Yahoo busy with new initiatives

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details.

Yahoo is considering offering a wireless Internet access service, and has launched a beta test of its Web-based e-mail for AT&T customers and cranked up the performance on its Yahoo Mail beta.

The TechCrunch blog reported on the potential Wi-Fi service Wednesday. A screenshot on the site "suggests that Yahoo's new messenger product (with voice over Internet Protocol capability) will be able to access certain Wi-Fi networks and allow IMing and VoIP calls," the site said.

"Now when you are on the move to the places that you go most--airports, hotels, coffee shops--you can stop twiddling your thumbs and start communicating via instant message with the people you care about most...all for free," the screenshot says.

A premium service with unrestricted access would be available for $7.95 a month, or users could pay $2.95 for two hours under a pay-as-you-go plan, the screenshot says.

"We recently conducted a survey to capture feedback on a potential on-the-road service. Yahoo does not have imminent plans to provide this service," the representative said in an e-mail response to questions.

Yahoo and AT&T announced on Wednesday a beta test of a new version of Yahoo Mail that will be available to AT&T Yahoo High Speed Internet and Dial subscribers. The service offers drag-and-drop e-mail organization, message preview and an integrated Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, reader with access to breaking news, blogs and other feeds directly from Web mail, the companies said.

The AT&T Yahoo Mail beta is now available to a subset of AT&T Yahoo Mail users and will be available to all users in coming months.

Yahoo also said this week that it's boosting the speed of its new Yahoo Mail beta.

"We've heard your calls for faster--and we're continuing to soup up the Yahoo Mail beta's performance," a Yahoo blog posting said. "This (version is) twice as fast when you first launch it, and (on average) four times faster on subsequent launches."

 

Correction: This story incorrectly reported on the status of a wireless Internet access service. Such a service is only under consideration.

[maxwis]

Good Luck With Tech Support

Have a problem with Yahoo Mail or Mail Plus? Good luck getting tech support. Yahoo does not post email network status anywhere on their site. Want to phone them about an email problem? Sorry, no tech support phone number is available. You are left with having to send them an email (which you can't do if your Yahoo Email is not working, or filling out an online form.

Regarding the beta of Yahoo Mail, I had to revert back to the production version because the beta does not work on my Windows Mobile PDA. Apparently Yahaoo Mail beta uses some new Java code or something which is not supported by Windows Mobile IE 4.5. There is no provision for running different versions of browser based Yahoo Mail on different OS platforms. This is very shortsighted.

[maxwis]

Good Luck With Tech Support

Have a problem with Yahoo Mail or Mail Plus? Good luck getting tech support. Yahoo does not post email network status anywhere on their site. Want to phone them about an email problem? Sorry, no tech support phone number is available. You are left with having to send them an email (which you can't do if your Yahoo Email is not working, or filling out an online form.

Regarding the beta of Yahoo Mail, I had to revert back to the production version because the beta does not work on my Windows Mobile PDA. Apparently Yahaoo Mail beta uses some new Java code or something which is not supported by Windows Mobile IE 4.5. There is no provision for running different versions of browser based Yahoo Mail on different OS platforms. This is very shortsighted.