Even setting aside the environmental impact, this qualifies as a good deed; in a post on the Yodel Anecdotal blog, Chris Page noted that the Brazilian village most affected by the hydropower only had access to diesel generators before.

Still, the main motivation was the company’s drive to go carbon neutral.  Page wrote, “Yahoo! has decided to offset its 250 thousand metric ton carbon footprint from 2006 . . . .  What does 250 thousand metric tons look like?  Think of taking 35,000 cars off the road for a year, or turning off the lights on the Vegas strip for two months.”

This is a fairly big deal, in other words.  And it’s also a fairly smart PR move – Yahoo’s getting some publicity and “green cred” even as it accomplishes its pre-established goals.

On a less serious note, I have to point out that we all figured Google would be the world power within 20 or 30 years.  If Yahoo’s generating electricity, though, it could change that outcome.

One change will see numbered pink circles getting replaced with helpful words.  “The new Flickr map will display tags that will hover over specific locations, representing interesting and newsworthy things going on there,” according to a post on Yodel Anecdotal.

And that would be enough to get some people excited – it’ll make browsing Flickr’s geotagged photos a much more straightforward affair.  A more interesting development, though, should be the release of “Places Pages.”  Photos will be grouped according to the area in which they were taken, and that’s just the starting point.

Users should be able to sort pictures according to “popular tags, relevant Flickr groups, featured photographers of that region, along with local information such as a detailed map, current time, and temperature,” writes Kakul Srivastava.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to say when all these updates will be released.  Flickr’s not likely to keep users in suspense for too long, though, so look for something to happen within the next few weeks.

More than 100 million Telefonica subscribers, representing 15 countries in Europe and Latin America, will soon find their mobile Web experience infinitely more efficient and rewarding.

That’s a nice, healthy chunk of the global population that will see Yahoo oneSearch on its mobiles every time they use it to look for weather, news, and other information. They will also be able to use Yahoo Mail and the Flickr photo sharing service through the service.

Boom did leave out one little detail about the deal. OneSearch delivers advertising to the screen. Maybe he thought it would be unseemly to mention this revenue aspect of the Telefonica arrangement, but picking up a hundred million mobile users in one deal is the kind of win Yahoo needs to tout.

The deal revolves around Yahoo oneSearch, which has a habit of undergoing huge growth spurts.  This new development won’t disappoint; oneSearch product should be made “the main search service on Telefonica’s mobile portals in 15 countries in Europe and Latin America, potentially reaching more than 100 million consumers worldwide,” according to a press release.

That’s impressive.  And Steve Boom, the senior vice president of Yahoo’s broadband and mobile division, later revealed in a Yodel Anecdotal blog post, “As of today, oneSearch is the priority search service for over 200 million mobile consumers through seven major mobile operators in nearly 30 countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  Our ultimate goal is to connect one billion mobile users worldwide, so you can count on more to come.”

In the meantime, Yahoo’s sitting pretty.  Telefonica also seems pleased about whatever benefits oneSearch may bring to its users.  There appears to be a bit of an imbalance in the relationship, though, so we should note that the deal’s financial details were not disclosed.  It also remains unclear how long the deal may last.

Finally, there’s no telling if Telefonica could draw Yahoo into F1.  But if oneSearch continues to spread so quickly, it’s almost inevitable that the two will meet at some point.

Yahoo Hacks New Shopping, Travel Products

Though the intent of the Hack Day focuses on creating nifty applications while taking an enjoyable break from the daily grind, the efforts sometimes yield something that’s so good, they have to share it with everybody.

Bradley Horowitz, VP, Advanced Development at Yahoo, blogged on Yodel Anecdotal about a couple of applications that have made the grade. These products put a new twist on the existing services they complement.

For shoppers, the Shop by Color hack offers a palette of 56 hues for refining product searches. Click on a color, and it returns results for mint green or black or whatever the shopper chooses.

Clothing shoppers will likely be the group that finds Shop by Color most useful, but Horowitz wrote that beauty, home & garden, and electronics categories also benefit from this new hue of search.

The MapMixer for Yahoo Travel combines maps uploaded by users with Yahoo Maps of an area, and gives those uploaded maps Yahoo’s functionality. One example shows a map of USC’s main campus overlaid on the much more generic map of the area.

These maps can be embedded in sites and blogs for sharing with others. It’s an amazing little use of technology that should make MapMixer a very popular and useful tool.

Yahoo Takes BlueLithium For $300M

Yahoo Publisher Network’s Todd Teresi disclosed the acquisition on the Yodel Anecdotal blog. The company will pay about $300 million in cash for BlueLithium.

Teresi said the purchase fills a gap in what Yahoo can offer its advertising clients. “They provide the dashboards and insights our performance customers have been asking for – capabilities that have been a bit of an Achilles heel for us,” he said.

Performance marketing is simply the quest to turn a website visitor into a converting customer. That conversion can be a purchase or any other activity an advertiser deems worthy of marketing dollars spent through an ad campaign.

Teresi noted performance marketing “has been exploding online over the past year because it

If you don’t know what The Onion is, tough shallots – I’m prepared to move on without you.  And so, apparently, is the fine company is question.

“I was surprised to learn that they’re read in 752 countries, have news bureaus in 412 countries, are broadcast on 14,800 radio stations, offer a 24-hour news network, have a multinational intelligence agency, own 95% of all grocery store circulars, are the proprietors of an upscale haberdashery, offer mercenary embedded journalists for hire, and employ newsboys from an orphanage, which they also run,” wrote Yahoo’s Nicki Dugan on the Yodel Anecdotal blog.

For that matter, The Onion may also have an influence at Yahoo; this would explain why Koechley wound up in Sunnyvale instead of the famed Googleplex.  It would also account for a few recent moves on Yahoo’s part; I remain confused by one exec’s decision to combine Canada with Europe (strategically speaking), and a Yodel Anecdotal post about a cricket victory seemed rather out of place.

Ah, well, anything for a laugh, and from the sound of it, Koechley got a lot of them during his stay at Yahoo’s headquarters.

Yahoo Better Than Google At Unimportant Games

Andrew Cocker (of Yahoo UK & Ireland) went to the trouble of writing a Yodel Anecdotal post about that last win.  Cocker normally works as a senior marketing manager, but since he also served as UK Cricket Team Captain, the task was in his proverbial strike zone.

So, for the Yahoo-Google match-up at Lord’s, there’s a moment-by-moment account that means nothing to me (as I know nothing about cricket), and the final score put Yahoo at 137 and Google at a “paltry 120.”  Whoops.

Google’s reputation took another very tiny ding during a slot car race at SES San Jose.  “It was an exciting and tense race, with each of the participants balancing control and speed just as real race car drivers do,” writes Stephan Spencer on a CNET blog.  “And, like real races, the cars were painted up to represent each company’s logos.  In the end, Yahoo took the checkered flag, followed by MSN Search in second, and (oh my goodness) Google losing the race!  (Ask was a no-show.)”

Next week: a test of brains and brawn in a Yahoo vs. Google match of thumb wrestling!