Yahoo!

Yahoo! Geocities: Closed

Note: Present customers need not to worry till later this year. But Yahoo! Geocities is closed for new registrations.
Yahoo-geocities-closed

There will be no changes for the existing customers account. You can continue using the service till Yahoo! announces the exact date of the closure. Yahoo will announce about the data backup and will update its help center to help its existing customers take back their data safely.

Note that both GeoCities Free or Plus accounts will be closed later this year. So existing customers need to think of their data from now itself, though Yahoo! says not to worry about your data till this summer. As soon as possible, we need to redirect our customers to our new website. So if you have any serious blog/site in GeoCities, it is advisable to move as soon as possible, as Yahoo will not be opening any new channels for free hosting.

Yahoo-geocities-closed

On the foot steps of Google, Yahoo is closing its free hosting service later this year. According to Yahoo! the reason for this closure is to encourage anyone interested in a full-featured web hosting plan to consider upgrading to their award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service. Yahoo! has a hosting business and why will it be willing to shoot at its own leg by providing free hosting!

Google had shut down GooglePages.com and it allowed its customers to transfer the existing data to Google sites. Google sites does not support css and java script, thus making it almost worthless!
On the other hand Yahoo! does not have any plans to open another free hosting service.

Will it encourage people to signup for award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service? There are many other free hosting services available. Whats your thoughts about this move from Yahoo!

For anyone looking for a professional hosting, we suggest Doreo host and you can try it for free for 45 days.

New Chat & SMS Widget inside Classic Yahoomail!

I was using Yahoomail as usual, and suddenly something popped up with a water bubble bursting sound. I could see a blue widget above my email folders. I never did anything to get this. No settings, no modifications, no plugins. I was just checking my mail and the blue widget appeared and after a refresh it disappeared. I used the back button in my FireFox browser and took the screen shots of the chat & sms widget.
It had already imported all the contacts and mobile numbers from my Yahoo! messenger.
It looks cool, loads fast.
Here are some screen shots:

It appeared in the Classic Yahoomail and not in the upgraded version of YahooMail. Upgraded version of Yahoomail already has a separate portion for chatting. But this is something new and better, as we need not move from the inbox to start chatting(some what similar to that in Gmail.)

Click above image to see in full screen

Tab for multiple user chat
Did you notice this widget in your Yahoo mail? Hope this is in the initial state of testing. And Yahoo! will rollout this feature to all its users some time in the future.

Got the Chat and SMS widget back in my Yahoo Mail again. Its not disappearing now. Its nice to chat and adds more fun to its already famous Mail

Yahoo! Search turns 5 — May God bless you long life

Its been 5 years after the launch of Yahoo! search.

Good to see Mattcutts wishing Yahoo! on twitter:

Important milestones achieved over 5 years by Yahoo! Search:
• Opened our search infrastructure and index to outside developers with BOSS.
• Opened our search results page to outside innovation with SearchMonkey.
• Launched Search Assist, still the most sophisticated query assistance technology on the Web.
• Launched a suite of mobile search products including Yahoo! oneSearchTM.
• Acquired, grew, and improved Delicious, a top social bookmarking tool.
• Launched Site Explorer to help site owners to manage their presence on Yahoo! Search.
• Protected users from potential viruses, spyware, and spam with SearchScan.
• Integrated music and video players directly on the search results page.

We wish Yahoo! a greater success.

To read the full article, head to Yahoo! official Blog.

Yahoo! Mail Getting Smarter With Smarter Inbox-First Look Video

Yahoo! announced today that, some of the Yahoo! Mail users will begin to experience the new smarter inbox.

Whats new?
1. A Welcome Page which surfaces messages, information and activity updates.

2. An updated inbox(Smarter Inbox)….

Yahoo! announced today that, some of the Yahoo! Mail users will begin to experience the new smarter inbox.
Yahoo!-Mail-Smarter-Inbox
Whats new?
1. A Welcome Page which surfaces messages, information and activity updates.

2. An updated inbox(Smarter Inbox)

3. Folder view that filters messages from personal connections.

4. Access to relevant third-party applications like Flickr, Flixster and Xoopit from within your inbox.

With the implementation of Smarter Inbox, Yahoo! promises a faster loading, lightweight mail box, from where we can do much more than just read and send emails!

Take a look at the Video, of Smart Yahoo! Mail:

An update by Yahoo! :-
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.

Create your New Yahoo! profile

Yahoo! is popular for its email and IM services, so having a Yahoo! profile seems more interesting.

Some of the good features in Yahoo! profile are:
1. We can now invite our friends by importing our contacts from Yahoomail and messenger. This is a cool feature.

2. We can set the status message. — Since twitter has been so popular, this status message feature has also become a must feature in many social networking sites.

3. We can write about me section here too 🙂

4. There is a nice “Guest Book” in everybodies profile – Giving it some more touch, for social networking.

5. Drag and drop the “Guest Book”, “Connections, “Updates”, “About me” boxes in your profile and place it according to your wish.

6. You can share the Updates of “Yahoo! 360”, “Yahoo! Avatars”, “Yahoo! Buzz”, “Yahoo! Shine”, ”
Personal Info” with your contacts in Yahoo profile. You get the option to determine what to share and what not to.

7. People can now find you(search for your profile) and add you as friend. And you can opt to get an email notification when there is some activity in your profile. And you can opt it out too! .You can search for new/old friends by just searching for their Name or email address.

8. You can set the permission for, who can see your updates and who should not see your latest updates.

9. And there is an interesting feature called “Connection Suggestion”, which automatically suggests some of the contacts from our email. These are people you communicate with a lot in Yahoo! Mail, or who you added to Yahoo! Contacts or your Messenger List.

10. For security concern Yahoo! has also given the option to make our profile public or private.

You can add me to your Yahoo! profile contact — technotip.org!

Small Problem with Yahoo Buzz! and its Quick Solution

After Yahoo Buzz! was officially launched, we were eager to start using it on our blog, and experience the buzz. But from the first day itself we could find that, we could not submit our stories to Yahoo Buzz!
yahoo-buzz-error-message

wrong-method-of-submission-yahoo-buzz And the same error message is being shown now also. So what is the use of Yahoo Buzz! releasing to public? They could have solved the problem before the official launch.

Anyway, we could luckily and unknowingly found the simple way to submit the story to Yahoo Buzz!
The above error message comes only when you try to submit any story by right clicking on Yahoo Buzz! button and opening it in new window….!

Do not submit any story by right clicking on buzz! button and opening it in new window, it will show you the error message. So just directly click(Mouse – right click) on the “Buzz!” button and it will open in new window and you will be taken to the proper page to submit your story.
yahoo-buzz-working-properly

Many of you might be knowing this, but still I thought to share it with you, because I saw in many blogs and they were writing that Yahoo Buzz! is not at all working from the day they are open to all. But now you also know that(atleast after reading this post), its not true. Yahoo Buzz! is working fine, but Yahoo! surly need to make some improvements to it.
And as I have observed, both way of submission works fine for those who had got the opportunity to test Yahoo Buzz! before it was released to the general public. And as I just investigated it a bit, I found that the source code that they are using to display the Yahoo Buzz! button is different then that used by the general public!
Hope Yahoo! will soon consider the interests of the general public also, as the population of general public in much much much more than its selective members!
That was just my thoughts flowing while writing this article…..
Please share your experience so far with Yahoo Buzz!. Its difficult to tell about any service so early, but still you can share your early experience with it in the comment section, and lets all learn something out of everybodies experience.
Also (Vote)Buzz! this story to Yahoo Buzz!, if you find it useful.

Yahoo Buzz! is now open to everyone.

Yahoo-buzz-logo-tm Are you banned from Digg? Are you an active person in sites like Digg, stumble ?

If you said yes, then you have a Happy news. As said in the title of this article, Yahoo Buzz! is now open to everyone. Previously it was a closed Beta.

Now without wasting much of your time..I will tell some of the points and you can hurry to grab the Buzz Button.

1. Its an Digg like site of Yahoo!.

2. Believed to be the most powerful (more than Digg — Tested).

3. As almost all net users have an YahooMail Id, many people can Vote for your story on Yahoo Buzz!, than on Digg, stumble etc.

4. Yahoo Buzz! site is looking clean and easier to use than any other Social Bookmarking site.

5. The featured article will be displayed on “Yahoo.com” and not just on “buzz.yahoo.com”.

6. Its now open for everyone.

Now Go Grab the Buzz button. And Buzz my stories also, if you find anything interesting in Technotip.org!

orelse here is a small work around for wordpress blogs…


<script type="text/javascript">
  yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = "<?php the_title(); ?>";
  yahooBuzzArticleSummary = "<?php the_excerpt() ?>";
  yahooBuzzArticleType = "text";
  yahooBuzzArticleId = window.location.href;
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://d.yimg.com/ds/badge2.js"
  badgetype="text-votes">       
</script>

This code will get the Title, URL, and the excerpt of your article automatically to the Yahoo Buzz site, instead of manually inserting all these details.

And change “text-votes” to “square” or “small-votes” or “medium-votes” or “large-votes” or “logo” or “text” or “small” or “medium” or “large” to change the button type.

If you are using Blogspot, then remove these yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = “< ?php the_title(); ?>“; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = “< ?php the_excerpt() ?>“; two lines, and use the code. I think it will work. I have not tested it on Blogspot, but still hope it works fine. If anyone of you have tried this, then please confirm us, by leaving a comment below this article.

MyBlogLog and Delicious unveiled its new design

Recently MyBlogLog followed by Delicious unveiled its new design. MyBlogLog, has no new features introduced, where as Delicious has added one or two new features. Here are the screen shots.

MyBlogLog(Yahoo! Service):

mybloglog-new-theme

Delicious(Yahoo! Service):

Yahoo’s most popular bookmark sharing service Del.icio.us is now Delicious.com. If you type the old URL, then you will automatically be redirected to the new URL.

And the new design is also cleaner and first time users wont get confused(as was the case with older design). Ok, now take a look at the new design…

delicious-new-design
So whats new in Delicious… click here to explore.

Hope Yahoo! is hard at work to bring some new feel to some of its popular services…