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.

Get Discount Coupon For Paid Advertising

This strategy involves investment of some money. This method will surly bring in more traffic, if done in a smarter way.
Target the right audience. If your blog is about Gadgets, then advertise on those websites which are popular in that niche. By doing so, you will get some quality traffic and some of the traffic may convert into loyal readers.

Now coming to the point, make use of some discount coupons available all over the internet, to advertise using Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Market, Bidvertiser, Text-Link-Ads etc.
By doing so, you will reduce the cost of advertising to almost 50 – 80%!
Yes you read it right. You can almost reduce the advertising cost by 50 – 80% or even more.
Google Adwords or its power users has previously given 150 to 200$ free advertising coupons. Recently I had found that there was maximum of 50$ off when you signup for adwords for the first time. — Search for the coupon code in Google.
Yahoo Search Market, provides frequent free advertising coupons to its existing customers. And the first time advertiser will get 25$ off[Offer might have expired. Again use search engine and you will most probably get one].
Bidvertiser gives 20$ free advertising for the first time advertiser.
Text-link-ads, has comeup with a new adverting system called InLink advertising, where they place dofollow links on the blogs where you purchase the advertising. As part of their public launch, TLA (InLinks) is offering $100 worth backlinks for just $1, for a limited time.
tla-inlinks-example By utilizing this opportunity you can get good Technorati authority and Google may rank you high!
To grab this big opportunity, signup an account with TLA, and click on the “BUY LINKS” -> InLinks.
Text-link-ads-inlink Now enter “Keyword or phrase” relevant to your blog topic, and pick as many links as you want so that the total adds up to $100.00. Usually PR4 links come at $25 a piece, PR3 at $20, PR2 at $12 and PR1 at $10 etc. Just use your common sense while selecting these links, so that you benefit more out of the deal. After selecting the links worth 100$, click on the add to chart button at the end. Now put the link of your blog which you want to advertise. After checking everything, press “Checkout”. Now you get the option to pay 1$ by using your credit card, after using the coupon code 100free. And a happy thing is, TLA also allow us to pay using paypal.
See for the link to paypal payment at the end of the same page. Click on it and follow the instruction.

Do not fear of penalty, as the link looks very natural and not like paid advertising.
And the links will be placed for 30 days.

Now please read on further without fail..
Many of the above offers are valid only for the first time advertisers. And these offers are given with the intention that you will continue to be their advertiser even after the expiry of the offer.
So most of these companies[This is written in general, and it do not pointout to any particular company] set a “Subscription” to your Credit Card and/or to your paypal account.
So be careful and cancel[if you are not sure to continue advertising for the next month] the authorization of them once you pay them the initial amount for the first time.
For example:-
When you pay for X adNetwork for the first time using paypal, it may set the authorization to X adNetwork for further automatic payment for the coming months.
[ Actually paypal will ask you for confirmation before setting the authorization, but most beginners will skip reading and may click Yes.]
To remove it:- Goto your paypal account, click on the “Transaction Details”(in Recent Transaction Section) and then on “View Billing Agreement Details” link. Now see the “Status:” and click on the Cancel button. Thats all, you will not be billed by X adNetwork without your permission.

So be careful while doing online transaction. And do not waste your money without making proper use of discount coupons!.

Actually many adnetworks provide such discount to attract customers and to make them use their service somehow and to show them that their adnetwork can bring them more benefits. But many people just use these discount coupons and get traffic to their blog and then discontinue using them. But I think, if any of these advertising programs seems to be bringing you high quality traffic, and if you are getting more returns to your investment, then why to stop paid advertising? Use the discount coupons, offers etc and experiment which one suits you the best and continue with them.

This also holds good for any kind of online purchase. You can look for a good discount for your first time hosting.

If its hard earned money, then use it wisely 🙂
Like this, you can do a quick google search before using any ad network for advertising purpose or directly contact the company people and ask them for a discount coupon.

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!

Traffic strategies: PART 2(Add RSS feed signature to your emails)

We write emails to our friends, relatives, anonymous people around the world etc. Many of the people with whom we communicate may already be knowing about our blog and there is a high chance that they already are our subscribers.
But still adding RSS feed signature or adding the “Headline Animator, which displays rotating headlines” will bring some traffic to our blog, as it shows our old article titles and they might be interested to know more and they may endup clicking on the title and visiting your site. Anyway, adding a small piece of code doesn’t hurt or take a lot of time.

Feedburner has got this feature and you can integrate the small piece of basic HTML code to get the animated banner. But the limitation here is, you can see only five most recent items cycling through your feed’s. To over come this you can use some other RSS widgets, but while selecting see that these widgets are created only using basic HTML(for faster loading and user experience).

To use Feedburner animated banner feed as your email signature in Yahoomail, follow these simple steps:-

1. Log into your Yahoo! mail.
2. Click on Options.
3. In the “Management” section, click on the Signature option.
4. Drag and drop your Feedburner animated banner and click on “SAVE“.

If you want this email signature in Gmail, then you have to take some more steps:-
Gmail currently doesn’t allow us to add HTML codes directly into emails. But there are always some workarounds to get our work done!
Actually, you can over come the Gmail signature limitation by using Gmail’s POP3/SMTP features by making use of standard email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.), create a signature in that email program that has your Headline Animator in it, and send your emails through your Gmail account. This is an easy task for those who are already using Outlook etc software.

But for people who are not using such email programs and who are not willing to use such things, there are some other solutions:-
To use the animator in Gmail, all you need is the “Better Gmail” Firefox extension. It adds a check box in your gmail account settings to enable HTML. Remember you must be using “Mozilla Firefox” only to get this to work.
I think everyone needs to give this Firefox extension a try. It also adds many cool features to your gmail, like:- Add Google Calendar link, Add Google Reader “Feeds” link, Air Skin, All pages’ mailto: links compose in Gmail, Attachment Icons, Attachment Icons (Bigger!), Conversation Preview, Attachment Reminder(now integrated in Gmail by Google), Date Search, Filter Assistant, Fixed Font, Folders4Gmail(Great isn’t it?), Force encrypted Gmail connection (https), Forward Thread, GrandCentral Voicemail, Integrate Google Reader, Mail.app(Mac-like skin), Show disk usage as progress bar, Signature Settings: Float/HTML/No dashes, Smart Read Button, Super Clean Skins, TinyURL selected link (Cmd+Shift+T), Unlabeled Message Search etc etc etc etc… So here is the link to download “Better Gmail”.

Drag and Drop:-
One more option to use with Gmail, Yahoomail, hotmail or anyother mailing service is, just drag and drop the widget at the bottom of your email and it will be working fine. But it requires you to do it manually all the time you send an email. Many people follow this simple drag and drop work, as this would provide us with the option of when to add and when not to add the email signature(with feed banner).
Copy the HTML codes generated in Feedburner(animated banner creation) and paste it in a notepad and save it on your hard disk with file name ending with .html. Run it(by clicking on the html file) whenever you write an email. Now drag and drop the animated banner into your email. Its that simple..

It seems like- “this method will not bring any traffic”, and its partly true. As you will not get heavy traffic out of this method. To get more traffic, you must be active in mail groups like yahoogroups, gmail groups etc and you should be sending interesting emails to a group with large number of users. This will surly bring some traffic, as people may forward that email to their friends and then their friends may mail it to their friends…like this, your email(along with your email signature) will reach many people and you may get many visitors and they may even signup to your RSS/email feeds and may become your loyal visitors(but please keep your fingers crossed!). Do not expect a heavy traffic from this method, which dries up your blogs bandwidth.

And another thing I want to mention here before ending this article, is, never think that your emails are marked as SPAM because you are using some HTML codes in your email messages. This will not happen, as today’s email systems has gone far from the basic text, to a high multimedia messaging. So no email service provider is going to mark you as a SPAMMER, for using some basic HTML in your email.

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.