Yahoo Mail Lets Allows SMS to Phones

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said on Sunday it was giving its e-mail users more ways to reach friends and online contacts by allowing them to trade messages with mobile phone users.

The new e-mail-to-phone connection is one of the features the Internet media giant plans to add as it makes available to the more than 250 million Yahoo Mail users a new version of the world's most popular e-mail program in coming weeks.

The Yahoo Mail overhaul is part of a drive to transform its e-mail franchise into more of a social activity that blends the convenience of instant communication with the implicit network of relationships found in one's online address book.

Already this year Yahoo has been testing another feature that lets its e-mail users communicate using conventional e-mail or via instant messages using either Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft Live Messenger.

"Our goal is to make (Yahoo) Mail a more social experience," John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, said in a phone interview. "We really look at ourselves as sitting on top of the largest dormant social network out there."

Kremer said by upgrading the e-mail service technology, the Sunnyvale, California-based company aims to lay the groundwork for adding more social-networking features later this year.

Yahoo is scrambling to make its services more relevant as many Internet users spend more and more time on social networks like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook and less time passing through portals like Yahoo, AOL.com or Microsoft Corp's MSN.

The new version of Yahoo Mail gives users three options for communicating with contacts -- e-mail, online instant-messaging or text-messaging to mobile phone users. Users can switch between the three, depending on which is most convenient.

Initially, the text-messaging feature will be available to Yahoo Mail members in the United States, Canada, India and the Philippines. To text a friend, users simply enter a mobile phone number, type a text message in Yahoo Mail and hit send.

Yahoo Mail had 254 million users in July, according to audience measurement firm comScore Inc, while Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail had 224 million. Yahoo Messenger was used by 93 million in July.

Yahoo plans to make its upgraded e-mail program the standard option for all new users of the free service. It will upgrade users worldwide over a six-week period, Kremer said.

Existing users will be prompted to upgrade, although users of slower dial-up connections or those comfortable with Yahoo's "classic" e-mail can continue to use the older version.

The key difference with the older e-mail program is how the new service lets users "drag and drop" e-mail into folders, speeding the time it takes to sort through incoming messages.

Search features are also improved, allowing Yahoo Mail users to narrow results to find a specific sender, folder, date, attachment type or message status. So a search can, say, find all photos in Yahoo Mail tagged with a person's name.

In the United States, Yahoo Mail will detect dates, addresses and proper names and allow users to link quickly to Yahoo Calendar, Yahoo Maps or Yahoo Search for that data. The look-up feature is optional and can be turned off.

October is the 10th anniversary of Yahoo Mail's launch.

Steam Community Beta Explored

There’s no doubt that PC gamers have suffered big time since the console war erupted. All the great content got snagged by Sony or Microsoft while PC gamers were left behind with half assed ports. Look at Xbox Live on the 360 for instance – it’s pretty much the wall that supports the console, on which all the games are bricked together to form a pivotal force, around which 360 gamers feel right at home. I’ve always wanted something similar on the PC, so when Microsoft announced their Games for Windows Live (GFWL) banner and service for the PC, I was really excited. Who wouldn’t be... Imagine seeing the same kind of integration Xbox Live has on the 360 on a Windows Vista PC. I dreamt of seeing GFWL somewhat like the Media Centre bit of the Vista OS (where looks and functionality is concerned), with a seamless interface that would let you handle your achievements, friends list and have a plethora of arcade games on one gorgeous looking platform, that would be so well woven into Windows Vista that it’d make you drool even if you were dehydrated.

What we ended up with instead, was a crappy set of limited in-game features that had absolutely no functional use whatsoever. In fact, it was so terribly flawed that a great game like Shadowrun(PC) was completely raped to the point that people couldn’t play the game due to Windows Live Gaming. My copy of Shadowrun is collecting dust in front of me as we speak, because every time I start up my game it goes straight to the GFWL update screen, but doesn’t connect to their great update servers, leaving me helpless as I wait for my game to become playable. If you think this is a problem with just my copy/internet connection/nationality you’re quite wrong. It turns out that a huge number of people the world over can’t play this fine game, thanks to Microsoft.