New Home Page Design for Yahoo! (May 17, 2006)

Yahoo! has released its new design for the home page. (If you are still getting the old design, look for the link that takes you to the new one.) Over the years, most "new" homepages for search engines have been fairly non-consequential reorganization of items on the page and changes in colors. In this case, the re-design is primarily a re-organization of the page, but I think most users will indeed, once they get used to it, find it easier to use. Among the changes are:

• Greater prominence of the search functions at the top of the page.
• A more obvious menu of the major Yahoo! services (on the left of the page).
• Easier access to Mail, Messenger, Radio, Weather, Local, and Movies, by just holding your cursor over their tabs in the box on the upper right side of the page.
• Easier access to News by means of the prominence of headlines in the middle of the page, with tabs for Entertainment, Sports, Money, World, and Video.
• On the down side, the Yahoo!'s former "flagship", its directory categories, have now completely dissapeared from the page. You can still search for terms in the directory by means of the tab above the search box, but other than that, if you want to browse the directory categories, you will not find a link to it on the home page, and it is not even listed in the box that pops up when you click the All Yahoo! Services link. In that box if you click on the the All Yahoo! services link, you will find it under the "D"s. You can still get to it by going directly to dir.yahoo.com.

New Tech Section Added (May 7, 2006)

Yahoo! has added a whole new section, this one on technology (tech.yahoo.com).Consisting of three areas, Products, Advisors, and My Tech, Yahoo! Tech provides extensive information on technology products and how to shop for and get the most from those products. In the My Tech area, you are provided with the capability of tracking information on specific products of interest to you.. In the Advisors area you will find how-to and tips articles written by Yahoo's own writers and also articles from Dummies.com, PC World, and other publishers. Also take advantage of the instructional videos provided on the site and the search boxes for searching just the Tech section.

Toolbar Enhancements (March 27, 2006)

Yahoo! has added several enhancements to the toolbar:

• Getting a jump on the not-yet-fully-released Interent Explorer Version 7, which has the tab feature (a major reason for using Firefox), the new version of the Yahoo! Toolbar provides the capability of adding tabs so that you can quickly, within the same browser window, switch from one site to another.
• For the Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox, enhancements have been made for bookmarks, mail alerts (an alert can be shown on the Mail button for new mail), and spyware detection, plus the option of a button to Del.iciou.us. The toolbar also has an option to take you to Yahoo!'s Flickr photo service.

Another useful toolbar feature that was added a bit earlier: You can highlight text anywhere on a page and drag it into the serach window on the toolbar, then just click the search button to search for that text.

If you want to get a good feel for all (well, most) of the things the toolbar provides, spend a couple minutes clicking on the down-arrows found on the toolbar. The menus there provide an impressive view of the options.

"Inside Yahoo!" Has Disappeared (August 2005)

Yahoo!, for reasons unknown, seems to have dropped the "Inside Yahoo" section both from its main page and as an option on "My Yahoo". I suspect that it will return, but maybe with another name. The most "official" place to find out what's new from Yahoo's own perspective is, at the moment, the Yahoo Search Blog at http://www.ysearchblog.com/, but that covers "search" primarily and hits other features only incidentally.

Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox Now Out of Beta (July 31, 2005)

Yahoo!'s toolbar for Firefox, which has been around in Beta mode since February, is now fully released. It allows you to do the same things from a Firefox screen that you can do in the IE version, including searching the various Yahoo! databases (Web, images, video, etc,), run Yahoo!-provided anti-spy software, view RSS and other news headlines, access dozens of other Yahoo! sections and features, translate pages, add a site to My Web, be notified of new Yahoo! Mail messages,  etc.  To download it, go to toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox.

Yahoo! ToolBar for Explorer Gets an Update (JUne 28, 2005)

Yahoo! Toolbar 6.1 is now available for Internet Explorer. You will find the following in the new version:

• Smart Tool

When you highlight text on any webpage, a little icon pops up next to it. Click the arrow on the icon and you will see options to: - Search for the terms - Copy - Translate to English - Look it up in a dictionary - Turn off the Smart Tool feature When you choose Search, the concept indicated by the highlighted text is searched using Yahoo!’s contextual search tool.

• When you are on a page that provides an RSS feed, you will see a plus sign appear on the toolbar. Click on it and you can add the RSS feed to your My Yahoo! page.
• A button on the toolbar to save the current page to Yahoo!’s My Web.
• A button that opens Yahoo LAUNCH Music Engine that allows you to manage your music and LAUNCH radio.(See item below.)

Important New Link on Yahoo!'s Home Page (May 5, 2005)
If you look very carefully, you will notice a new link on Yahoo!'s home page to the right of the search box, the link to "My Web (Beta)". For more about this, see the item on this page for Yahoo! Introduces Personal Search - "My Web"
 
 
 
 

Searching & Browsing

New Personalized Shortcuts Option Introduced - in Beta (December 20, 2005)

Though a variety of shortcuts have been possible on Yahoo! for quite a while, they had all been ones predefined by Yahoo! These shortcuts enable you to get specific information easily or to get very easily to a specific section of Yahoo! by entering a minimal statement in Yahoo!'s search box.. The first type required no real "format", e.g., weather london. (See Yahoo! ot the Max, pages 37-39 and the table on page 40 for a list of these shortcuts.) The other type of shortcut took you to Yahoo! sections and required an exclamation mark in front of the feature, e.g., !mail took you directly to Yahoo! Mail.

The latter type, which uses an exclamation mark to take you to a specific webpage, has now been greatly enhanced. You can go to any page you want, particularly one you might use frequently, by creating your own shortcut, with a mnemomic of your own choice. For example, to be able to easily get to World Factbook, I could create one named !fb. Thereafter, all I need to do to get to that site is to enter !fb in the Yahoo! search box.

To set these up, go to search.yahoo.com/osc/create. Once you have set up some of these, you can see a list of your shortcuts by entering !list in the Yahoo! search box. On the shortcut setup page, you will also see how you can create shortcuts for searches.

For example, if you want to create a shortcut for simple searches on Medline Plus:

1. Go to the MedlinePlus site and do a sample search. For example, search for angina.
2. Copy the results page URL, in this case,
   http://search.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/query?DISAMBIGUATION=true&FUNCTION=search&SERVER2=server2&SERVER1=server1&PARAMETER=angina&x=55&y=8
3. Go to Yahoo!'s Open Shortcuts setup page at http://search.yahoo.com/osc/create and paste the URL into the URL box under the "Search a Site" part of that page.
4. Note where in the URL your search term appeared (in the above case, after PARAMETER=). That is the "variable"
5. Substitute that variable with the Yahoo shortcut "placeholder", %s
6. The shortcut URL will now read:
   http://search.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/query?DISAMBIGUATION=true&FUNCTION=search&SERVER2=server2&SERVER1=server1&PARAMETER=%s
7. Name your shortcut, e.g., mlp, and click the Set button.
8. Now, to search MedlinePlus for osteoporosis, in the Yahoo! search box, just enter: !mlp osteoporosis

Yahoo! Podcast Search Introduced (October 10, 2005)

Yahoo!s newly introduced podcast search Yahoo! Podcasts (podcasts.yahoo.com) may now very well be the best search engine out there for easily identifying podcasts of interest, identifying individual podcast episodes on a particular topic, and easily listening to episodes and subscribing to a podcast.(If you are not familiar with podcasts, start by going to the Help link on the site. Yahoo! provides an excellent introduction to podcasts, including how to use them and even a tutorial on how to create your own.)

Yahoo! Podcasts (which is still in Beta) provides a search box that allows you to enter terms and use the pull-down menu to search series, individual episodes, or both. To find an overall podcast (series) that covers a particular subject, choose the Series option. If you want to find every episode (individual podcast broadcast session) that mentions a topic, search by episode. On search results pages, you will see series listed first, followed by individual episodes mentioning your term(s). For the series listings, you will see the name of the podcast, a brief description, and usually a thumbnail image. Click on either the name or the image and you are taken to a "Series Information" page that Yahoo! has created that provides more information about the series including the URL of the podcast homepage, the URL for its RSS feed, ratings and reviews by Yahoo! readers, and a list of recent episodes. You can also add your own "tags" that will enable others to more easily find the podcast.

On results pages and on Series Information pages you will find "Listen" and "Subscribe" links for each series. Click on the Listen link to hear the most recent episode. Click on the Subscribe link and Yahoo! will easily get you subscribed, including choosing the "jukebox" (iTunes, Yahoo! Music, etc.) you wish to use.

"Search by Neighborhood" Added to Yahoo! Local Search (August 16, 2005)

For 60 US metropolitan neighborhoods, Yahoo! has added a neighborhood option to its Local Search. To use this, go to Yahoo! Local  ( local.yahoo.com or click on the Local link above a Web search box) and enter a city (e.g., Buffalo, NY) or ZIP code in the Location box. (Don't enter anything, such as "restaurants", in the other, "Search for", box, or you will miss the page you want.)  Alternatively, from Yahoo!'s main page, enter the name of the city, then on the results page, click on the "Local Dining & more" link that appears above the regular search results.

On Neighborhood pages (example), you will see a map of the neighborhood with icons keyed to three columns beneath the map, for: What's Happening Locally, Users' Favorite Restaurants, and More Local Favorites. Hold your cursor over an icon and you will see the name of the establishment, a user rating (by number of stars), and an excerpt of a review. In the corresponding listing in the three columns are links to take you to detailed information and to a reviews page (where you can read reviews and submit your own review) .Other links on the Neighborhood page will take you to categories of businesses, etc. (e.g., Auto Dealers, Banks), to pages for other neighborhoods in the city, and to maps for Traffic and Wi-Fi Hotspots. Toward the bottom of the page you will find links to recent items you viewed, recent searches, and recommendations based on those choices.

There is one other thing on the Neighborhood pages you may not want to miss. To the left of the three categories are links that allow you to place an RSS feed for the neighborhood's "Events and Local Favorites" on your My Yahoo! page, or to get an RSS feed link to place on other RSS readers.

When you do a local search and specify both a business (etc.) and a location (example), you will not get to the kind of Neighborhood page described above. For the 60 cites providing a neighborhood search, you will find a set of Neighborhood links, but these, unfortunately, at present do not show the three neighborhood categories mentioned above.

Size of Yahoo!'s Search Index Tops Google's (August 9, 2005)

Yahoo! has announced, by means of its official blog, that the size of its index is now larger than that of Google's index. Yahoo now claims over 20 billion items, including over 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and more than 50 million audio and video files. If tradition is followed, expect Google to suddenly discover some more in their own databases, coming up, coincidentally of course, with a number that will exceed Yahoo!'s number. Some quick benchmarking indicates that Yahoo! is correct about the relative sizes.
 

Yahoo! Introduces New Audio Search (August 4, 2005)

Yahoo! has released a powerful new audio search service (at http://audio.search.yahoo.com/ ) that provides searching of, and access to, over 50 million audio files. These include music, newscasts, interviews, speeches, podcasts, sound effects, e-books, and other audio. It also serves as a music comparison shopping site, allowing you to choose from numerous music providers.

To search, just enter some terms (subject, artist, album, etc.) in the search box.

There is no advanced search page, but once you’ve done a search you will find options on the results pages for narrowing down by Music, Podcasts, or Other Audio. For songs, you can refine your search by using the links for Song, Artist, or Album. A “More Options” link provides narrowing by a specific format, duration, source ( Web & Audio Services or Audio Services Only) and Releases (“Include alternates, imports, EPs, etc.” or “Major”)

Search results show the artist, speaker or other source, title, duration, link to a sample (if available), number of download locations,  and links to reviews and to a record for the entire album   Clicking on a title will take you to a “music shopping” page that lists the services (e.g., AudioLunchbox, eMusic, iTunes, MusicMatch, Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music) from which you can purchase the piece. This page also shows, for each service: the format (MP3, etc.), platform (Win, Mac), “Burn to CD” allowed (yes or no),  Copy allowed (yes or no),  track price, subscription price, and delivery method (e.g. download). The Delivery button takes you to the page on the audio provider’s site that allows you to purchase (and download) the item. For those purchasing music, a link to “Select your preferred audio service” enables you to identify your favorite audio provider service. When you do a search, if your service provides that song,  a direct link will be provided, next to the item on the results page, that takes you to the appropriate page of the provider’s site.
 
 
 

As promised earlier by Yahoo!, LexisNexis and Factiva content have now been added to the Yahoo! Search Subscriptions service (See below). This is a very major addition, providing integrated access for Web searchers to the content provided in the LexisNexis AlaCarte! service (20,000 news and business sources from the past 2 years) and Factiva'a iWorks service (from Dow Jones and Reuters, with 90 days of  business news and information). For users without a subscription to the services, both of these provide an easy pay-per-article option.
 

Yahoo Adds Mobile Web Search and SMS Search (July 7, 2005)

Though Yahoo! has had a mobile Image Search and Local Search for a while, you could not actually search for web pages.  Now you (US users, at least) can, if you have a compatible phone from Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon.. You can also, by means of text messaging (SMS), use a variety of Yahoo!'s shortcuts to receive text messages with your local weather, stock quotes, etc.

Mobile Web - Go to Yahoo! on your mobile phone and you will now see the Web option as well as Images and Local. Enter your search terms and choose Search. Be aware, though, that when you receive the search results and click on one of them, you may encounter a "content format not supported" message. Unfortunately, Google's mobile search seems to be more robust than Yahoo!'s since Google uses a "translator" to make even non-WAP-compatible pages readable (though not necessarily very pretty).

SMS shortcuts - With this approach, you use text messaging, rather than your browser, to get information with the same kind of "shortcuts" available through a regular Web browser. These include local weather, local businesses, stock quotes, dictionary definitions, horoscopes, WiFi hotspots, area codes and zip codes. On your phone, go to a new text message screen and enter 92466 (the keys for "yahoo") in the address box. (Don't worry if your phone automatically inserts a hyphen, it will still work.) Leave the Subject line entry, and enter the "shortcut" in the message window. for example:

    weather 22181  [your ZIP code]
    hardware 21620
    quote ibm
    define obstreperous
    horoscope aries
    wifi arlington va
    410
    Zip code crumpton md

You will receive a text message with the answer.

My Web has just become My Web 2.0, the big change being the incorporation of "community" or "social" search, where you and your friends can share your My Web collections of saved pages, plus add descriptive tags and do some other things. To understand this, if you haven't already used My Web, first read about the  old My Web below. If you already are using My Web, then when you log in, you will automatically be switched to My  Web 2, or you can go directly to myweb2.search.yahoo.com

To change your personal Web to a community Web, use the "invite" link. Once you have done so, and the invitee has accepted your invitation, you will be able to see each other's "personal Web". The more people you invite, the larger your community and the larger the collection of sites.

Now when you save a page, you can also add tags describing the page. When others in your community search, they will be able to take advantage of the tag contents, and vice versa. In addition to what the "old" My Web could do, the new version allows the following (primarily by using the links found on the main search page and on results pages):

• View all of the community's saved pages (at least those they designated as viewable)
• View all of the community's tags
• View all of your contacts (community members)
• View "Everyone's" Web, tags, and pages
• See all pages saved by any specific contact (by clicking on the contact's name in My Web results)
• Search by a specific tag (as shown and clickable in My Web results)
• Sort results by date, title, URL, or popularity
• Change what will display in My Web as the the title of a page
• Specify, for any item you save, whether it is to be accessible by only you, by your "friends" or by the community.

Though some people have shown a lot of enthusiasm for "social" searching, the jury is probably going to be out for quite a while on whether this is a big thing or something of lasting interest to only a very small portion of Web searchers. (I'd be interested to hear some compelling reasons for me to get really excited about this. Email me.
 

Yahoo! Introduces "Federated Search" of Subscription Databases (Beta) (June 17, 2005)

Making another move to make the "Invisible Web" more visible, Yahoo has introduced Yahoo! Search Subscriptions (at search.yahoo.com/subscriptions ), which allows users to simultaneously search multiple selected databases that require a subscription in order to access the database's content (typically news or journal articles) . (Without a subscription, the farthest you will get is to a bibliographic description of the items, and perhaps an abstract.)  Known in the library world as "federated searching", this ability to go out to several different online subscription database systems and search their databases simultaneously is not a new idea. Some commercial platforms have been providing this capability for several years.  Yahoo!'s experiment is the first attempt by a major Web search engine to provide automated access specifically and exclusively to such a collection of databases. Google Scholar has done this to a partial degree. Google Scholar provides a search of "scholarly" material, and search results will often include material requiring a subscription. Yahoo! has gone a significant step further: (1) It enables a user to isolate those specific services for which he or she has a subscription. (2) Because of Yahoo!'s arrangements with the publishers, if you are already logged on to your account with the provider, you will be taken directly to the content (otherwise you will be prompted to log in with you account information).

You choose which subscriptions you wish to search by clicking the appropriate checkboxes either on the main subscriptions search page, or more permanently, on the Subscription Preferences page.

Yahoo Search Subscription is starting with the following content:

   "* Consumer Reports - All online content
    * Forrester Research - All online reports
    * FT.com - All articles from the past 60 days
    * IEEE - All technical articles since 1988 and selected content older than 1988.
    * New England Journal of Medicine - All full-text articles
    * TheStreet.com - All articles from 2005
    * Wall Street Journal - All articles from the past 30 days referencing companies that are publicly traded in the United States "

                                                               (from search.yahoo.com/subscription/learnmore):

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), Factiva, and Lexis-Nexis are currently slated to join the list.
 
 
 
 

Yahoo! has now placed its Creative Commons search directly on the Advanced Search page. You no longer need to go to a separate URL to search for CC material. For details on the Creative Commons Search, see the item below.

Most of the major search engines have quickly climbed on the "personalized search" bandwagon, but once again, Yahoo! has managed to come up with a product that has a number of significant advantages over the competitors. Though there are variations, the major thrust in this arena by most of the search engines (Yahoo!'s My Web, Google's My Search History,  My Jeeves),  involves providing the ability to save a record of your own searches and the items you selected from those searches, to be able to organize them, and to go back and work with them again.

To utilize this, log in to Yahoo! and then click on the "My Web" link that you find to the right of the search box on Yahoo!'s main page or My Yahoo!, (or you can go to myweb.search.yahoo.com.) If you have used My Web before, you will see a list of previous searches. If not, you will see a "Try it Now" link that will enable you to activate My Web (and import your My Yahoo! bookmarks).

Once logged in, you will see two, instead of one, search buttons to the right of the search box, "My Web (beta)" and "Search the Web." Do a search using the "Search the Web" button and notice the additional options that now appear in each retrieved record: "Save" and "Block". If you click on "Save" that item will be added to the list of items saved in connection with that search. Notice that when you click on "Save" you are also given the opportunity to add a note of your own (You can also later go back and edit it), and to choose a folder in which to save the item on your "My Yahoo!.   Here (and later) you have the option of creating new folders.) After you have added a note and/or chosen a folder, click "Save" again and you will see the "Saved" indicator attached to that item. The Block button adds that site to a list of sites you would like excluded from future searches. These are stored in a "Blocked" folder and you can, at any time, remove a site from the blocked list.

Above your results on search results pages you will see three other new links:  "My Web", "My Search History" and "Stop".

"My Web" takes you to a list of items (Web pages) that you have saved, i.e., "your" Web. On that page you will also find:

• A list of your folders. Click on one to see items you placed in that folder. You will also find links there to Add folders or Edit folders. The latter enables you to rename or delete a folder or to make it public or private (more on this below). Among the folders you will see a History folder and a link to clear your history.
• A "My Search History" link. See below. "Stop" link. This will stop the recording of your searches.
• "Show details"/"Hide details" link. This will cause the following to be displayed or not displayed for each item: Description of the site as shown on search results pages; "How I found it" (what the search was that retrieved the item).
• A checkbox beside each item enabling you to select one or more items to move to a folder, or to email or IM to someone else, or delete.
• Email button - to email selected items.
• IM button - To send selected items via Yahoo! Instant Messaging.
• Delete button - To delete an item from your saved items collection.
• "Move to" window - To file the item in the folder you select.
• "Sort by" menu - To sort the items by date, URL, or how you found them.
• Features/FAQs link - A description of the features of My Web.
• Community - A discussion group for My Web users.
• Bookmarks - To import the bookmarks that you created on My Yahoo! or at  bookmarks.yahoo.com into your My Web.  For some browsers, you can import the bookmarks you created using the browser's bookmarks feature.
• Install Toolbar - To download and install the Yahoo! Toolbar on your browser

My Search History - This page looks very similar to the My Web page described above. What you see on the My Search history page, however, is a list containing each site you visited, whether or not you "saved" the item. This brings up to a major feature of My Web versus its competitors (some of them at least, at the moment). When you save a page using My Web, you actually save a copy of the page, not just a link to the page. If you go back a month later, look at "My Search History" and click on an item, you will go to the page as it is at the moment (as with a "bookmark" in a browser). If you save the page and go to it either from "My Web" [saved pages] or from your folders, you will pull up the copy of the page as it was when you saved it. Pages are saved on the Yahoo! computer rather than your own computer, so you can access your saved sites over the Internet from anywhere in the world.
 

The "My Web" Search Button  - With this button (located next to the search box), you can search just the contents of your saved.

Yahoo! Toolbar  --  The My Web FAQ says that the Yahoo! Toolbar makes it possible to add any page showing in your browser to My Web even if you did not get to the page by means of a Yahoo! search. If so, the way to do it is very obscure and I have not yet figured it out. However, with or without the toolbar, you can install a "Save to My Y! Web" bookmarklet button to the links bar on your browser. Go to the MY Web FAQ page and simply drag the "Save to My Web" button to your links bar. Thereafter, for any page you are on, just click on the "Save to My Y! Web" button to add that page to your saved pages.
 

Sharing - In addition to "sharing" saved sites by means of email and IM (discussed above), you can also share by making a folder "public". To do so, from the folders list, click on the name of a folder. Beneath the list you will see the Private/Public option. Click on Public. Then click on the "Preview" link to see the pages as others will now be able to see it, either by going to the URL for the page or by subscribing by means of RSS. To simply have them view it, copy the URL that you saw when you did the "Preview" and send it to those you want to share with. (Example)  Alternatively, click on the XML button beneath the private/public option buttons, copy that URL and share it with others. (Example) They can use that URL to subscribe to your folder as an RSS feed. In both cases, Yahoo! has "masked" the actual URL, so that others can view your public folders but cannot go to your My Yahoo! and change them.

In contrast to other personalized search interfaces, Yahoo! is especially strong in that it has the largest combination of features, with "basics" such as lists of searches and saved pages, but also more unique features such as folders, notes, blocking, and most uniquely, its extensive "sharing" capabilities and integration into other Yahoo! offerings such as My Yahoo!.
 
 
 

For some reason, Yahoo! had declined to add a link on its home page that takes you to the simplified, uncluttered (yes, "Googlesque") Yahoo! Search page. You can now, though, just click on the "Yahoo! Search" button with nothing in the search box, and you will get there.

Yahoo!'s Video Search has been getting more and more robust in two areas:  Content and Technology.

Technology - In addition to the video material that Yahoo! finds by crawling the Web, it is now collecting video directly from video publishers by means of RSS (Rich Site Summary) delivery. Using RSS "enclosures", Yahoo! can capture a lot of metadata that can then be used to enhance the indexing of those videos. Eventually this can include even the full transcripts of video that it has gotten from news and other sites. Using Media Really Simple Syndication (Media RSS), a media-oriented RSS extension and specification, video publishers can now easily provide Yahoo! with a broad range of video and audio content.

Content - Among those organizations that Yahoo! has relationships with to begin providing video and audio content are: Buena Vista Pictures (Movie trailers and clips), CBS News (News clips), CMT (Video entertainment), Discovery Communications (Video Clips from Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, Discovery Home, FitTV, TLC, Travel Channel and Science Channel), IFILM (Movie clips and trailers, shorts/independent movies, viral movies and music videos), Internet Archive( Open Source Movies, Prelinger Archives, Brick Films, Election 2004, PBS Computer Chronicles, etc.), Internet Broadcasting Systems (Local news clips), MTV (Video entertainment), Reuters (News clips), Scripps Network (Home & Garden Television video clips, The Food Network video clips), Stupid Videos (Fun and independent videos), The One Network (Movie trailers, celebrity interviews, music videos), TVEyes (Bloomberg news clips including Morning Markets, World Financial Report, etc.), VH1 (Video entertainment). For a little more detail, see the Yahoo! press release.

Special Search Now Available for Creative Commons Material  (March 24, 2005)

If you are not familiar with Creative Commons, Creative Commons licenses provide a means by which copyright owners can easily grant some of their rights to the public, yet at the same time retain some of their rights. (For details, see the Creative Commons website.) Yahoo! has now (in Beta mode) created a search page that allows you to search specifically for materials with a Creative Commons license and which you can therefore more freely and easily use in your own publications, etc. With the Yahoo! Creative Commons Search, in addition to a general search for Creative Commons material, you can limit your search to content that you can use for commercial purposes or content that you can "modify, adapt, and build upon." You can also refine your search by using Yahoo! search syntax such as title:rembrandt  or site:flickr.com in your search.

My Yahoo!

Yahoo! has recently (apparently without an announcement) increased the maximum number of modules on a My Yahoo! page from 30 to 100. For practicality and ease of viewing, if you have anywhere near that many modules, you may want to take advantage of additional My Yahoo! pages. In addition to your main Yahoo! page, you can have up to five additional pages. These might be particularly useful if you have a large number of RSS feeds and would like to arrange them by category.  (By the way, if you noticed the Google announcement about its new portal page, the total number of modules that Google has to offer is eleven.)
 

Yahoo! Groups

You Can Now Add a Wiki to Your Yahoo! Groups (April 17, 2006)
 
For your Yahoo! Groups, in collaboration with PBwiki, Yahoo! has introduced a free wiki option. With this you can create a wiki of your own for your Yahoo! group, invite all members or selected members to participate, and you can control who can view the wiki and who can edit it.

Pages are easy to edit and format, and it is easy to create new pages using a plain page that you format any way you wish or by starting out with one of thirteen templates provided. You can add images, files, tables, a sidebar, a table of contents, HTML formatting , and an RSS feed.

For help with creating and using your Yahoo! Groups wiki, Yahoo! provides a tour, a wiki forum, and email tech support

To set one up, go to your Yahoo! Group and look for a link in the Yahoo! Group Tips box or go to pbwiki.com/yahoo/

Yahoo! News

News Message Boards Taken Down (December 29, 2006)

The following has come from Neil Budde, General Manager, Yahoo! News :

"Yahoo! News is working on new ways for readers to comment on the news and participate in a discussion around it. While we work on our new community features, the message boards that were linked from individual news articles have been taken offline.

As they were set up, the Yahoo! News message boards allowed a small number of vocal users to dominate the discussion. In addition, related discussions from similar news articles were not easily linked.

Over the next few months, we plan to offer new discussion forums based on topics in the news and incorporating the latest features to foster a better discussion for all of our readers."

Blogs Now Included in News Search (October 12, 2005)

Now when you search Yahoo! News, blog content will be included in the results. The pull-down menu next to the news search box provides an option to search All News & Blogs, Yahoo News Only, News Photos, or Video/Audio. Fortunately, on results pages blog results are shown separately on the right side of the page. Yahoo! says that tagged pictures from Flickr will also be included in results. At present, the blog content of News Search is in Beta mode.

Yahoo!'s News Page Gets an Overhaul  (Apr. 27, 2005)

Yahoo!’s main News page has received a a substantially new look. Most of the change in appearance is due to re-arrangement of links on the page, but there have also been some substantive changes. As before, the main page contains selected items from each major news section (now also with a “U.S. National” category). The links to the full page for each section are now located across the top of the main page rather than listed in a column on the left.

A nice addition is the “Index” link on the home page that leads to a clickable display of each of the news sources that are covered in each category. On the Index page you will also find menus for Local News, Comics, and Editorial Cartoons. These pull-down menus enable you to easily go to news from over fifty-one metropolitan areas, and to select a particular comic strip or political cartoonist.

Slideshows and Snapshot links are still there, but have been moved from the left to the right side of the page. The links that were formerly labeled  as “Resources" are now under “Also in the News.”

The most significant new  features on the main page are found in the “menus” that are now located in the “My Sources” area for each News section. Links that were formerly to the right of each section are now in the bar at the top of each section. The most significant change there is that you can now add your favorite news sources (at least from those Yahoo! accesses for the particular section) using the “Add/Edit” My Choices. Click on that link and, for each category, you will see from 6 to 20 of the “Most Popular” sources, from which you can choose. Things you choose here will also be displayed on your “My Yahoo!” and other personalized Yahoo! pages. For some sections, such as Politics, Technology, and Entertainment sections, there is also a link on the “Add/Edit” page that allows you to select from some popular Weblogs.  The Business and Finance section provides a link to choose for some popular stock market news sites.  Along the top of each section, links allow you to toggle to a view of the headlines from any of the selected major sources for that section.

Within individual stories, you will find links to related stories. Click on those links to get a pop-up window with the headlines and a brief summary for those related stories. (At the bottom of those pop-up windows are links for searches on that topic in News, News Photos, Images, and Web). (To find these, Yahoo! is using its "Y!Q" search technology.)

Tying into Yahoo!’s increasing IM emphasis, with the “IM Story” link on stories pages you can send a story to someone else by means of  Yahoo!’s Instant Messenger service.

The biggest change overall is in the re-positioning of things on the main News page, but the ability to "toggle" between headline sources in the news sections, the ability to have some choice in which sources you see there, the related links in stories, the Index link, and the IM capability for stories means that the changes have been more than just "cosmetic".

Yahoo! first introduced its News Ticker back in 1996. With the advent of the toolbar and other features, it was, as Yahoo! says, "de-emphasized."  Now it is back, in a very low profile way, but taking great advantage of RSS feeds and integrating nicely with your My Yahoo! News and Weather selections. To download the program, go to edit.ticker.yahoo.com/config/slv4_page?.p=ticker .  After downloading and installing it (probably less than two minutes total), it will appear in your Windows Toolbar at the bottom of your screen. The headlines you will see scrolling there are from the News, Stocks, Weather, Sports Scores, and other RSS selections you have selected for your My Yahoo!. Click on a scrolling headline to have the story open in your browser. Right-click on the ticker to get to your ticker preferences. From the Preferences window you can control the ticker speed, refresh rate (every 5 minutes, on up), color scheme, whether you want the ticker font to be bold, and whether the ticker should display even when your screen saver is on. The "Show news stories using QuickView" option instructs the ticker to open the story in a QuickView" window, rather than in your browser window. You can also choose not to use your My Yahoo! preferences by having the ticker log you in as a "Guest" If you do so, you are given a choice of headline categories, weather locations, and stick ticker symbols.

In addition to the scrolling ticker, when you install the My Yahoo! ticker, you get quick access to other Yahoo! services. Click on the "down-arrow" next to the Red "Y!" and the resulting pop-up window gives you one-click access to Yahoo!, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail, the Yahoo! search databases (Web, Images, Directory, Yellow Pages, News, Products, Maps), plus the Dictionary, Stock Quotes, Movie Showtimes, and your Yahoo! Address Book.

Communicating (Email, Messenger, Mobile, etc.)

Yahoo! Mail Enhancements Beginning to Arrive (September 6, 2005)

Having been promised for some time, you may be beginning to see some major enhancements to Yahoo! Mail. The promised enhancements will make Yahoo! Mail look and act more like client email programs such as Outlook and Eudora and will provide message preview, local caching of messages, drag-and-drop filing, enhanced searching (including searching of the content of attachments), viewing multiple emails in separate windows, and scrolling through message headers. The enhancement that some of you may begin to see first is the display of thumbnails of image and document attachments. If you see these, you can also click on the thumbnail of documents to see a preview. For image thumbnails, there are links to save the image to your computer and to Yahoo! Photos. When the fully enhanced version becomes available to you, you will have the option of moving to the new version or sticking with the older version.

According to a message posted by Yahoo!,  "The ability to publish user-created chat rooms in the public Yahoo! Chat directory is currently unavailable. We are working on improvements to this service to enhance the user experience and compliance with our Terms of Service." At the moment (June 20, AM), even chat rooms already in the directory don't seem to be available. If you read Chapter 6, you will know that I am definitely not a fan of Yahoo! Chat Rooms and will not consider this much of a loss. Stay tuned for further developments (probably not developments in my attitude toward chat rooms.)

Through a partnership between Yahoo! and Sprint, users of Sprint’s PCS Vision wireless phone service can now take advantage of a Yahoo! wireless email.

In addition to sending and receiving emails, the service from Yahoo! allows you to manage you email account and take advantage of your Yahoo Address book. In contrast to many “webmail” services, with this new service you can download your email messages so that you have access to them even when you do not have a Web connection.

The service requires a download to your phone and is available on certain Sprint PCS Vision handsets from Sanyo, Samsung and PalmOne. Sprint will charge $2.99 per month for the service.

If you don’t use Sprint, it doesn't’t mean that you can’t accomplish similar things with Yahoo! Mail. In the U.S., Cingular, Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon also have Yahoo! email capabilities, though not identical to what is offered by the Sprint deal. In each case, having access will depend upon the subscription plan you have with your wireless provider and your phone model capabilities.  If you have Internet access through your phone, you have access to Yahoo! Mail and other Yahoo! wireless services. To find out exactly what you can do with your own phone go (on your computer) to mobile.yahoo.com.

In the case of Verizon, for example, with its $15 per month Mobile Web service, in addition to other  mobile web services, I have access to  Yahoo!’s  Local Info, Yellow Pages, Mail, Weather, Photos, Movies, Sports, Driving Directions, News, Address Book, Finance, Calendar, and other services.  With the Yahoo! Mail service, through my phone I can get not just to my Yahoo! Mail, but with Yahoo! Mail’s “Check Other Mail” option, I can also access my POP mail account from my regular ISP. I can send, receive, and delete messages and store them in folders I create, just as with regular Yahoo! Mail. Downloading messages from my POP account brings them into my Yahoo! mailbox. For my Yahoo! Mail account, I also can get alerts sent to my phone whenever I receive a Yahoo! Mail message. The one significant thing that the new Yahoo!-Sprint deal provides that I can’t do with Verizon is the downloading of messages to my phone itself, and thus the ability to view them when I do not have a Web connection.

For countries other than the U.S., check your local Yahoo! help screens for mobile availability. (In the UK, for example, access is available through O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and Virgin.)

Yahoo! has released a test version of Yahoo! PhotoMail, a free service that allows you to send up to 300 photos in a single email message. (Go to it at photomail.mail.yahoo.com).  The new service gets around the old  limitations on email attachment size and the lengthy time usually required to download large numbers of attached photos.

At present, the test version is available for any PC user with Windows 2000 or XP and with Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher). To use PhotoMail, you must first install the Quick Select Tool. With a broadband connection, downloading and installing it only takes about a minute. Also, though, once you have installed the Quick Select Tool, take a couple minutes to do the optional “Quick Tour” to get a feel for what PhotoMail can do and how to do it. .

Once you are in PhotoMail, you will see the Yahoo! Compose Message screen, which will now include the “Insert Photos” button. You click on it, the Quick Select Tool pops up, and you then choose your photos from either the photos on your own computer, photos you have stored on Yahoo! Photos, or ones you have found from a Yahoo! Image Search. Yahoo! has done an excellent job of integrating these three sources into PhotoMail.  After choosing your source, you select your photos and drag and drop them to the window on the right of the Quick Select Tool (or click the Add button). Click OK and you are returned to the Compose Message screen. There you will also see the Photo Tools options which allow you to add a border, rotate, or choose one of three “quality” levels for your images.  When finished, click Send. Uploading the photos can take some time (Uploading 50 photos with a mixture of resolutions, using a broadband connection, took me 16 minutes.)

At the recipient's end, the photos can be viewed very quickly and easily.  A  key idea that makes this work is that it is "thumbnails" that are sent and included in the body of the message. Recipients then get the full image by clicking on a thumbnail, or by choosing to see a slideshow of all images. Recipients are also provided with buttons to print photos, order prints, or save photos either to their own computer or to Yahoo! Photos. (By the way, Yahoo! Photos offers unlimited storage of photos.)

Yahoo! PhotoMail is definitely in the “You gotta try it” category.

Yahoo! Mail Becomes More Multi-lingual, More International (May 26, 2005)

Yahoo! has announced that in June Yahoo! Mail be be available in six more languages (bringing the total to 21) and have "localized" versions for seven more countries (Poland, Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia). This will bring the total number of localized sites to thirty-four.

Yahoo! also announced that
 
 

Free PC-to-PC phone service now available on Yahoo! Instant Messenger (May 18, 2005)

Yahoo! is stepping up the Instant Messenger competition by offering free PC-to-PC phone service using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) . With the new Messenger, you can make free phone calls through your PC to someone at another PC, anywhere in the world. (Technically the new version of Yahoo! IM is still in Beta, which these days just means that you can expect to see changes before it "settles down".) To get the new version, go to beta.messenger.yahoo.com. As well as allowing you to talk as you would in a usual phone conversation, you can also leave voicemail messages, have an archive of your call history and get free ringtones. You can share photos with the other person just by dragging a photo onto the message area of the Messenger screen. You will also see the following new options on the Messenger screens: Contact cards to easily get to your Address Book, indicators that you have received new Yahoo! Mail or new voicemail, and tabs for the Yahoo! Buzz Index and Entertainment Tonight. As part of this, Yahoo! has also announced increased spam protection for messaging. To use the new phone capabilities, you will (obviously perhaps) need speaker and microphone capabilities on your computer, either separately or as a headset. (It is compatible with USB-connected headsets.) This will be available in 18 localized country versions.
 

Yahoo! has upped the amount of free storage for its free email accounts to one gigabyte ((previously 250 Megabytes). For Premium (paid) subscription (Yahoo! Mail Plus) users, the amount is now two gigabytes. Yahoo! Mail now also provides automatic virus scanning for both incoming and outgoing mail and attachments. Another protection feature that has been added is DomainKeys, which adds an indicator to your received emails when the email is coming from a different domain than is indicated in the email itself.

Keep in mind that you can use the email storage not just for sending and receiving email but also for just "storing" documents, photos, etc. Just send an email to yourself with the files as attachments. If you do this, at least consider using the Briefcase option on My Yahoo!, instead. Briefcase provides 30 megabytes of free storage, and is designed specifically for storing files. With it, you can create folders and much more easily organize the files you save. If you do not have Briefcase on your My Yahoo!, click on "Add Content" and you will find the Briefcase option under "Yahoo! Services".

For storing photos, consider using Yahoo! Photos, which provides unlimited free storage of photos (Unlimited both in terms of storage size and number of photos) and numerous other options such as albums, easy printing of photos, etc.

Buying & Selling

  Yahoo! Auctions Closing (May 9, 2007)

Yahoo! has announced that its auctions site will close as of June 3, 2007.

Yahoo! Eliminates Auction Fees for Sellers (June 6, 2005)

Yahoo! has eliminated fees for sellers to list their items in Yahoo! Auctions.

Two New Shopping Tools Added: Gift Finder and RSS Feeds for Some Shopping Categories. (April 25)

Yahoo!'s new Gift Finder (powered by ChoiceStream Personalization Platform) provides a shopper with gift suggestions that have been matched against information you provide about the recipient. To use this, go to the Yahoo! Shopping page and look for "Find the Perfect Gift".    Choose a gift category (Birthday, Wedding, etc.) from the 22 categories. You will then be asked a series of questions identifying the recipient's sex, age range, relationship (to you), and lifestyle. Gift Finder will then (with a little bit of luck) present you with a collection of suggested gifts.

XML/RSS Feeds for Product Categories - Now when browsing some categories, you will see the following:

Click on one of the buttons if you would like to receive feeds (either through your My Yahoo! page or an RSS reader) notifying you of new products in that particular product category. If you click on the "See all RSS feeds" link, you will be shown a page listing all of the product categories for which this option is available. Yahoo! is starting out with 29 product categories from the following Shopping sections: Most Popular Electronic Products, Most Popular Computer Products, New Releases - Music, New Releases - DVDs and Movies.
 
 

Also see:

Free "Webpage" Hosting for Small Businesses (April 13, 2004)
 
 
 

Finance

Upgrade ot Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo!'s Finance section has been upgraded to include new tools for stock charting, improvement of financial chat rooms, video news, and more.

Enhancements to investor chat rooms include threading of topics and filtering out messages that are primarily "invective" and similar noise content. Financial blogs are also forthcoming.The new version of the stock charts allows comparison of stock performance by company, more historical data, and drag-and-drop navigation.Also included in the upgrade is video financial news (from ABC, CNN, Forbes, and SmartMoney) and more technical analysis tools.Yahoo! plans to permit other sites to include (for free), charts, quotes, and news on their sites. Yahoo! says that this opportunity will also be expanded for information from other parts of Yahoo! This upgrade is starting with the US Yahoo! Finance site and will be expanded later to versions for other Yahoo! country sites

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Resource Center Added to Yahoo! Small Business (March 9, 2005)

The new “Small Business Resource Center”, found under the “Articles & Resources” tab on the Yahoo! Small Business page, contains around 1,000 articles on key business issues, focusing primarily on the information needs of entrepreneurs. They include tips and  more in-depth content, some created by Yahoo! and some from a variety of well-known business news and information sites. A menu on the left of the main Resources page enables you to browse the Resources categories, and under each category you will find several subcategories. The eight main categories are Getting Started, Sales & Marketing, Online Business, Management & HR, Legal, Finance, Office & Technology, and Business Tools. The Resources homepage also contains a featured article and “Latest Articles”.  A search box allows a search of the Resources collection.

Corporate Governance Profiles from Institutional Shareholder Services have been added to 7,500 of the Company Profiles found in Yahoo! Finance. Corporate Governance Profiles (CGQs) provide two numbers for comparing "strengths, deficiencies and risks of a company's corporate governance practices and board of directors". The CGQ Index Score compares the company to relevant market indices (S&P 500, etc.), and the CGQ Industry Score compares the company to industry peer groups. (For details about the ratings, go to the Institutional Shareholder Services page that explains the ratings and the criteria involved, or go to the Yahoo! Help screen on CGQ's for a somewhat briefer explanation.)  CGQs are found on Yahoo! Finance's Company Profile pages. To get to the CGQs, do a search on the company ticker symbol in the Yahoo! Finance search box. That will take you to the Quotes and Info page for the company. On that page, look (on the left) under the "Company" heading and click on "Profile." On the Profile page, you will probably find the CGQ on the right.

Free "Webpage" Hosting for Small Businesses (April 13, 2004)

Yahoo! is offering a  website of up to five pages for free to small businesses. This is packaged in conjunction with adding a business' listing to the Local Yahoo! ("yellow pages") database, but a business can take advantage of the listing without the website. Enhanced listings are also available for a monthly fee. The free listing in Yahoo! Local can be done in less than five minutes and includes the business name, address, local phone number, 800 number, Fax number, company email, Web address (for companies that already have one), operating hours, payment methods accepted, year established, languages spoken, brand names carried, products and services offered, and professional services. Almost all of theses are optional.

The free website of up to five pages is created by means of easy-to-use templates and will have a Yahoo! URL, for example, va.local.yahoo.biz/mylittleshop
 
 
 

Other Seriously Useful Yahoo! Stuff

Yahoo! PhotosClosing - Shift to Flickr. (March 2006)

Yahoo!'s Photos site is closing down, with users being asked to shift to Yahoo!'s other, more sophisticated, photos site, Flickr.

Yahoo! Adds Satellite Images to Maps Beta (April 11, 2006)

As a significant move in the battle between Google and Yahoo! to look more and more like each other, Yahoo! has added satellite imagery to its Maps (Beta) (See report below). The images are in some cases more recent and the resolution in some cases better than you currently find in Google Maps (and Google Local and Google Earth), and in some cases the resolution is less. For each map, regular (just the road map), satellite, and hybrid (image and road map) views are available. For the entire world, Yahoo is providing satellite imagery at medium resoulition (15 meters per pixel) with better resolution for "the lower 48" US states. Driving directions are available for the US and Canada. APIs (Application Program Interfaces) are available for developers for publishing these maps and mashups on their own sites.

New Yahoo! Maps Available in Beta (November 6, 2005)

Yahoo! has released the Beta version of its new Maps (and Driving Directions) service (Go to http://maps.yahoo.com/beta or click on the Maps link on Yahoo!'s main page). With this version, Yahoo! has eliminated the main reason for someone to have chosen Google Maps -- the "dragability". With the new Yahoo Maps, you can now use your mouse to easily drag the map in any direction you wish (much easier than clicking on a direction indicator and then waiting for the screen to refresh, often not to exactly the spot you wanted.) For driving directions, Yahoo! saves locations you have previously entered and you can enter multiple stops. (As soon as you have entered your first destination, Yahoo! provides another box for a next destination.) There are also links to get reverse directions or round trip directions. On directions results pages, hold your cursor over any step and you will see that step of the trip highlighted on the Map. Click on a step in the list of directions to see a small map with detail for that turn. As with the old version, the Find on the Map option located beneath the directions allows you to have Yahoo! show services (ATMs, Banks, gas stations, etc.), entertainment and shopping (amusement parks, malls, golf courses, etc.), restaurants and bars (even down to the kind of restaurant, Chinese, seafood, etc.), and travel services (airports, hotels, parking, etc.). Choose what you want to see either by using the search box or the categories provided and the matching locations will be identified on the map by numbered call-outs. Click on one to see details. If you click the "Live Traffic"checkbox above the map, current traffic reports will be shown on the map. Links are also provided to send the map to your mobile phone or email it.

Back

Yahoo! has changed the name of its music site from LAUNCH - Music to Y! MUSIC (good move!). (The Yahoo! Radios stations, however, are still LAUNCHcast Radio.)  The more substantive change here however, is that Yahoo! is now in the song-selling business, in direct competition with I-Tunes, Napster, and other music sites.

The "Shop" tab on the Music page has been replaced with the Music Services tab, which, when clicked, leads to links for Yahoo! Music Engine and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. The latter is the subscription service and the Music Engine is the downloadable software that enables you to take advantage of the subscription. It enables you to play music, to search for music, to create playlists, rip and burn CDs, transfer music to portable devices, and buy music downloads (even without a subscription). Downloading and installing will take about 5-10 minutes, and then a few minutes more if you ask the program to identify and catalog the music you currently have on your computer. Be aware that you will need to go to "Programs" to find the Music Engine. Links on the Yahoo! Music page will not take you there.

Yahoo Music Unlimited provides access to over one million songs, with monthly subscriptions available at $6.99/month or annual subscriptions at $4.99/month. Songs can be purchased without a subscription for $.99. To manage this, Yahoo is using the DRM (Digital Rights Management) process. With this, a code is embedded in each piece of  music that allows you to use it only as long as your subscription is active. With an active subscription you can download the music, share it with friends (over Yahoo! IM), transfer it to your portable player, etc.
 

You Can Now Get Personalized Movie Recommendations on Yahoo! (May 25, 2005)

If you go to the Yahoo Movies page and click on the "My Movies" tab, you will find a new link, for "Movie Recommendations". Tell Yahoo! your age range and place yourself on a scale indicating the general kind of movies you like (from Mostly Art/Independent to Mostly Mainstream/Hollywood), and then, from a list Yahoo! shows you, rate some movies you've seen.  Based on your rating of these (from A+ to F), Yahoo! will present you with recommendations. You can continue to rate more and more movies to help the program more precisely identify movies it thinks you might like. From the list of recommendations, as well as elsewhere on the Yahoo Movies section, you can get local showtimes, read reviews, see details about the movie, view trailers and lots, lots more. These new personalized recommendations are only a very tiny part of what the Yahoo Movies section has to offer. I would guess that some ardent movie fans probably have Yahoo! Movies as their start page.