Yahoo! Mail Blog
The latest scoop on Yahoo! Mail product updates, new releases, bug fixes,

I may be quite proud of my recent screencast work, but in the event that there are people out there still seeking enlightenment (or simply a clearer description of how this works), I thought it might be nice to show you one of the newest additions to the Tutorials family: Text Messaging With Your Contacts.

The following sections are all included in the tutorial, and give lots of good examples and explanations.

• What Is…
  
• Signing In to Chat
• Sending a Text Message
• Switching Between Texting, Chat, and Email

BTW … our Tutorials team is always looking to make them better, so after checking them out please be sure to answer the “Was this helpful?” and provide any feedback you can!

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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Got a question about the Rugby World Cup?
Ask Jonah.Lomu@yahoo.com and get an answer.

Rugby’s first global icon Jonah Lomu, arguably one of the most influential and inspirational players in the history of rugby, will be online direct with sports fans every day throughout the 2007 Rugby World Cup. Sports fans can ask Jonah questions and interact with him directly on his daily blog during the Rugby World Cup.

Ask your question
So, if you’ve got a question about the Rugby World Cup you’d like answered by Jonah. Just shoot him a question via email to jonah.lomu@yahoo.com. Jonah, although he’s quite busy, will answer one question a week. And the best questions will get a personal reply from Jonah and be featured on his blog. Plus you’ll win some signed merchandise.

C’mon England!! (Sorry Welsh, Scot and Irish fans, but my loyalty lies with the sweet chariot :-) )

As always – Happy emailing
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Team

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We all get some unwelcome emails from time to time. You probably do what I do and just press delete, but sometimes you need a bit more muscle on your side to deal with them.

That’s where the Address Blocker comes in handy. It stops emails from addresses you don’t want to hear from. Just what you need? Then here’s how to do it.

Click Options, then on the list on the left click Spam. Right in the middle of the page you’ll find a space in the “Blocked Email Addresses” section. All you’ve got to do is put any email addresses you don’t want to get mail from in here, then click Add.

So whether you have some annoying spammer who has targeted you, feel like some scammer is phishing for your info, or you just have some regular old person who is kind of harassing you, this is where you can designate them for blocking.

Told you it was easy.

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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Judging from the weekend comments, and because my last post answered one of the other pressing topics, the big question on many of your minds is “When will my account be switched out of beta?”. Unfortunately the official answer is, I really can’t say because exactly when the roll-out reaches you depends on the “farm” (short for server farm) where your account “lives.”

So to elaborate on this mysterious process, I managed to track down Skotch Vail, Director of Yahoo! Mail’s Front End (translation: the engineering folks working the rollout), and while I can’t tell you all individually when your accounts will go live, I can now offer a little more background on the process involved.

So without further ado, here’s the scoop. As has been mentioned before, there are A LOT of accounts to transition: 255 million (according to comScore). All of these user accounts are divided up into hundreds of farms. In advance of every release, we go through extensive internal QA, followed up by selective roll-outs to large numbers of employees (extended QA), but since we cannot replicate every possible scenario of user behavior, browser selection, computer hardware, operating system, and feature usage, we gradually roll the product out to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible.

As we roll the updated code out to each farm, our engineers are closely monitoring for unforeseen issues. It’s also a fairly complex process because of the different types of Mail accounts on our system.

Of course you will now ask why we announce before everyone has it. We know that once it goes out to anyone, word travels fast, so we’d better make sure we explain ourselves. We realize it’s not a totally perfect process, but we really feel like this is the best way to handle something of this magnitude.

Hopefully that helps explain things a little, and thanks much to Skotch for taking the time to chat.

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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So, nothing ever goes quite as planned. And if you were trying to access the blog this afternoon, you may have seen the “undergoing maintenance” page. And of course it took much longer than I would have liked. But I guess it just happens sometimes.

So what’s new?
Well I upgraded to the latest version of the blog software and changed the template that we were using. So if you are a regular visitor to the blog you might notice some changes to the layout.

We’re also going to be adding some tips to the blog. You can see where they will live from the new pages in the top navigation. Me and other team members (oh, and I think we’ll be looking to get some tips from you too) will be adding tips to help you get the best out of Yahoo! Mail. So stay tuned for that.

I hope you like the new look. Please let me know by leaving a comment.
As always… Happy Emailing
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team

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I always like to end things on a high. That’s why I love being able to add a special signature at the end of my emails. Just a little something that’s all mine, with some contact details thrown in for good measure. You can do it too. Add a saying, a proverb, a phrase that sums you up. It’s up to you how you sign off.

It’s easy to do, just start by click on Options, then selecting Mail Options. In the center of the page after “Signature:” select “Show a signature on all outgoing messages”. On the far right of the message window above the text area click either Plain Text (yawn) or Rich Text (cool and colorful stuff) before you start writing your signature in the text area. As you can see from mine I opted for Rich Text, and even included a sprinkling of HMTL. There isn’t an option to manually insert or edit HTML, but you can copy/paste from other pages if you have something you want to use. Finish off by clicking Save Changes, and you have a signature.

There you go, hope you enjoy it!

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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This time I’m not talking about unlimited storage. I’m talking about our mascot Liam – and boy he’s a big one. Think New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade big.

see more pics on Flickr

To celebrate the fact that we’re removing beta from Yahoo! Mail Beta, the team at Yahoo!’s campus in Sunnyvale celebrated with an enormous, inflatable Liam. Over 40 feet tall and able to float over tall buildings in a single bound, the celebration was meant to be as big as all the features we’ve been able to pack into the new Yahoo! Mail.

Consider these features:

• Unlimited storage
• Drag and drop
• Preview pane
• Select multiple messages
• Right-click
• Keyboard shortcuts
• And more….

Coming soon
The term “beta” will be removed from Yahoo! Mail Beta in a short while. We’ve all worked very hard to bring you the best mail product available, and will continue to work hard to keep it the best.

Why’s he called Liam?
Well, he’s actually based on a real person on the Yahoo! Mail team. But his name was chosen for a good reason. Can you guess it? Read it backwards…

Happy emailing
Andrew – Yahoo! Mail Beta Team (soon to be just Yahoo! Mail Team :-) )

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***UPDATED 10/25***

It seems that one of the more frequent questions popping up in the comments on this blog has to do with switching from original (or “Classic”) mail to the to the New mail, or vice versa. I’ve taken a stab at answering it a few times within comments, but maybe a full fledged post will help get some more eyes on the information.

Can I switch between old and new Yahoo! Mail?

For sure! We understand that it’s not easy to switch away from a format that you’re really comfortable with. So we made it super-easy to switch back whenever you want. You can switch up to the new and back to the old as often as you want. We hope you’ll see how much the new Yahoo! Mail improves on the old version. But until you agree, here’s how to switch back.

Under where it says “Welcome, yourname” at the top of your Yahoo! Mail page, there’s a “Mail Classic” link (”Switch Back” for those still in Beta). Click that link to go back to the Classic, or Original, Yahoo! Mail version you’re already familiar with.

There is also an opportunity to switch if you visit the Options drop-down menu. At the bottom of the menu is the option to “Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic…”

After initiating the switch, from either link, you will see a pop-up informing you that you are about to switch back, asking you to confirm or cancel, and asking for feedback. If you do decide to switch back this is one of the best opportunities to be heard regarding why.

To come back to the new Yahoo! Mail, just click “Options” in the upper-right corner of your Yahoo! Mail page. On the Options page that opens, the message ” The new Yahoo! Mail has arrived! Try it now!” appears in the upper-right corner, just below the “Options” link. Click “Try it Now!” to get back to the new Yahoo! Mail.

So now you have no excuse not to try the new version.

Hopefully this helps clear things up.

***UPDATE***

I’ve heard that some people may not be seeing the same link options to upgrade back to New Mail once switching back to Classic.  You should still see the Purple Box shown above if you click on the Options drop-down and select “Mail Options”, but you should also now see also see a link in the very top right of the window (a little to the right of your Yahoo! ID) that reads “All-New Mail”.  Clicking there will also take you to the New Yahoo! Mail.

Hope that helps.

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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It took a little longer than I had hoped, but through some trial and error (and a lot of screencast software testing) I have pulled together my first screencast demonstration. Hopefully the volume levels turned out OK, but if not be sure to let me know. Also feel free to list other demonstrations you would be interested in seeing.

In the brief demonstration you will see how the new SMS feature integrates seamlessly into the Mail and Messenger interface. My apologies on the blurry nature of the picture.

DOUBLE UPDATE: Big thanks to Ryan Kennedy for giving me the lowdown on uploading a larger file. Not only have I recorded the video again (a bit clearer and a lot louder), I now have a link to the original video capture (much larger image, and considerably clearer) that you can watch if you like. Check out the hi-res version here.

Ryan
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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This doesn’t really have anything to do with Yahoo! Mail, but while I’m working on a screencast demo of some of the new features (aiming for Friday! Tuesday :)) I thought I could share with you a little behind the scenes action from the Yahoo! campus.

Thanks to our friends over at Yahoo! Music, singer/songwriter Emily King stopped by and performed some songs for everyone lunching outside of URL’s (our campus cafeteria). Throw in some frozen lemonade and it was a good time for everyone.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the whole thing so I’m unable to confirm whether or not she played the moving, though clearly inaccurate given today’s weather, cover of Ain’t No Sunshine.

You can see some additional pics over on flickr.

See you next time!

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Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

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