Introduction

We started this blog almost a year ago in November 2005. It has been a source of information for updates and useful tips for those interested in Yahoo! Mail Beta. Today we take that to the next level. But first, an introduction…

My name is Ryan Kennedy. I’m the lead engineer on the Yahoo! Mail Web Service (I spend most of my day writing code). Some people may know me from my personal blog where I talk about Yahoo! Mail quite a bit. Or perhaps you know me from the Y-Mail Yahoo! Group, where I’ve occasionally been known to stop by. Maybe you dropped in on my talk about the Yahoo! Mail Web Service at the Yahoo! Open Hack Day.

Well, as if I don’t have enough to do with my normal day job, I’ve recently had my role expanded to include being a Yahoo! Mail Beta evangelist. Evidently people here at Yahoo! realized I was already spending a bunch of time informally as an evangelist that they might as well make me an official evangelist and I’m thrilled about being given this opportunity.

What exactly does that mean? What’s this evangelist business all about? Well, to start I’ll be taking over posting duties on this blog. I’m hoping to post more frequently than we have in the past. I’m also planning to utilize my engineering relationships with the other teams responsible for Yahoo! Mail Beta to bring more in-depth posts. In parallel, I’ll become more actively involved in our self-sustaining community of users on the Y-Mail Yahoo! Group. Come join us!

Which brings us back to now. I’ve got some cool stuff in mind. I’m already working on some material for the blog. I should have some new posts starting next week. Some nice, juicy stuff. Additionally, I’m trying to get together some screencasts of the hacks that were built at the Yahoo! Open Hack Day using the Yahoo! Mail Web Service. Some really cool stuff was built that not a lot of people were able to see.

So fire up those aggregators. Updates are on the way!

Ryan Kennedy (rckenned AT yahoo-inc.com)
Yahoo! Mail Beta Evangelist