Yahoo's New Email

Yahoo recently released its new version of Yahoo Mail to its over 280 million users worldwide. At present, it is the most widely used email in the United States. While there are some issues that have not been resolved, the new interface is faster and cleaner. Over 6 months ago I did a post on Yahoo Mail that included discussing their beta email system that was then being developed. Well they have made the changes they considered necessary and released the new Yahoo Mail.

One of the things I like most about Yahoo Mail is the ability to drag an email from one folder to another with the mouse. Simply left click on the message and move it to the folder you wish to move it to. Even the widely heralded Gmail does not have this feature. There you move an email message from one folder to another by selecting the message(s) you wish to move and then select the "Move To" tab and from the drop down menu select the folder you wish to move it to. This is certainly more time consuming.

Yahoo Mail has also integrated certain applications with its new email to facilitate communicating with friends and family. For example if you are planning a family reunion you can send an Evite invitation directly from your own email page. You choose a design for your invitation and create it just like a hard copy invitation you send in the mail. The difference is that this is a computer generated invitation that is emailed and resembles the paper one. You also save on postage. For those who use Flickr to store and share their pictures, you can email your Flickr pictures from your Yahoo account.

Further, I like the interface between contacts and email. With Gmail unless you are using keyboard shortcuts you need to click on "Contacts" or "Mail" in the upper left hand corner of your Gmail interface to go from one to the other. With Yahoo Mail, to go from one to the other you click on the "Inbox" or "Contacts" tabs that are easy to find above your inbox or contacts respectively. You also have the ability to preview your messages at the bottom without opening them which is also a good feature.  

This email is not perfect by any means. I mentioned in my previous post about Yahoo Mail that in order to delete spam messages you are prompted if you are sure. Other mail services realize if you are deleting a spam message there is no need to prompt to confirm you are sure about deleting them. However when deleting a message from your inbox or another folder, you are not prompted to see if you are sure about deleting. I do not understand why Yahoo is so concerned about you possibly deleting a spam message in error while not as concerned about you deleting a message from your inbox, sent or other folders. I hope this is simply a glitch that Yahoo will correct in the near future.


While Yahoo Mail is improved, there are still some unresolved issues. You are limited to 100 email filters whereas other email services do not limit the number of filters. You are limited to blocking 500 email addresses. If you wish to view your Yahoo Mail in an email client such as Outlook or Windows Live Email you must upgrade to Yahoo Plus for $20.00 annually. Upgrading also gives you such features as a limit of 200 email filters and no ads.  Another knock on Yahoo Mail is that the spam filter leaves a bit to be desired.  Yahoo has said that this issue has been addressed with their new release.  Time will tell if this is so.


In all Yahoo is one of the better email services.  With its good and not so good features, you have to decide for yourself if it is the one for you.

Flickr - A Different Type of Photo Sharing Site

If you not only enjoy sharing photos but also being able to learn about photography as well, then you may wish to check out Flickr. Flickr is owned by Yahoo and a Yahoo account is required but worth it if you wish to have a Flickr account. As of a year ago, Flickr had over 26 million users.

A free account allows you to only see the last 200 pictures you have posted and you can only post a picture to 10 groups. Groups relate to a topic which can be related to camera gear used, locations, types of photos, etc.  You can discuss in these groups not only photography but also topics relevant to the group. If you are travelling, there is probably a group for the places you are visiting that you can check out for pictures posted in the group and even post questions or comments about the area.  For $24.94 a year you can get a Pro account. This enables you to have stats on your account, unlimited uploads and storage, ad free browsing and other benefits. No matter what type of account you have, you can tag your photos which enables pictures to be found easier when doing a search by topic.

This is such a popular site for photography that in May of 2009 the official White House photographer Peter Souza started to use Flickr as a way to release White House photos.

If you have even a passing interest in photography this is a site worth checking out. You do not need to have an account to go through the site and check out the pictures and groups. You may decide to stay awhile.  Click to see pictures in my Flickr account.

Maps Online - Part I

Some may remember the days of going to the neighborhood gas station and getting a free map to plan your trip or if it was a trip farther away, writing and getting directions from the oil companies such as Sinclair, Esso, etc.  Well those days are long gone.  They have been replaced by online maps, GPSes and even smartphones.

For online mapping there are 4 primary websites: Bing Maps, Google Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.  Bing Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps will be covered in this blog.  Google Maps will be covered in a future blog.

Bing Maps is the new map on the block comparatively speaking.  The map allows you to get directions for driving, walking or public transportation.  It also is easy to send the directions to your email or cell phone.  You can get directions based upon current real time traffic conditions though this is generally limited to the major thoroughfares. Directions do note at the end of the route if you have reached a certain location that you have gone too far which is a nice touch.  The "What's Nearby" feature is also useful.  I found it easy to zoom in and out using the road view and arial view.  Where it has already been photographed, the Streetside view has clear pictures an certainly clearer than the heralded Google Maps. However when moving along the street in Streetside view there is not an indication of about where you are.  I do like the 3D views with which you can rotate/pan and zoom functions. That said, it is relatively slow to open and also to go from view to view as well as going to the location you choose.  There is certainly room for improvement here.  Also if you wish to reverse your route after you have gotten directions, you need to go back to the search page. This is not a good thing.

MapQuest has a lot of the features that the others have with 1 notable exception. You cannot use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out on the map. You can only get directions by car.  No walking, public transit, etc. directions can be obtained using MapQuest.  It has a street view known as 360 view but the areas available are relatively few and slower than expected.  I did not find 360 view to be user friendly. Like the others, there is a way to search for businesses in the area.  MapQuest has a drop down menu of choices or you type your own in the search bar under "Find a Business".  A real good feature of MapQuest when searching for directions is you can get turn by turn directions if you wish.  This and Google Maps are the only ones of the 4 maps where you can do this.  Bing Maps allow you to go to the text indicating the turns and click to go to the location on the map but MapQuest's turn by turn directions is preferred.

Yahoo Maps offers live traffic and a points of interest finder.  It also computes a route rather quickly.  Yahoo Maps is better used to computing a route by car. There is not a way to determine a route by other means.  Yahoo Maps is also the only map that I am reviewing that does not have any drop down menu for locating businesses. Google Maps does have a very limited one which is stretching it a bit and will be covered in a future blog as noted earlier. You also can use it to find a business along the map that is showing on the screen.  This is done by typing the category in the search bar under "Find a Business on a Map".  It is more of a no frills map to mainly be used for directions by auto and finding a business.  There is no street view like in Bing Maps or Google Maps.  Further you cannot get a map for turn by turn directions or click on the text directions to go to that part on the map.

One final note here.  All 4 maps allow you to click to change a route by dragging any part of the route.

Also for those subscribing by email to my blogs, please check your spam settings if you are not receiving them.  Some have noted that the email of this blog has gone to their spam folder.  It should be marked as "not Spam".

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail is the second largest webmail provider with approximately over 275 million users as per a May 2010 interview with Yahoo! Mail's Carlo Catajan. It offers unlimited mail storage with attachments limited to 25mb per email message. Because of the large amount of subscribers there is also Ymail and Rocketmail which offers the same benefits of a Yahoo mail account. I find the interface to be very user friendly.


You have the option of a preview pane.  Unlike Windows Live Hotmail where the preview pane can be on the right side or bottom of the page, in Yahoo Mail it can only be at the bottom of the page. This give you the ability to in effect delete the message without opening it after seeing it.  One of the better features is like Gmail, the email message you are composing is saved as you are writing it.  However, like Gmail if you leave Yahoo without saving the message as a draft, you likely will lose it.  In other words, save your message every so often as insurance of a crash or other reason for you to be knocked off. 


Not everything is A-OK about this webmail service.  I cannot understand that when you want to delete a spam message you are prompted if you are sure. The other mail services realize if you are deleting a spam message there is no need to prompt to confirm you are sure about deleting them.  The drag and drop feature is deceptive.  It really does not allow you to move between folders by dragging it into another folder.  This however is corrected in the beta version where you can drag a message from one folder to another.  


Yahoo Mail works well with Yahoo Contacts.  The issue with Yahoo Contacts is that when importing contacts from another application it is not seamless.  For a business, the name may end up being the email address.  You would need to manually change. 

If you currently have a Yahoo email account go to http://features.mail.yahoo.com/ for the beta version. One disadvantage of the beta version is to go to "Options" you need to go to click "Help" and then "Options".  The non beta version has a selection for "Options" that is easy to find and you do not need to go to another selection prior.  I would anticipate that the bugs in the beta program will be corrected prior to it going live.  If you wish to not use the beta version after trying it, you need to go to "Help" then select "Return to Original Mail".

In all it is a solid email program.  It has a relatively easy to use interface which is more user friendly than most.

A Concern About Yahoo Calendar

Earlier this week I was helping a friend who uses Yahoo Calendar and was having issues with it. What I found was cause for concern. I did a little research using my existing Yahoo account which I do not use much anymore. Let me first start by saying that between Friday February 18 and Monday February 21 the calender that was in beta version for Yahoo was released as their new version. My friend had prior to February 18 converted from the older calendar version to the beta version and was having issues with the beta version. This past Friday that version was still in beta. With my Yahoo account I successfully converted my calendar to the beta version. I saw this disclaimer which led me to believe I could switch back if I was not satisfied with the beta version (see the disclaimer terms noted in 2). I switched to the beta version with the intent of switching back as there was nothing in the disclaimer to make me believe I could not switch. As a matter of fact,what was mentioned was what I would lose if I decided to switch back. However, when I tried switching back there was not a way for me to switch back. Upon further searching, I found a link that I cannot switch back to prior version. While I certainly do not think that Yahoo deliberately is setting up people to switch, I do feel that given the disclaimer I should have been able to switch back. With Yahoo Mail,one can choose from their current version, classic version and beta version switching as you see fit. Why can you not go between the old and new Yahoo calendar versions? I will add here that if you have had an existing Yahoo account, you are not presently required to switch to the new calendar. However if you were to now open up a new Yahoo account, you are given the new calendar version.

My concern is that there are likely others who made this switch but were not able to switch back.  As I noted, in Yahoo mail you can go back and forth between 3 versions including the beta. Why not allow the same for their calendar especially in light of what I had mentioned? If anyone from Yahoo reads this and wishes to respond, I will publish their response. We all know Yahoo has been having issues as of late and has reduced staff. They should step up here. When I used their service on a more frequent basis, I was satisfied. I note that Google's email service and calendar surpassed them a while back. Their new calendar still does not have quite a few features that Google has but it is improved and I like the interface better than their previous calendar. I hope that Yahoo does the right thing and allows those who use the new Yahoo calendar to revert back to the previous version if they wish.