mail Archive

TechCrunch is reporting that Yahoo will announce in the coming days that they have removed all caps on storage within Yahoo Mail. Currently Gmail caps storage at 2.8 gig.  Mike notes, "I spoke with Yahoo’s Vice President of Mail, John Kremer, this afternoon about the announcement. He says the new storage limits (or rather lack of a limit) affect all Yahoo mail users, not just users of the new beta product.

"Users are subject to Yahoo’s abuse policies, which requires users to follow “normal email practices” and not engage in activities like using Yahoo mail for basic online storage (a number of services have popped up to help people use Gmail for this purpose)."

So basically they are saying, "You can store as much mail as you want, but you can't store files." So for example, each morning I have my server email me a backup file (about 10mb), can I store 500 of these? 1000 of these? Or do these count as "online storage" ?

The Yahoo blog is clear; it is for "email message storage" — so I guess my backup files should be fine. Don't expect to use it as a FTP site for your Lindsay Lohan pics or weemee icons.

Also, as we have learned so many times with internet access, is unlimited really unlimited? I love Yahoo Mail, have used it since day 1 and really enjoy using it over Gmail. I look forward to the storage cap removal.

(now place your bets on how long until Gmail counters. I give it 2.5 days)

Ok, as I sit here eating breakfast watching all of the other people in the "breakfast room" and wondering which are here for SXSW, I checked my Yahoo Mail. I saw the following when I opened the app:

So somehow you can have NEGATIVE inbox mails. Now that is pretty groovy!

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that spam has doubled in 2006. I can certainly attest to that. In fact, an address I setup a month ago for the Gift Exchange, has been hit with nearly 200 spam messages a day. I am sure this fresh address was worth a lot. In fact, the first spam I received, included the following information:

With over 100,000 microfibers per square inch, this towel is “one of the heaviest in the industry in this size class”.

For further information or to place an order call Toll Free: 877-356-6455 This is a limited time offer so Call Now!
Jenlis Inc email: jenlisinc@yahoo.com
Place your order today! 877-356-6455

So I gave this company a call. The owner said that he hired a firm to find e-mail addresses of people who would be interested in his microfiber towels. And so I asked him why my giftexchange mailbox would be interested in this. He had no answer. I told him that I am sure he will receive other calls as well from other pissed off people.

Then I look at this CenterNetworks site. Started in 1999, I created a mailbox, “copy@c..n.com”. When I decided in 2002 to put CN on hold while I decide where to move it to next, I turned the email address off. When I turned CN back on this year, the spam started again to a point of receiving over 500 a day.

I don’t know about you, but dealing with spam takes time out of a person’s day. Thousands of spam messages a day to delete, to remove, to deal with. How many real messages are lost because of filters, or because of accidental deletion? Counting everything I could today, I had to deal with 1,841 spams. This only includes ones I know about and those that get past my filters.

So with that, I have one request for 2007, let’s put an end to spam. And not a “patch it with Akismet” deal, but a real effort to combat it. I have some thoughts about why the government does not step in but I won’t go there.

Look at all we have accomplished this year. The collective intelligence is just amazing. Now, let’s figure out how to end this spam epidemic before it becomes a disease on Web 2.0. The initial x-rays already show something.

So maybe 2007 Time Magazine Person of the Year will be a thing in 2007 and that thing will be…

Windows Live Mail has launched some updates this evening. They include:

• Brand new interface which looks more like live.com
• Can select colour of interface
• Better mail search
• Faster rendering
• Contact search

They also noted that the calendar should be updated soon.

Earlier today, Yahoo! announced that they will be allowing developers to build from the Yahoo! mail platform. A couple of excerpts from the release:

Yahoo Mail — used by 257 million people — is designed to spark development of thousands of new e-mail applications built not only by Yahoo engineers but by outside companies and individuals.

Chad Dickerson, head of the Sunnyvale company's software developer relations program, said he believed that the open approach to programming represented the biggest single Web software ever to be opened up for public development.

"Yahoo is a very large company but we can't build every applications that a user might want," Dickerson said in an interview at Yahoo headquarters. "You can imagine tens of thousands of niche applications (springing) from Yahoo Mail."

I am sure that once the code is available, we will see new extended versions of Yahoo! mail and lots of exciting mashups. This is similar to Amazon and eBay opening up and allowing developers to build off their platforms. I would love a mashup bringing together my webmail client for my domain mail plus Yahoo mail in the same window.

I really like Yahoo! Mail and in my opinion it is a much better product than its main competitor, Google Mail.