Yahoo! Mail for mobile phone

Yahoo Mail extending to mobile phone texts

By Stevie Smith Aug 27, 2007, 13:22 GMT

Global Internet specialist Yahoo! Inc. has this week announced a widening to the range and draw of its existing e-mail service by granting online account holders the ability to stay in touch with their on-the-go friends via the dispatch and receipt of text messages to and from mobile phone handsets.

Yahoo revealed its e-mail-to-phone connection plan yesterday (Sunday, August 26), and will see it arrive as just one of many new features that the California-based giant will soon be rolling out for its 250 million account holders when the latest version of Yahoo Mail is unleashed in the near future.

Likely inspired by the phenomenal success of various user-created Web 2.0 sits such as Facebook and MySpace and the gradual decline of traditional e-mail portals Yahoo! intention with its new package is seemingly to craft a more socially pliable service that offers improved communication capabilities alongside the simplicity and convenience of networked contact access.

"Our goal is to make [Yahoo] Mail a more social experience," commented John Kremer, VP of Yahoo Mail, in a telephone interview with the Reuters news agency. "We really look at ourselves as sitting on top of the largest dormant social network out there."

When it arrives, the newly enhanced version of Yahoo Mail will offer account holders three combined ways to interact with those gathered on their contact lists: e-mail; online instant messaging; and text messaging to friends armed with an online mobile phone handset. Yahoo has also said that the imminent communication improvements to its Mail service should be seen as a precursor to the company implementing progressively more social network components in the future.

Yahoo Mail, which currently boasts around 254 million users, 93 million of which actively use the existing Yahoo Messenger option, will be initially adding the new mobile phone text message feature into the US, Canadian, Indian, and Philippine regions. The service will function much like standard mobile texting, with the PC user entering the phone number of a friend, typing a message in the Yahoo Mail portal, and then simply sending it as if it were a conventional mail.

Other new Yahoo Mail features expected to arrive alongside the e-mail-to-phone enhancement include the ability to drag and drop email into folders, and also improved search features that enable users to look for a specific attachment, date, folder, message status, or sender. (Source: http://tech.monstersandcritics.com)

Yahoo! Mail lets users send free text messages to cell phones

August 27, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Yahoo Inc. has closed the beta testing of its new e-mail service and will roll it out to its 254 million users over the next six weeks, the company said today. The beta testing of the new Yahoo Mail had been going on for two years.

Yahoo has added some new features to Yahoo Mail that were not included in its test of the service. For example, users can now send free text messages in real time from Yahoo Mail to cell phones in the U.S., Canada, India and the Philippines, according to a company statement. In addition, they can send instant messages from Yahoo Mail to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger 2 users... (Source: http://www.computerworld.com/) 

Texting on Yahoo Mail

Appeasing the text messaging fanatics in your life just got easier with the unveiling of a new free feature on Yahoo Mail.

Users will be able to write text messages on their computer keyboards and send them to someone's cell phones.

The new feature is part of an upgrade to Yahoo's e-mail service, which graduated from beta testing today. The release is another step in bringing multiple forms of communication - e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging - to one place.

The addition of text messaging, also known as SMS, will be rolled out to Yahoo Mail's 250 million users over the next six weeks. I hadn't got it yet on my e-mail today so I guess I'll just have to live without for the time being.

Users will see a pull down menu that allows them to toggle between e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging. The choice of text messaging may be the obvious choice if you know the recipient is away from the computer and on a cell phone.

Text messaging is particularly popular with teens, who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time typing short notes on their cell phones and sending them to friends, who are inevitably armed with their own cell phones. (Source: http://www.sfgate.com/)