Yahoo has been testing the beta version of its Yahoo Mail service since September 2005. Now it finally launched in finished form. Yahoo Mail has been worth the wait, because it is slightly better than Google’s popular Gmail service, in my opinion. Unlike Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo Mail allows users to exchange text messages with cell phones, too. It also offers unlimited storage of emails and attachments free of charge. In comparison, Gmail offers 2.9 gigabytes for free and sells additional storage space from $20 (6GB) to $500 (250GB) per year. Hotmail is going to offer 5GB for free and 10GB for $20 a year shortly.
What is nice about the new Yahoo Mail version, is that it acts more like a stand-alone computer program than a web-based application. For instance, you can now drag messages into folders, select groups of messages and right-click on messages to get a menu of options such as marking messages as read/unread or deleting them. Another handy feature is that you can open new tabs in Yahoo Mail, so you can have your inbox in one tab, a new email you’re composing in another tab and a live conversation in yet another one.
Overall, Yahoo Mail offers lots of features that Gmail and Hotmail still lack. But to be fair, Gmail has been in beta status since April 2004 and is still waiting to be released as final version.
Mark Cuban’s thoughts, and he has a point:
Every generation has its defining breakthrough. Cars, TV, Radio, Planes,highways, the wheel, the printing press, the list goes on forever. I’m sure in each generation to whom the invention was a breakthrough it may have been heretical to consider those inventions “dead and boring”. The reality is that at some point they stop changing. They stop evolving. They become utilities or utilitarian and are taken for granted.
(…)
Some people have tried to make the point that Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet is evolving. Actually it is the exact opposite. Web 2.0 is proof that the Internet has stopped evolving and stabilized as a platform. Its very very difficult to develop applications on a platform that is ever changing. Things stop working in that environment. Internet 1.0 wasn’t the most stable development environment. To days Internet is stable specifically because its now boring.
Sweden is known for being the leader in Internet innovation. Today I found an article on CNN about 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg. She has a 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad, which is believed to be the fastest residential Internet connection in the world.
In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.
Jonsson and Lothberg’s son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.
The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.
“We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed,” he said.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/07/20/superfast.net.ap/index.html
This is still a rumor, and I cannot confirm it, but it does indeed make sense that Microsoft is considering to buy Facebook for $6 billion. Though, Google has its eyes on Facebook too and Big-G is likely to make a bid much higher than $6 billon for the hot web2.0 company. As said, right now it’s just a rumor, but it should be interesting to see how this will play out in the end.
LA based Dreamcrowd wants you to share your dreams on its online dream sharing website. Users can post their dreams on a blog-like site and other users can then interpret the dreams. There is also a “dreamopedia” that automatically gives an analysis based on words provided in the description of the dream. What looks strange at first sight doesn’t really surprise… People already share their waking hours with millions of people by writing blogs and sending text messages to Twitter, so why not also share the experience you’re having when being asleep?
As of June 18, Jerry Yang is Yahoo’s new Chief Executive Officer after having worked closely with the company’s board of executives for 12 years. Yang founded the company with David Filo. On Yahoo’s Yodel blog he said he believed that Yahoo! has an “incredibly bright future”. Commenting on his vision of Yahoo’s future, he said:
What is that vision? A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline. A Yahoo! that increases its focus on differentiating its products and investing in creativity and innovation. A Yahoo! that better monetizes its audience. A Yahoo! whose great talent is galvanized to address its challenges. And a Yahoo! that is better focused on what’s important to its users, customers, and employees.
I, too, think Yahoo! will have to better monetize its search engine and make better use of their established advertising platform. They can achieve this by either displaying their ads on more web pages or, and this is more important, get higher quality traffic for their advertisers, which would lead to higher pay-per-click prices.
About Jerry Yang, from Yahoo’s press release:
Jerry Yang co-created the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide in April 1994 with David Filo and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995. He was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the company in June 2007. Mr. Yang, a leading force in the Internet media industry, has been instrumental in building Yahoo! into the world’s most highly trafficked Web site and one of the world’s most recognized brands. Since the company’s founding, Mr. Yang has been a key member of the executive management team. His focus at Yahoo! over the years has included corporate strategy, Yahoo!’s technology vision, strategic business partnerships and international joint ventures, and recruiting key talent. In addition to serving on the Yahoo! Board of Directors, Mr. Yang also currently serves on the boards of Cisco Systems, Yahoo! Japan, and Alibaba, and is a member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees. Mr. Yang holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and is currently on a leave of absence from Stanford’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program.
Link: Official press release.
[via Apogee]
Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart from Chicago are the founders of Threadless. They got the idea for starting Threadless after they had taken part in an online T-shirt design contest: Why do stores print so many shirts with different designs and only make money on the ones people actually like and buy? Nickell and DeHart figured they would make more money if they found a way to only print popular shirt designs. Therefore, the duo started Threadless, which is an online shop where people can design their own T-shirts and submit them for an Internet competition on the site. Other people then have the possibility to hold a vote on the six best T-shirt designs among the roughly 700 designs that are submitted to Threadless in a week. Threadless does not only get lots of design ideas almost for free, but they also found a way to only sell popular T-shirts that people are more likely to buy. And their profit margin is high: the shirts only cost $4, but Threadless sells them for $15 and up. Last year Nickell and DeHart have sold $16 million worth of shirts. They had just finished high school when they had the idea for their online store. It was an idea, and it made them millionaires.
Link to a more detailed story: ‘Project Runway’ for the t-shirt crowd
Hypergrowth of online sales might start slowing down. Online sales have grown 25% or more annually in the recent years, but growth in sectors such as book and ticket sales slowed down in 2006.
The reaction to the trend is apparent at Dell, which many had regarded as having mastered the science of selling computers online, but is now putting its PCs in Wal-Mart stores. Expedia has almost tripled the number of travel ticketing kiosks it puts in hotel lobbies and other places that attract tourists.
It seems that people aren’t ready yet to buy all of their stuff online. Major corporations such as Dell cannot only rely on online sales if they want to retain or increase their annual growth rates. Therefore, they start getting back to offline markets in order to make good for the loss in additional annual online sales.
The slowdown is a result of several forces. Sales on the Internet are expected to reach $116 billion this year, or 5 percent of all retail sales, making it harder to maintain the same high growth rates. At the same time, consumers seem to be experiencing Internet fatigue and are changing their buying habits.
Online Sales Lose Steam as Buyers Grow Web-Weary
According to Apple, their Safari web browser was downloaded more than 1 million times in the first 48 hours after it was made available online. A beta version of Safari is now available as a version running on Microsoft Windows. Here’s the press release:
Safari for Windows Public Beta Downloads Top 1 Million in First 48 Hours
CUPERTINO, California—June 14, 2007—Apple® today announced that more than 1 million copies of Safari™ for Windows were downloaded in the first 48 hours since the free public beta was made available on Monday. Safari 3 is the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use browser, and is available as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.
Safari 3 is the fastest browser running on Windows, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2, based on the industry standard iBench tests.* Safari 3 supports all modern Internet standards including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and Java. Safari updates are delivered seamlessly through Apple’s Software Update, and the first update for Safari for Windows Public Beta which fixes some early reported bugs was released last night.
Safari 3 for Windows requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, a minimum of 256 MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor.
*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Testing conducted on an iMac 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows XP, with 1GB of RAM.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.
