The company plans to unveil facelifts to its free e-mail service and search results.

Ping Fu, the CEO of Geomagic, must have really impressed President Barack Obama.

Fu, who earlier this year was invited to Obama's State of the Union address, has now been appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

She'll be joined by another Tar Heel, Holden Thorp, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As part of changes rolling out this week, Yahoo will import personal updates from Facebook's social network for users who want a bridge between two of the world's most popular websites. The Facebook link will need to be turned on by each Yahoo user.

Yahoo's mapping service development lags compared to its rivals. Nokia's smart phones are not popular in the U.S. Can the partnership solve each other's problems?

It never hurts to get yet another reminder that we live in a region known for its strong economy.

Durham and Raleigh both make a new list of "20 Cities Surviving the Recession," compiled by MainStreet and Yahoo Finance. The list points to metropolitan areas "where the recession is ending -- and you might be able to find a job."

Durham gets a nod for its pharmaceutical, higher education and research industries and stabilizing home prices. Raleigh's base of strong business and higher education communities gives the city "a strong foundation for recovery moving forward."

The Triangle routinely makes such "best of" lists, especially for business and careers, so it's easy to become jaded. But those types of lists help to attract more jobseekers and businesses to this region, which, in turn, bolsters the local economy.

Others on the latest list include Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; Huntsville, Ala.; Boston; San Francisco; and Salt Lake City. Raleigh and Durham are the only North Carolina cities on the list.

Read the full list online here.

The Associated Press and Yahoo announced a deal that will allow Yahoo to continue posting AP content in exchange for for an undisclosed amount of cash.

It's coming on Christmas. They're cutting down trees. And Interstate 40 is still closed at the Tennessee border, because of an Oct. 25 rock slide.

NCDOT is using dynamite and dump trucks to remove tens of thousands of tons of boulders, to repair the roadway - and (hopefully) to stabilize the hillside so this won't happen again. I-40 won't reopen until spring.

If your holiday plans include a drive through the Smokies, you'll want to take care in choosing your route. (And if you've found a good one, please let me know by e-mail or in a blog comment below.)

NCDOT is sticking with its suggestion that drivers stick with interstate highways: ... [MORE]

Russell Barrett reports that there's more than one way to get around the rock slide that closed Interstate 40 a month ago just east of the Tennessee border. (See today's story, with a map of NCDOT's recommended detour.)

How you get there depends on where you ask for directions. Barrett found that some online mapping services will lead you into trouble - but some give good guidance.

Here's what he found when he consulted four of them. (I've added links to the specific maps and directions.)

After reading of the continued problems with I-40 in the mountains this morning, I checked four online mapping programs to see if they were aware of the situation. I used Lake Junaluska as the starting point and Knoxville TN as the finish.

The results: they batted .500.

Yahoo and Google maps both routed around I-40. ... [MORE]

Lulu.com, the Raleigh-based online book publisher, has inked a deal with Yahoo that will expand its potential audience.

Yahoo will post Lulu's weRead book discovery application on its redesigned homepage starting today.

The tool allows readers to use Facebook and other social networking sites to find new authors and recommendations from other users. Readers also can catalog their book collections and rate books and authors.

Posting the application on Yahoo's popular home page also could increase interest in Lulu's self-published authors and drive traffic to its main Web site. Yahoo ranked third in Internet visitors in August, after Google and Microsoft.