Good Bye MyBlogLog

I have just received an email from Yahoo! announcing the end of MyBlogLog service. It’s going to be discontinued effective May 24, 2011. Nice of Yahoo! to give us some time before terminating it for good.

However the link for help pages redirected me to this page: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/ll/featured/index.html, which I think is a mistake because it’s for “Local Featured Listings”.

Nevertheless, we thank you Yahoo! for a great service.

Delayed Yahoo! Messenger Custom Message Updates

Borrowing Google’s term – I have lately been using a flaky connection when connecting to the Internet. What I noticed is that my Yahoo! Messenger list becomes static and no custom messages are being updated. When I looked at my friend’s list, the custom message I set wasn’t showing. I was also not able to see when people get online or offline. I’m using Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2161 for Windows.

I’ve tried all that I can think of – changing connection preferences, clearing message archives because I thought they grew too big, and up to the extent of reinstalling the whole application. I even blamed Symantec Endpoint Protection for it.

I found a simple remedy today – disable the “Always sign in to my mobile phone when I sign out of Messenger“. I have always thought that this option is convenient, especially when someone wants to convey a message for me when I’m not online. Well, okay I admit being lazy as this can easily be done by clicking on “Sign in to <cellphone number>” in the menu.

It turns out that the server is confused when you are online/offline so frequently – flaky connection. It’s a bug, yes.

Why am I not using Pidgin? Because I still want to separate my identities with the “send-as” functionality. With Pidgin I always revealed my identities to different group of people, and I don’t like it. I’ll reuse it once this feature is added.

So if you’re facing the same issue and have the option turned on, try to disable it.

Filters! Yahoo! I Want Better Filters!

I have been a long time Yahoo! Mail user (since 2001), and a paying customer of Yahoo! Mail Plus for 5 years+ (since 2003). There were no Gmail back then, and I needed a permanent email with POP3 access. Yahoo! slowly improved their services, although one thing that I have always been annoyed about is the unavoidable error that will be displayed if I try to access the web interface while my email client is pulling email via POP3. Every time!

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In June 2004, I received an email informing some improvements. I didn’t really noticed them, really.

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But then again, this is what I am really disappointed about. The “temporary” message has been there since the release of the new GUI.

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And here is the antique filter form. Furthermore, Plus users can only create 50 filters. What’s that about?

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Come on, Yahoo! please improve Mail. While you’re at it, IMAP service wouldn’t hurt too.

MyBlogLog: Where Have I Been?

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I have neglected MyBlogLog for quite some time that I never noticed that it has been bought by Yahoo!.

I did wonder on how some people get very nice MyBlogLog widgets and today I decided to check it out. I was asked to link my account to Yahoo! when I tried to log into MyBlogLog. And as you can see I have activated the new widget.

It turns out Yahoo! decided to leave the old widget codes alone and it has worked all these while 🙂

Old Vs New:

p/s – no offense to Onyx Design I was not trying to delete you but when I captured the screen I had my mouse hovered on top of your icon and too lazy to re-capture.

Yahoo! Mail Now Unlimited

Yeah, you heard it right. Yahoo! has finally disabled the storage limitation for all users!

As a long time Yahoo! Mail Plus user with 2GB max storage I was surprised to see that my limit has been decreased to 1GB and only 35% of my email exists where it was at 50% level before. Of course, I did not notice the fuse on the storage meter:

Yahoo! Mail

Logging into my other Yahoo! Mail account (free), I can see that the storage limit is still there. Perhaps Yahoo! is implementing this phase by phase. You can read more about it officially from Yahoo!. Quote:

“users that follow normal email practices and comply with our anti-abuse limits can consume an unlimited amount of free email storage. This will apply to both new and existing users.”

Have the storage size limitation been lifted from your account?

Yahoo! POP3 and SMTP Via SSL


It has almost been 5 years since I have subscribed to Yahoo! Mail Plus and I am really satisfied with the service. With POP3 and SMTP access, I couldn’t be happier. Furthermore the ability to add disposable email addresses to combat SPAM from not-so-trusted sites is really useful.

Yesterday I tried to send an email to a friend via SMTP and the connection failed. Well, I thought it was a glitch somewhere and didn’t really care so I saved the message as draft. However, checking email via POP3 still works fine.

When I tried again today, I still can’t connect. The first thing I checked is the POP & SMTP help in Yahoo! Mail. Indeed, Yahoo! now have SSL support for both POP3 and SMTP (port 995 and 465 respectively). Cool. I didn’t realize when Yahoo! had this available but this is a good news. Nobody can sniff my email communications on the line anymore.

Yahoo! Mail Plus POP and SMTP

I changed my Thunderbird settings to use SSL for sending and receiving, and all is working fine now.

I also realized that Yahoo! never disabled the non-SSL SMTP port 25. I wonder why Thunderbird failed to connect earlier. Oh well, maybe that’s just a sign to let me know that SSL is available 🙂

For the non-technical readers, SSL enables encryption for the communication between your machine and the server. Yes, the similar technology as HTTPS for browsers.

Yahoo! Time Capsule

Time capsule? Isn’t that idea kinda old? Not really, if combined with today’s multimedia techniques and technologies. Quite a while ago, Yahoo! has introduced Yahoo! time capsule, created by Jonathan Harris, an internet artist.

For 30 days, from October 10 until November 8, Yahoo! users worldwide can contribute photos, writings, videos, audio, even drawings, to this electronic anthropology project.

There are several themes in which you can contribute to, namely FUN, SORROW, FAITH, BEAUTY, PAST, NOW, HOPE, YOU, LOVE, ANGER.

Why you don’t have a try? At the moment this is posted, time left is 21 days, 1 hour, and 40 minutes.