My account on Yahoo! Mail was finally switched from the Beta version to the final release. The announcement was made around the end of August, but my server just got converted to the new release yesterday. The rollout is being done slowly, farm by farm so that troubles can be sorted out, if they occur. After all, Yahoo! does have 250 million users to cater to, according to comScore.
Not much has changed, except for the fact that some icons used have a new feel. The built-in messenger now supports interconnection with Windows Live Messenger too, a feature earlier found only in the desktop version and the online version of Yahoo! Messenger. It did mean I was swamped by a lot of add requests though.
Also, as they’d said, now you can send free SMSes directly from the Yahoo! Mail interface, which shows handy little icons for any type of message in its compose window. You can switch to a different type now while working on something.
Another new feature that has been added is Yahoo! Shortcuts for Mail. What this does is that it automatically creates links for various things like addresses, keywords, place etc, and allows you to do tasks quicly with them. For example, if an address is written in a mail, it’ll link that to its map on Yahoo! Maps; or link a keyword like ‘India’ to a search. You can choose to turn this feature off, or choose the categories in which you want to see these shortcuts by going to you mail options page.
And I heard Prashanth’s FINALLY admitted that Yahoo! Mail IS better than Gmail. One convert done today, check…