Yahoo! MapMixer is Cool

Just as it was becoming clear this week that Yahoo! Co-Founder Jerry Yang’s first “100 days” as CEO isn’t setting up to be all that, a stream of new toys, deals, and partnerships have been announced. MapMixer is a product of Yahoo! Hack Day, according to TechCrunch and Reuters, and as you can see above, it enables you to overlay graphics on Yahoo! Maps (above is the USC campus, zoom out for full effect). Of course, not everything scales so nicely (see the Chicago ‘L’ map).

Yahoo is seeking more applied ingenuity and is pronouncing it’s “openness.” (NOTE: Jeremy Zawodny posted a much-better-written rebuttal/addendum to the BizWeek article on his blog.)

Is this real or a back-against-the-wall reaction to the apparent leak of a Google in-house video purporting a confluence of Google apps in a streamlined Facebook platform sort-of-way? Was Page and Brin’s $1.3 million landing at NASA’s Moffett Field near the Google HQ merely a decoy to overshadow speculation on the video? Is it true that there’s a bubble keeping the fog and cold bay air out of Silicon Valley?

The real big deal for Yahoo! this week was the announcement of a hefty deal to serve ads for Bebo, one of the most popular social networking sites in the UK (and a oft-rumored acquisition interest of Yahoo).

Also, tonight marks the launch of a partnership with Woot.com in which one item per night is featured on Yahoo! Shopping for purchase at sellout.woot.com.

Woot! will continue offering nightly deals. Woot, based somewhere near Dallas, has expanded in recent months to offer a weekly wine special and a daily shirt. It seems the Sellout idea could be a bit disconcerting for traditional Yahoo shoppers; the link directs you to a Woot site and requires a Woot — not a Yahoo — login. The only hint of a Yahoo presence on the purchase page is the purple background. While Woot clearly benefits from this, it’s unclear exactly how Yahoo profits — aside from some form of revenue sharing — although the client is taken off of Yahoo property with no intuitive way to return.

Amid all this action, good news on Yahoo! Sports besting, ESPN for unique visitors in August, evidence of the nascent omg! microsite gaining audience share on TMZ and People, and the debut of Halo Films coming this Friday. But also — the bad and questionable news. Premature invites for Yahoo Mash (nee Mosh), whispers of Yahoo music’s imminent demise, and reports that the presidential mashup project has gone soft. All the while, the stock price is flirting with the 52-week low.

Could turn out to be a pretty exciting run up to day 100 for CEO Yang after all.

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MORE COVERAGE: Yahoo! VP Bradley Horowitz pumping the Hack concept in blog and in an interview with Read/Write Web.