Yahoo's new MyWeb

Yahoo has introduced a powerful new personalized web search service called MyWeb. It is fully integrated into Yahoo Search and Yahoo toolbar. It allows a Yahoo user to save copies of web pages with the click of a button. In other words, you can think of it as a personalized web search cache.

Your saved pages can be organized into folders. Folders can be either be kept private or shared with other users via RSS feeds, email, IM, or (soon) via Yahoo 360, Yahoo's new blogging service.

Now the one feature that really sold me on it was the automatic search history. If you turn this feature on, whenever you do a Yahoo search and look at a page, it's automatically put in your search history, which of course is there whenever and whereever you're logged into your Yahoo account. As Loren Baker pointed out, Yahoo has a big advantage over Goggle, because Yahoo users do log in, whereas most Google users don't (they don't even have a Google account).

Now I've been a fan of web-based services for a long time. My email (Yahoo) and my feed reader (Bloglines) are both web-based, and I really like being able to access both from any computer. So I like the idea of keeping my web search history on the web as well.

I've used Yahoo for years. I use or have used Yahoo's Mail, Address Book, Calendar, Notes, Briefcase, Maps, Local, Yellow Pages, Bookmarks, Groups, Movies, News, Messenger, Hot Jobs, Games, Reference, Alerts, Toolbar, and 360 services. And yes, at home, my home page is My Yahoo. So naturally I like more Yahoo services. However, most of my friends and family are not into Yahoo the way I am. So there's the rub. All these services are great if you're into Yahoo anyway. The real question will be, will new features like My Web win new users over to Yahoo? It'll be interesting to see. I'm particularly interested in the planned integration between Yahoo Search / My Web and Yahoo 360. I was a little disappointed with 360, but then again, I don't have many Yahoo friends... So if you do use Yahoo 360, check out my page.

Happy Searching!

Categories: yahoo, search

Google Maps, meet Craigslist real estate | News.blog | CNET News.com

Google Maps, meet Craigslist real estate | News.blog | CNET News.com
This is a really great example of how services can be integrated into Google maps. I tried it out and found it quite easy to use. Being more into Yahoo than Google, I was happy to see that once I zeroed in on a property to look at, I could bring up the Google map or Yahoo map. Nice!

Categories: maps

Tagging my blog

I've been trying to figure out how to easily tag my blog, i.e., how to index it by categories, using del.icio.us and Technorati. I've run across an article describing how to do it with a little bookmarklet, so I'm trying it out here. It's a little clunky, but it does do the trick.

Categories: tags

RSS Reaches Out for Enterprise, Social Networks

This article talks about how enterprises are getting interested in RSS, blogging, etc. In describing Rojo, the description of people sharing their news feeds seems reminiscent of the way del.icio.us users share bookmarks.

Welcome to my blog...

I'm fascinated by a whole range of topics generally having to do with how people use computers to communicate and organize their lives. I'm interested in browsers, email, instant messaging, syndicated feed protocols (RSS and Atom), blogging.

I also have a more personal journal I share with family and close friends, but I decided to create a seperate blog to explore my technical thoughts.

Why did I choose Blogger? Because Blogger has the most flexibility in terms of layout, and it's easy to change. I can save articles as drafts and then publish them when they're ready. I can email posts to my blog if I choose. I like how it looks.

Notice my blogroll in the sidebar; this is the list of news and blog sites I read regularly. I use Bloglines for this.

That's all for now...

E-mail is the new database

Here's an interesting article from BBC News entitled: E-mail is the new database. It's certainly true that our email storage space has gone way up, as people hold onto all sorts of emails. Of course, it's unstructured. So this makes me think more about efforts to automatically sort (i.e structure, at least in a rudimentary way) one's email.

Under Construction

I'm in the midst of setting up this blog. Stay tuned.

Update: I've found that I can post-date items, so I'm moving over some interesting articles I've saved over the last few months.

A 'Smart' Email Software Organizes Your Tasks

In A 'Smart' Email Software Organizes Your Tasks, Roland Piquepaille discusses 'smart' software which analyzes your workflow and helps organize your tasks. I'm a little skeptical, but it's an interesting concept.

ongoing · Why We Need Atom Now

Here's an article from Tim Bray - ongoing · Why We Need Atom Now. There are two main protocols for syndication: RSS and Atom. I'm not an expert in either, though I'd sure like to learn more. Tim discusses some advantages to using Atom.

HOWTO: How to build YPOPs! RPM for Fedora Core 3

I'm not using YPOPs! (though I am using FetchYahoo!). Nevertheless, this article has good info about building stuff in a Fedora Linux environment.