Saturday, April 09, 2005

 

Test-driving Yahoo! 360º

This lazy Saturday I've spent some time test-driving Yahoo! 360. If any of you would like an invitation to join in, let me know!

What I've seen so far w. 360:

1. The ease w. which you can add .jpg files to your postings is striking - someone obviously wanted to make that feature noticeable. Yet, if you try to change any other cosmetic features to make your blog, say, have larger print, you come up empty.

2. The top right corner of the "My Page" screen has a nifty search function.

3. Clicking around to select my page and site settings was cumbersome, w. simply too much verbiage! Shhhhh, I kept longing for my Blogger easy-to-use settings.

4. Even the standard, "invite your friends" text was too verbose for me! Is Yahoo! condescending its users by providing suggested text? I'd like the invitation to be to the point w. none of this and that. So, I changed mine, many of you have seen it; here's a sample of one:
Un amigo de Princeton, Christian Crumlish (de la Clase del '86 - la de Angie),
me ha invitado a usar Yahoo 360! Beta (la versión experimental, la cual tiene
un waiting list ahora mismo si la quereis usar sin invitación). Christian es
famoso en el Internet, pues es el co-autor de un libro de como usar "Microsoft
Front Page 2003" y tambien escribio "Power of Many" (me lo estoy leyendo ahora).
Wait!!! My Spanish characters got garbled! Oh no! No wonder my dear, Web-savvy Uncle Hank turned down his invitation! By the way, Xianman's real name should have been a link to his search on Google, or, I mean, Yahoo! but that feature was not available that I could see on my custom invitations.

5. Is Yahoo! afraid of something? Why not create blogging software that can compete, even beat, the Pros? So what my grandmother wants to use Yahoo! for her blog, she should still be treated as if she could be major blog honcho #1.

6. Maybe someone forgot to collaborate to build 360... why not make it a state-of-the-art collaboration w. some very hip blog social software designers? When I'm about to blog and my interface reminds me of when I saw Yahoo! for the first time in the Dark Ages of the Web; my sense of dejà vu takes me back to my old 486, my old 2400 kbps modem and my decision to use Yahoo! as my backup rather than my daily bread.

7. ¡Buena suerte!

Xianman, thanks for inviting me!



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