How To Use Yahoo! Go - Part 3 of 3

Use Yahoo! Go - Part 3 of 3

by Michael E. Callahan aka Dr. File Finder

Over the past two weeks I've looked at all the standard features that are included in Yahoo! Go. In part 1 I looked at the Carousel in Yahoo! Go makes it amazingly easy and intuitive to navigate around the interface. I also took a look at the Home page, access to Flickr, and the ability to do you Yahoo! Email. In part 2 I looked at how Yahoo! Go delivers news, sports, weather, and financial information. This week I'm going to look at some of the ways you can customize Yahoo! Go so it delivers the content you want. Let's get going.

Wonderful Widgets

Now, each of the items you have in Yahoo! Go is called a widget. From the main screen if you press * you can go to a section called "My Widgets" where you can delete widgets, enter settings, hide widgets, and more. Keep in mind that Yahoo! Go is still in beta testing and it already has an impressive number of widgets that you can add. There's one for Wikipedia, for example, so you can quickly access it from your mobile device. I installed the "QWERTY Phone Dial Helper which is a clever little widget that "translates" those pesky 1-888-CALL-FLAMINGO style numbers into just number so you can dial it easily. There's a widget for MySpace and one for MTV. There's even one for eBay which can be quite handy. Widgets are divided up into categories like Most Popular, Newest, Most Downloaded, and so on. Others you can currently pick from include:

• Bay Area Web Cams
• Leo Dictionary - English/German
• Farmacie - Find Pharmacies in Italy
• Men's College Hoops
• Currency Converter
• CalTrain Times
• and MORE!

Widgets have become a popular add-on for many products including Yahoo! Go, Opera, Vista, iGoogle, and more. As Yahoo! Go comes out of beta and is released I'm certain that a ton of widgets are going to be created that you can pick from. I've been using Yahoo! Go for about two months and already there are many more widgets available.

A Work In Progress

I'm really taken with Yahoo! Go and I really do feel that it's the best product I've seen for accessing your information on a portable device. It's important to me for you to know that Yahoo! Go, as I'm describing it today, is still a work in progress. It's gradually evolving and expanding. Existing features are being refined and new ones are being added. One facet that's being worked on is Yahoo! OneConnect. This aspect is going to allow you to connect, in a very real way with all the people that are important to you. OneConnect is going to bridge online communities and bring them all together on your phone. Imagine being able to use Instant Messaging, text, email, and social networks to connect with everyone you want to connect with. OneConnect will tie together services like Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Dopplr, and many more. It will give you a way to have all the information you need right on your phone. Amazing! And, if you a software developer there's an SDK and lots of information so that you can create widgets for this brave, new world.

Another element that's also being developed will help you to bring all types of content into one, easy-to-use, place. You'll be able to have emails, RSS feeds, graphics images, videos and more right at your fingertips and be able to alter how that information is displayed to you. With Yahoo! OnePlace you'll be able to bring content together like never before. What's really cool to me is that not only will be you able to bring in content you've got on Yahoo, but you'll also be able to link to content on places like Google, YouTube, Digg, and more. Utilizing smart bookmarks you'll be able to instantly update everything. Sounds almost like science fiction doesn't it? Well, it's not!

Summing It Up

Yahoo! Go is a powerful, yet easy-to-use tool that brings you information directly to your phone. It offers you news, sports, weather, stocks, finances, and lots of information. Yahoo! Go can be easily customized by you to give you the things you want on your phone. Widgets can provide you with everything from bus schedules to currency conversions. Yahoo! Go, currently in beta 3, is a work in progress that just keeps getting better and better.

At the same time that Yahoo is working on Yahoo! Go they're also working on oneConnect, onePlace, and oneSearch. As these products become fully available you'll be able to pick the ones that are right for you. In addition, I'll be doing in-depth reviews of each of these products which should all be appearing sometime soon. Coming next week I'll be reviewing Yahoo! oneSearch Voice that lets you search from your phone by simply talking.

Over the years I've looked at and evaluated a lot of software. A lot of it is average and some of it is good. Only rarely do I ever see a product or a line of products that I really get excited about. I feel that excitement for Yahoo! Go and Yahoo! oneSearch, onePlace, and oneConnect. This is where mobile computing is heading and I'm going to be telling you about it as it happens. Stay tuned.

In case you missed the other installments, here are links:

• How To Use Yahoo! Go - Part 1 of 3
• How To Use Yahoo! Go - Part 2 of 3

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