Yahoo Mail Beta
I logged into my Yahoo! Mail account the other day and was presented with the option to test their new interface. Overall, Yahoo! Mail Beta is pleasant to use and feels like a regular desktop client such as Outlook or Thunderbird. You can read RSS feeds alongside your mail and have the option of forwarding stories to your friends. You can also drag and drop email messages between folders without refreshing the page, thanks to a lot of AJAXy goodness. You have the option of using a preview pane for messages or a handy tabbed interface.
However, the big disappointment would have to be speed. There are noticable delays when you attempt to load a folder and sometimes even when you select a message. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer stall when I attempt these basic tasks. However, it’s still faster than the old method of refreshing the page.
Almost two years ago, Yahoo! acquired Oddpost, which is now powering Yahoo! Mail Beta. Integrating two existing pieces of software can take much longer that it would first appear. Even after a lot of effort, the results can still be less than ideal. When time is limited, it is essential to decide early on exactly how far you want to take software integration. Otherwise, you could just get stuck waiting for your mail to load.
Consumerist Empowers Shoppers
Back at my Midwestern high school, state law mandated that students could not graduate without having taken a course called consumer seminar. Though a wholly informative course, after college and graduate school, I can’t really remember much about the course or what we learned. I know that I took it during summer school after my junior year of high school and that we spent our last day in class watching this (awesome) movie called “Breaking Away” as a reward for making it through the course. I know that the teacher’s daughter worked in advertising and had written a famous sports jingle, but that’s about all I remember about that class.
Not too long after high school, you find yourself making actual decisions without the benefit of all the information. You sign things because you are either too busy or too visually impaired or too impatient to make out the mouseprint. Sometimes you simply don’t know how to advocate for yourself. You meekly pay your bills, buy your groceries and submit to what companies describe as external pricing pressures. Once in a while you pop open the newspaper to find that a desperate and strung-out consumer has written to a columnist about how her phone company or credit card misbilled her and could the reporter please advise her on what to do? Sometimes the reporter does oblige, and after the whole sordid tale is in print, the PR people usually start looking into this. Things tend to get resolved when bad publicity is at stake. Continue reading “Consumerist Empowers Shoppers” »
Internet Explorer 7 is a Step in the Right Direction
I just downloaded the beta version of Microsoft’s new version of Internet Explorer. Here are a couple of quick thoughts on it:
(1) This is a very RSS friendly browser, and will go a long way towards getting non-geeks to use the technology. IE 7 has a little RSS icon (shown on left) that is highlighted when you are browsing a site that has an RSS feed associated with it. After you select a feed type (such as RSS 2.0), you are taken to a page that shows the feeds’ contents and prompts you to subscribe. Once you subscribe, you can view the feed in a built in RSS feed reader. Below is a screen shot of the subscribe page:
I’m a broken record here, but I really believe you need to include an RSS feed on any new website you develop.
Continue reading “Internet Explorer 7 is a Step in the Right Direction” »
Politicians Abuse Wikipedia, Again
So, it looks like we have example #1,211 of a politician (or more aptly, their staff) abusing Wikipedia for political gain. This time Morton Brilliant, the campaign manager for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Cathy Cox, edited the entry of opponent Mark Taylor to include a reference to Taylor’s son’s DUI arrest. The campaign manager has resigned, and the typical media feeding frenzy is gearing up now. You can view a version of the entry with the DUI information here.
To play on an old saying: Don’t make any edits to Wikipedia that you wouldn’t want printed on the front page of the New York Times.
Using YouTube for Issue Advocacy
In a post a couple of weeks ago, I suggested that organizations post their videos to viral sites like YouTube as a way of reaching a larger audience. Well, the advocacy group Public Knowledge has done just that, posting a video on the net neutrality issue currently before Congress.
It seems to have worked, too. So far the video has been viewed 43,000 times and ranks 39th on this week’s list of YouTube’s most watched videos. Just as importantly, the video has created a pretty good conversation on YouTube about net neutrality, with thirty four comments so far.
Here’s the video, for those interested: