Archive for November, 2010

Protecting yourself online

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

At Yahoo! Mail, we take security very seriously, so we want to keep you informed about potential threats that we’re seeing on the horizon. In recent weeks, a new technology has raised awareness around security weaknesses that threaten Web surfers around the world.  The technology at the center of attention is called Firesheep. It’s a plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that lets users view the Web traffic of others logged onto the same unsecure Wi-Fi network and possibly steal log-in information. While the implications of this technology are serious, there are a few key tips to help prevent anyone from accessing your information:

  • Always be cautious when accessing your account when using unsecure Wi-Fi networks. Consider accessing your account only on networks that use WPA-enabled, secure Wi-Fi connections. And, you should only connect to Websites that use cookie-based authentication.
  • Sign up for a personal VPN service and use it when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network. If you’re using a work computer that has VPN software, activate it.

If you want more information about how to stay safe online, visit http://security.yahoo.com/. As always, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

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David McDowell
Sr. Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Mail

Posted in General, Yahoo! Mail US | 2 Comments »

Protecting yourself online

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

At Yahoo! Mail, we take security very seriously, so we want to keep you informed about potential threats that we’re seeing on the horizon. In recent weeks, a new technology has raised awareness around security weaknesses that threaten Web surfers around the world. The technology at the center of attention is called Firesheep. It’s a plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that lets users view the Web traffic of others logged onto the same unsecure Wi-Fi network and possibly steal log-in information. While the implications of this technology are serious, there are a few key tips to help prevent anyone from accessing your information:

  • Always be cautious when accessing your account when using unsecure Wi-Fi networks. Consider accessing your account only on networks that use WPA-enabled, secure Wi-Fi connections. And, you should only connect to Websites that use cookie-based authentication.
  • If you need to use public a Wi-Fi connection, use a POP email client to access your mail via SSL. Yahoo! Mail UK users have the ability to send and receive email using clients like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others. Make sure to set up your client with SSL for the best account security.
  • Sign up for a personal VPN service and use it when you connect to a public Wi-Fi network. If you’re using a work computer that has VPN software, activate it.

If you want more information about how to stay safe online, visit http://security.yahoo.com. As always, please feel free to contact our Customer Care team.

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David McDowell
Sr. Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Mail

Posted in General, Yahoo! Mail UK | 1 Comment »

Here Comes The All New Yahoo! Calendar

Monday, November 15th, 2010

My friend Aishwarya Mahajan is a busy guy. As the head of Livelihood Operations of Aide et Action South Asia, he’s always running to meetings with print-outs of his daily calendar to keep him punctual. When I learned about his organization habits, I had to stop his madness. So one day I pulled him aside and introduced him to the All New Yahoo! Calendar and all of its new features for helping busy people manage their schedules.

If you can relate to Aishwarya, then you’ll love the All New Yahoo! Calendar, which is designed to make it easier for you to organize your events and appointments. We’ve begun to migrate users over to the All New Yahoo! Calendar, and by next spring all Calendar users will get a chance to use it. Here are some new features that we baked into the All New Yahoo! Calendar.

Get your stuff done faster— You can view an entire month or focus on a specific date and time. You can also assign colors for different calendars and to-do lists, and drag-and-drop events between dates or years.
Sharing made easy—All New Yahoo! Calendar gives you more control to share your calendars and events. You can control how you share events and reminders by selecting ‘View Only’ or ‘Add/Edit’ modes. You can also make your event publicly accessible to anyone who knows your Yahoo! ID, send contacts a Web URL to access your calendar, or send invites to clients that support the .ics protocol.
Subscribe to other calendars—You can subscribe to other Web calendars that support the iCal address protocol.
Take your Calendar with you—All New Yahoo! Calendar supports Calendar Sync with mobile and other smart devices using the CalDAV protocol. That means you can sync Yahoo! Calendar with the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iCalendar, Mozilla Lightning/Sunbird, Palm, Alcatel, and others.
Custom themes— Similar to Classic, Yahoo! Calendar 2.0 also hosts country holiday calendars which you can subscribe to easily.

I’m proud to report that Aishwarya has moved his scheduling activities onto Yahoo! Calendar and it has made him much more organized. We hope you’ll see the same benefits too. Don’t forget to tell us what you think by leaving us a comment.

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Ashish Parnami
Sr. Product Manager
Yahoo! Mail & Calendar

Posted in Address Book & Calendar, General | 7 Comments »

Cool New Features for the Android App

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Readers might recall that back in the summer we released our first version of Yahoo! Mail for Android. We’ve been pleased with the success of both Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger on the Android platform, but of course we never stop looking for ways to make the apps even better. To that end we’ve been reading all your suggestions, and polishing the app, leading up to today’s launch of the new Yahoo! Mail app in the Android Market. So what’s it all about?

  • Multiple Accounts: Probably the biggest request we had from users was for the ability to add multiple Yahoo! Mail accounts. Well we heard you loud and clear! You can now add accounts and swap seamlessly between them.
  • Photo Browsing: If you’ve used our mobile Web HTML5 site for iOS devices you’ll be familiar with our photo features. When you receive an email with photo attachments we give you a fast preview, right in the inbox.
  • Mail, IM and Video: When you install Yahoo! Messenger on your device, you’ll be able to see the online presence of your contacts from within Mail. With one tap of a contact you can trigger a new message, view contact details, start an IM, and even begin a video call without ever leaving Yahoo! Mail.
  • Contact Sync: You can now access your Yahoo! Contacts from your device contacts app with ease, wherever you are in the operating system.

You can visit the Android Market to download the apps to your phone today. Leave us a comment and tell us what you think, or send us feedback directly from the apps. We really do read every message, so if you have a great idea for the next version we’d love to hear about it!

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Lee Parry
Product Manager
Yahoo! Mail

Posted in General, Mobile | 12 Comments »

Love Yahoo! Mail Beta? Download A Wallpaper for Your Computer

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

If there’s one thing that most Internet users in Southeast Asia agree on, it’s Yahoo! Mail. The most popular email service in the region, Yahoo! Mail is number one in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and a strong second in Singapore (Source: Comscore, Sept. 2010).

Last week’s release of Yahoo! Mail Beta gave our more than 16 million regional email users a reason to celebrate. Now that Yahoo! Mail Beta is live, we at Yahoo! Southeast Asia thought we would try to add one little cherry on top. After knocking around a few ideas with our crack UED team, designers of sights like Yahoo! OMG Indonesia and Yahoo! Movies Singapore, we decided that users in Southeast Asia and around the world might like a few wallpapers to trick-out their PC desktop with the same styles that we used to redesign Yahoo! Mail Beta. So, today we are happy to present two flashy Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpapers, a gift from Yahoo! Southeast Asia to our users in the region, and all of the 273 million Yahoo! Mail users worldwide.

800x600 Paper

Paper

800x600 Bubble

Bubble

Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpapers are a way for Yahoo! Southeast Asia to say thanks for making an email product that meets the needs of users in our region. Yahoo! Mail Beta’s focus on speed is a direct response to markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Philippines, where fast Internet connections and computing power are harder to come by. Yahoo Mail Beta’s tight social integration will also be a big hit in our region, especially in Indonesia, home of the world’s third-largest Facebook user base and the world’s highest concentration of Twitter users (Source: Comscore, Sept. 2010). Better mobile email access is also a big win in Southeast Asia, where mobile Internet use is skyrocketing, and in Singapore, the country with the world’s highest penetration of iOS devices (Source: Ad Mob, April 2010). And of course, all of our users will appreciate Yahoo! Mail Beta’s great spam protection, unlimited storage, and easy-to-use interface.

Each Yahoo! Mail Beta wallpaper comes in four different sizes, since we know that all PC desktop screens are not created equal. To download the wallpapers, click on the links below to match your monitor resolution, and then right click on the image to set it as your desktop background.  And if you like them, let your friends know too. You could even send them an email with the good news!

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Isaac Souweine
Product Marketing Manager, Southeast Asia
Yahoo!

Posted in General, Yahoo! Mail | 9 Comments »

Thanks for Your Feedback about Yahoo! Mail Beta

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Since we launched Yahoo! Mail Beta a week ago, I’ve been reading your feedback. I’m thrilled to hear your passion for the new product. Your comments have helped us identify what we need to fix in the short-term and how we should evolve Yahoo! Mail in the long-term. On behalf of the Yahoo! Mail team, thank you.

I’d also like to answer some of the most common questions and concerns about Yahoo! Mail Beta. From reading comments on the Yahoo! Mail Blog, on Facebook, Twitter, and the suggestion board, there are a few consistent things on your mind:

  • Unread message count: We released an update to Yahoo! Mail Beta that addressed this issue. From now on, the unread message count will not include unread messages in the Trash and Spam folders.
  • Browsers: Yahoo! Mail Beta works best with Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and newer, Safari 4 and newer, and Chrome 5. But, we’re no longer going to block Chrome 6 or Internet Explorer 9 users from accessing Yahoo! Mail Beta. And, we’ll continue to support more and more browsers as we approach general availability.
  • Link to Calendar: We’re glad to hear from our Calendar users! We’ll be adding a link to Calendar in short order.
  • Colors & themes: What, you don’t love purple? Not to worry, we have an assortment of great color options and themes coming soon. We’ll be sure to tell you all about them on this blog when they launch.
  • Header: It sounds like some of you would like more room to read and compose messages. There are changes to the interface coming over the next few months that will give you more options. Stay tuned.
  • IMAP: We support IMAP on many popular mobile devices. Today, our focus is to support the tremendous growth of our mobile IMAP users.

Keep sending us your comments and suggestions. We need your help to make Yahoo! Mail even better.

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David McDowell
Sr. Director of Product Management
Yahoo! Mail

Posted in General, Yahoo! Mail | 35 Comments »