Great ‘People of the Web’ feature
This doesn’t have anything to do with Yahoo! Mail, but I couldn’t resist sharing it. You might have seen the feature when it originally ran last month, but Yahoo! News featured former software engineer, and current budding rock star, Jonathan Coulton in the People of the Web section.
The story tickled me a few weeks back, but during some weekend traveling I had an opportunity to listen to more of his music and my friends and I thought it was fun, hilarious, and entertaining. Especially his folk rendition of a Sir Mix-a-lot classic (yep … that one).
Anyway, I’m still planning to provide you all with some quality Y! Mail content this week … but couldn’t resist.
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Ryan K. Community Manager Yahoo! Mail |
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- 15 Comments
March 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
i like u
March 10th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
So you have nothing to say about Y-mail again this week?
Spare us your interest references elsewhere.
This is supposed to be the mail Blog
March 10th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Doyle,
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I’m still committed to providing readers with news and information about Y-Mail, but from time to time I’d still like to offer up fun stuff about Yahoo! too (even if not about Mail).
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Don’t worry, this vast majority of posts will still be Mail focused.
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Ryan K
March 10th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Hey Ryan,
I appreciate your attempt at sharing something of personal interest, and I also understand why others may not. It may be wise to refrain from offering a personal opinion or preference for something, unless it’s added to something that does relate directly to Mail.
In my opinion, the design of these Yahoo! Blogs forces information to be layered so deeply that it makes any kind of interactivity between readers and authors nearly impossible. For example, the problems and errors people have reported in comments about Mail — they’re scattered throughout all of the postings.
If I have a question or problem relating to my personal Mail account, I have no idea if the question/problem has already been reported and, if so, whether or not the concern was addressed. I would need to go back to November of 2005 and read through all of the comments and responses you’ve provided. The exception would be when you actively post an article that directly addresses a question or problem that probably affects a huge minority — if not majority — of users.
Would you consider having a 360 site — or perhaps a web site hosted by Yahoo! — that allows you greater freedom to organize the information provided by you as well as your readers? An entire sub-domain could be used to just categorize and list the technical concerns you receive. That way everyone would easily know what is on the “back burner”, so to speak.
The more I read this blog, the more I think that you need more advanced tools to organize the information for the readers. Maybe it’s easy for you to extract information on your end, but it’s not on mine.
One added benefit of having a 360 site or a full-scale web site is that you could have a page with your bio, and perhaps have a column where you could comment on things like Yahoo!’s ‘Great People of the Web’ feature.
I received a response from you in the posting titled ‘Need help managing that Preview Pane?’ from Feb. 5th (2008). In your response (comment #25565) posted Feb. 6th, you stated that you would look into the concern with regard to security and the Preview Pane. See my post on Feb. 6th (comment #25517) for a review of my concern. Are you still working to get a response? Have you forgotten about it??
Well, I am thankful for having at least some kind of forum to address concerns and questions about Mail with an official Yahoo! representative.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:18 am
He had something to say about Yahoo Mail last week. Both of the posts had to do with Y-mail: one post showed how to integrate several services with Y-Mail to make it easier to stay in touch with people. The other post discussed recent problems with Y-Mail.
Most of us wind up mentioning problems that we’re having with our mail accounts, but unless I’ve missed something, I wasn’t under the impression that this blog is meant as a technical support forum. We’re all frustrated sometimes and wind up ’shooting the messenger,’ so to speak, but I’m sure Ryan is doing the best he can with what Yahoo gives him to work with.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:23 am
My webmail has not been down at all! Interesting…
March 11th, 2008 at 6:53 am
hi do mind love
March 11th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Hi Jason,
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All very valid concerns, and I’m trying to find ways to make discussion easier to track (for both sides).
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However, the ultimate problem is that this isn’t a support forum, despite the efforts of some readers to make it one, and some sort of dedicated message board would evolve into that.
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Not saying you should all feel sorry for me (and this challenge), cuz I signed up for this gig, just trying to reinforce that this isn’t simple to solve.
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Hopefully what we can accomplish here is that I can help communicate your feedback to our internal decision makers, make them more aware of how our decisions may impact your experience in unexpected ways, and help our engineering folks become aware of broader site issues (and resolve them).
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At the same time, when there are larger issues I want people to know that they can look here for updates. However we can’t always post about more isolated issues, because that tends to confuse more people than it helps.
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With regard to your questions about Preview Pane … you should expect a response soon. It requires some additional research, and recent issues pushed it to the back burner.
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Thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback.
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Ryan
March 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE NEW YAHOO MAIL?
It is always”checking mail”, “loading mail” or sending server error codes such a 12002, 12007 and causes so much aggrevation.
I can log on to hotmail read and reply to all in the time it takes me to get the first message loaded to read in yahoo.
yahoo has only been this way for me since after December.
Good luck and I hope you problems don’t cost you clients when you begin to charge!
March 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Ryan, Thanks a heap. That particular Geek exemplifies what the Internet is all about. As a retired geek myself, I can really dig his whole approach. I so appreciate that you shared this with us. Thank you.
mz
March 13th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Yahoo! People of the Web is a good channel to feature hidden talents and let the World appreciate.
All “main course” without “dessert” is boring. Thanks for Sharing on Coulton.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Hi Ryan! I liked your article, it’s good to have some “personal” stuff every now and then…we cannot be that “stiff” all the time, can we? Cheers, R!
March 18th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I have been giving out my email address to different web sites and because I am asking questions about Mr. Obama they are not reconizing my address. I have questions which I believe should be answered and can’t get through.
Why not?
Anyway I will try here.
My nephew was here the other day and we were discussing Mr. Barak Hussein Obama and how a newspaper got into trouble publishing his middle name. He stopped and said Hussein and Obama.
Didn’t Nostradamus say that the 3rd anti-Christ’s names were something like Hussein and Obama and isn’t that why everyone said.
1. that it was Sadam Hussein and
2. that it was Osama Bin Laden.
I know that again this will not get anywhere but doesn’t it give you room to think; I know it sure got me thinking.
I looked up Nostradamus and it is hard to just get his predictions off the internet.
If anyone knows of a good site to do this please post it on here.
Thank you
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:40 am
I’d like to make a simple suggestion fot Yahoo MAIL. I’d like to have the ability of being able to embbed a picture in the Email instead of the “attach method”. What Outlook Express can do.
How hard is that?
April 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
This is a really great and informative article. Thank you very much for posting it!