The Yahoo! Developer Network announced the release of the Yahoo! Updates Firehose service, a Web service for accessing and searching the full, real-time index of Yahoo! updates and a stream of activity from various Web services like Flickr.  

The Yahoo! Firehose is accessed via Yahoo! Query Language (YQL), an SQL-like query language that is used as the primary vehicle for accessing Yahoo! data and services. It allows developers to call, update, and combine data from across Yahoo!  for use on sites and within applications. 

Using YQL, you can now query the Updates Firehose for common keywords used across all updates, updates from a specific application, all updates of a specific language, updates associated with a location, updates associated with a specific URL, or updates of a specific type (including status updates, ratings, comments, and reviews). The latter caused a small stir in the comments of the official announcement.