Keep friends at your fingertips with the new Yahoo! Messenger:

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email.jpg" alt="" />Personally, I am happy to give my entire online existence over to Google. They have my email, my Analytics data, my search history, my mobile device, my credit card information, and the list goes on. Some people may not feel that this is the smartest thing to do, and I don’t blame them. Those same people may still want to reap the benefits of web mail (in contrast to plain old desktop email, powered by Thunderbird and its ilk).

So I’ve gathered up a list of ten popular free email providers that you might want to take for a spin if Gmail or Yahoo are not your thing.

Hotmail

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email3.jpg" alt="email[3]" width="500" height="200" border="0" />

href="http://www.hotmail.com">Hotmail is Microsoft’s email service, and I have to say this is one of the best services on this list (if not the very best). We’ve recently held a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/switch-hotmail-makeuseof-poll/">poll asking if you guys would be willing to switch to Hotmail, and most of you picked the answer that went “I will never ever consider switching to Hotmail. Ever“. Well, if you’re one of those people, I guess I won’t be able to sway your opinion.

But if you go to that href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/switch-hotmail-makeuseof-poll/">poll page and scroll down, you will see comments by a user who goes by the name of Galileo Vieira, a member of Microsoft’s Hotmail team. Galileo presents some fairly persuasive arguments as to why you should give Hotmail a chance. Their new UI is quite spiffy, and Microsoft are generally putting some energy into the service.

Is Hotmail better than Gmail (or even Yahoo, for that matter)? I would say definitely not, not by a long shot. But I would say that for most users, Hotmail is probably the best service on this list.

Mail.com

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email5.jpg" alt="email[5]" width="580" height="350" border="0" />

If you feel that your email domain name is the most important part of the address, you should definitely check out href="http://mail.com">Mail.com. Its default domain name (@mail.com) is cool enough, and is even one letter shorter than you-know-who. But if you’re looking for something more specific, Mail.com offers an enormous list of alternative domains for you to pick from, such as “Engineer.com”, “Muslim.com”, and even “Secretary.net”.

It also boasts unlimited email storage, drag-and-drop labels, and more.

GMX Mail

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email9.jpg" alt="email[9]" width="400" height="300" border="0" />

href="http://www.gmx.com/">GMX claims to be “the free e-mail you’ve been waiting for”, and boasts 13 million users. That may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to how many users the other vendors have, but it’s still a sizable amount. Some of the perks GMX provides include unlimited email storage, as well as attachments of up to 50MB each.

The service is based in Germany, and they also have an href="https://market.android.com/details?id=de.gmx.mobile.android.mail&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImRlLmdteC5tb2JpbGUuYW5kcm9pZC5tYWlsIl0.">Android app that seems slated mainly at German-speaking users.

Hushmail

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email15.jpg" alt="email[15]" width="488" height="410" border="0" />

href="http://www.hushmail.com/">Hushmail is a bit more of an esoteric service. Their main claim to fame is that fact they provide “private, secure” free email accounts. Why the quote marks, you ask? Because Hushmail (quite famously) betrayed user trust in 2007 by providing email correspondence to federal agencies, complying to a Canadian court order. You can read a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/">complete analysis of the incident in Wired’s Threat Level column of the time.

In brief, what you should know is that Hushmail’s mechanisms are not completely secure, although they are still significantly more secure than those offered by other providers. Conversely, their free option only includes a paltry 25MB of storage – a far cry from the unlimited space offered by some of the other vendors on the list. If privacy is a key concern for you, check out Hushmail, but don’t blindly trust them. Configure your own settings, and don’t give them your encryption key at any stage of the process.

Zoho Mail

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email17.jpg" alt="email[17]" width="308" height="327" border="0" />

href="http://zoho.com">Zoho makes a complete suite of online productivity tools, including a spreadsheet, a Wiki service, and more. Zoho Mail is their free email offering, and it looks quite spiffy. If you already use Zoho, that means you have a Zoho Mail account. One of its distinctive feature is that it is 100% ad free – not a single banner in sight.

Gawab.com

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/email21.jpg" alt="email[21]" width="498" height="523" border="0" />

href="http://www.gawab.com/">Gawab offers email tracking (a way to see if users received your email), 10GB of storage, and other goodies. But above all, it offers built-in support for foreign character encodings, such as Arabic UTF-16. If you write a lot of email in Arabic and are not happy with your current email provider, check out href="http://gawab.com">Gawab.

Final Thought

Did I miss an important free email provider? Are you using an unknown provider that is absolutely awesome, and are dying to tell the world about it? Share it all in the comments!

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Keep friends at your fingertips with the new Yahoo! Messenger:

View full post on FileHippo.com

Keep friends at your fingertips with the new Yahoo! Messenger:

View full post on FileHippo.com

Keep friends at your fingertips with the new Yahoo! Messenger:

View full post on FileHippo.com

class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/YPulse.jpg" alt="facebook on yahoo" width="300" height="48" />Whether or not you’ve heard the news, if you have a Yahoo account then you’ve probably noticed subtle differences in many of the screens where your contacts and your status updates are managed.

In December 2009, Yahoo Mail was integrated with Facebook. These days, if you’re a Yahoo user, you’ll discover connections to Facebook all throughout Yahoo. This goes beyond simple share buttons. You can now import all of your Facebook contact information and birthdays into your Yahoo contacts list, you can update your status from your Yahoo status box, and you can even import your profile picture from Facebook.

id="more-57104"> /> In this article, I’m going to show you the four areas of Yahoo where you’ll notice the clearest integration with Facebook and how you can make use of those connections.

Accessing Facebook From Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail was the very first area of Yahoo that become integrated with your Facebook account. You can be certain the purpose for doing this was so that Yahoo users could import all of their Facebook contacts into their Yahoo contact list.

The first thing you’ll notice once you’ve signed into your Facebook account from Yahoo, is that when you access your Ymail main page, the center pane shows all of the latest status updates from both Yahoo and Facebook.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57105" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface1.jpg" alt="facebook on yahoo" width="575" height="488" />

The display defaults to use both, but if you want, you can click on the Facebook tab and only see all of your friends Facebook status updates. By default, your Yahoo and Facebook contact lists are separate. Yahoo apparently respects your privacy enough not to automatically import all of your Facebook contact details into your Yahoo contact list. However, you can do this by clicking on “Contacts” inside Yahoo Mail.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface7.jpg" alt="yahoo facebook" width="395" height="396" />

Clicking on “Get Started” will walk you through the process of bringing in all of the data from your Facebook contacts and integrating them into your Yahoo contact list. Once you’ve “plugged in” your Facebook account, your contact information on Yahoo will remain updated with all of the latest contact information.

Another cool integration between Facebook and Yahoo Mail is that whenever you receive an email message from a contact that Yahoo recognizes as one of your Facebook friends, you’ll see a little “F” Facebook icon on the corner of their profile image.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface6.jpg" alt="yahoo facebook" width="350" height="260" />

If you click that icon, it’ll whisk you immediately to that person’s Facebook page.

Other Yahoo Integration With Facebook

Since December 2009, Yahoo has been hard at work integrating Facebook features into the rest of the website as well. So long as you’ve enabled the Facebook connection with your Yahoo account, you’ll discover Facebook access almost anywhere.

One very convenient integration I noticed was from the main Yahoo page. So long as you’re logged in, under “My Favorites” you’ll find “Facebook” listed. If you click on the “Quickview” link, a minimized view of Facebook pops up within your main Yahoo page.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57106" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface2.jpg" alt="yahoo facebook" width="575" height="515" />

The coolest thing about this is that you can immediately check out your Facebook page straight from your Yahoo main page, without going to a different website or opening a new window. The quickview screen works just as though you’re at the Facebook site itself. Click on any of the tabs at the top and the content will change within the quickview screen.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57107" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface3.jpg" alt="instant messenger yahoo facebook" width="575" height="510" />

Now, if you’ve ever used any of the social network desktop or online apps that integrate all of your social networks like class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/twitterers-you-should-be-using-seesmic-desktop/">Seesmic or class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-reasons-digsbys-a-must-have-im-client/">Digsby, you’ll see that Yahoo is actually attempting to accomplish the same goal. If you click on the “Have something to share?” link on your main Yahoo page, you’ll see that under the dropdown box, you can choose to distribute your status update to your Facebook account by selecting the box.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57108" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface4.jpg" alt="instant messenger yahoo facebook" width="497" height="334" />

You’ll see this especially when you visit Yahoo Pulse. Here, it’s pretty obvious that Yahoo is really trying to become the central hub where Yahoo users access all of their social networks. In fact the Yahoo Pulse page mirrors the Facebook layout in a lot of ways, with the status update at the top, friend updates from your various networks in the center, and even friend connections and “applications” on the right, just like in Facebook.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57109" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface5.jpg" alt="instant messenger yahoo facebook" width="575" height="528" />

style="text-align: left;">As you can see from the screenshot above, Yahoo also offers the ability to plug into your Twitter account so you can send and receive updates from your Yahoo account as well.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57112" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/yface8.jpg" alt="facebook on yahoo" width="411" height="339" />

Yahoo Pulse is also where you’ll go into your profile to extract your Facebook photo for use as your Yahoo avatar. Finally – no more silly cartoon character for a profile!

Are you a Yahoo user, and if so, do you know of any other ways that Facebook is integrated into Yahoo? What do you think about the integration? Share your insight and thoughts in the comments section below. />
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style="border: 0px none;margin-left:20px;float:right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/0-yahoom-intro.png" alt="video call iphone"/>Yahoo! recently released its latest update to the href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/yahoo-messenger/id309219097?mt=8#">Yahoo! Messenger 2.0 [App Store link] application for the iPhone. This app lets you connect with your IM friends and make free voice and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/record-skype-video-calls-free-vodburner/">video calls to everyone on your Messenger account. You can also use it to make low cost calls to land line or mobile phones, as well as make calls to PCs and Android devices.

Being able to make video calls is a welcomed addition to an already popular application on iOS devices, and is especially useful if you’re looking for a quick way to connect with friends visually. In this article, I will go over all the new features associated with this application.

id="more-56470">

Making Calls with Yahoo! Messenger 2.0

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-17_1952.png" alt="video call iphone"/>

We’ll start with the most important update to the application–making calls. With this app, you can now make both video and voice calls to your Yahoo! Messenger friends. Calls can be made to either iOS to iOS, iOS to PC or iOS to Android devices.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-17_1953.jpg" alt="mobile video call"/>

To make video calls and stream live video one-to-one, it is preferable to have an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, iOS 4.1 and WiFi connection.

Voice calls are also free to your Messenger friends, but you are also able to make low cost voice calls to landlines and mobile phones, as well as low cost international calls with a Yahoo! Voice Phone Out account. This feature is available in the following markets: US, France, Germany, Spain and Singapore.

Multitasking

Another new feature incorporated into the app is multitasking. Quite simply, what this allows you to do is work with your other iPhone apps while Yahoo! Messenger runs in the background. This feature is available for iPhone 3GS/4 users running iOS 4.1.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-17_1954_001.png" alt="mobile video call"/>

Multitasking is a huge addition to this app if you ask me. It allows you to do other things while waiting for a response to the people you’ve messaged, and also gives you the opportunity to access your other files in the middle of a conversation. No more “I’ll check and get back to you later.”

What Else Can You Do with This App?

Now that we’ve tackled the major updates, lets look at some of the other features that make this a useful application for your phone. You can still use the Yahoo! Messenger app to send free SMS messages to your friends, although they may be charged a fee depending on their carrier’s policies.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-17_1954.jpg" alt="video call iphone"/>

Also, get notified for every message you receive with push notification support. Now you can know when a new message arrives regardless of whether the app is running, in the background, or even if it’s not open.

You can bring your friends into one place by adding your href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-cool-tips-tricks-in-windows-live-msn-messenger/">Windows Live Messenger contacts to your buddy list, and capture and share iPhone photos and video with them in real-time, as well as all of your Yahoo! Messenger buddies.

And in case you were wondering, the app’s performance has been enhanced, offering a “simpler, faster, richer Yahoo! Messenger experience at your fingertips.” Rich text and personal expressions–like emoticons and avatars–are also in play.

Conclusion

If you use Yahoo! Messenger to keep in touch with your friends and you also own an iPhone or other iOS device, I see no reason why you shouldn’t take advantage of this app. With the new updates, Yahoo! offers a simple way to keep in touch with your friends and contact them via texting, calling by phone, and even video chat.

It’s also great to see that this app works across different platforms such as the PC and Android, so even if your buddies don’t have an iPhone the chances are good that you can still message them for free with this app.

Do you use Yahoo! Messenger to keep in touch with your friends? If not, will you be now that this update has come out? Leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below! />
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class="align-left" style="border: 0px none; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 5px; float: right;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/blueglobe.jpg" alt="email to rss" />One of the issues I’ve always had with my free Yahoo email account is the fact that it’s so difficult to deal with it anywhere outside of the online Yahoo Mail system itself. There aren’t very many online email systems that will let you extract email from your Yahoo account as easily as you can get it from your Gmail account. This is because, unlike with Google Mail, a free Yahoo Mail account does not include free POP access.

Recently, I wrote a review of class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rss-bandit-feed-online/">RSS Bandit, a very cool feed reader with the ability to pull in email feeds from Gmail accounts. It doesn’t use POP access, instead it utilizes the authenticated Atom feed that Google provides to all Gmail users. This is awesome, but once again it made me regret ever signing up for a free Yahoo account, because it’s once again left out in the cold. No matter what, I always have to go back to the online Yahoo email system to check those emails. In a Web 2.0 world, Yahoo Mail feels so disconnected from everything.

id="more-52473"> /> After writing the RSS Bandit article, I realized that if there’s some way I could convert my free Yahoo email account into an RSS feed, I’d have an instant connection to that free email account without the need for a POP connection. It actually didn’t take very long to discover class="vt-p" href="http://ymailfeed.appspot.com/">YmailFeed, an awesome free service hosted on Google AppSpot (ironically) that lets you convert your free Yahoo email account into an RSS feed.

Setting Up Your Yahoo Email RSS Feed

The first thing you’ll need to do to set up your Yahoo Mail as an RSS feed is to visit YmailFeed, sign up for your free account, and then click on “Start the Process“.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52474" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/yfeed1.jpg" alt="email to rss" width="569" height="426" />

You’re then taken to your Yahoo account sign-in page. This is a legitimate Yahoo sign-in, it’s not a scam! YmailFeed is not collecting your login information, you simply need to log into your account so that the YmailFeed system can retrieve a unique key associated with your authentication.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52475" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/yfeed2.jpg" alt="email to rss" width="224" height="435" />

This is similar to when you give external applications permission to access your Facebook account. Likewise, by logging into your Yahoo account, you are “approving” that YmailFeed can access your incoming email. To hammer this home, Yahoo requires that you sign off on this request, since you’re basically opening up your email account to a third-party app that is going to convert your incoming mail into a feed format.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52476" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/yfeed3.jpg" alt="forward email to rss" width="569" height="151" />

Once you agree, your account is active and all new, unread email is converted into a feed. You can see a preview of that feed in the left window in your YmailFeed account. You have three important links at the bottom of the next screen, which is basically the feed for your free Yahoo email account. If that URL is ever compromised and falls into the wrong hands, just click on “Regenerate the Codes” and a new set of feed URLs is provided – the old ones will be disabled.

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Three types of feeds links are provided, AutoDiscovery, a standard RSS Feed and an ATOM feed. Now that I’m using RSS Bandit, which can handle AutoDiscovery, I just initiate a new feed and add the feed under my existing email group. The feed shows up under “Feed Details” just like any other regular RSS feed.

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The way RSS Bandit handles it when you click on the email itself is that it opens up a direct link to Yahoo Mail within the lower content panel. Another cool way to make use of your Yahoo feed is by clicking that little “Netvibes” link on the YmailFeed page with your feed URLs. In just two clicks, you can add an awesome Yahoo mail widget to your class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/manage-life-completely-online-netvibes/">Netvibes account.

Getting Yahoo Mail loaded into my private Netvibes dashboard is something that I haven’t been able to get working for a long time, but now with YmailFeed, it works like a charm.

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If you just want to get your most recent Yahoo mail in Google Reader, simply add the RSS Feed from your YmailFeed account and you’ve instantly connected Google Reader to your Yahoo inbox. Now, how cool is that?

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In fact, having your free Yahoo inbox as an RSS feed like this opens up a whole world of possibilities. You could install the class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-intelligent-online-news-filter-greatnews/">GreatNews RSS Filter and use it to analyze all incoming Gmail and Yahoo email and send you alerts. Rather than setting up filters in all of your email accounts, you can process all incoming email in one place.

Can you think of other cool ways you can make use of your Yahoo email RSS feed? Share your ideas and insight in the comments section below! />
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