Yahoo speeds up mail, adds more Twitter

by 3loomi Thu Oct 28, 2010 9:08 pm

(CNET)--Yahoo wants to make its Web e-mail service a place you never want to--or more importantly -- have to leave to get your social fix. Thecompany on Wednesday is releasing an overhauled version of its Yahoo Mail Betaclientthat it says is twice as fast as the previous version, whilemanaging totack on new features like an integrated Twitter client,rich mediapreviews and a more full-featured instant messaging client.

Yahoosays this speed boost should be especially noticeable to usersoutsidethe U.S. with latency issues, due mostly to the new versionmaking useof the company's cloud computing technology.Thismeans that if you're on a spotty connection, the app can adjustitsbehavior to keep pages from timing out, or becoming unresponsive.

Besidesthe speed and performance increase, which Yahoo says were thetop usersrequests, the company has added a very robust Twitter client,whichjoins the existing social-sharing tools for Facebook and Yahoo.You canpost to just Twitter, or any combination of the other twoservices, aswell as see Twitter status updates in the update streambelow. Yahoohas long had a way to slurp in Twitter feeds, but now youcan do thingslike reply and retweet without leaving the page.

If asynchronousupdates are not your thing, Yahoo has also tuned itsintegrated IMservice to include some desktop software-like features,includingwindow docking and tabbed conversations. This lets you keep achat withseveral people running in one window while you go about withothere-mail tasks.

On top of these changes, Yahoo has addeda welcomefeature in the form of media previews. Now, when you get alink to aYouTube video, a Flickr or Picasa photo set, you can view thatcontentwithout leaving the message. Clicking on any of these items, aswell asattached photos, will open them up in a simple lightbox viewer.

Togetthe new features, users will need to opt in to Yahoo's Beta forMail.They are not yet integrated into the company's Classic mailservice.

©2010 CBS Interactive Inc.All rights reserved. CNET, CNET.com and theCNET logo are registeredtrademarks of CBS Interactive Inc. Used bypermission

by discovery Fri Nov 05, 2010 12:25 am

thanx

Yahoo speeds up mail, adds more Twitter

Yahoo speeds up mail, adds more Twitter

Re: Yahoo speeds up mail, adds more Twitter