Things you can do with Yahoo!

A Little Bit of History

I could not remember the time when I first signed up with a Yahoo email account. The oldest email I have in my mail box was dated back in the year 2001. How I wish that I had the first welcome email from Yahoo.

However, I do remember that I did not sign up with Yahoo at first. Hotmail was my first email account and coincidentally, the oldest email was also dated back in the year 2001.

Back in those dates, the largest mailbox we could ever get was 1MB and it slowly increased to 2MB and up to 1GB or more these days. Incredibly, Yahoo offers unlimited storage space.

As an Email Account

Of course most of us know that Yahoo provides email accounts. As I mentioned, it has unlimited storage space for its users which is one of the great advantage of using Yahoo over other email accounts. And after using it for so many years,
it never fails me.

Users get two choices now which are the Yahoo Mail Classic and the All-New Mail Yahoo. After using the All-New Mail Yahoo, I switched back to the classic one instead. Once of the reason is that it is slower and if I have too many emails in one folder, I will have problem in reading them or moving the emails around. Indeed, the interface is much more like an email application but classic is much faster.

Part of the reason of slow access, I believe is because of the ability to access Yahoo messenger from the All-New Mail Yahoo.

In order to access Yahoo POP3, you will need to upgrade yourself as a premium user which you need to pay $19.99 per year. However, there is a freeware YPOPs! that acts as a gateway to provide POP3 server interface to connect your email application with HTTP browser interface. That will save you $19.99 per year if you really need to have POP3 interface.

My Yahoo!

This functions is similar to iGoogle and I prefer My Yahoo! because it is better organized and comfortable to use in my opinion. From here, you can access your bookmarks, emails, facebook, calendar, rss feeds and the likes. You can create pages with custom names and most importantly, you can access them from anywhere as long as you have internet access.

Organizer

Bookmarks

I tried a lot of online bookmarkers but none of them really work for me. They are either slow to access or troublesome to setup. I ended up with Yahoo Bookmarks. You can install Yahoo Bookmark as a toolbar in your browser but you will not be able to access your bookmarks anywhere you like unless you have your portable applications. By setting up My Yahoo!, you can have Yahoo Bookmarks as a module.

You can add bookmarks through the module but organizing them or adding a folder will be troublesome as you need to enter Yahoo Bookmarks page. However, a little of effort in setting up the bookmarks is worth than trying to synchronize the bookmarks for the browser at my workplace and the browser at my home.

To Do List

I have my To Do List right at the center of My Yahoo! which will remind me of the things that I need to do. It is simple add and remove tasks with priority settings.

Note to Self

Some of the tasks which are not so important, I will put them in this section. This module is like a sticky note and you can type in anything you want.

The difference between To Do List and Note to Self is that I can delete a task in the To Do List easily while I have to edit Note to Self in order to delete the things that I have typed in it.

Yahoo Calendar

It may not be as powerful as the functions that you get in an email application; however, it is still sufficient for me to plan ahead. You have the choice to view events in advance in a calendar month of choose to only view events.

Communications

Facebook

Do not expect this to have powerful functions but you will be able to update your status, know if anyone pokes you or sends you a message.

Y! Messenger

You are able to sign in to Yahoo Messenger using this module and it is an alternative choice than using All-New Mail.

POP Mail Preview

I have an email account with my service provider and I have always been using Yahoo to check that email account. Even though I have forgotten the password, but I have saved the password in my Yahoo account. I had contacted my service provider about the password changing procedure but I was lazy to follow up. Well, another excuse.

Gmail Preview

I can find a Gmail Preview module but not Hotmail preview. Isn’t it nice to be able to view all sorts of email account that you have in just one page?

Yahoo Mail Preview

If you are in My Yahoo!, you can still see your emails through this module. You can select the number of emails that you want to preview. The problem with this module is that you can only preview your inbox. If you have a set of rules to organize the emails that go into your mailbox, then you are not able to view other folders than inbox.

Other Modules

There are a lot more modules to be explored. You can view the latest news from international news to football and local news. You can create a new page and insert all your tracking rss feeds so that you never miss out of any latest topics. You can add a Flickr module and view the latest pictures posted.

What’s more? Podcasts, youtubes, technology, blogs, entertainment, currency converter and many more.

Verdict

The reason I choose My Yahoo! over iGoogle is because of its stability. I tried iGoogle but most of the modules are created by users themselves and do not have the standard design or look. Some of the modules, such as email previews, are
created to steal users’ passwords. Although I cannot verify this, but I believe that things get more complicated when users are able to create module themselves.

Overall, I love My Yahoo! right at the moment and I am able to organize my web workplace more efficiently and effectively because I am able to access it anywhere.