Yahoo! Go for Mobile

Yahoo! Go - Get Started on Your Mobile

interesting (see final paragraph). useful little app. particularly if you have an affinity for the yahoo! brand and are familiar with yahoo! services or otherwise strongly identify with your yahoo! ID.

the app (downloadable here) - specifically for nokia series 60 devices - is quite elegant (although a bit larger than your average .sis file - a whopping 1.8 mb). installation is a breeze - the beauty of the open symbian/nokia series 60 platform. configuration is quite simple, which includes launching a couple of additional installs for synching, installing the IM client, etc.

in terms of functionality, mail is nicely integrated into the nokia messaging menu. mail management options are simple, intuitive - you can easily reply to or forward messages, or even file mails directly into your pre-established yahoo! folders which now appear in the nokia inbox options menu as a result of having installed the yahoo! client. slight downside: incoming yahoo! mail gets dumped into the same inbox as incoming sms and mms messages (duplicates appear in a dedicated yahoo! folder within the messaging menu as well), which makes things a bit cluttered. but, as said, it's easy enough to file and/or delete messages just as you would from a fixed terminal. bottom line on mail: i used to have to launch my browser to access y! to check my yahoo! mail on a static basis - now i get it pushed to me. sweet. and, near as i can tell, the yahoo! app does not seem to be interfering with my secure corporate push e-mail running on the same device.

as for calendar synch, seems wrinkle-free (haven't yet synched address book, but assume same). photo synch likewise (first time you use the photo synch you have to go through a quick install process - but it's automatic and seamless). as i'm already a regular user of shozu app for uploading images to flickr (also in the yahoo! camp) - from which i can share, post to blog, etc. - i'm not sure this new yahoo! solution in its current state will compel me to switch. but cool nonetheless.

the IM client (another quick install on first use) is also quite elegant - seems to look and act a lot like the agile messenger client, except that the latter allows simultaneous presence on multiple IM services (aol, msn, yahoo!, icq). for whatever reason, despite a decade-long history and strong affinity with yahoo!, i'm still more likely to use my aim moniker than any other so i'm gonna probably stick with the agile messenger solution for the nonce. but hey, that's just me. this is a pretty slick client if you're a yahoo! messenger junkie.

what i found perhaps the least intriguing piece of the package was the search/bookmark menu. it looks pretty, but once you click on an option - sports, finance, weather, movies, whatever - it launches your mobile browser, where you sign in at the familiar y! prompt, and then you get the familiar y! screens. nothing wrong with that, mind you, i've been accessing y! from the phone for ages. thing is, not sure why i'd want to toggle back and forth between the yahoo! search/bookmark menu and the browser to go from, say, finance to weather? for now i'll just stick to my existing y! bookmark in my browser and access the way i always have.

so, all of that said, and bearing in mind that this is an early, preliminary review based on limited exposure to the app/service (no doubt with experience i'll discover yet more value, and perhaps a shortcoming or two), all-in-all i'd say yahoo! go appears to be quite a handy little application that should serve to make the mobile internet experience yet a bit more user-friendly, for yahoo! afficionados and newcomers alike...

...as for what all of this may mean for the mobile business ecosystem, that's another thing altogether. note that this yahoo!-nokia news comes out of CES the same day that google-motorola announced some sort of association. whole lotta changin' dynamic going on...