Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail Hits 100 Million Users

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:48:40 +0000

The Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Mail service has hit 100 million users. The company also hit 500,000 Facebook fans. Yahoo! recently made some layout changes for its Mail service. Yahoo! currently receives 5,000 feedback messages per day that the company uses to create changes in the user interface. For example, the company took a message about making the toolbar appear at the bottom of long messages seriously. Yahoo! also added a switch view feature that allows users to jump between infinite scrolling and paginated view. CNET]

David Kernell Sentenced To A Year In Jail

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:29:04 +0000

David Kernell, the “Sarah Palin e-mail hacker” has been sentenced to a year in jail at the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky according to the Federal Bureau of Prison (BOP) records. Kernell was able to hack into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo! e-mail account by guessing her security questions. After breaking into her e-mail account, Kernell got some attention by posting some of Palin’s personal e-mails and photos on the online forum 4chan.

A judge suggested he be put in a half-way house instead of jail. Kernell is expected to be released on November 23rd. Kernell was convicted on two counts of destroying records and unlawful access to a computer this past APril. He was acquitted of wire fraud. Ashland is a low security institution that houses male inmates. It is located 125 miles east of Lexington, Kentucky.

Flickr Adds People You May Know Tool

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 17:33:42 +0000

Flickr has introduced a new feature called People You May Know. The suggestions are based on your contacts and people that they know. You can add contacts from the Find Your Friends page or from the new module on the Flickr homepage. You can designate people as a friend, family member, or contact. If you want other suggestions, you can dismiss the suggested people. You can aso have Flickr find your contacts from Facebook, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail. [Flickr Blog]

Yahoo! Redesigns Yahoo! Mail

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 04:58:46 +0000

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has redesigned Yahoo! Mail to make it faster and safer. The new Yahoo! Mail Beta is at least twice as fast as before. Facebook and Twitter integration has been added to Yahoo! Mail too. You can tweet, retweet, or send a text message out to friends while putting together an e-mail. If a friend sends you photos or videos from Flickr, Picasa or YouTube, then it will show up in a slideshow on the side. This way you never have to leave the page to see the external content. I think that is a cool feature that Gmail is also long overdue to have. Check out the video demo below of the new Yahoo! Mail:

Yahoo! Mail @ Yahoo! Video

[Yodel Anecdotal]

Yahoo! Launches Mail and Messenger App For Android

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:27:33 +0000

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has launched a Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger app for the Android Market. Yahoo! also launched HTML5 mobile websites for the iPhone and a Yahoo! Search Widget for Android. The new Android app features include push notifications for new e-mails, Yahoo! Address Book integration, e-mail search, photo uploads as attachments from the camera, emoticons and rich text formatting. There is also easy toggling between Mail and Messenger. Full press release below.

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo!(R) Mail and Yahoo! Messenger Apps for Android

Also Debuts New Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News HTML5 Mobile Websites for iPhone; Yahoo! Search Widget for Android

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jul 01, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — In continuing to develop leading mobile products and services that reach a broad audience across multiple platforms, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today expanded the reach of its industry-leading services with the immediate availability of Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps for Android as well as a Yahoo! Search Widget for Android.

Leveraging the latest HTML5 technology, Yahoo! is also debuting faster and richer Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News sites for iPhone and iPod Touch. These new mobile products will provide the hundreds of millions of loyal consumers who rely on Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, Search, and News with seamless, integrated experiences on their mobile devices.

“Yahoo! keeps more than 600 million consumers around the world connected to the people and things that matter to them most – wherever and whenever they want,” said David Ko, senior vice president, Americas, Audience, Mobile, and Local for Yahoo!. “With the availability of our world-class Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps for Android and by harnessing the latest in HTML5, we’re making it easier than ever for consumers to access fast, reliable, and feature-rich Yahoo! experiences across some of the fastest growing platforms in the market.”

Easy Access to Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger on Android

With a visually stunning interface as well as new functionality and other enhancements optimized for the Android platform, the Yahoo! apps for Android provide more than 300 million Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger users with the best communication experience for easily accessing and sharing information on Android phones.

The Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger Android apps are available globally as free downloads available in the Android Market, supporting OS 2.0 or newer.

With the new Yahoo! Mail App for Android, consumers can:

Receive push notification of new email messages
Send emails to contacts from the Yahoo! Address Book as well as to contacts in the native phone address book
Search email messages by sender, recipient, subject and keywords
Upload photos as attachments directly from the phone’s camera or the photo gallery
View and download attachments
Insert emoticons and rich text formatting into emails
Effectively manage and organize their Yahoo! Mail messages, folders, and spam
Easily toggle between the Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger apps

In addition to providing a robust consumer experience, the Yahoo! Mail app for Android offers advertisers an opportunity to reach a highly engaged mobile audience. Samsung is the inaugural advertiser with a rich media display advertising unit.

With the new Yahoo! Messenger App for Android, consumers can:

Easily message friends, check friends’ status updates and availability and update their personal status and availability
Send instant messages to friends via SMS text message¹
Multitask and stay connected with the app working in the background; with push notifications, consumers can easily catch new messages and friend requests
Get full use of emoticons and rich text formatting
Send photos to friends directly from the phone’s camera or the photo gallery

Also available today, the Yahoo! Search Widget for Android provides consumers with convenient one-click access to Yahoo! Search. After the Widget is installed, a Yahoo! Search box is easily accessible on the home screen. With voice search for easier input, Search Assist for quick suggestions and recommendations, and auto-locate technology to deliver locally relevant results, the Yahoo! Search Widget quickly provides the answers a consumer needs.

The Yahoo! Search Widget is currently available in the U.S. only for free. It is available for download in the Android Market and supports OS 2.0 or newer.

Upgraded Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News for iPhone and iPod Touch

Harnessing the latest technology, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News are now built on HTML5 to give consumers a faster and more sophisticated mobile browsing experience.

The upgraded Yahoo! Mail offers consumers a webmail experience that is fast and reliable and that easily surfaces rich content. Now available globally in 28 languages across 200 countries, Yahoo! Mail is optimized for iPhone and iPod Touch and is expected to be available across other Webkit-enabled browsers in the future.

With HTML5 Yahoo! Mail consumers can:

View HTML messages; compose rich text messages, reply, search emails, and access folders while offline
Manage folders and create smart folders with messages from key contacts
Surface photos and video attachments directly within the mail preview
Enjoy a seamless experience with Yahoo! Mail across mobile and desktop

Additionally, now Yahoo! News includes an all-new layout with animated visual effects and navigation that uses touch gestures to deliver a compelling news experience. Yahoo! brings the news to life with photos, slideshows, and video features, and provides consumers with an option to explore related articles. Currently available in the U.S. on the iPhone or iPod Touch browser, the product is expected to become available in additional countries and on additional devices.

For more information about the products and services, visit Yahoo.com and search for: “Yahoo! and Mobile”

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one of the most visited Internet destinations and a world-class online media company. Yahoo!’s vision is to be the center of people’s online lives by delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet experiences. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit http://pressroom.yahoo.com, the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal (http://yodel.yahoo.com) or the Yahoo! Mobile blog (http://ymobileblog.com). (YHOO — M)

¹ Users may send SMS text messages only to their contacts in the following countries: Canada, Indonesia, India, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.

[Yahoo! PR]

David Kernell Hit With Two Charges For Hacking Into Sarah Palin’s E-Mail

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:17:13 +0000

David Kernell was convicted by a federal jury in Knoxville, TN in connection with accessing the Yahoo! e-mail account of former U.S. vice president candidate Sarah Palin. He penetrated the e-mail account by selecting the forgot password feature and answering the security questions that Palin selected. He was able to answer the security questions by finding general information about Palin across the Internet.

Kernell was charged with computer fraud and obstruction of justice. Not only did Kernell hack into Palin’s e-mail account, he posted personal photos and e-mails of hers on the Internet. Kernell was not charged with wire fraud or identity theft. Kernell’s father is Michael Kernell, a state legislator in Tennessee. Palin wrote about the incident on Facebook by comparing it to Watergate:
“Violating the law, or simply invading someone’s privacy for political gain, has long been repugnant to Americans’ sense of fair play. As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates’ private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.” [NetworkWorld]

Sarah Palin E-mail Hacker David Kernell Given 3 More Federal Charges

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:16:26 +0000

Remember David Kernell? He was the one that hacked into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and posted her personal photos on 4chan. And then Gawker retrieved those images and posted it on their website. Kernell was able to hack Palin’s e-mail by getting through Yahoo! Mail’s security questions. Today it was announced that three more federal charges were made against Kernell, the University of Tennessee student.

The three new chages are fraud, unlawful electronic transmission of material outside Tennessee, and an attempt to conceal records to impede an FBI investigation.

David pleaded not guilty to all charges. The magistrate agreed to push back Kernell’s trial from May to October. David is the son of a Democratic Tennessee legislator.

[via AP]

Digg Hires Tom Shin As Head Of Sales

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:52:35 +0000

Digg cut about 10% of their workforce last week and announced that they wanted to expand upon their sales team in order to lean towards profitability. This is why Digg has hired Tom Shin as their new head of sales. Shin comes from Yahoo! where he was one of the top salesman in the Northwest region. Shin’s job will be to manage the relationship with Microsoft and find leads for direct advertising.

While Shin was at Yahoo! he helped Yahoo! Mail grow from $20 million in revenue to $300 during the 7 years that he was Director of Product Marketing for the division.

I believe that with Shin on board, Digg will be able to achieve profitability based on Shin’s track record. Given Digg has 35 million users and many are tech-savvy, this gives Shin a lot to work with in terms of pitching advertising campaigns to Fortune 500 companies. Now hopefully we’ll stop seeing ads like these:

Yahoo! Hires Abaca and Return Path For Mail Antispam

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:10:48 +0000

Yahoo! is taking a big step towards ensuring their Mail users receive less spam. The search engine company with a new CEO has hired a couple of companies to enhance their mailing technology in order to detect spam and notify marketing companies about e-mail user habits.

Yahoo! recently hired Abaca, a company that makes e-mail security technology to detect phishing and spam messages. Yahoo! will be using Abaca to detect spam messages and filter them out of Yahoo! Mail inboxes and into a spam folder. Abaca’s technology partners include VMWare, First Class Application Partner, and Coyote Point Systems Inc.

Return Path was also hired by Yahoo! Return Path monitors e-mails that were reported as spam and notifies e-mail marketers. This way it will train e-mail marketers how to brand their e-mails to prevent looking too much like spam.

Lastly Yahoo!’s anti-spam team will be utilizing a “supercomputer” made of thousands of PCs as part of the open source Hadoop project to detect spammers even further. Yahoo! partnered with several universities for this project.

Mark Risher, Anti-Spam Czar for Yahoo! reminds Mail users that “if Yahoo! Mail does let something slip through into the wrong folder — either allowing spam into your inbox or mistakenly putting a good message in your Spam folder — please use the ‘Spam’ and ‘Not Spam’ buttons to let us know. Clicking those buttons sends an immediate and powerful signal to our systems (and to me so that we can quickly try to correct the problem. It’s the best way for us to get better, and to continue keeping your e-mail experience great!”