Webware

Yahoo opens Yahoo Mail APIs, invites mash-ups

Yahoo on Wednesday plans to open up the APIs to Yahoo Mail, inviting outside Web developers to build mash-up applications with its mail service.

One application that Yahoo will make available creates a link between Flickr and Yahoo Mail. The service looks at the subject line of an e-mail and searches Flickr for photos related to that word, such as "party."

The company envisions a whole list of applications that can be built using mail.

For example, people can find ways to access e-mail from different mobile clients or to combine social networking features and multimedia with mail, … Read more

ActiveAllowance introduces kids to joys, sorrows of budgeting

ActiveAllowance is a complex site that helps families with children manage the kids' allowances and chores. After experimenting with it for a few minutes, it made me hope that my 8-month-old son never, ever grows up. Am I really going to have to manage a list of chores, pay for them piecemeal, and then teach my kid to motivate himself, budget his income, and learn about saving, investing, and so on?

I suppose that's part of being a dad. And a site like this could help me and my wife keep our messages consistent. ActiveAllowance tracks lists of chores and goals, and helps a child budget his efforts to finish the tasks that earn him money. It also helps kids allocate their income based on family guidelines (so much for savings, for charity, and so on). Parents can set it up so allowance money is awarded when certain chores are done, or you can decouple allowance from chores if that's the way you parent.

Kids get their own simplified interface when they log in. From there, they can check how they are doing against their goals, and print "checks" to draw from their allowance funds, which they present to the Bank of Their Parents, presumably in exchange for cash or goods.

The site allows for very detailed management of chore lists, payments for them, and budgeting, and I found it frighteningly complex. User feedback on the site's forums tells the story: it takes time for users to get past the learning curve. There are many who seem to be stuck in the support forums. But once the program is grasped, the transparency and communication fostered--and the degree of consideration required before you can fill out the details--helps families communicate more effectively about money, and ActiveAllowance can motivate and teach children in all the right ways.

My take, though, is this: if your sons or daughters can follow all the ins and outs of their detailed chore list and exactly what income they're going to earn from each task--and if they begin to effectively organize their lives around getting what they want--then you might do well to give them your Quicken password and let them run all the household's finances. And maybe if you get to work each day on time, they'll grant you your own allowance.

Vaguely related: Wired's new Geek Dad blog.

Two more pictures after the jump.

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Dumb Ideas Club: Livemansion makes a movie through social networking

Can you imagine a MySpace: The Movie, full of self-promoting emo kids, strippers, and dirty old men? How about LinkedIn: The Movie, with a cast of social-climbing tools who love to pass around business cards at parties? Yeah, not such awesome ideas. Which is why I'm beyond skeptical of the potential for Livemansion: The Movie, a movie created by entertainment and acting social networking site Livemansion, to be any kind of success.

My point is this: American Idol might still be hot, but there are some things in the entertainment world that probably shouldn't be left up to … Read more

News Roundup: Original Signal, Google Mobile, eJamming

Original Signal rolls out meme tracker. The single-page aggregation service has added a new front page to their Web section. The page displays the top 10 most popular stories at any given time. The new service uses an algorithm that decides when a story is worthy of being on the front page without any additional user interaction required beyond browsing the site. Something similar was done with Spotplex, which we checked out last month.

eJamming launches. The virtual garage for musicians to 'jam' in different geographical locations launched their AUDiiO service this morning. The app has versions for both Windows … Read more

StreetAdvisor: The social network for the street where you live

An interesting new community site launched this morning. And by community, I mean real community: the street you live on. StreetAdvisor is a place to rate your block and meet your neighbors.

The rating system lets you review your street on five main scales (vibe, wired, health, value, essentials), each of which has subscores (for example, the wired scale includes a cellular coverage score). That's a lot of ratings to give, but you can, if you want, just give the main overview scores.

You can also upload video tours of your street, which could be a great resource for people looking to move on to a particular street. It's usefulness, however, depends on people reviewing and rating their streets honestly. It also assumes that real estate pros don't try to game the system by artificially inflating streets on which they have houses for sale (or dragging down scores on streets where they don't). The co-founders told me that have measures in place are in place to help prevent that.

For residents of a particular street, the system's "StreetBoard" also serves as a local resource. It's a social network with an open message board ("StreetShout") for street-related discussion with your neighbors. It also has a wiki-like element: You can find the numbers of local services (police, doctors, post offices) or enter them yourself for others to see.

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Yahoo's unlimited storage still not enough

Yesterday Yahoo announced they would begin offering Yahoo Mail users unlimited storage. The company will start with U.S. accounts and continue to roll out the upgrade to most of the world by the end of June. The only other major company to offer unlimited Web e-mail storage is AOL, starting in 2005 for paid members.

Despite the big upgrade, something that bugs me is that attachment sizes are still limited to 10MB for free accounts. Both MSN and Yahoo have premium e-mail services that double the mostly standard 10MB attachment size (at a price). This can be really handy … Read more

iLetYou.com: Just like going to the video store. But online.

iLetYou is a new rental marketplace for DVDs and video games. If you want to rent a disc but don't want to sign up for a membership service like Netflix or Blockbuster, it's a good option. Most rentals are $2 or $3 for a week, with no recurring fee. It's also likely to be more reliable than a user-to-user swapping service like PeerFlix (which I use and like, although I've learned not rely on it).

The service also looks like a good bet for mom-and-pop video stores that want to put their rental inventories online. Many … Read more

News Roundup: UPS Delivery Intercept, YouTube Mobile, McCain's MySpace punk'd

UPS re-direct service goes live. Ever missed a package because it got delivered to your house or apartment while you were at work? UPS has introduced a new service called Delivery Intercept that lets you redirect, hold, and return a package en route, avoiding such mishaps. ( CNET News.com)

YouTube to launch mobile site. The popular video-sharing site is readying a version of its site optimized for mobile viewers. The only reason there hasn't been one sooner is an exclusivity clause with Verizon, from a deal inked last November for Verizon's V Cast service. (via GigaOm)

Google Pack expanded. … Read more

Tumblr: Microblogging done right

Tumblr blogging service, which launched last month, gives people the chance to publish brief or full-length, media-rich posts using their browser or mobile phone. It's a happy medium between a tidbit posting service, such as Twitter, and a full-fledged blogging tool, such as WordPress or Blogger. Tumblr is aimed at folks who feel they may not have enough content or time to write a full blog, yet still want to write and share links and media.

Each Tumblr user gets their own "Tumblelog," a short-form blog that contains one of six types of media: word posts, photos, videos, quotes, URLs, and IM conversations. Each type of content has its own visual style and corresponding form for publishing. It's delightfully simple, and within minutes you can add a wide range of content. There's also a bookmarklet for your browser's toolbar to post items without having to navigate to Tumblr's home page.

Tumblr comes with some pretty advanced options for power users. You can give your Tumblelog its own domain, and even set the length for stories on your RSS feed. There are five themes to pick from, and you can customize the color of every aspect of the interface. If you are integrating Tumblr into your blog or Web site, there's an option to paste in your CSS.

What really sets Tumblr apart is its speed. It's blazingly fast. According to founder David Karp, the service gets in excess of 10,000 posts an hour, something you can visually track using an in-house tool called Radar. Currently in alpha, it shows the last 20 pieces of content published to the service. It's a little bit like Digg's DiggSpy, but without autorefreshing.

If you're on the fence about blogging or just want an easy way to publish interesting tidbits you find while browsing, give Tumblr a try. Our semiofficial Tumbleblog can be found here.

Note: From 2003 to 2007, Tumblr creator David Karp was a partner and CTO of UrbanBaby.com, now owned by CNET Networks, publisher of Webware.com.… Read more