The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...
Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.
The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.
Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.
Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.
Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.
Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Search is history, says Yahoo!
The company says personalisation is now more important than search, in what some have seen as an admission that it can't compete with Google
Jonathan Richards
Yahoo!, one of the two names most synonymous with search on the internet, has surprised Silicon Valley by suggesting that the future of the web is not about search.
The comments, interpreted as an admission that Yahoo! cannot keep pace with Google, came during a conference at which many participants said that the traditional model for getting information from the internet – using a browser to visit web pages – was outdated.
Although Yahoo!, like Google, has talked before about developing a more personalised web, with relevant information delivered directly to readers, this was the first time that the company has said publicly that search will become less important.
"Search is no longer the dominant paradigm," Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors, Yahoo!'s personalised home page, told the Next Web conference in Amsterdam.
"The future of the web is about personalisation. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user," Mr Bhat said.
The remarks were seized upon as an acknowledgement that Yahoo!, which has been losing market share to Google despite the release of its rejuvenated search platform, Panama, earlier this year, could no longer keep pace with its rival and was beginning to shift its focus.
"They're basically admitting defeat,” Deborah Schultz, a Silicon Valley-based marketing consultant who gave one of the conference keynote speeches, said. “They've realised they can't compete with Google on search."
Jeff Clavier, a managing partner at the venture capital firm SoftTech, said: "The problem with Yahoo! is that they're trying to be all things to all people but they don't do any one thing particularly well."
Asked later to clarify his comments, Mr Bhat told Times Online: "We're not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful."
A Yahoo! spokeswoman added that search remains a top priority for the company.
One of the most widely talked about keynote speeches at the conference was given by NetVibes, a company which has attracted more than ten million users to its service, which allows them to customise the information they receive from the web via small icons knows as 'widgets.'
Instead of visiting their favourite pages on a browser, NetVibes users organise a series of widgets that receive information from those pages, as and when it is updated, via a feed similar to RSS (really simple syndication).
NetVibes said it already had agreements in place with more than 100 major providers, inluding CBS, Time, and USA Today to 'widgetise' their content. Tariq Krim, its chief executive, said it would announce deals with 500 more companies this month.
"The widgets can be anything – your e-mail inbox, the favourite section of your chosen newspaper, a travel site that is constantly searching for cheap ticket on a route you have specified,” Mr Krim said.
“The point is to be able to update you on all essential things without you having to visit pages,” he added. "We like to call it a dashboard of your digital life."
Scott Rafer, the former chief executive, of MyBlogLog, which was bought by Yahoo! earlier this year for a reported $10 million, agreed that the focus of web companies was moving from search to personalisation.
"Google's founders made a lot of money essentially with an algorithm,” he said. “The next trick is people. The next web will be dominated by someone who does a great job with people manipulations.”
Mr Clavier said that web personalisation will become much more sophisticated. "I think the level of personalisation will reach a point of total freakiness,” he said. “Every personal detail – what content someone likes, the context they're in, their location, the time of day and their behaviour – will start to become relevant in the way the web is used."
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Mail is a Web-based email (webmail) service from Yahoo!. It is the largest e-mail provider on the Internet, serving millions of users. Yahoo! Mail's major competitors include Hotmail, Gmail, and AIM Mail.
Yahoo! Mail Beta, a significantly different and advanced version, is currently under heavy development and is set to replace the current version of Yahoo! Mail when it is complete. It is currently in public beta. Development of what has now become Yahoo! Mail Beta started in July 2004, although it is possible other prototypes were in development before then. It is currently compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and Camino as well as Firefox (as part of Yahoo!'s plan to eventually upgrade all of their sites to be compatible with Firefox). Although usable under Opera and Safari there are slight visual problems regarding the layout.
History
The history of Yahoo! Mail began with JoJo Healy, Yahoo!'s resident investment banker since November 1996, who has dealt with every Yahoo! acquisition since it was created. "No one knows your business like your employees," he said. According to him, the main question was always to consider whether to "build, buy or rent." The answer really depended on the growth of competitors and the current position of the company. The main reason to buy things was to gain speed to market.
The growth in the number of Internet users eventually boosted the e-mail technology, but also created a very competitive environment where the winner was the first company to launch a successful e-mail service and attract potential users. E-mail became one of the most important features of a Web company as it would mean regular visits from e-mail users to the website.
When Hotmail and Mirabilis (the creator of the instant messenger ICQ) were looking to be bought, Yahoo! was the first company to which both made offers. Yahoo!, however, passed on both companies as they were too expensive for Yahoo! at that time. In the end, Microsoft ended up buying Hotmail for $400 million and AOL bought Mirabilis for $288 million.
Later there was also to be another battle to acquire the online communications company Four11. Yahoo! made a deal with the company for co-branded white pages. Gloria Gavin, who worked at Four11 as director of international business development said, "We always had a bias about being acquired by Yahoo! They were more entrepreneurial than Microsoft. We had a great cultural fit – it made a lot of sense." The real point in acquiring Four11 was that in March 1997, the company had launched Rocketmail, a webmail system that could be offered to users. In the end, Yahoo! concluded a deal with Four11 for $96 million. Yahoo! announced the acquisition on October 8, 1997, very close to the time that Yahoo! Mail was launched.Yahoo! Mail resulted from an acquisition rather than internal platform development because, as Healy said, "Hotmail was growing at thousands and thousands users per week. We did an analysis. For us to build, it would have taken four to six months, and by then, so many users would have taken an e-mail account. The speed of the market was critical."
The transition to Yahoo! Mail was not easy for many Rocketmail users at first. Yahoo! released various help pages to try and help these users. Soon after, on March 21, 2002, Yahoo! cut free software client access and introduced the $29.99 per year Mail Forwarding Service. Mary Osako, a Yahoo! Spokeswoman, told CNET, "For-pay services on Yahoo!, originally launched in February 1999, have experienced great acceptance from our base of active registered users, and we expect this adoption to continue to grow."
During the summer of 2002, the Yahoo! network was gradually redesigned. On July 2, Yahoo.com was redesigned and it was announced that other services like Yahoo! Mail would enter the same process. Along with this new design, new features were to be implemented, including new navigation tools, such as drop-down menus in DHTML and different category tabs, and a new user-customizable color scheme.
In November of the same year, Yahoo! launched another paid service: Yahoo! Mail Plus.Yahoo! Mail Plus offered a number of new features, including:
On April 1, 2004, Google announced a free webmail with 1 gigabyte of storage. Though Gmail, Google's e-mail service, certainly offers a large amount of storage capacity, its invitation-only accounts kept the other webmail services at the forefront. Most of the major webmail providers like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and AOL followed Google's lead and increased their mailbox storage considerably. Yahoo! was the first provider to announce 100 MB of storage for basic accounts and 2 GB of storage for premium users. Hotmail followed suit, offering 250 MB, only 150 MB more than Yahoo! Mail, but still 750 MB beneath Google's initial whopping 1 GB. When signing up for a Hotmail account, users were initially only given 25 MB for the first 30 days, after which the account quota would rise to 250 MB. Determined not to lose customers, Yahoo! Mail then countered Hotmail and Google by increasing the storage quota of its free email accounts to 1 GB.
On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired Oddpost, a strong webmail offering that simulated a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook. Oddpost had new innovative features such as drag-and-drop support, right-click menus, RSS feeds, and a preview pane, but it also had incredible speed, using e-mail caching to shorten response time, and many of these features were incorporated into an updated Yahoo! Mail service.
Features
Starting in May 2007, Yahoo! started to roll out to its users, both Beta and non-Beta testers, an "unlimited" amount of email storage.
Yahoo! Mail has the following features:
Users can get around the Web browser access restriction by using software that simulates a POP server to which the e-mail application connects. FreePOPs is an example of a free software application that allows email clients access to webmail (including Yahoo! Mail) services through POP3.
In September 2006 it was announced Yahoo! Mail will be open source.
Spam policy
Like most free Webmail providers, Yahoo! Mail is often used by spammers to provide a "remove me" email address. More often than not, these addresses are used for the express purpose of verifying the recipient's address--thus opening the door for more spam. This has led many ISPs and individual users to block messages from Yahoo! Mail accounts.
However, Yahoo! does not tolerate this practice, and terminates accounts connected with spam-related activities without warning.
Filters
In 2002, in order to prevent abuse, Yahoo! Mail had filters that changed certain words (that could trigger unwanted Javascript events) and word fragments into other words. "Mocha" was changed to "espresso", "expression" became "statement", and perhaps most damaging, "eval" (short for "evaluation") became "review". The widespread unintended effects of this can be seen by using search engines to find such nonsensical terms as "prreviewent"(prevalent), "reviewuation"(evaluation) and "medireview"(medieval).
When asked about these changes, Yahoo! explained that the changed words were common terms used in Web scripting, and were blacklisted to prevent hackers from sending damaging commands via the program's HTML function.
As of Friday, June 8, 2007, the Yahoo! Mail filters no longer substitute certain words for others. Although the change may have occurred prior to this date, Yahoo! Mail now prepends an "_" (underscore) to certain suspicious words and word fragments.
Sending a test email from a non-Yahoo! Mail account to a Yahoo! Mail account with the words "Mocha", "eval", "Javascript," and "expression" in a sentence resulted in the Yahoo! Mail filters prepending an "_" (underscore) to those words, resulting in "_Mocha", "_eval", "_Javascript" and "_expression".
This prepending obviously removes the threat of the words acting as commands via the program's HTML function by rendering them as non-commands or unrecognizable commands.
As of June 9, 2006, only the terms "expression" and "javascript" were prepended with an underscore ("_").
There is also offered a spam filter called SpamGuard and an ability to set up custom filters. One problem that can be encountered is that the spam filter is applied before any custom filters you create. This results in some emails which you may wish to have directed to your Inbox or some other folder to be sent to your Bulk folder instead. The only way to deal with this bug is to constantly monitor your Bulk folder, this most often affects email from unusual domains but this author has had email from a Yahoo email account being sent through a Yahoo Group mailing list get filtered to Bulk as well.
Mail certification
In February 2006, Yahoo! also announced their decision (along with AOL) to give some organizations the option to "certify" mail, by paying up to one cent for each outgoing message, allowing the mail in question to bypass Yahoo's and AOL's inbound spam filters.
Greylisting
Incoming mail to Yahoo! addresses can be subjected to deferred delivery as part of Yahoo!s incoming spam controls. This can delay delivery of mail sent to Yahoo! addresses without the sender or recipients being aware of it. The deferral is typically of short duration, but may extend to several hours. Yahoo! does not specifically document this policy in detail, although some information is available
Yahoo! Mail user name bans
On February 20, 2006, it was revealed that Yahoo! Mail was banning the word "Allah" in e-mail user names, both separate and as part of a user name such as linda.callahan. Shortly after the news of the "Allah" ban became widespread in media, it was lifted on February 23, 2006. Along with this action, Yahoo! also made the following statement:
We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s Terms of Service.
'Allah' was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience.
Yahoo! Mail Beta
In September 2005 Yahoo! began beta testing a significantly enhanced version of their e-mail service, based on Ajax scripting acquired from Oddpost, along with new philosophical approaches to email, including the Oddpost design philosophy (which Google made heavy use of in Gmail):
As Mail Beta is based on Oddpost, it features the same underlying code base, including the implementation of this design concept to minimize the amount of data sent during an email session by creating a JavaScript UI engine on the client side and sending "Datapacks" instead of reloading the whole interface on every click like a traditional webmail service (e.g. traditional Yahoo! Mail). This makes the service much faster than its counterparts.
However, unlike Oddpost, Yahoo! Mail Beta runs on a variety of OS' and browsers, and runs perfectly under Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. It does not work with the MacOS X default browser, Safari, however it does run in Safari under Windows.
The look and feel of the new version is designed to mimic a desktop e-mail client, and it offers unlimited storage space, tabbed emails, RSS feeds, drag-and-drop capabilities, advanced keyboard shortcuts, advanced search, integration with Yahoo! Calendar and Messenger, Domain Keys, address auto-complete and more.
Yahoo Mail Beta also has a mascot called Liam, who is basically a little boy, who is shown in the "Help" panel as well as in the loading screen.
The Mail Beta team also plans on integrating Yahoo! Messenger with Mail Beta.
Wide-scale beta release of the new version was introduced in late 2006 , and as of September 2006, active users who sign up get the new Yahoo! Mail Beta immediately.
It is unclear when Mail Beta will leave Beta stage, as there are certain features (e.g. Yahoo! Calendar, Notepad etc.) that are still missing from the application, as well as features that are wholly original to Mail Beta (e.g. Yahoo! Messenger integration). Mail Beta also lacks anything other than the most rudimentary search function, leaving it a long way behind many other webmail clients.
Public and critical reaction to the new product has been positive , although a number of users have encountered speed issues, which can render the client very difficult to use - especially on older hardware. Each update to the Beta has included significant speed improvements, and the Mail Beta team is still focused on improving speed issues.
In March 2007, Yahoo! integrated the Yahoo! Messenger instant-messaging service into the Yahoo! Mail Beta interface.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Mail is a Web-based email (webmail) service from Yahoo!. It is the largest e-mail provider on the Internet, serving millions of users. Yahoo! Mail's major competitors include Hotmail, Gmail, and AIM Mail.
Yahoo! Mail Beta, a significantly different and advanced version, is currently under heavy development and is set to replace the current version of Yahoo! Mail when it is complete. It is currently in public beta. Development of what has now become Yahoo! Mail Beta started in July 2004, although it is possible other prototypes were in development before then. It is currently compatible with Internet Explorer 7 and Camino as well as Firefox (as part of Yahoo!'s plan to eventually upgrade all of their sites to be compatible with Firefox). Although usable under Opera and Safari there are slight visual problems regarding the layout.
History
The history of Yahoo! Mail began with JoJo Healy, Yahoo!'s resident investment banker since November 1996, who has dealt with every Yahoo! acquisition since it was created. "No one knows your business like your employees," he said. According to him, the main question was always to consider whether to "build, buy or rent." The answer really depended on the growth of competitors and the current position of the company. The main reason to buy things was to gain speed to market.
The growth in the number of Internet users eventually boosted the e-mail technology, but also created a very competitive environment where the winner was the first company to launch a successful e-mail service and attract potential users. E-mail became one of the most important features of a Web company as it would mean regular visits from e-mail users to the website.
When Hotmail and Mirabilis (the creator of the instant messenger ICQ) were looking to be bought, Yahoo! was the first company to which both made offers. Yahoo!, however, passed on both companies as they were too expensive for Yahoo! at that time. In the end, Microsoft ended up buying Hotmail for $400 million and AOL bought Mirabilis for $288 million.
Later there was also to be another battle to acquire the online communications company Four11. Yahoo! made a deal with the company for co-branded white pages. Gloria Gavin, who worked at Four11 as director of international business development said, "We always had a bias about being acquired by Yahoo! They were more entrepreneurial than Microsoft. We had a great cultural fit – it made a lot of sense." The real point in acquiring Four11 was that in March 1997, the company had launched Rocketmail, a webmail system that could be offered to users. In the end, Yahoo! concluded a deal with Four11 for $96 million. Yahoo! announced the acquisition on October 8, 1997, very close to the time that Yahoo! Mail was launched.Yahoo! Mail resulted from an acquisition rather than internal platform development because, as Healy said, "Hotmail was growing at thousands and thousands users per week. We did an analysis. For us to build, it would have taken four to six months, and by then, so many users would have taken an e-mail account. The speed of the market was critical."
The transition to Yahoo! Mail was not easy for many Rocketmail users at first. Yahoo! released various help pages to try and help these users. Soon after, on March 21, 2002, Yahoo! cut free software client access and introduced the $29.99 per year Mail Forwarding Service. Mary Osako, a Yahoo! Spokeswoman, told CNET, "For-pay services on Yahoo!, originally launched in February 1999, have experienced great acceptance from our base of active registered users, and we expect this adoption to continue to grow."
During the summer of 2002, the Yahoo! network was gradually redesigned. On July 2, Yahoo.com was redesigned and it was announced that other services like Yahoo! Mail would enter the same process. Along with this new design, new features were to be implemented, including new navigation tools, such as drop-down menus in DHTML and different category tabs, and a new user-customizable color scheme.
In November of the same year, Yahoo! launched another paid service: Yahoo! Mail Plus.Yahoo! Mail Plus offered a number of new features, including:
- 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage
- 20-megabyte message size limit
- Ability to send up to 10 attachments per e-mail
- POP Access and Forwarding
- Archiving of e-mail messages to a hard drive for offline access
- Ability to send messages from Yahoo! Mail using other e-mail domains
- 200 blocked addresses and 50 filters to help screen unsolicited e-mails
- No promotional taglines in messages
- No account expiration
- A choice of stationaries
On April 1, 2004, Google announced a free webmail with 1 gigabyte of storage. Though Gmail, Google's e-mail service, certainly offers a large amount of storage capacity, its invitation-only accounts kept the other webmail services at the forefront. Most of the major webmail providers like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and AOL followed Google's lead and increased their mailbox storage considerably. Yahoo! was the first provider to announce 100 MB of storage for basic accounts and 2 GB of storage for premium users. Hotmail followed suit, offering 250 MB, only 150 MB more than Yahoo! Mail, but still 750 MB beneath Google's initial whopping 1 GB. When signing up for a Hotmail account, users were initially only given 25 MB for the first 30 days, after which the account quota would rise to 250 MB. Determined not to lose customers, Yahoo! Mail then countered Hotmail and Google by increasing the storage quota of its free email accounts to 1 GB.
On July 9, 2004, Yahoo! acquired Oddpost, a strong webmail offering that simulated a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook. Oddpost had new innovative features such as drag-and-drop support, right-click menus, RSS feeds, and a preview pane, but it also had incredible speed, using e-mail caching to shorten response time, and many of these features were incorporated into an updated Yahoo! Mail service.
Features
Starting in May 2007, Yahoo! started to roll out to its users, both Beta and non-Beta testers, an "unlimited" amount of email storage.
Yahoo! Mail has the following features:
- Free version: Unlimited Mail Storage. 10 MB attachments, plus protection against spam and viruses. (See: DomainKeys) Advertising is displayed on the screen while working with the e-mail account. In some countries, users with free accounts can also read mail from a POP3 server (but not in the US). However, if they want to send mail from a distant SMTP server, they must upgrade to a Plus account. Accounts not logged into for four months get deactivated (The account can be retrieved but all personal data is lost). Every free Yahoo! account will be deleted after an inactivity of 4 months. Early in 2006, Yahoo! Mail introduced aliases to its repertoire of features. Users could now add a (single) alias username containing a dot character for a pre-existing account. The Chinese version of Yahoo! Mail offers 3.5 GB quota and 20 MB attachments
- Business: Unlimited Mail Storage, 10 E-mail quota. Yahoo! Business E-mail is a combination of all their e-mail services with 10 distinct accounts each with the same features of the plus version and personalized domain name and e-mail address. Accounts can be managed by an administrator. There is $25 set-up fee and $9.99 monthly fee to use this service.
- Additionally, a user can pay $35 per year to have up to five custom e-mail addresses and a domain name.
- Yahoo mail underlines addresses and phone numbers in email and allows the user to add them to the address book.
Users can get around the Web browser access restriction by using software that simulates a POP server to which the e-mail application connects. FreePOPs is an example of a free software application that allows email clients access to webmail (including Yahoo! Mail) services through POP3.
In September 2006 it was announced Yahoo! Mail will be open source.
Spam policy
Like most free Webmail providers, Yahoo! Mail is often used by spammers to provide a "remove me" email address. More often than not, these addresses are used for the express purpose of verifying the recipient's address--thus opening the door for more spam. This has led many ISPs and individual users to block messages from Yahoo! Mail accounts.
However, Yahoo! does not tolerate this practice, and terminates accounts connected with spam-related activities without warning.
Filters
In 2002, in order to prevent abuse, Yahoo! Mail had filters that changed certain words (that could trigger unwanted Javascript events) and word fragments into other words. "Mocha" was changed to "espresso", "expression" became "statement", and perhaps most damaging, "eval" (short for "evaluation") became "review". The widespread unintended effects of this can be seen by using search engines to find such nonsensical terms as "prreviewent"(prevalent), "reviewuation"(evaluation) and "medireview"(medieval).
When asked about these changes, Yahoo! explained that the changed words were common terms used in Web scripting, and were blacklisted to prevent hackers from sending damaging commands via the program's HTML function.
As of Friday, June 8, 2007, the Yahoo! Mail filters no longer substitute certain words for others. Although the change may have occurred prior to this date, Yahoo! Mail now prepends an "_" (underscore) to certain suspicious words and word fragments.
Sending a test email from a non-Yahoo! Mail account to a Yahoo! Mail account with the words "Mocha", "eval", "Javascript," and "expression" in a sentence resulted in the Yahoo! Mail filters prepending an "_" (underscore) to those words, resulting in "_Mocha", "_eval", "_Javascript" and "_expression".
This prepending obviously removes the threat of the words acting as commands via the program's HTML function by rendering them as non-commands or unrecognizable commands.
As of June 9, 2006, only the terms "expression" and "javascript" were prepended with an underscore ("_").
There is also offered a spam filter called SpamGuard and an ability to set up custom filters. One problem that can be encountered is that the spam filter is applied before any custom filters you create. This results in some emails which you may wish to have directed to your Inbox or some other folder to be sent to your Bulk folder instead. The only way to deal with this bug is to constantly monitor your Bulk folder, this most often affects email from unusual domains but this author has had email from a Yahoo email account being sent through a Yahoo Group mailing list get filtered to Bulk as well.
Mail certification
In February 2006, Yahoo! also announced their decision (along with AOL) to give some organizations the option to "certify" mail, by paying up to one cent for each outgoing message, allowing the mail in question to bypass Yahoo's and AOL's inbound spam filters.
Greylisting
Incoming mail to Yahoo! addresses can be subjected to deferred delivery as part of Yahoo!s incoming spam controls. This can delay delivery of mail sent to Yahoo! addresses without the sender or recipients being aware of it. The deferral is typically of short duration, but may extend to several hours. Yahoo! does not specifically document this policy in detail, although some information is available
Yahoo! Mail user name bans
On February 20, 2006, it was revealed that Yahoo! Mail was banning the word "Allah" in e-mail user names, both separate and as part of a user name such as linda.callahan. Shortly after the news of the "Allah" ban became widespread in media, it was lifted on February 23, 2006. Along with this action, Yahoo! also made the following statement:
We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!'s Terms of Service.
'Allah' was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience.
Yahoo! Mail Beta
In September 2005 Yahoo! began beta testing a significantly enhanced version of their e-mail service, based on Ajax scripting acquired from Oddpost, along with new philosophical approaches to email, including the Oddpost design philosophy (which Google made heavy use of in Gmail):
As Mail Beta is based on Oddpost, it features the same underlying code base, including the implementation of this design concept to minimize the amount of data sent during an email session by creating a JavaScript UI engine on the client side and sending "Datapacks" instead of reloading the whole interface on every click like a traditional webmail service (e.g. traditional Yahoo! Mail). This makes the service much faster than its counterparts.
However, unlike Oddpost, Yahoo! Mail Beta runs on a variety of OS' and browsers, and runs perfectly under Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. It does not work with the MacOS X default browser, Safari, however it does run in Safari under Windows.
The look and feel of the new version is designed to mimic a desktop e-mail client, and it offers unlimited storage space, tabbed emails, RSS feeds, drag-and-drop capabilities, advanced keyboard shortcuts, advanced search, integration with Yahoo! Calendar and Messenger, Domain Keys, address auto-complete and more.
Yahoo Mail Beta also has a mascot called Liam, who is basically a little boy, who is shown in the "Help" panel as well as in the loading screen.
The Mail Beta team also plans on integrating Yahoo! Messenger with Mail Beta.
Wide-scale beta release of the new version was introduced in late 2006 , and as of September 2006, active users who sign up get the new Yahoo! Mail Beta immediately.
It is unclear when Mail Beta will leave Beta stage, as there are certain features (e.g. Yahoo! Calendar, Notepad etc.) that are still missing from the application, as well as features that are wholly original to Mail Beta (e.g. Yahoo! Messenger integration). Mail Beta also lacks anything other than the most rudimentary search function, leaving it a long way behind many other webmail clients.
Public and critical reaction to the new product has been positive , although a number of users have encountered speed issues, which can render the client very difficult to use - especially on older hardware. Each update to the Beta has included significant speed improvements, and the Mail Beta team is still focused on improving speed issues.
In March 2007, Yahoo! integrated the Yahoo! Messenger instant-messaging service into the Yahoo! Mail Beta interface.
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Y!M” redirects here. For the movie database, see Yahoo! Movies, for the mail service, see Yahoo! Mail.
Yahoo! Messenger is a popular advertisement-supported instant messaging client and protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email. Yahoo! offers PC to PC telephone, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories.
In addition to instant messaging features similar to those offered by ICQ, it also offers (on Microsoft Windows) features such as: IMVironments (customizing the look of Instant Message windows), address-book integration and Custom Status Messages. It was also the first major IM client to feature BUZZing and music-status. Another recently added feature is customized avatars.
Yahoo! Messenger 2.5.3 for Mac, released in 2003, is the current stable version for Mac OS X. It has far fewer features than the current Windows release and has been reported to be quite buggy. In June of 2006 Messenger for Mac 3.0b1 was released as a beta, and remains in beta more than a year later. This beta has a more modern interface than 2.5.3 and includes avatars,display image viewing, BUZZ facility, and some other features comparable to those on the Windows version. However, it is still lacking the more advanced features contained in the Windows version, such as PC-to-PC calling, photo sharing, an address book and chat room access. The latest beta version (rc4 released in May 2007) also contains bugs, including a java bug when Safari 3 is installed that causes new messages to pop to the top of the window causing the user to repeatedly scroll to the bottom of the window as new messages arrive.
Yahoo! has announced a partnership with Microsoft to join their instant messaging networks. This would make Yahoo! Messenger compatible with Microsoft's .NET Messenger Service. It also made Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger compatible with Yahoo!'s Network. This change has taken effect as of July 13, 2006, - Yahoo! Messenger has integrated instant messaging with Windows Live Messenger users, and is fully functional.
British Telecommunications' BT Communicator software is based on Yahoo! Messenger. BT Communicator was withdrawn on 31st December 2006.
Yahoo! Messenger was originally launched under the name Yahoo! Pager on March 9, 1998.
Features
Yahoo! Voice
Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service , provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application.
Voicemail and file sharing
Yahoo! added voicemail and file sending capabilities to their client. File-sharing of sizes up to 1GB was added.
Plug-ins
As of 8.0, Yahoo! Messenger has added the ability for users to create plug-ins (via the use of the freely available Yahoo! Messenger Plug-in SDK), which are then hosted and showcased on the Yahoo! Plug-in gallery
Yahoo! Mail integration
On July 2, 2007, Yahoo! plans to integrate Yahoo! Mail Beta and Yahoo! Messenger. Conversations will eventually be archived and stored in the same manner as emails. This allows users to search within their chat logs easily, and to have them centrally stored no matter what computer is used to have conversations.
URI scheme
Yahoo! Messenger's installation process automatically installs an extra URI scheme ("protocol") handler into some web browsers, so that URIs beginning "ymsgr:" can open a new Yahoo! Messenger window with specified parameters. This is similar in function to the mailto: URI scheme, which creates a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a web page might include a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the YIM user notarealuser.
Send Message
To specify a message body, the m parameter is used, so that the link location might look like this:
ymsgr:sendim?notarealuser&m=This+is+my+message
Offline Messaging
Offline messaging, a feature long offered by Yahoo!, allows online users to send messages to their contacts, even if said contacts are not signed in at the time. The sender's offline contacts will receive these messages when they next go online.
Interoperability with Windows Live Messenger
On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced plans to introduce interoperability between their two messengers, creating the second largest instant messenger userbase worldwide: 40 percent of all users (AIM currently holds 56 percent). The announcement comes after years of 3rd party interoperability success (most notably, Trillian, Pidgin) and criticisms that the major instant messengers were locking their networks. Microsoft has also had talks with AOL in an attempt to introduce further interoperability, but so far, AOL seems unwilling to participate.
Interoperability between Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger was launched July 12, 2006. This allows, for Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger users to chat to each other without the need to create an account on the other service, provided both contacts use the latest versions of the clients. For now, it's impossible to talk using the voice service among both messengers.
Games
There are various games and applications available that can be accessed via the conversation window by clicking the games icon and challenging your current contact
yahoomessenger.exe (previously ypager.exe)
yahoomessenger.exe is the main process belonging to the Yahoo! Instant Messenger application, an Internet messaging program. The name of the Yahoo! instance messaging client changed from ypager.exe to yahoomessenger.exe since version 7.5.0 beta.
Note that this applies to the Windows version of Yahoo! Messenger.
Upcoming releases
Yahoo! will soon unveil a completely rehauled version for Windows Vista to a generally enthusiastic response. It has been designed to exploit the new design elements of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation.
Macintosh client 3.0 Beta 2 will reportedly have more features, including Voice. However, Yahoo! have yet to announce a release date for this beta.
Yahoo! Mobile
Yahoo! Mobile
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Mobile is a mobile website operated by Yahoo! worldwide to promote its Yahoo! Go and mobile web products.
External links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Mobile is a mobile website operated by Yahoo! worldwide to promote its Yahoo! Go and mobile web products.
External links
Yahoo! Movies
Yahoo! Movies
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Movies, provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production stills. Users can read critic's reviews, write and read other user reviews, get personalized movie recommendations, purchase movie tickets online, and create and view other user's lists of their favorite movies.
Special coverage
Yahoo! Movies devotes special coverage to the Academy Awards with a special Oscars site. The Oscars site includes articles, show coverage, a list of the night's big winners, photos, videos, polls, and a blog, written by J. Keith van Straaten.
Yahoo! Movies also releases special guides, such as the Summer Movie Guide, which contains information on the major releases of the summer with exclusive trailers and clips, photos, box office information, polls, and unique editorial content.
Additionally, Yahoo! Movies is teaming up with MTV to host a special site for the MTV Movie Awards, which will feature show information and a section where users can submit original movie shorts parodying last year's movies for the chance to win the new award, Best Movie Spoof.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Movies, provided by the Yahoo! network, is home to a large collection of information on movies, past and new releases, trailers and clips, box office information, and showtimes and movie theater information. Yahoo! Movies also includes red carpet photos, actor galleries, and production stills. Users can read critic's reviews, write and read other user reviews, get personalized movie recommendations, purchase movie tickets online, and create and view other user's lists of their favorite movies.
Special coverage
Yahoo! Movies devotes special coverage to the Academy Awards with a special Oscars site. The Oscars site includes articles, show coverage, a list of the night's big winners, photos, videos, polls, and a blog, written by J. Keith van Straaten.
Yahoo! Movies also releases special guides, such as the Summer Movie Guide, which contains information on the major releases of the summer with exclusive trailers and clips, photos, box office information, polls, and unique editorial content.
Additionally, Yahoo! Movies is teaming up with MTV to host a special site for the MTV Movie Awards, which will feature show information and a section where users can submit original movie shorts parodying last year's movies for the chance to win the new award, Best Movie Spoof.
Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Music, provided by the Yahoo! network, is a provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming.
Previously referred to simply as "LAUNCH" (and rebranded "Yahoo! Music" or simply "Y! Music" in February 2005), it began as a magazine by the same title that was issued in both standard print format and as an interactive CD-ROM. Eventually the print version was eliminated and subscribers were only sent the CD-ROM version. It contained video interviews, live performances and special video segments by music stars as well as standard (but interactive) music magazine features. Eventually the company, LAUNCH Media, offered music videos over the Internet and started LAUNCHcast Internet radio in 1999. LAUNCH was purchased by Yahoo! for US$12 million in 2001 and integrated into their website. The website also features artist profiles with extensive selections of music and biographical information.
Yahoo! Music was the #1 online music site in terms or audience reach and total time spent as of March 2007.
New version
A banner has recently started appearing on the UK region for Y! Music asking users to fill in a survey to help them create the next version of Y! Music. The banner shows a small screenshot of the new version showing a new white/purple colour scheme instead of the current different shades of purple. It is also a sign of the possible launch of a UK music store to compete with iTunes and Napster.
Products
Key dates
In 2001, Yahoo! purchased LAUNCH Media, makers of the LAUNCHcast Internet radio service.
On September 14, 2004, Yahoo! purchased Musicmatch, Inc., makers of the Musicmatch Jukebox software. As of Musicmatch 10.1, Yahoo! has rebranded Musicmatch Jukebox as Y! Music Musicmatch Jukebox, and integrated it with the Yahoo! Music Engine store. The main difference is the branding and physical program.
In 2005, Yahoo! Music became the first major online music service to provide a $5 per month unlimited download service similar to the Open Music Model, albeit with digital rights management, called Yahoo! Music Unlimited.
Notes and references
Comscore Media Metrix Accessed May 2, 2007.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Music, provided by the Yahoo! network, is a provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming.
Previously referred to simply as "LAUNCH" (and rebranded "Yahoo! Music" or simply "Y! Music" in February 2005), it began as a magazine by the same title that was issued in both standard print format and as an interactive CD-ROM. Eventually the print version was eliminated and subscribers were only sent the CD-ROM version. It contained video interviews, live performances and special video segments by music stars as well as standard (but interactive) music magazine features. Eventually the company, LAUNCH Media, offered music videos over the Internet and started LAUNCHcast Internet radio in 1999. LAUNCH was purchased by Yahoo! for US$12 million in 2001 and integrated into their website. The website also features artist profiles with extensive selections of music and biographical information.
Yahoo! Music was the #1 online music site in terms or audience reach and total time spent as of March 2007.
New version
A banner has recently started appearing on the UK region for Y! Music asking users to fill in a survey to help them create the next version of Y! Music. The banner shows a small screenshot of the new version showing a new white/purple colour scheme instead of the current different shades of purple. It is also a sign of the possible launch of a UK music store to compete with iTunes and Napster.
Products
- LAUNCHcast and LAUNCHcast Plus Internet radio
- Yahoo! Music Jukebox
- Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription streaming and download service
- Music videos
- Live Sets - Exclusive video concerts from A-list artists
- Who's Next - Listeners vote on emerging artists
- Pepsi Smash on Yahoo! Music - Exclusive video interviews, performances, and reality segments
- Artist profiles
- Lyrics
- Official Grammy Awards coverage
Key dates
In 2001, Yahoo! purchased LAUNCH Media, makers of the LAUNCHcast Internet radio service.
On September 14, 2004, Yahoo! purchased Musicmatch, Inc., makers of the Musicmatch Jukebox software. As of Musicmatch 10.1, Yahoo! has rebranded Musicmatch Jukebox as Y! Music Musicmatch Jukebox, and integrated it with the Yahoo! Music Engine store. The main difference is the branding and physical program.
In 2005, Yahoo! Music became the first major online music service to provide a $5 per month unlimited download service similar to the Open Music Model, albeit with digital rights management, called Yahoo! Music Unlimited.
Notes and references
Comscore Media Metrix Accessed May 2, 2007.
Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! News is an Internet-based news aggregator provided by Yahoo!. It features Top Stories, U.S. National, World, Business, Entertainment, Science, Health, Weather, Most Popular, News Photos, Op/Ed, and Local news.
Articles in Yahoo! News come from news services, namely Associated Press (AP), Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Christian Science Monitor, NPR, USA Today, CNN.com and others.
Yahoo! has for a long time had message boards for discussions of each news article but on December 19, 2006 closed the old boards permanently due to massive amounts of trolling. Yahoo! is working on a new message board system which will be ready in the early half of 2007.[citation needed] As of July 23 2007, the new message board system is still not in place.
External links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! News is an Internet-based news aggregator provided by Yahoo!. It features Top Stories, U.S. National, World, Business, Entertainment, Science, Health, Weather, Most Popular, News Photos, Op/Ed, and Local news.
Articles in Yahoo! News come from news services, namely Associated Press (AP), Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Christian Science Monitor, NPR, USA Today, CNN.com and others.
Yahoo! has for a long time had message boards for discussions of each news article but on December 19, 2006 closed the old boards permanently due to massive amounts of trolling. Yahoo! is working on a new message board system which will be ready in the early half of 2007.[citation needed] As of July 23 2007, the new message board system is still not in place.
External links
Yahoo! Next
Yahoo! Next
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Next is a showcase of some of Yahoo!'s newest and upcoming projects. It is essentially an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies in their beta testing phase, and a chance for the Yahoo! community to interact and have a say on how upcoming products are designed and fine tuned. Each prototype can be discussed in its own individual Yahoo! Next forum.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Next is a showcase of some of Yahoo!'s newest and upcoming projects. It is essentially an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies in their beta testing phase, and a chance for the Yahoo! community to interact and have a say on how upcoming products are designed and fine tuned. Each prototype can be discussed in its own individual Yahoo! Next forum.
Yahoo! Personals
Yahoo! Personals
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Personals is an online dating service provided by Yahoo!.
Features
Yahoo! Personals editions are designed in local languages. Contacting a member through Yahoo! Personals requires a paid subscription to Yahoo! Personals.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Personals is an online dating service provided by Yahoo!.
Features
Yahoo! Personals editions are designed in local languages. Contacting a member through Yahoo! Personals requires a paid subscription to Yahoo! Personals.
Yahoo! Photos
Yahoo! Photos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Photos is the photo sharing service of Yahoo!, designed specifically for Yahoo! users.
The service has unlimited storage for photos, but it is required that photos have the jpeg/jpg extension. Users create individual photo albums, categorize their photos and place them in the corresponding albums. Users are also able to set access of their albums by publishing them for the viewing pleasure of everyone, disabling access, or marking them as private folders for their own viewing. In an effort to make it simpler and more efficient, Yahoo had an uploader tool to drag and drop the pictures from one's computer to Yahoo! Photos web page. In March 2005 Yahoo! purchased another photo sharing site, Flickr, and in May 2007 announced that Yahoo! Photos would be closed down on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 9 p.m. PDT.
Features
Cancelled Version
In 2006 a new version of Yahoo! Photos, as well as a public API, was released for some users. However, the new version was not made public.
Shut down of Yahoo! Photos
On the 16th June, 2007, Yahoo! Photos issued a press release stating that it would be terminating September 20, 2007 in order to focus their efforts on Flickr.
Yahoo! Photos has proposed a number of alternatives for customers who want to move their photos to other services.
More information about the closure can be seen at Yahoo! Photo's Knowledge Base Article.
Several independent users have derived alternative solutions for migration of their photographs uploaded at Yahoo! Photos, namely: Download Hi Resolution Yahoo! Photos by Rohit Sud, Download Yahoo! Photos by Kent Brewster, and Yahoo! Photos Grabber by Yandao.com
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Photos is the photo sharing service of Yahoo!, designed specifically for Yahoo! users.
The service has unlimited storage for photos, but it is required that photos have the jpeg/jpg extension. Users create individual photo albums, categorize their photos and place them in the corresponding albums. Users are also able to set access of their albums by publishing them for the viewing pleasure of everyone, disabling access, or marking them as private folders for their own viewing. In an effort to make it simpler and more efficient, Yahoo had an uploader tool to drag and drop the pictures from one's computer to Yahoo! Photos web page. In March 2005 Yahoo! purchased another photo sharing site, Flickr, and in May 2007 announced that Yahoo! Photos would be closed down on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 9 p.m. PDT.
Features
- Photos on a television for persons using newly upgraded software in the TiVo Series2 setup box.
- Users are permitted to batch their pictures and customize folders with stationery, and access features like ordering prints, creating books, calendar and personal stamps.
- Photos can be shared with Yahoo! 360° friends, appear on My Yahoo! pages, be shown via Yahoo! Messenger or be displayed on one's desktop with Yahoo! Widgets.
- Yahoo Photos opened an internal API which allows a partner to access photo storage and work with customer’s photos with permission.
- Yahoo! Backupr is one of these services which allows albums to be burned as a CD or a DVD with customizable CD/DVD labels and CD/DVD case print materials.
Cancelled Version
In 2006 a new version of Yahoo! Photos, as well as a public API, was released for some users. However, the new version was not made public.
Shut down of Yahoo! Photos
On the 16th June, 2007, Yahoo! Photos issued a press release stating that it would be terminating September 20, 2007 in order to focus their efforts on Flickr.
Yahoo! Photos has proposed a number of alternatives for customers who want to move their photos to other services.
More information about the closure can be seen at Yahoo! Photo's Knowledge Base Article.
Several independent users have derived alternative solutions for migration of their photographs uploaded at Yahoo! Photos, namely: Download Hi Resolution Yahoo! Photos by Rohit Sud, Download Yahoo! Photos by Kent Brewster, and Yahoo! Photos Grabber by Yandao.com
History
- March, 2000: Yahoo! Photos launched.
- March 29th, 2005: Yahoo buys Flickr, which is an online community to share and discuss personal photos and montages.
- January 14th, 2007: Yahoo! Photos updated the site with new features, including free full-resolution downloads from ISPs that have partnerships with Yahoo.
May 3rd, 2007: An informal announcement was made that Yahoo! Photo was going to shutdown. USA Today reports:
"Yahoo Photos will be shut down by the fall. Users will be directed over a three-month period to transfer their images to Flickr or other photo sites such as Multiply, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish or Photobucket. Yahoo says it will make the transition easy, with a one-click transfer" process."- June, 2007: Yahoo! photos is no longer accepting new accounts or allowing users to upload photos
- September 20, 2007: Yahoo! photos will shut down.
Yahoo! Pipes
Yahoo! Pipes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Pipes is a Web application from Yahoo! that provides a GUI-based interface for building applications that aggregate Web feeds and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. The site works by letting users "pipe" information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be modified (e.g. filtering). A typical example is New York Times thru Flickr, a pipe which takes the New York Times RSS feed and adds a photo from Flickr based on the keywords of each item. The site is currently in beta.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Pipes is a Web application from Yahoo! that provides a GUI-based interface for building applications that aggregate Web feeds and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. The site works by letting users "pipe" information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be modified (e.g. filtering). A typical example is New York Times thru Flickr, a pipe which takes the New York Times RSS feed and adds a photo from Flickr based on the keywords of each item. The site is currently in beta.
Yahoo! Podcasts
Yahoo! Podcasts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Podcasts is a podcasting directory service that lets users download, stream online, subcribe (via RSS) and review podcasts. It also allows users to search for podcasts or browse from a podcast directory.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Podcasts is a podcasting directory service that lets users download, stream online, subcribe (via RSS) and review podcasts. It also allows users to search for podcasts or browse from a podcast directory.
Yahoo! Publisher Network
Yahoo! Publisher Network
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Publisher Network (abbreviated YPN) is a beta network, launched on August 2, 2005 by Yahoo!. As the service is currently in Beta, it is currently only accepting US-Based publishers; it is believed that Yahoo! will expand this when the program comes out of Beta. YPN provides cost per click contextual advertising, similar to Google Adsense, as well as various tools and services to assist publishers in building and improving their websites.
In May 2006, YPN caused some controversy by shutting down accounts used for MySpace layout sites. The reason given was the quality of traffic was very poor.
Also in May 2006, the Yahoo! Publisher Networks' blog posted an updated version of their requirements from publishers. YPN have now explicitly stated visitors must recognize advertisements as advertisements, and images/media may not be placed to induce accidental clicks.
See also
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Publisher Network (abbreviated YPN) is a beta network, launched on August 2, 2005 by Yahoo!. As the service is currently in Beta, it is currently only accepting US-Based publishers; it is believed that Yahoo! will expand this when the program comes out of Beta. YPN provides cost per click contextual advertising, similar to Google Adsense, as well as various tools and services to assist publishers in building and improving their websites.
In May 2006, YPN caused some controversy by shutting down accounts used for MySpace layout sites. The reason given was the quality of traffic was very poor.
Also in May 2006, the Yahoo! Publisher Networks' blog posted an updated version of their requirements from publishers. YPN have now explicitly stated visitors must recognize advertisements as advertisements, and images/media may not be placed to induce accidental clicks.
See also
Yahoo! Real Estate
Yahoo! Real Estate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Real Estate was launched by [[Yahoo! Inc.]] in June of 1998 with the mission to provide home buyers, sellers and renters with the most relevant and comprehensive set of information and tools. With access to over three million homes for sale and apartments for rent, Yahoo! Real estate provides one of the most comprehensive listings search experiences on the web. Beyond listings search, Yahoo! Real Estate also provides users with the following real estate tools and products:
Following a successful August 2006 site redesign, Yahoo! Real Estate has grown to be one of the most trafficked real estate sites on the internet.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Real Estate was launched by [[Yahoo! Inc.]] in June of 1998 with the mission to provide home buyers, sellers and renters with the most relevant and comprehensive set of information and tools. With access to over three million homes for sale and apartments for rent, Yahoo! Real estate provides one of the most comprehensive listings search experiences on the web. Beyond listings search, Yahoo! Real Estate also provides users with the following real estate tools and products:
Following a successful August 2006 site redesign, Yahoo! Real Estate has grown to be one of the most trafficked real estate sites on the internet.
Yahoo! Research
Yahoo! Research
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Research is a research organization established on January 2004 within Yahoo!. It is currently headed by Prabhakar Raghavan.
Topics within Yahoo! Research include: Search, Machine Learning, Microeconomics, Media Experience, and Community Systems.
Locations include:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Research is a research organization established on January 2004 within Yahoo!. It is currently headed by Prabhakar Raghavan.
Topics within Yahoo! Research include: Search, Machine Learning, Microeconomics, Media Experience, and Community Systems.
Locations include:
- Barcelona, Spain
- Yahoo! Research Berkeley, CA
- Burbank, CA
- Santa Clara, CA
- New York, NY
- Santiago, Chile.
Yahoo! Search
Yahoo! Search
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the search engine. For the corporation, see Yahoo! ; for other uses see Yahoo! (disambiguation).
Yahoo! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo!. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" merely referred to a Yahoo! provided interface, which would send queries to another search engine "behind the scenes" (until 2004 Google). The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and storage/retrieval of data was done by Yahoo! itself.
Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo! acquired other companies with their own search engines. In 2002, it bought Inktomi, a "behind the scenes" search engine, whose results are shown on other companies' web sites. In 2003, it bought Overture Services, Inc., which owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. Initially, even though it owned multiple search engines, it didn't use them on the main Yahoo.com web site, but kept using Google's search engine for its results.
However, starting in 2003, Yahoo! Search became an original web crawler-based search engine, with a reinvented crawler called Yahoo! Slurp. Yahoo! Search combined the capabilities of search engine companies it had acquired, with its existing research, and put them into a single search engine. Its new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo!'s sites that had a web search function. It also started to sell its search engine results to other companies, to show on their web sites. Its relationship with Google was terminated at that time, with the former partners becoming each other's main competitors.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the search engine. For the corporation, see Yahoo! ; for other uses see Yahoo! (disambiguation).
Yahoo! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo!. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" merely referred to a Yahoo! provided interface, which would send queries to another search engine "behind the scenes" (until 2004 Google). The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and storage/retrieval of data was done by Yahoo! itself.
Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo! acquired other companies with their own search engines. In 2002, it bought Inktomi, a "behind the scenes" search engine, whose results are shown on other companies' web sites. In 2003, it bought Overture Services, Inc., which owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. Initially, even though it owned multiple search engines, it didn't use them on the main Yahoo.com web site, but kept using Google's search engine for its results.
However, starting in 2003, Yahoo! Search became an original web crawler-based search engine, with a reinvented crawler called Yahoo! Slurp. Yahoo! Search combined the capabilities of search engine companies it had acquired, with its existing research, and put them into a single search engine. Its new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo!'s sites that had a web search function. It also started to sell its search engine results to other companies, to show on their web sites. Its relationship with Google was terminated at that time, with the former partners becoming each other's main competitors.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Search Marketing (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.
Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc. (formerly Goto.com) (overture.com). Goto.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service following previous attempts that were not well received.
Origins of Goto.com
Goto.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.
In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches. The bid amount was paid by the advertiser to Goto every time a searcher clicked on a link to the advertiser's website. By July 1998, advertisers were paying anything up to a dollar per click.
GoTo's business model was based on the idea that its paid listings would make it more relevant than other services, especially for general searches, and web sites that pay more are probably better sites. A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.
In contrast, GoTo's pay-for-placement model was very successful. Commentors theorised that the web had matured in the intervening two years, and these type of economic models were more acceptable since the web was no longer just a place for academic research, but also a place for buying products. GoTo founder Bill Gross speculated at the launch that GoTo would succeed because, as a relatively new service, it had no reputation to taint with paid listings, unlike Open Text.
On October 8, 2001, Goto.com, Inc. renamed itself Overture Services, Inc. GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund said "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand."
Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo! to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites. Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo!
This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as AltaVista and AlltheWeb.
Acquisition by Yahoo!
In 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer, Yahoo!, for $1.7 billion. The old brand name of Overture has now been phased out as Yahoo! re-brands all of its products under the Yahoo! name. The exception to this is in Japan and Korea where the local businesses continue to use the Overture brand.
Details of current service
Goto.com's and Overture's original services provided only a list of search results ordered according to the bid amounts paid by the respective advertisers. Yahoo!'s Search Marketing's latest iteration, code named Panama, was released early in 2007. It replaced the old formula with one more similar to what Google AdWords uses to rank advertisements against search results. The exact formula is secret, but it is basically Bid * Quality Score = Ad Rank, where quality score is comprised of the ad's CTR (click-through-rate), the relevance of the ad to the creative, and the 'quality' of the landing page the ad is sending the user to.
Yahoo! Search Marketing also provides features such as Geo-targeting, Ad Testing, Campaign Budgeting, and Campaign scheduling.
Patent litigation
In May 1999, Goto.com filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine". The patent was granted as US patent 6269361 in July 2001. A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.
Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo!, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002.
The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWord service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.
Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.
Adware partnership
In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now Claria Corporation) an adware company. Under the partnership, Gator's software monitored a web-user's activity on web sites and search engines (even sites such as Google that are not affiliated with Overture) and grabbed search keywords. These keywords were submitted to the Overture search engine. As a result, advertisers who paid for listings in Overture found their products advertised through Gator's Search Scout software, even if they wanted nothing to do with Gator. Overture faced a great deal of criticism for entering into this partnership.
When Yahoo acquired Overture, the Claria software impaired the operation of Yahoo's services. For example, when a user with a Claria application installed used Yahoo Search, they received a standard set of Yahoo results with sponsored listings at the top supplied by Overture. The user would then receive a full-screen pop-under window from Search Scout. Since Search Scout uses Overture's paid listings as well, Claria's window has the exact same listings as the Yahoo search results.
Subsequently, Yahoo! came out with the Yahoo! Toolbar, which allows users to remove adware and spyware from their system. The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies. Claria's website, claria.com, does not list Yahoo! as a partner and a March 2006 press release states that they are exiting the adware business.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Search Marketing (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.
Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc. (formerly Goto.com) (overture.com). Goto.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service following previous attempts that were not well received.
Origins of Goto.com
Goto.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service.
In February 1998, GoTo offered advertisers the option of bidding on how much they would be willing to pay to appear at the top of results in response to specific searches. The bid amount was paid by the advertiser to Goto every time a searcher clicked on a link to the advertiser's website. By July 1998, advertisers were paying anything up to a dollar per click.
GoTo's business model was based on the idea that its paid listings would make it more relevant than other services, especially for general searches, and web sites that pay more are probably better sites. A similar service had been offered by Open Text in 1996, but this precipitated outcries and bad publicity because searchers at the time did not want the search process more commercialized.
In contrast, GoTo's pay-for-placement model was very successful. Commentors theorised that the web had matured in the intervening two years, and these type of economic models were more acceptable since the web was no longer just a place for academic research, but also a place for buying products. GoTo founder Bill Gross speculated at the launch that GoTo would succeed because, as a relatively new service, it had no reputation to taint with paid listings, unlike Open Text.
On October 8, 2001, Goto.com, Inc. renamed itself Overture Services, Inc. GoTo's chief operating officer Jaynie Studenmund said "We also felt it was a sophisticated enough name, in case our products expand."
Through partnerships, Overture enabled portals such as MSN and Yahoo! to monetize the hundreds of millions of web searches made each day on their sites. Indeed, these partnerships proved highly lucrative, and in a period otherwise marked by dot-com failures, Overture became a substantial profit driver for portals like Yahoo!
This success enabled Overture to acquire web sites such as AltaVista and AlltheWeb.
Acquisition by Yahoo!
In 2003, Overture was acquired by its biggest customer, Yahoo!, for $1.7 billion. The old brand name of Overture has now been phased out as Yahoo! re-brands all of its products under the Yahoo! name. The exception to this is in Japan and Korea where the local businesses continue to use the Overture brand.
Details of current service
Goto.com's and Overture's original services provided only a list of search results ordered according to the bid amounts paid by the respective advertisers. Yahoo!'s Search Marketing's latest iteration, code named Panama, was released early in 2007. It replaced the old formula with one more similar to what Google AdWords uses to rank advertisements against search results. The exact formula is secret, but it is basically Bid * Quality Score = Ad Rank, where quality score is comprised of the ad's CTR (click-through-rate), the relevance of the ad to the creative, and the 'quality' of the landing page the ad is sending the user to.
Yahoo! Search Marketing also provides features such as Geo-targeting, Ad Testing, Campaign Budgeting, and Campaign scheduling.
Patent litigation
In May 1999, Goto.com filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine". The patent was granted as US patent 6269361 in July 2001. A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.
Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo!, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002.
The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWord service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.
Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.
Adware partnership
In April 2003, Overture announced a three-year partnership with Gator Corporation, (now Claria Corporation) an adware company. Under the partnership, Gator's software monitored a web-user's activity on web sites and search engines (even sites such as Google that are not affiliated with Overture) and grabbed search keywords. These keywords were submitted to the Overture search engine. As a result, advertisers who paid for listings in Overture found their products advertised through Gator's Search Scout software, even if they wanted nothing to do with Gator. Overture faced a great deal of criticism for entering into this partnership.
When Yahoo acquired Overture, the Claria software impaired the operation of Yahoo's services. For example, when a user with a Claria application installed used Yahoo Search, they received a standard set of Yahoo results with sponsored listings at the top supplied by Overture. The user would then receive a full-screen pop-under window from Search Scout. Since Search Scout uses Overture's paid listings as well, Claria's window has the exact same listings as the Yahoo search results.
Subsequently, Yahoo! came out with the Yahoo! Toolbar, which allows users to remove adware and spyware from their system. The toolbar affected the operation of Claria's software and may have put stress on the relationship between the two companies. Claria's website, claria.com, does not list Yahoo! as a partner and a March 2006 press release states that they are exiting the adware business.
Yahoo! Sharpener Award
Yahoo! Sharpener Award
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Sharpener award is an annual student award hosted by the online search engine Yahoo! which aims to promote creative paths into the advertising industry. It sits as almost a junior level to the advertising accolade The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair.
The competition, backed by Campaign Magazine, is regarded as part of Yahoo!’s ongoing efforts to raise awareness of online advertising as a highly creative medium and to celebrate the best of the next generation of creatives.
The Award was set up in 2005 and a request for entries was announced in November.
The award in 2006 aimed to challenge final year university design students to develop an integrated campaign for Yahoo! Music Unlimited – Yahoo!’s music download product.
Entries were reviewed by an influential jury including Mark Roalfe (RKCY) and Guy Philipson (IAB). They short listed nine finalists, followed by a second round of judging to reveal agree third place, second place and the overall Sharpener Award winner who was with a 3 month paid placement at 4 London agencies: TBWA, Tequila, Agency.com and MBA.
2006 Winners
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Sharpener award is an annual student award hosted by the online search engine Yahoo! which aims to promote creative paths into the advertising industry. It sits as almost a junior level to the advertising accolade The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair.
The competition, backed by Campaign Magazine, is regarded as part of Yahoo!’s ongoing efforts to raise awareness of online advertising as a highly creative medium and to celebrate the best of the next generation of creatives.
The Award was set up in 2005 and a request for entries was announced in November.
The award in 2006 aimed to challenge final year university design students to develop an integrated campaign for Yahoo! Music Unlimited – Yahoo!’s music download product.
Entries were reviewed by an influential jury including Mark Roalfe (RKCY) and Guy Philipson (IAB). They short listed nine finalists, followed by a second round of judging to reveal agree third place, second place and the overall Sharpener Award winner who was with a 3 month paid placement at 4 London agencies: TBWA, Tequila, Agency.com and MBA.
2006 Winners
- First Place : Alexander Brown (Goldsmiths College)
- Second Place : Julieanna Cheng and Yasin Osman (Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College)
- Third Place : Laxmi Patel and Katy Riches (University of Hertfordshire)
Yahoo! Slurp
Yahoo! Slurp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Slurp (Slurp) is a web crawler from Yahoo! group. It crawls the web and puts content into the Yahoo! Search engine. Slurp is based on Inktomi's web search technology - Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo! in late 2002.
Slurp identifies itself by using the following User agent strings:
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp China; http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Slurp (Slurp) is a web crawler from Yahoo! group. It crawls the web and puts content into the Yahoo! Search engine. Slurp is based on Inktomi's web search technology - Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo! in late 2002.
Slurp identifies itself by using the following User agent strings:
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
* Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp China; http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html
Yahoo! Time Capsule
Yahoo! Time Capsule
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Time Capsule, a brainchild of Jonathan Harris, is a time capsule project by Yahoo! Inc. where users could contribute to a digital legacy of how life was in 2006. Open to contributions from 2006 October 10 to 2006 November 8, the Time Capsule hoped to capture the thoughts and feelings of the world in 2006 for historical purposes. At the time of the closing of the capsule, the total number of submissions was 170,857. The highest number of contributions, 32910, came from the 20-29 age group.
The Time Capsule closed on November 8, 2006, after which the digital collection of submissions was entrusted to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings based in Washington D.C., where will remain until Yahoo!'s 25th Birthday in 2020. According to the official About Yahoo! Time Capsule page, "You'll have your handiwork presented to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, projected on one of the most famous relics on the planet, AND then beamed along a path of laser light into space." "This will definitely be something to email the grandkids about someday," it adds.
In addition to being able to contribute text, audio, images and videos, visitors could browse previously included entries, comment on them, or forward them. In return for submitting content to the Time Capsule, Yahoo! asked users to vote for one among a list of seven charities which received a portion of $100,000 from Yahoo! based upon the ratio of votes received by contributors. The charities were the World Wildlife Fund, the International Rescue Committee, the Grameen Foundation, UNICEF, One.org, Seeds of Peace, and the International Child Art Foundation.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yahoo! Time Capsule, a brainchild of Jonathan Harris, is a time capsule project by Yahoo! Inc. where users could contribute to a digital legacy of how life was in 2006. Open to contributions from 2006 October 10 to 2006 November 8, the Time Capsule hoped to capture the thoughts and feelings of the world in 2006 for historical purposes. At the time of the closing of the capsule, the total number of submissions was 170,857. The highest number of contributions, 32910, came from the 20-29 age group.
The Time Capsule closed on November 8, 2006, after which the digital collection of submissions was entrusted to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings based in Washington D.C., where will remain until Yahoo!'s 25th Birthday in 2020. According to the official About Yahoo! Time Capsule page, "You'll have your handiwork presented to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, projected on one of the most famous relics on the planet, AND then beamed along a path of laser light into space." "This will definitely be something to email the grandkids about someday," it adds.
In addition to being able to contribute text, audio, images and videos, visitors could browse previously included entries, comment on them, or forward them. In return for submitting content to the Time Capsule, Yahoo! asked users to vote for one among a list of seven charities which received a portion of $100,000 from Yahoo! based upon the ratio of votes received by contributors. The charities were the World Wildlife Fund, the International Rescue Committee, the Grameen Foundation, UNICEF, One.org, Seeds of Peace, and the International Child Art Foundation.
Yahoo! Tech
Yahoo! Tech
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Tech is a web site that provides product information and setup advice to help its users, as expressed in its slogan "Tech Made Easy." Yahoo! launched the web site in May 2006.
The site, which is the first new product from the Santa Monica, California-based Yahoo! Media Group, features a selection of original, licensed, and user-generated content, along with product ratings and reviews for thousands of tech products across 19 product categories. Plus, the site can be personalized using its "My Tech" feature, which allows users to save products that they own and would like to research in the future.
The site's original content includes a weekly web-based reality show called Hook Me Up, where Yahoo! users get a tech makeover—as well as four featured "Yahoo! Tech Advisors," who blog about how gadgets and current technology affect their lives from the four very different demographic segments (The Mom, The Techie Diva, The Working Guy, and the Boomer). Yahoo! Tech's content partners include Consumer Reports, Wiley Publishing's For Dummies series, and McGraw-Hill; and it incorporates Yahoo!'s community, search, and shopping services.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Tech is a web site that provides product information and setup advice to help its users, as expressed in its slogan "Tech Made Easy." Yahoo! launched the web site in May 2006.
The site, which is the first new product from the Santa Monica, California-based Yahoo! Media Group, features a selection of original, licensed, and user-generated content, along with product ratings and reviews for thousands of tech products across 19 product categories. Plus, the site can be personalized using its "My Tech" feature, which allows users to save products that they own and would like to research in the future.
The site's original content includes a weekly web-based reality show called Hook Me Up, where Yahoo! users get a tech makeover—as well as four featured "Yahoo! Tech Advisors," who blog about how gadgets and current technology affect their lives from the four very different demographic segments (The Mom, The Techie Diva, The Working Guy, and the Boomer). Yahoo! Tech's content partners include Consumer Reports, Wiley Publishing's For Dummies series, and McGraw-Hill; and it incorporates Yahoo!'s community, search, and shopping services.
Yahoo! Towers
Yahoo! Towers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Towers is a multiplayer game and a member of the Yahoo! Games network of online computer games. It is a puzzle game involving falling blocks. Games are played competitively amongst human users.
Blocks fall in lines of three blocks; individual blocks are distinguished by one of six colours and an associated character (one for each of Y, A, H, and !, and two for O). Yahoo! Towers differentiates itself from other Tetris-style games via these letters: if Y-A-H-O-O-! is spelt (using two different Os, but in either order), a process knowing as "Yahooing" or "hooing", a player temporarily gains the ability to add blocks to opponents' stacks. There are many different ways of "hooing", each giving the player different amounts of "falls", meaning how many pieces can be played before the ability ends.
Defense blocks help you and your partner (if you have one) clear your boards. Attack blocks hurt opposing teams' chances to win by several means.
Y- is grey, and associated with adding or subtracting a row of blocks.
A- is green, and associated with dithering or clumping.
H- is blue, and associated with adding or dropping stones.
O- is purple, and associated with color blasts or defuses.
O- is yellow, and associated with "medusa" and "midas" blocks.
!- is orange, and associated with removing opponents' powers or removing a color from the screen.
You can also get other special powers that can devastate a player.
"Targeting" is when a player deliberately sends offensive powers to attack another specific player. This is usually frowned upon by novices but used by advanced players to eliminate competition quickly and decisively.
Each table has a maximum number of 8 players. Teams can consist of one or two players.
Yahoo! Towers first appeared on the scene in late 1999 as a beta, then in December of 1999 as the game currently exists. It quickly gained popularity and after a few months 10,000 players would be on at any given time. A popular ladder also existed through Case's Ladders and a hall of fame can still be found at the link below. Most of the best towers players played on that ladder and as one can see from the site, nearly everyone stopped playing by the time 2002 rolled around.
The game retains a small but dedicated following; approximately 200 users are online at any given time. At its peak in the summer of 2000, over 10,000 users could be found playing at once. Its decline can be attributed partly to a rampant rise in cheating using various program hacks. As of 2006, the average amount of players is 132.
Game Play
By arranging falling groups of three permutable blocks, each of one of the above Letters/Colors, your goal is to be the last player, or a member of the team with the last player, who has space to drop more blocks onto their screen (much like the end-game in Tetris). By grouping blocks into lines of three or more (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally) of the same color, they will clear, and the blocks from above will fall into their place. After clearing a certain (incremental) number of groups of one color, the next falling blocks of that color will have powers, as mentioned above. You can use these, positive for yourself/teammate, and negative against your opponents, by using the space bar to 'randomly' (editor knows of no pattern) distribute, or the number keys to assign a power to a certain player.
By spelling the entire "YAHOO!", using distinct "O"s, you can further devastate your enemies, by showering them with remnants of any blocks that you clear in the next few groups. The numbers of groups that you have this ability depends on how you constructed the "YAHOO!". If you spell it horizontally, you have one group to attempt to clear blocks, if diagonally, 2 turns, and vertically yields three turns. Combinations of these will further extend your attempts, and this is how better players will typically try to start a game.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Towers is a multiplayer game and a member of the Yahoo! Games network of online computer games. It is a puzzle game involving falling blocks. Games are played competitively amongst human users.
Blocks fall in lines of three blocks; individual blocks are distinguished by one of six colours and an associated character (one for each of Y, A, H, and !, and two for O). Yahoo! Towers differentiates itself from other Tetris-style games via these letters: if Y-A-H-O-O-! is spelt (using two different Os, but in either order), a process knowing as "Yahooing" or "hooing", a player temporarily gains the ability to add blocks to opponents' stacks. There are many different ways of "hooing", each giving the player different amounts of "falls", meaning how many pieces can be played before the ability ends.
Defense blocks help you and your partner (if you have one) clear your boards. Attack blocks hurt opposing teams' chances to win by several means.
Y- is grey, and associated with adding or subtracting a row of blocks.
A- is green, and associated with dithering or clumping.
H- is blue, and associated with adding or dropping stones.
O- is purple, and associated with color blasts or defuses.
O- is yellow, and associated with "medusa" and "midas" blocks.
!- is orange, and associated with removing opponents' powers or removing a color from the screen.
You can also get other special powers that can devastate a player.
"Targeting" is when a player deliberately sends offensive powers to attack another specific player. This is usually frowned upon by novices but used by advanced players to eliminate competition quickly and decisively.
Each table has a maximum number of 8 players. Teams can consist of one or two players.
Yahoo! Towers first appeared on the scene in late 1999 as a beta, then in December of 1999 as the game currently exists. It quickly gained popularity and after a few months 10,000 players would be on at any given time. A popular ladder also existed through Case's Ladders and a hall of fame can still be found at the link below. Most of the best towers players played on that ladder and as one can see from the site, nearly everyone stopped playing by the time 2002 rolled around.
The game retains a small but dedicated following; approximately 200 users are online at any given time. At its peak in the summer of 2000, over 10,000 users could be found playing at once. Its decline can be attributed partly to a rampant rise in cheating using various program hacks. As of 2006, the average amount of players is 132.
Game Play
By arranging falling groups of three permutable blocks, each of one of the above Letters/Colors, your goal is to be the last player, or a member of the team with the last player, who has space to drop more blocks onto their screen (much like the end-game in Tetris). By grouping blocks into lines of three or more (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally) of the same color, they will clear, and the blocks from above will fall into their place. After clearing a certain (incremental) number of groups of one color, the next falling blocks of that color will have powers, as mentioned above. You can use these, positive for yourself/teammate, and negative against your opponents, by using the space bar to 'randomly' (editor knows of no pattern) distribute, or the number keys to assign a power to a certain player.
By spelling the entire "YAHOO!", using distinct "O"s, you can further devastate your enemies, by showering them with remnants of any blocks that you clear in the next few groups. The numbers of groups that you have this ability depends on how you constructed the "YAHOO!". If you spell it horizontally, you have one group to attempt to clear blocks, if diagonally, 2 turns, and vertically yields three turns. Combinations of these will further extend your attempts, and this is how better players will typically try to start a game.
Yahoo! UI Library
Yahoo! UI Library
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Yui (disambiguation).
Yahoo! UI Library (YUI) is an open-source JavaScript library, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as AJAX, DHTML and DOM scripting. It also includes many CSS resources. It is available under BSD License.
Features
YUI Library comes with complete documentation. It has two types of components: Utilities and Controls, and some CSS resources.
Utilities
Animation
Helps create "effects" by animating the position, size, opacity or other characteristics of page elements.
Browser History Manager
Helps web applications use the browser's back button and bookmarking functionality.
Connection Manager
Helps manage XMLHttpRequest transactions in a cross-browser fashion. It has integrated support for form posts, error handling, callbacks and file uploading.
DataSource
Provides a common configurable interface for other components to interact with different types of data, from simple JavaScript arrays to online servers over XHR.
provides a wrapper for HTMLElements in the DOM and makes simpler common tasks such as adding listeners, manipulating the DOM, and setting and getting attributes.
DOM
Helps with common DOM scripting tasks, including element positioning and CSS style management.
Drag and Drop
Helps with Drag-and-drop development (creation and management of draggable objects that can be picked up and dropped elsewhere on a web page)
Event
Provides developers with easy and safe access to browser events (such as mouse clicks and key presses). It also provides the Custom Event object for publishing and subscribing to custom events.
Controls
AutoComplete
Provides autocomplete feature (suggestion lists and type-ahead functionality) for user interactions involving text-entry. It supports a variety of data-source formats. It also supports server-side data-sources via XMLHttpRequest.
Button
Enables the creation of rich, graphical buttons that function like traditional HTML form buttons.
Calendar
A graphical, dynamic control used for date selection.
Container
Supports a variety of DHTML windowing patterns including Tooltip, Panel, Dialog, SimpleDialog, Module and Overlay.
DataTable
Simple yet powerful API to display screen-reader accessible tabular data on a web page. Notable features include sortable columns, pagination, scrolling, row selection, resizeable columns, and inline editing.
Logger
Provides a quick and easy way to write log messages to an on-screen console, the FireBug extension for Mozilla Firefox, or the Safari JavaScript console.
Menu
Provides easy way to create fly-out menus.
Slider
Provides a generic slider element that enables the user to choose within a finite range of values on one or two axes.
TabView
Provides navigable tabbed views of content.
TreeView
Produces a content tree whose nodes can be expanded and contracted.
CSS resources
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Yui (disambiguation).
Yahoo! UI Library (YUI) is an open-source JavaScript library, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as AJAX, DHTML and DOM scripting. It also includes many CSS resources. It is available under BSD License.
Features
YUI Library comes with complete documentation. It has two types of components: Utilities and Controls, and some CSS resources.
Utilities
Animation
Helps create "effects" by animating the position, size, opacity or other characteristics of page elements.
Browser History Manager
Helps web applications use the browser's back button and bookmarking functionality.
Connection Manager
Helps manage XMLHttpRequest transactions in a cross-browser fashion. It has integrated support for form posts, error handling, callbacks and file uploading.
DataSource
Provides a common configurable interface for other components to interact with different types of data, from simple JavaScript arrays to online servers over XHR.
provides a wrapper for HTMLElements in the DOM and makes simpler common tasks such as adding listeners, manipulating the DOM, and setting and getting attributes.
DOM
Helps with common DOM scripting tasks, including element positioning and CSS style management.
Drag and Drop
Helps with Drag-and-drop development (creation and management of draggable objects that can be picked up and dropped elsewhere on a web page)
Event
Provides developers with easy and safe access to browser events (such as mouse clicks and key presses). It also provides the Custom Event object for publishing and subscribing to custom events.
Controls
AutoComplete
Provides autocomplete feature (suggestion lists and type-ahead functionality) for user interactions involving text-entry. It supports a variety of data-source formats. It also supports server-side data-sources via XMLHttpRequest.
Button
Enables the creation of rich, graphical buttons that function like traditional HTML form buttons.
Calendar
A graphical, dynamic control used for date selection.
Container
Supports a variety of DHTML windowing patterns including Tooltip, Panel, Dialog, SimpleDialog, Module and Overlay.
DataTable
Simple yet powerful API to display screen-reader accessible tabular data on a web page. Notable features include sortable columns, pagination, scrolling, row selection, resizeable columns, and inline editing.
Logger
Provides a quick and easy way to write log messages to an on-screen console, the FireBug extension for Mozilla Firefox, or the Safari JavaScript console.
Menu
Provides easy way to create fly-out menus.
Slider
Provides a generic slider element that enables the user to choose within a finite range of values on one or two axes.
TabView
Provides navigable tabbed views of content.
TreeView
Produces a content tree whose nodes can be expanded and contracted.
CSS resources
- CSS Page Grids: Seven basic page wireframes with subsection components to support 130 different page layouts.
- Standard CSS Fonts: Standardized cross-browser font families and size rendering.
- Standard CSS Reset: CSS declarations remove margins and standardize cross-browser rendering on common elements.
Yahoo! Voice
Yahoo! Voice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service , provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application. Yahoo! Voice uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), GIPS codec and the DialPad engine for voice transport.
Unsupported Functionality
Yahoo! Phone Out
PC-to-Phone calls to landlines and mobile phones with the Yahoo! Phone Out service (charges apply). Conference calls from PC to Multiple (PSTN) phones or mobiles is currently not supported.
Yahoo! Phone In
Phone-to-PC calls on your computer can be received from landline or mobile phones. With the Yahoo! Phone In service, one can also choose a phone number for your PC from many countries and areas around the world.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service , provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application. Yahoo! Voice uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), GIPS codec and the DialPad engine for voice transport.
Unsupported Functionality
- Voice call encryption
- PC-Phone (Multiple) Conference calls
Yahoo! Phone Out
PC-to-Phone calls to landlines and mobile phones with the Yahoo! Phone Out service (charges apply). Conference calls from PC to Multiple (PSTN) phones or mobiles is currently not supported.
Yahoo! Phone In
Phone-to-PC calls on your computer can be received from landline or mobile phones. With the Yahoo! Phone In service, one can also choose a phone number for your PC from many countries and areas around the world.
Yahoo! Widgets
Yahoo! Widgets
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Widgets is a free application platform for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. The software was previously called Konfabulator, but after being acquired by computer services company Yahoo! it was rebranded. The name Konfabulator was subsequently reinstated as the name of the underlying rendering engine. The engine uses a JavaScript runtime environment combined with an XML interpreter to run small applications referred to as Widgets, and hence is part of a class of software applications called widget engines.
Note the uppercase "W" in Widget; this is the proper use of capitalization when referring to the actual applets that Yahoo! Widget Engine runs. The aforementioned use of capitalization is unique to this particular widget engine.
Features
Yahoo Widget Engine includes some default Widgets to get users started, including a weather Widget, a digital clock, and a calendar among other things. However, many will want to customize their desktop and look for Widgets that perform tasks not met by the default set of Widgets. Some of the more popular ones include a world timezone clock, dedicated countdown timers, simple RSS feed readers, and webcam viewers. You can get these wide variety of widgets from their website
Each Widget runs in its own system process, separate from other Widgets and the main Konfabulator system process itself, thus improving the stability of the software application as a whole. Should a problem occur with a Konfabulator Widget requiring it to be shut down, that particular Widget can be shut down without affecting other Widgets or the main Konfabulator application. A disadvantage of doing this, however, is the extra computer memory needed for each process to run. Computer users who are careful about computer memory usage or run computer memory-intensive software applications usually point this out as the main disadvantage or their main concern about Konfabulator.
Heads-Up Display/Konsposé
Konfabulator was the first widget engine to provide a feature that could quickly bring all open Widgets to the top of the desktop. Called Konsposé (alluding to Mac OS X's Exposé), it can be activated by pressing a hotkey (set by the user). This causes all Widgets to be brought to the foreground, and all other applications to be dimmed. Widgets can also be set to be Konsposé-only, meaning that they will only appear when Konsposé is activated.
With the release of Yahoo! Widget Engine, Konsposé was renamed to "Heads-Up Display". It functions just like Konsposé and differs only in name.
(the) Dock
With the introduction of Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.0, the engine has included a feature called the dock. The dock shows all currently open Widgets with representative icons and allows users to expand the dock to show all Widgets inside the users "My Widgets" folder. Widgets that do not specify images are either provided with their screen-shot from the official Widget gallery or the default Widget icon, both shown on the right. When rolled over with the mouse, the dock helps users manage their Widgets with buttons to close a Widget, show a Widget's preferences, and reveal a Widget from the Heads-up Display. For users who prefer not to have a dock visible all the time, the dock has options to auto-hide when not active, or even close the dock entirely.
Developer/API Features
The Yahoo! Widget Engine (Konfabulator) has an very flexible Application Programming Interface (API) based around JavaScript with many features useful to developers. A few basic features include items such as text-areas, images, and timers. Other features include the ability to make "calls" to the Internet to retrieve webpages, RSS, or interact with online scripts, as well as file IO (the ability to write, delete, and otherwise manage files), and Animator objects to aid in visual effects. A built in interface allows Widget developers to run OS specific code such as a shell scripts and COM applications on Windows, and AppleScript on Mac.
As of Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.0, SQLite has been included in the engine, allowing developers to create and modify databases. Also included with 4.0 is Canvas. In simple terms, Canvas allows developers to create Widgets without a single image or create simple drawing programs. However because Widgets are based around JavaScript, the only real limit is the developers imagination. Canvas "images" can be saved to either a JPG or PNG image file. With the introduction of the dock, Widgets can set their own dock icons. Dock icons support a small subset of the engine's features, so they have the ability to display multiple images and text. This is useful to Widgets designed to be such things as a clock, or a weather forecaster. Also added to text objects is support for simple CSS styles for formatting.
Another new feature included in version 4.0 is the ability to automatically check gallery downloaded Widgets for updates, but as of August 2, 2007, the feature has not been activated. Currently, only official Yahoo! Widgets report updates. Official developers have stated that as soon as they "throw a switch on the server", it will become active for all Widgets.
History
Initial development
Yahoo! Widgets was originally developed as Konfabulator, by a core development team consisting of Arlo Rose, Perry Clarke, and Ed Voas. Originally released on February 10, 2003 as a Mac OS X only application which cost US$24.95 (and later, with the release of version 2.0, US$19.95), its Windows version was released on November 8, 2004 with the release of version Konfabulator 1.8, and made freeware with the release of Konfabulator 2.1 on July 25, 2005, when it was sold to Yahoo!. Shortly prior to this, Apple released a similar widget engine, Dashboard, as part of its Mac OS X Tiger operating system. Konfabulator's main commercial competitor on the Windows platform is DesktopX, developed by Stardock. Other programs offering similar functionality include Kapsules and AveDesk (for Windows), gDesklets (for GNOME), and SuperKaramba (for KDE).
The JavaScript engine used by Konfabulator uses the Mozilla SpiderMonkey implementation, and conforms to the Mozilla JavaScript version 1.5 standards (equivalent to ECMAScript 262 edition 3, with Mozilla extensions).
According to the online comic strip depicting Konfabulator's history on Konfabulator's web site , the idea of Konfabulator originated in 1998 when Arlo Rose saw how he could skin the MP3 media player running on his computer. His idea was to "skin any information you wanted to see on your desktop", to quote the comic strip.
Prior to this, he had experience with Kaleidoscope, a skinning program for the Apple Macintosh operating systems, akin to WindowBlinds. He coined the term "Konfabulator" to describe his idea, and then tried pitching his idea to other software programmers. He was unsuccessful until the year 2002, when Perry Clarke (who would later become one of the core developers of Konfabulator) heard about his idea and agreed to work with him on the project.
On February 10, 2003, Arlo and Perry launched version 1.0 of Konfabulator. Before the launch, Arlo created a teaser web site asking visitors what Konfabulator is, while it was still in development. When it was finally released, users of Konfabulator were highly impressed with the idea of Widgets, and its popularity soared as a result, something which surprised the developers of Konfabulator. Due to its popularity, Arlo and Perry had to quit their jobs to work on Konfabulator full-time.
In July 2003, Arlo and Perry started working on a Windows version with another software programmer, but internal differences broke them up and they were forced to scrap the work already done. Later, Arlo persuaded Ed Voas (who was then a friend of Arlo and had 10 years of software programming experience at Apple Computer, and would later become the third member of Konfabulator's core development team) to develop a Windows version for them.
Initially he declined, but later he created a working prototype and presented it to the Konfabulator development team within two days.
In November 2004, Konfabulator 1.8, the first cross-platform version of Konfabulator, was released. Windows users were pleased with the fact that most Konfabulator Widgets for the Mac OS X operating system could run seamlessly on their Windows machines, and vice-versa, thus making most Konfabulator Widgets truly cross-platform capable (some Widgets developed later were platform specific, though).
A few months later, on May 18, 2005, the first major release of Konfabulator since version 1.0, Konfabulator 2.0 (sometimes shortened to K:2), was released, along with a visual overhaul of Widgets, improved functionality, and a marked down price of US$19.95 from the previous US$24.95 (this was after many users, especially Windows users used to the idea of freeware and other cheaper widget engines, complained about the high price). The popularity of Konfabulator accelerated soon after that, and companies were seeking to use Konfabulator in their projects. In response to the demand for Konfabulator, and to provide a proper information source for Widget developers (some of whom were scraping web sites for information for their Widgets), the Konfabulator development team decided to sell Konfabulator to Yahoo!.
Yahoo! Acquires Konfabulator
On July 25, 2005 Konfabulator was acquired by Yahoo!, and Yahoo! released Konfabulator for free. Whilst the Konfabulator framework was renamed Yahoo! Widgets, the underlying engine continued to be branded as Konfabulator until December 2005.
Yahoo! said the reason they purchased Konfabulator was that they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the Widget developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo! Web site. In doing this, Widgets could be built without having to scrape or search web sites in order to get information regarding the APIs for Widget and the Konfabulator framework.
On May 23, 2006, the long-awaited Universal binary of the Yahoo! Widget Engine, version 3.1.4, was made available to users of Intel-based Macintosh computers.
In August of 2006, Perry Clarke, the original engineer of the Mac version of the Widget Engine, left the Widgets team.
"Dashboard versus Konfabulator" Debate
Many people have made comparisons between Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard, especially after Apple announced the feature while Mac OS X v10.4 was in development. It was a subject of debate on the online community following the few months before Mac OS X Tiger's official release.
One school of thought came to the conclusion that Dashboard was a "rip-off" of Konfabulator. They point out the visual and functional similarities between Dashboard and Konfabulator, and the fact that both programs used the term "widgets" to describe the applications they ran.
Indeed, Apple was using the term "gadgets" to describe the widgets Dashboard ran before switching to "widgets" during the course of Mac OS X Tiger's development for unknown reasons, and that both have widgets that used several modern Internet technologies.
An opposing group claims that the idea of Konfabulator was actually not new. They point to Desk Accessories, a feature found in early Apple Macintosh operating systems in 1984. They point out that many of the functions the original Desk Accessories had were similar to what Konfabulator provided (or could provide). Among them were things such as a calculator and a clock. Some even draw the conclusion that Konfabulator is ripping off Apple, and not the other way around.
Both claims were refuted by the article, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger by John Siracusa. The author of the article points out that none of the Konfabulator developers hold any patents on Konfabulator's implementation. Neither was the idea of an "accessory" application; it had been around for quite some time and has taken on several forms, from the widgets discussed here to full-fledged software applications.
Also, despite the similarities, there are some underlying differences between both programs. The widget engine is different; Konfabulator Widgets use XML and JavaScript. However, Dashboard widgets use HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) along with JavaScript, and can display themselves in the Safari web browser as if they were web pages. The operation of widgets in both environments is also different; Konfabulator Widgets can be set to be visible on the desktop, as well as to appear only when Konsposé is activated. Also, Konfabulator Widget preferences are usually set using a dialog box, accessible by bringing up the context menu of each Widget. However, Dashboard widgets cannot normally stay on the desktop, and the preferences of each widget is set by "flipping" over the widgets and setting any options on the "back" of the widget itself.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yahoo! Widgets is a free application platform for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. The software was previously called Konfabulator, but after being acquired by computer services company Yahoo! it was rebranded. The name Konfabulator was subsequently reinstated as the name of the underlying rendering engine. The engine uses a JavaScript runtime environment combined with an XML interpreter to run small applications referred to as Widgets, and hence is part of a class of software applications called widget engines.
Note the uppercase "W" in Widget; this is the proper use of capitalization when referring to the actual applets that Yahoo! Widget Engine runs. The aforementioned use of capitalization is unique to this particular widget engine.
Features
Yahoo Widget Engine includes some default Widgets to get users started, including a weather Widget, a digital clock, and a calendar among other things. However, many will want to customize their desktop and look for Widgets that perform tasks not met by the default set of Widgets. Some of the more popular ones include a world timezone clock, dedicated countdown timers, simple RSS feed readers, and webcam viewers. You can get these wide variety of widgets from their website
Each Widget runs in its own system process, separate from other Widgets and the main Konfabulator system process itself, thus improving the stability of the software application as a whole. Should a problem occur with a Konfabulator Widget requiring it to be shut down, that particular Widget can be shut down without affecting other Widgets or the main Konfabulator application. A disadvantage of doing this, however, is the extra computer memory needed for each process to run. Computer users who are careful about computer memory usage or run computer memory-intensive software applications usually point this out as the main disadvantage or their main concern about Konfabulator.
Heads-Up Display/Konsposé
Konfabulator was the first widget engine to provide a feature that could quickly bring all open Widgets to the top of the desktop. Called Konsposé (alluding to Mac OS X's Exposé), it can be activated by pressing a hotkey (set by the user). This causes all Widgets to be brought to the foreground, and all other applications to be dimmed. Widgets can also be set to be Konsposé-only, meaning that they will only appear when Konsposé is activated.
With the release of Yahoo! Widget Engine, Konsposé was renamed to "Heads-Up Display". It functions just like Konsposé and differs only in name.
(the) Dock
With the introduction of Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.0, the engine has included a feature called the dock. The dock shows all currently open Widgets with representative icons and allows users to expand the dock to show all Widgets inside the users "My Widgets" folder. Widgets that do not specify images are either provided with their screen-shot from the official Widget gallery or the default Widget icon, both shown on the right. When rolled over with the mouse, the dock helps users manage their Widgets with buttons to close a Widget, show a Widget's preferences, and reveal a Widget from the Heads-up Display. For users who prefer not to have a dock visible all the time, the dock has options to auto-hide when not active, or even close the dock entirely.
Developer/API Features
The Yahoo! Widget Engine (Konfabulator) has an very flexible Application Programming Interface (API) based around JavaScript with many features useful to developers. A few basic features include items such as text-areas, images, and timers. Other features include the ability to make "calls" to the Internet to retrieve webpages, RSS, or interact with online scripts, as well as file IO (the ability to write, delete, and otherwise manage files), and Animator objects to aid in visual effects. A built in interface allows Widget developers to run OS specific code such as a shell scripts and COM applications on Windows, and AppleScript on Mac.
As of Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.0, SQLite has been included in the engine, allowing developers to create and modify databases. Also included with 4.0 is Canvas. In simple terms, Canvas allows developers to create Widgets without a single image or create simple drawing programs. However because Widgets are based around JavaScript, the only real limit is the developers imagination. Canvas "images" can be saved to either a JPG or PNG image file. With the introduction of the dock, Widgets can set their own dock icons. Dock icons support a small subset of the engine's features, so they have the ability to display multiple images and text. This is useful to Widgets designed to be such things as a clock, or a weather forecaster. Also added to text objects is support for simple CSS styles for formatting.
Another new feature included in version 4.0 is the ability to automatically check gallery downloaded Widgets for updates, but as of August 2, 2007, the feature has not been activated. Currently, only official Yahoo! Widgets report updates. Official developers have stated that as soon as they "throw a switch on the server", it will become active for all Widgets.
History
Initial development
Yahoo! Widgets was originally developed as Konfabulator, by a core development team consisting of Arlo Rose, Perry Clarke, and Ed Voas. Originally released on February 10, 2003 as a Mac OS X only application which cost US$24.95 (and later, with the release of version 2.0, US$19.95), its Windows version was released on November 8, 2004 with the release of version Konfabulator 1.8, and made freeware with the release of Konfabulator 2.1 on July 25, 2005, when it was sold to Yahoo!. Shortly prior to this, Apple released a similar widget engine, Dashboard, as part of its Mac OS X Tiger operating system. Konfabulator's main commercial competitor on the Windows platform is DesktopX, developed by Stardock. Other programs offering similar functionality include Kapsules and AveDesk (for Windows), gDesklets (for GNOME), and SuperKaramba (for KDE).
The JavaScript engine used by Konfabulator uses the Mozilla SpiderMonkey implementation, and conforms to the Mozilla JavaScript version 1.5 standards (equivalent to ECMAScript 262 edition 3, with Mozilla extensions).
According to the online comic strip depicting Konfabulator's history on Konfabulator's web site , the idea of Konfabulator originated in 1998 when Arlo Rose saw how he could skin the MP3 media player running on his computer. His idea was to "skin any information you wanted to see on your desktop", to quote the comic strip.
Prior to this, he had experience with Kaleidoscope, a skinning program for the Apple Macintosh operating systems, akin to WindowBlinds. He coined the term "Konfabulator" to describe his idea, and then tried pitching his idea to other software programmers. He was unsuccessful until the year 2002, when Perry Clarke (who would later become one of the core developers of Konfabulator) heard about his idea and agreed to work with him on the project.
On February 10, 2003, Arlo and Perry launched version 1.0 of Konfabulator. Before the launch, Arlo created a teaser web site asking visitors what Konfabulator is, while it was still in development. When it was finally released, users of Konfabulator were highly impressed with the idea of Widgets, and its popularity soared as a result, something which surprised the developers of Konfabulator. Due to its popularity, Arlo and Perry had to quit their jobs to work on Konfabulator full-time.
In July 2003, Arlo and Perry started working on a Windows version with another software programmer, but internal differences broke them up and they were forced to scrap the work already done. Later, Arlo persuaded Ed Voas (who was then a friend of Arlo and had 10 years of software programming experience at Apple Computer, and would later become the third member of Konfabulator's core development team) to develop a Windows version for them.
Initially he declined, but later he created a working prototype and presented it to the Konfabulator development team within two days.
In November 2004, Konfabulator 1.8, the first cross-platform version of Konfabulator, was released. Windows users were pleased with the fact that most Konfabulator Widgets for the Mac OS X operating system could run seamlessly on their Windows machines, and vice-versa, thus making most Konfabulator Widgets truly cross-platform capable (some Widgets developed later were platform specific, though).
A few months later, on May 18, 2005, the first major release of Konfabulator since version 1.0, Konfabulator 2.0 (sometimes shortened to K:2), was released, along with a visual overhaul of Widgets, improved functionality, and a marked down price of US$19.95 from the previous US$24.95 (this was after many users, especially Windows users used to the idea of freeware and other cheaper widget engines, complained about the high price). The popularity of Konfabulator accelerated soon after that, and companies were seeking to use Konfabulator in their projects. In response to the demand for Konfabulator, and to provide a proper information source for Widget developers (some of whom were scraping web sites for information for their Widgets), the Konfabulator development team decided to sell Konfabulator to Yahoo!.
Yahoo! Acquires Konfabulator
On July 25, 2005 Konfabulator was acquired by Yahoo!, and Yahoo! released Konfabulator for free. Whilst the Konfabulator framework was renamed Yahoo! Widgets, the underlying engine continued to be branded as Konfabulator until December 2005.
Yahoo! said the reason they purchased Konfabulator was that they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the Widget developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo! Web site. In doing this, Widgets could be built without having to scrape or search web sites in order to get information regarding the APIs for Widget and the Konfabulator framework.
On May 23, 2006, the long-awaited Universal binary of the Yahoo! Widget Engine, version 3.1.4, was made available to users of Intel-based Macintosh computers.
In August of 2006, Perry Clarke, the original engineer of the Mac version of the Widget Engine, left the Widgets team.
"Dashboard versus Konfabulator" Debate
Many people have made comparisons between Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard, especially after Apple announced the feature while Mac OS X v10.4 was in development. It was a subject of debate on the online community following the few months before Mac OS X Tiger's official release.
One school of thought came to the conclusion that Dashboard was a "rip-off" of Konfabulator. They point out the visual and functional similarities between Dashboard and Konfabulator, and the fact that both programs used the term "widgets" to describe the applications they ran.
Indeed, Apple was using the term "gadgets" to describe the widgets Dashboard ran before switching to "widgets" during the course of Mac OS X Tiger's development for unknown reasons, and that both have widgets that used several modern Internet technologies.
An opposing group claims that the idea of Konfabulator was actually not new. They point to Desk Accessories, a feature found in early Apple Macintosh operating systems in 1984. They point out that many of the functions the original Desk Accessories had were similar to what Konfabulator provided (or could provide). Among them were things such as a calculator and a clock. Some even draw the conclusion that Konfabulator is ripping off Apple, and not the other way around.
Both claims were refuted by the article, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger by John Siracusa. The author of the article points out that none of the Konfabulator developers hold any patents on Konfabulator's implementation. Neither was the idea of an "accessory" application; it had been around for quite some time and has taken on several forms, from the widgets discussed here to full-fledged software applications.
Also, despite the similarities, there are some underlying differences between both programs. The widget engine is different; Konfabulator Widgets use XML and JavaScript. However, Dashboard widgets use HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) along with JavaScript, and can display themselves in the Safari web browser as if they were web pages. The operation of widgets in both environments is also different; Konfabulator Widgets can be set to be visible on the desktop, as well as to appear only when Konsposé is activated. Also, Konfabulator Widget preferences are usually set using a dialog box, accessible by bringing up the context menu of each Widget. However, Dashboard widgets cannot normally stay on the desktop, and the preferences of each widget is set by "flipping" over the widgets and setting any options on the "back" of the widget itself.
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