed every time a new photo (or video) is uploaded).

Face.com, the developers of the facial recognition technology behind Facebook apps like Photo Tagger and Photo Finder announced that it is opening up its API, which will allow developers to take advantage of this technology anywhere on the web. We had a chat with Face.com founder Gil Hirsch, who talked about the technology, the API, Facebook’s Open Graph, and what kind of apps we can expect to see around this API.

Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site so many people love, announced an important deal today as it named HP’s Snapfish its preferred photo printing and gift creation partner.  Thanks to the arrangement, printing pictures is about to become a lot easier for some folks, and for others, this will even be the first time a certain printing option has been available at all.

Let’s admit it: Flickr, which should have beaten Facebook to the punch, fell way behind in terms of letting its users tag people in their photos.  However, Yahoo’s photo-sharing site has now caught up, and in a couple of respects, outdone what many regard as its chief rival.

Yahoo-owned Flickr announced that its 4 billionth photo was uploaded over the weekend. It was uploaded by a user that goes by the name of "punimoe."

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is fully embracing social media with its launch of "CPSC 2.0"

The goal of the social networking initiative is to provide consumers with additional resources about product safety information and recalls.

"Through social media, CPSC can directly reach millions of the moms, dads and others who need our safety information the most," said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum.

Yahoo has released three new mobile applications for the iPhone and the BlackBerry.

Flickr for mobile has launched as iPhone app allowing users to upload, share and tag photos and videos while staying connected to the Flickr community. iPhone users can down the app via the iTunes App store.

There is a lot of redesigning of Yahoo properties going on these days. Earlier today, some big changes were announced for delicious. The Yahoo homepage was recently redone of course. Now Flickr has redesigned its search results page. The company says the new design makes it easier to browse through the billions of photos and videos on the site, and to connect to the communities that can help make sense of them.

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VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.

What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.

It may have taken the Yahoo property a little while, but Flickr’s now fully embracing Twitter.  Today, a "Flickr 2 Twitter" feature launched, and Flickr also committed itself to keeping and updating a Twitter account.

Let’s start with the Flickr 2 Twitter development.  As a Flickr representative explained in an email to WebProNews, Flickr 2 Twitter is "a new way for Flickr members to easily post images to Twitter."

Collecta, a new search engine, launched today with a unique twist… they’re one of the first real-time search engines.

Searching with Collecta, you get real-time results from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, social sites and various news outlets.

There is no hotel on Santorini that doesn’t look amazing in the photos on their website. They all show rooms with white washed walls and clear blue exteriors. Glasses of wine on tables overlooking amazing sunsets. Beauty products are the same online, promising supermodel style complexions with no wrinkles in sight. Flickr is full of photos that are "tweaked" in some way to slightly increase their beauty, and the tricks that used to be only in the realm of tabloid photo editors are now available to us all.

Yahoo Image Search has introduced a new feature that allows users to filter search results by Creative Commons license.

The Yahoo Search Blog offers more details. "When you use Yahoo! Image Search, you’ll now see a checkbox for Creative Commons allowing you to filter for images from Flickr that can be used commercially or that can be modified (remixed, tweaked, or built upon) with restrictions set by the image’s creator."