As you may have read in Brad's post, Joe and I will be moving over to the Download Squad blog.

Don't worry, you'll still get to see the fanatical obsession of new Y! builds and services that you've come to know from us (in fact, I noticed today a new Y! Mail build...)

I'd like to thank everyone that's read my drivel here and taken the time to comment on the posts.

So, come on over to the new location -- we'll be sure to have cold one's in the fridge for you...

Wondering where your morning fix of Joe Beaulaurier and Chris Price has gone? We wanted to expose their obsessive and expert coverage of Yahoo! to a larger audience, and we asked them to join the Download Squad team. Download Squad is our blog about the user experience in all kinds of software and online services. Joe and Chris accepted our offer, so as of today you will find their posts on Download Squad.

You can roll your Download Squad experience in several different ways:

BOOKMARKS

Main blog:
http://www.downloadsquad.com

The Yahoo! category:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/yahoo/

All Joe Beaulaurier all the time:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/bloggers/joe-beaulaurier/

All Chris Price all the time:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/bloggers/chris-price/

RSS FEEDS

Main blog:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/rss.xml

The Yahoo! category feed:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/yahoo/rss.xml

The Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog will remain exactly where it is, with its tremendous archive of blog entries. Use it as a reference point, and point your browser/newsreader to Download Squad for the continuous Yahoo! updating you've come to expect. Thanks for reading!

Yahoo! Local has seen a lot of new features over the past year. According a recent JupiterKagen study people have taken note of its value:

"Local advertising media should broaden their distribution using syndication and data services to compete with portals," said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. "Yahoo! currently has more market share than the next five services combined, including both Google's and MSN's local services."

I think there is a real possibility of being too little, too late if existing local media do not starting acting soon. I also think Yahoo! would be amiss if they didn't provide local media with the means to build branded local channels.

Think Yahoo is going the way of the dinosaur because of Google's recent roll outs which make it look more and more like Yahoo? Don't be too sure.

But it only helps to irritate the masses when Yahoo!s get excited about the kewl factor and forget that bright shiny apps sometimes lack usability. Such was the case with the Yahoo! Local 4th of July Mashup.

This nifty app was presented to visitors at www.yahoo.com as the front-center feature on July 4th (US Independence Day). Launch it and wow! it looks kewl. but move the map to your city (it's a safe assumption you don't live in one of the cities on the app's short list) and it looks more like poop.

This is apparently a demonstration of what can be done but it's not actually doing it. So why place it on the front page? The end result is to feed the angst of people trying to stick with Yahoo!.

Usability should be prioritized far above the kewl-factor when making these placement decisions - unless trying to impress fellow developers while disappointing users are the objectives.

Even though my actual cell phone isn't listed on Y! Mobile, I can still access the website just fine from the phone's browser.

Today, when I connected I came across a link to a Beta of the Y! Mobile Mail service. We all know it takes far less than that to convince me to activate \ download a beta application...

Instead of the Folder list of old, you are now presented with the Inbox messages at the top. You can still get to the rest of your Folders further down the page. As with the Y! Mail Beta, really Search is also prominent, making it easier to find the messages you want to read.

At first glance, I like it - I'm only really interested in new messages, so this new layout puts what I want up front and center.

Thanks to the Y! Mobile folks for continuing to modify the service for those that use it.

I have to admit - I do love new toys, and cell phones are no exception...

I recently dropped my old phone due to poor service and replaced it with a shiny new Samsung A900. I did get to transfer the number, so all I really wanted to do is tell Y! Mobile about the change in the handset.

I go through the registration process and discover that Y! doesn't have my model listed as available - the nearest is the A700 which isn't really the same.

Does anyone out there know how to get the newer models listed on the service?

I noticed last night a new update for the Y! Toolbar for Firefox extension has been released, taking us up to v1.2.1.20060626

I don't notice anything that's significantly changes, maybe our readers can help me out there (or the devs themselves).

As usual, either grab it from the Y! Toolbar site, or just have Firefox check for updates.

From the comments to my last post, it looks like I'm not the only one that's taken longer than the 10 days to get into the new Y! Photos beta.

It appears that there is a bug with Y! Users that also have tied their ID and Phones together on Y! Mobile. Maybe it's related to the Y! Photos Mobile beta that I posted about before.

I'm told that this is why my access is delayed, how many others have the same problem is unknown.

The good news is that the developers are aware of the problem and are squashing that bug - hopefully that'll get us on soon...

While visiting the Yahoo! Messenger with Voice landing page, I noticed a plugin being promoted that I saw real value in using. It is the Gamechannel plugin.

For those of you who haven't heard of Gamechannel, it is a feature of Yahoo! Sports where you can open up a small browser window that streams real-time data about whatever game (baseball, football, etc.) you want to keep an eye on. It's pseudo animated and relies on eye-catching graphics to provide as much information as is possible in a limited space.

So after seeing the plugin being promoted and realizing no link was being provided to it, I raced over to the Application Galley for Messenger Plugins and searched for "gamechannel." Nothing! Awk... What could this mean? So I backed out and using Y! Search looked for "messenger plugin gamechannel." Near the top I see a link to the India localized Application Gallery. What the heck? So I went there and found the Gamechannel plugin. I downloaded it and am happy to announce it's better than I expected.

Why it's not in the US Application Gallery is anyone's guess but I learned it's best to access the "Worldwide" Application Gallery in the future.

Today, Yahoo! opened a public beta for the new, rebuilt from the ground up, version of Y! Messenger for Apple Mac users. It requires OS X and includes many things the Windows version has had for some time such as Avatars/display images (not just smilies anymore), new sounds, webcam support and changeable status messages. It is equipped to be interoperable with Microsoft Live (MSN) Messenger when it and Y! Messenger open the gates (no pun intended).

I recently found myself with a Mac with OS X on my desk and have been using both Y! Messenger and iChat. The older Mac Y! Messenger was really crippled compared to what I was accustomed to on my WinXP machines. After all, it hadn't been updated in a long, long time. This new beta version addresses all of that.

My office mate is a die-hard Apple fan(atic). He hungrily downloaded and installed the new Y! Messenger for Mac. Upon launching it, he exclaimed, "Oh man, it's a complete knock-off of iChat!" He then listed off several new features as evidence. I pointed out that all these features have been available in the Y! Messenger for Windows for some time. That seemed to dissuade his concern about Yahoo! ripping off dear old mother Apple.

One item that made me go "Oh!" is the mail alert that appears on the desktop momentarily. It is semi-translucent black like a Widget. Very slick indeed. Yes, I guess I am easily amused.

 

According to this post on Yahoo! Next, the Yahoo! Mobile folks are testing some new feature that get you directly from your cellphone to some of their services - IM, Mail, Address Book.

Of particular interest is that Mail access is done via IMAP and appears to work on any IMAP email client - including Thunderbird. Non-web client access has been a Plus feature for a long time now - and is arguably why so many people subscribe to the upgrade.

Just plug the following into your client and use your Y! Account \ Password to access it:

• IMAP: imap.next.mail.yahoo.com
• SMTP: smtp.next.mail.yahoo.com

Using these settings, you can access free accounts with a full client (I never upgraded after Yahoo! Plus was discontinued) - does this mean that the feature will become more generally available in the future?

[Update] As JR mentioned in the Comments - don't all go IMAP crazy and crash the servers. He suggests setting your client to poll every hour.

Alternatively - just use the Y! Mail Beta - real-time messages and most of the functionality of a desktop client, but in your browser.

As we've posted, the new Yahoo! Photos has gone into Closed Beta. Some of us have been lucky enough to get on the new version earlier than others.

When I requested the beta access, it mentioned it would take 7-10 business days to convert me - well that was yesterday and I'm still not there.

I'm guessing that demand was greater than the capacity, but I would've liked being told that when I signed up.

Any of our readers actually sign up and get converted yet? I'm going to stick with my Flickr Pro account for now...

I've been encountering problems with logging in to Yahoo! last night and again this morning. Sluggish to get into mail and I have been unable to log in to Messenger at all this morning. I thought it may be an isolated problem until I noticed a huge amount of TUYW traffic hitting Jason's post from two years ago which asks the biting question, "Is Yahoo IM and Yahoo email down for anyone?"Seems it may be.

Can a Yahoo! from the login/registration group or elsewhere shed some light on this for the benefit of the whole?

UPDATE: 8:30 Pacific Time
I've chatted with several folks (using Messenger, yeah) from various areas in Yahoo! who were surprised to hear that anything beyond Yahoo! running sluggish was happening. Granted I have yet to correspond with anyone from the Y! Registration Group and I think they will know best what's happening and what can be expected in the near future as far as a resolution or the need to be patient for a while.

I've noticed mail is taking almost an hour to arrive.

We'll keep you updated as we can. Keep an eye on the comments to this post.

UPDATE 10:50 Pacific Time

LaunchCAST in Y! Messenger won't launch. "Sorry, we were unable to connect to the media, possibly due to network issues. Error Code: 21"

 UPDATE: 1:00PM Pacific Time

According to an article on News.com,

 

"For a brief period early this morning, certain areas of Yahoo were inaccessible to a portion of registered users due to software-related issues," Yahoo spokeswoman Kiersten Hollars said in a statement. "We have identified the issue and corrected it. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience, and we apologize to our users who might have been affected. We take these issues extremely seriously, and Yahoo is instituting new processes to protect against similar incidents from occurring again."

I guess Kiersten doesn't read this blog since we had to find this out elsewhere. She really should. It'd probably help her a great deal.

 

Yahoo! Messenger is about to get a significant new feature in the upcoming Yahoo! Messenger v8.0 beta that's to be released real soon now.

Consistent with other things on the Yahoo Developers Network, this release will allow 3rd parties to hook directly into the Messenger client to provide functions not currently available. Plug-ins will be held in the Developers Gallery that Yahoo! is moving all it's add-ons to.

Plug-ins can interact with Messenger in a couple of ways:

• Tab plug-ins will allow you to display information in Messenger windows
• Conversation plug-ins will let you interact with other users

The Messenger Gallery is live now, but it doesn't look like the Download and Developer pages are up yet.

I'll post impressions once I can grab the latest beta (regular readers know I'm a sucker for beta code...)

This past week, the Yahoo! 360 team let loose a slew of new features that the community has been wanting for some time now.

Several of the features look to bring in some of the functionality of MySpace - we've seen many complaints \ comparisons of the 2 services on the Y-360 Groups for a while.

Custom Themes - Now you can make your page look as nice, or as ugly as you want. Thankfully, the team realized that there are issues with this approach and give you an option to 'View without this Theme' when viewing a 360 page.
Mature Content - I've seen more requests for being able to block Mature content than anything else. Now, you can designate your Blog Posts as Mature - either individual posts, or the entire Blog. Users can then tell 360 if they want to be able to view them - the service will automatically move them out of the view if so desired.
Personalized Comments - This is a 'shoutbox' type function that applies to your Main page - you can leave short messages that can be read by all visitors.
Embedded Media - Joe just posted about getting creative with embedded Video, the team just made it a whole lot easier. Music can be added to your Blast and Video to your Blog.  I'm happy to see that neither will play automatically - that turns me off faster than the bad themes...

Thanks to the developers for listening to the Community and giving us these new things to play with.