Shiny New Yahoo! Mail Classsic

Yahoo upgraded my mail account from Yahoo! Mail Classic to New Yahoo! Mail Classic. I had tried the New Yahoo! Mail and didn't like it. It's heavy, cluttered, painful when you don't have a really wide screen and plain ugly plus some features like folders don't work. Folders! One of the most useful features of Yahoo! Mail, it's really great when used with filters by the way and it's a feature Gmail doesn't have but I digress.

Well since Yahoo is not forcing his users to use the New version of Yahoo Mail, at least not at this time they simply changed my Classic Mail to the New Classic Mail without a warning. For once, I'm not complaining. This new version looks like a mixed of both New and Classic Yahoo Mail. It keeps the wide viewing space but adds some functionality. They have however taken out some features like the "Instalist" which allowed you to instantly create a mailing list for recipients when you are sending a message, it was a very practical way to create list for people you mail as a group. Yahoo has a full list of added and removed features.

I have more than one Yahoo! mail account, and no, I don't think it's illegal. I've noticed that only one of them was upgraded the others remained in the old Classic Mail version, still I'm not complaining as long as it's not the New Yahoo Mail! I felt the New Yahoo! Mail does not provide a good ad space, the ad at the right side of the screen just seems to eat up my inbox/mail viewing space while the old placement, when ads are at the top of the page, kept the ad away from my viewing space which I found more convenient. I personally think horizontal ads are better than vertical ones but that's just me.

More Spam on Yahoo Mail

It just doesn't stop. This morning again while checking my mail I found a few more spam messages in my Yahoo Mail Inbox. I wonder when Yahoo Mail is going to do something about it.



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Daily spam on my Yahoo mail

I used to get the occasional spam message delivered to my Inbox on Yahoo mail but nowadays I don't get one but many spam messages daily. I report all of them as spam but still day after day or ever later on the same day I receive similar messages from obviously spammy addresses (many are freenet.de email addresses) and with obviously spammy titles.

I don't remember giving away my email address on any site recently but I guess somebody sold my email to some spammers out there I just hope Yahoo! mail's Spamguard would do a better job at catching those spam messages and sending them to the Bulk folder considering that I've been reporting them regularly for a few days now. Funny, after writing the first draft for this post I went on my Indox again and found yet another spam message from a freenet.de address I had just marked the ones I found earlier as spam and they were removed from my inbox.

Again a few hours later, before publishing this post I find yet another spam message and you've guessed it form another freenet.de address... Disappointed with Yahoo! Mail.

Access Hollywood Video in Yahoo Mail

Have you noticed the videos in yahoo mail? No? Well I just watched a clip from Access Hollywood featuring Hayden Panettiere and Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus. They were asking Hayden about her relationship with Heroes co-start Milo Ventimiglia, she couldn't believe that people think they are dating -why not?-.

I'm not much of an online video watcher but I do watch entertainment and celebrity news on TV every once in a while and I'm a Heroes fan too. I prefer those videos over the car insurance ads.

Gmail and Yahoo Mail

I've been using Gmail for over a year now. In the beginning I had my Gmail addresses only for the sake of having one and the feeling of being part of a restricted group. But these days I use Gmail almost daily and many aspect of the Google Mail make the experience pleasant.

The first feature that I really enjoy is the automatic saving of emails addresses to contacts. How does it work, basically any email address that goes through your mail (sent/receive) is saved with the sender's name. When you have to write a message as soon as you start typing the address, Gmail suggests matches from all the addresses remembered so far and all you had to do was receive and send email.

Second most appreciated feature is the grouping of messages in conversations. I think it's even more ground braking - for me at least- than the first one. Now there is no need to go from page to page trying to find that message this person wrote you not so long ago, they are all kept together in the most convenient way, as long as they are from the same person and on the same topic.

I wont talk about the gadgets, like the chat within Gmail. But there are of course a few negative aspects to Gmail. For instance the standard interface is somewhat heavy. I understand it's not an issue for people with broadband internet access but if you have a poor quality internet connection you might want to avoid Gmail altogether. Otherwise you'll end up using the basic HTML version without all the cool features.

There is one other aspect of Gmail I particularly dislike. I've you noticed that when you check a message to perform an action (mark as read for example or add label) unless you go and uncheck the message it's left checked. This can be unpleasant if you happen to need to perform another action for example on other messages and forgot that you had not unchecked that first message. I don't understand why they left it like that you would think automatic unchecking after an action is perform is something they would have obviously thought of.

As a Yahoo Mail user of almost 10 years, I think Yahoo mail (the old version) still has a few features that Gmail might want to imitate because they do make the user's life easier, like the automatic "unchecking" mentioned early and the possibility to create folders. There is no way to create folders in Gmail. For those who think that folders are so not web 2.0, I want to say that they allow you to organize your incoming mail especially when you use them in conjunction with filters -or labels-. Adding labels help me identify specific messages but what I really want to do is have those messages delivered into one place. I have a few subscriptions and I don't like to have my subscription messages scattered around my inbox because sometimes I like to go through those particular messages in chronological order. Am I asking too much?

Old News from Yahoo mail and Gmail

A while ago, Yahoo announced that it's free mail service would soon have unlimited storage. Yes, it means you can store as many emails, photos and all sorts of attachments as you want without ever worrying about reaching your storage limit.

I personally thought that this just wasn't exciting news at all. For someone who has practically not deleted an email since the latest limit increase to 1GB it sounded more like they were saying "well we don't really have anything interesting to offer you so we'll just make this announcement and try to make it look like a big deal".

It seemed to me like increasing the size of attachments would have been more useful. The 8MB limit is just something I can't live with anymore. I had to send a heavy file to a friend and the only option I had was to split it and send each peace one by one. I had a total of 15 pieces of files, a nightmare! Unlimited storage whatever! At my current rate it would have taken me a few years to reach my 1GB limit, I don't receive videos or mp3 daily. The worst part of this announcement is that it did not come with a date. No, I just see the message on the screen while signing in to Yahoo mail. So when am I going to have unlimited storage? I need to know just so I can brag about it!

This was back then, I don't even remember when, probably a few weeks ago. Last week, or was it the week before... As I was checking my emails on Gmail I noticed they were calling my attention to a new feature, 20MB attachments. Now that's news. Yes, surely, the people at Google are reading my mind! Bigger attachments! That's exactly what the people need. I'm guessing Yahoo and maybe Hotmail will soon follow and I'm hoping that 20MB is just a starting value until the battle starts for the free email service that allows the biggest attachments!

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