Sunday, November 07, 2004
Getting Organized, My Yahoo and Google
I was overwhelmed.
Problem 1 :
Problem 2 :
Problem 3 :
Problem 4 :
Solution :
The wonderful people at Yahoo have probably created the best personalized portal of all. It's called My Yahoo
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Problem 1 :
I was an incurable news fanatic and needed some way to make it manageable.
Like so many of us I am a news junkie, with many interests ranging from politics to people, technology to cricket, from movies to foreign policy and many more. I had this constant, almost manic fear of missing out on the latest and I absolutely wanted my daily fix of browsing through several websites which gave me enough fodder to feed my ravenous appetite for whats newsworthy.
However it was all becoming too difficult to manage, especially with the advent of blogs, which
added to things I had to keep up with.
Like so many of us I am a news junkie, with many interests ranging from politics to people, technology to cricket, from movies to foreign policy and many more. I had this constant, almost manic fear of missing out on the latest and I absolutely wanted my daily fix of browsing through several websites which gave me enough fodder to feed my ravenous appetite for whats newsworthy.
However it was all becoming too difficult to manage, especially with the advent of blogs, which
added to things I had to keep up with.
Problem 2 :
I had no real system of keeping appointments.
One of my colleagues at work had his marriage about a month and a half ago. It was on a Saturday, and I was going to attend the marriage. However I just forgot ! It totally slipped out of my mind. I didnt make it . I only remembered on monday when i saw him that I was to attend his marriage the saturday before.
One of my colleagues at work had his marriage about a month and a half ago. It was on a Saturday, and I was going to attend the marriage. However I just forgot ! It totally slipped out of my mind. I didnt make it . I only remembered on monday when i saw him that I was to attend his marriage the saturday before.
Problem 3 :
I didnt have one address book which was recent and kept upto date.
My cell phone decided to die one day and with it went away all the contact numbers and email addresses that I had. Woosh like that !
My cell phone decided to die one day and with it went away all the contact numbers and email addresses that I had. Woosh like that !
Problem 4 :
Bookmarks in multiple computers
I had bookmarks at my computer at home and at work. I wanted an automatic system which would keep them synchronized.
I had bookmarks at my computer at home and at work. I wanted an automatic system which would keep them synchronized.
Solution :
The wonderful people at Yahoo have probably created the best personalized portal of all. It's called My Yahoo
The personalization site lets you add RSS feeds (which are now offered by most news sites and blogs) of your choice , it has a very usable calendar for keeping appointments (where you can set up reminders too, and never forget any birthday again ), you can link up an address book to store all your contact information and to solve my last problem you also have a facility of having your bookmarks stored on the site itself .
In additon to what i mentioned above you can configure it to your local and personal settings so that you can have links to your local weather, TV listings of your favourite channels (which you can add to your calendar automatically too), stored locations for Yahoo Maps, show timings for theatres near you,stock quotes and a lot more.
Ofcourse you can access your Yahoo mail box and Yahoo messenger right from this page.
And all of the above can be on a single page giving you a one click access to all of these.
Needless to say it has made my chaotic life much more under control. Do try it out !
Its all free ofcourse :) ..
It would be interesting to know if anyone has tried similar services and what their experience was with them.
In relation to this I was thinking about Google's business model. What Yahoo has done very well as I have illustrated above is to intergrate all these services under a single log-in and a similar look and feel. However in contrast Google seems to have many (very good) disparate services, Google search, Blogger, Gmail , Keyhole and Orkut, but with no central philosophy, no single access point or layout. Google almost seems like a small excited kid buying up whatever it likes without any grand central scheme of things. In contrast, for example, Yahoo has bought two thick client email applications OddPost and Bloomba, but they have not yet made a hullabaloo about it.They ofcourse must be integrating it with Yahoo mail, and are playing the waiting game therefore.
In additon to what i mentioned above you can configure it to your local and personal settings so that you can have links to your local weather, TV listings of your favourite channels (which you can add to your calendar automatically too), stored locations for Yahoo Maps, show timings for theatres near you,stock quotes and a lot more.
Ofcourse you can access your Yahoo mail box and Yahoo messenger right from this page.
And all of the above can be on a single page giving you a one click access to all of these.
Needless to say it has made my chaotic life much more under control. Do try it out !
Its all free ofcourse :) ..
It would be interesting to know if anyone has tried similar services and what their experience was with them.
In relation to this I was thinking about Google's business model. What Yahoo has done very well as I have illustrated above is to intergrate all these services under a single log-in and a similar look and feel. However in contrast Google seems to have many (very good) disparate services, Google search, Blogger, Gmail , Keyhole and Orkut, but with no central philosophy, no single access point or layout. Google almost seems like a small excited kid buying up whatever it likes without any grand central scheme of things. In contrast, for example, Yahoo has bought two thick client email applications OddPost and Bloomba, but they have not yet made a hullabaloo about it.They ofcourse must be integrating it with Yahoo mail, and are playing the waiting game therefore.
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