Yahoo 360, now in beta, is "an easy way to keep connected to friends and family with blogs, photos, and more." All you need to start up with Yahoo 360 is a Yahoo ID, and voila! you've got your Yahoo 360 page. You get free unlimited storage for pictures (a nice touch), and if you have a Flickr photo stream account you can just use those (Yahoo also owns Flickr).

If you are a Firefox user, you'll have to install a special little photo upload utility. This took me about 5 seconds, but it was annoying that I had to restart my browser in order to upload pics.

The blog allows you to create a blogroll, and motoblogging is enabled as well. Motoblogging "lets you instantly post text and photos directly from your mobile phone", something I could probably do if I didn't drop my phone the other day and crack it all up.

Yahoo 360 not only has all the above features, but you can invite friends over for a nice little chat; creating your own personal social network. Friends can be categorized - you might want to create such boundaries as "friends who owe me money", or "friends who tell me I look good in those pants when I know darn well that my butt looks like a wildebeest". Or not. You come up with your own.

You can check your Yahoo mail directly from your Yahoo 360 page as well, and invite friends and family to link to you with a nifty personalized invite:

"I've created my own place on Yahoo! 360 and I'd like you to connect to me so we can stay in touch. You can view my blog, my photos, my lists - and all sorts of things that matter to me. You can create a personal page and blog of your own, which will be linked to mine. That way you'll always know when I post something new." Feel the Love!

Lots of communication settings available, such as choosing which online nick you'd like to be known as, if you want your page available to the public, age, location, and if you want other people to be able to find you.

Yahoo 360 is remarkably similar to a few other social networking tools out there, most notable Multiply.com, but I want to give Yahoo props for allowing unlimited photo storage. And good Lord, did I just say "props"? Well, it's hot outside, what can I say. I think that Satan himself is playing in my sprinkler trying to cool off, it's that hot. Dang.