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

As you may have heard, we’ve been working on a new smarter inbox to help make your life easier. We’re happy to announce that today, some of you will begin to experience the smarter inbox, and we wanted to give everyone a chance to see what it looks like and what it can do.

The smarter inbox experience features a new Yahoo! Mail Welcome Page which surfaces messages, information and activity updates you care about most, as well as an updated inbox and folder view that filters messages from your personal connections.

The smarter Yahoo! Mail inbox also gives you immediate access to relevant third-party applications like Flickr, Flixster and Xoopit allowing you to do much more, and be more efficient, all from within your inbox. Take a look now and let us know what you think!

- Yahoo! Mail Team

Update: We are conducting a very limited beta test right now of the open applications in Yahoo! Mail. Only our power users, who were invited into the limited beta, can test out the new applications at beta.mail.yahoo.com. We will be extending this beta test to additional users over the coming months.

Read more »

Despite my earlier efforts to share these visionary suggestions with screenshots, it seems that people continue to rely heavily on search engines to get to their Yahoo! Mail account. Now if you simply like that process, more power to you. But if you would like something with fewer steps, do I have the video for you. Please excuse the stuffiness of the voice over. Not only was my voice born for print media, I was fighting off some seasonal allergies.

Read more »

In reading some of the recent comments on this blog, I’ve noticed that some folks have the impression that some of the recent changes going on around the network (updated profiles for example) are happening for no reason.  So I thought I would take a moment to give a refresher on the big picture.

You may remember back in January I posted about Jerry’s presentation during CES.  In it he spoke about a more open and social experience for Yahoo! users.  He also showed off the concept for Yahoo! Mail incorporating applications that leverage some of the social connections you have with others on the network.

Over the last few weeks there were two major developments that represent big steps in that direction.  First we have the changes to profiles.  More recently, Jay Rossiter (SVP who is helming the whole “open” thing) announced on Yodel that the doors for developers have officially opened.  Here’s a chunk of what he had to say about the plan.

Most obvious will be the social aspects. At a high level, we’re rolling out a social platform that will draw on the hundreds of millions of connections on Yahoo! – everything from random encounters with someone who commented on the same photo as you, to deep connections you have with friends who know nearly everything about you. By using the social contacts you already have on Yahoo! — through Mail, Messenger, Flickr, Finance, Fantasy Sports, etc. — we’ll make those social connections more active and useful. Most importantly, by enabling developers to make your social connections specific to the Yahoo! service you’re using, we believe you’ll enjoy some incredibly unique and creative new experiences that we would never have thought of.

Some developers were able to get a head start on this by participating in the Yahoo! Open Hack Day in September.  Developers spent much of the event working on applications that would benefit Mail users, but the concept spreads across the network.  Xoopit managed to pull down the best overall award with an application for Mail that gave users the ability to easily browse within Mail for media files that are attached to messages.

I know that this won’t answer all questions people have, but hopefully it’s reassuring to see what some of the stuff is building toward.  You can even take a gander at the Mail related section of Jerry’s video for a refresher.

Read more »

It is with much excitement (and much relief because I can stop ducking the questions) that I can share with you the news about our All-New Yahoo! Calendar.

You’ve been asking (a lot) and I’ve been rather coy, but now you know why. Yahoos have had a chance to play with it for a few months now, and I’m very comfortable telling you (and all of my friends) that it is worth the wait.

Granted many of you may be wondering why an online calendar is that big a deal. After all, despite the fact that most web-based mail services have integrated calendars, adoption has remained somewhat low (by comparison). We think that is going to change, and here’s why:

• Open standards like iCalendar and CalDAV make all calendars work together so people can share their schedules online without the hiccups of the past.
• Broadband and mobile device ubiquity means you’re always connected, even if you don’t like to admit it. You need your busy life to be in order and follow you wherever you go.
• Web 2.0 technologies have made it possible to incorporate very cool visual effects and practical functions like event discovery.

By leveraging some of the technology that the Zimbra team has brought to the table, and by working with many other groups in the online calendaring community, we have brought a lot of exciting stuff to the new Yahoo! Calendar. One of the components we deemed most critical was improving the ways for you to connect with your friends and family – even those who aren’t using Yahoo! Calendar. Our new Calendar is interoperable with the other popular services, including calendars from Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Mozilla, and Google.

Other bells and whistles include:

• Subscribe to any iCalendar-based public calendar and add upcoming events and show times to your Yahoo! Calendar. This means you’ll be able to plan for a local concert when your favorite band comes to town and you’ll know when the next new episode of 30 Rock will air.
• Personalize your Yahoo! Calendar with interesting photos from Flickr to make your online calendar as visually appealing as it is productive.
• Set email, IM or SMS reminders for important activities and never miss a birthday or anniversary again.
• Easily drag and drop events to reschedule appointments without having to refresh your Web page.

And this is really only the beginning. We are working on auto-sync capabilities with Outlook, options to download relevant calendars with ease (think sports teams, class schedules, etc.), and snazzy integration with many other Yahoo! properties.

So whether you were among those who have been eagerly awaiting news of an update, or are just someone curious about how useful an online calendar can be, you should head over to http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com and sign-up for the best Yahoo! Calendar we’ve ever offered. The early stages of the Beta are limited, so get on the waiting list now!  If you want to take a look before you sign-up, or want our Calendar guru (Herbert) to show you around, check out the screencast below. We’ve also got a jumbo version if you’d like to view the video more clearly.

Read more »

If you are an active emailer of images, you’ve probably already noticed this recent enhancement. But just in case you hadn’t (and because I was excited to test out a different screencasting tool) I wanted to give you all a demonstration of the all new image viewer we’ve incorporated into the All-New Yahoo! Mail.

Never before has it been so easy to get a quick look at images in your inbox! Hope you enjoy the video, and please feel free to make any suggestions for other features you would like demonstrated or explained.

Ryan Knight
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

Read more »

First off I want to thank everyone who responded to last weeks polls. It was very interesting to learn how our breakdown of New and Classic users is (almost 2:1 in favor of New mail), that the vast majority are using either IE or Firefox on Windows XP, and that we have such a passionate group of Linux users. I do apologize again to the Linux fans out there. As a longtime Mac user myself I should be more sensitive to users who stray from the majority . Thanks again for all of the great feedback, and I’ll be posting more polls soon!

For today’s post I wanted to accomplish a few things. Thank you for voting in the polls (check), refresh everyone on an important safety tip to foil fraudsters, and play with some fun software that I learned about at Blog World. Ok, that last one was really the one I was most excited about, but I’m glad I could fit in the other two. The Jing Project is the name of the site and it’s a great tool for grabbing visual content from your screen and sharing it with friends (it even features Flickr integration!).

Many of you have probably noticed that little folded down corner at the top right of the sign-in box. Well that is the Sign-In Seal, and this video will show you how it works. (more…)

Read more »

If you’ve been following the news flowing out of CES in Las Vegas, you’ve probably already heard that Chief Yahoo! Jerry Yang presented some glimpses of the possible future of Yahoo! The 45+ minute presentation leads with some interesting advancements in Yahoo! Mobile, but the real meat & potatoes portion (at least for Mail users) comes about 30 minutes in.

Jerry then gives a concept demo (translation: not an example of what the product will be, but more a look at the direction we are headed) that shows a very integrated type of next generation user experience built largely around Yahoo! Mail.

ZDNet’s Dan Farber gave a pretty detailed recap on his blog, and since I care about all of you so much (or because I never miss an opportunity to play with video software, you choose ) I went ahead and captured the Mail portion of the presentation in a separate video clip. It’s still a pretty huge file, so if you aren’t on a fast connection you may want check out a streaming version of the whole webcast (high, medium, low) and just eagerly await the Mail portion (starts at just about 29:30).

(more…)

Read more »

A lot of you may be off work this week (regardless of what you celebrate) and trying to remember all the great stuff that happened this last year while you get ready for 2008. Perhaps you are compiling a Year End Recap (like I am … be sure to check back next week ), or maybe you are trying to find a receipt from all that online shopping you have been doing recently (again … that could be me), or maybe it’s just like any other time of year and you are looking to track down a specific message.

Anyway … whatever your reason, the advanced search feature in the All-New Yahoo! Mail makes it REALLY EASY to sift through all that email you’ve sent and received to find the one you are looking for. Narrow down that search by a wide list of criteria (sender, recipient, subject, keywords, date, etc.) and find it fast. For our latest screencast I’ve staged a little search scenario to help demonstrate how it works.

You can check out the hi-res version here or view the embedded version below.

Ryan K.
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail

Read more »

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

Read more »