Loadz of new features to be added to Yahoo! Groups

Yahoo! Groups are constantly improving. Some of the latest releases for the product has been:

• More advanced search and browsing system which makes search updates much faster, and improves the sort order when you browse for groups. For more updates visit Yahoo! Groups Blog.
• Group Labs has launched its first feature or grouplet called "People Map". Groups Labs is nothing but a team of people who have been working on a new way to create features within Groups, features that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their groups. People Map is a simple application to find out where your group members belong to? For more information visit Yahoo! Groups Blog
• A new technology platform for the site (not quite fully released). We are changing every page of the site but doing so in a way that won't disrupt your existing experience. This new platform will allow us to release features much faster than ever before.

But the exciting news is what is to come in the future. Here is a short list of the features we plan to unveil to you in the coming year:

• New ways for people to share information with each other within your groups: Product Reviews, Services Directory, Wanted Boards, Address Book, Event Planner, and many more.
• Message Boards 2.0: Improving the Message experience within groups in many different ways (e.g. giving members the opportunity to choose which discussions they want to subscribe to, making it easier for moderators to highlight the best content, etc.).
• Ability to charge an optional subscription fee for membership to your groups (we have no plans to get in the middle of the transaction, just make it easy for you to make sure members are paying).
• Photo Album 2.0: An entirely new photo system with massive group storage and stunningly large photos.
• The return of archived attachments: We will process attachments and store them on your group, if you choose this option.
• For our non-English speakers, the ability to select the language you want to view the site in and better handling of all types of character sets.

To read more please visit the Groups blog

Some updates from Yahoo!

Here are couple of updates from Yahoo!

a) You have a simpler URL to remember going forward. yahoo.co.in has become yahoo.in . All the email addresses already @ yahoo.co.in will function as usual without any glitches but all the new email addresses will be registered on yahoo.in. So get your yahoo.in email address now.

b) Second good news is that the Group Labs has launched its first feature or grouplet called "People Map". Groups Labs is nothing but a team of people who have been working on a new way to create features within Groups, features that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their groups. People Map is a simple application to find out where your group members belong to? For more information visit Yahoo! Groups Blog (http://www.ygroupsb log.com/blog/ 2008/07/08/ try-out-the- new-people- map-beta/) and don't forget to give your feedback.

c) Its time to tickle your funny bone and you must not miss watching the new viral from Yahoo! for its two new domains ymail.com and rocketmail.com. Watch the viral at http://kaunhoonmain.com/

WAT Show on Yahoo! Groups Moderators Union

Thanks to WAT Blog for attending Moderators Union in Mumbai and covering it in their blog. Swami is rocking in the WAT Show.

Videos of Moderators Union are live

Watch out the videos of your intorductions at Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008 at Sahara Star at the following link:

http://video.yahoo.com/mypage?s=4446725&public=1

No more compromises with your email address with two new Yahoo! domains

Gone are the days when you have to make several attempts to get an email address a bit close to the one that you really wanted for yourself. Yahoo! has brought a whole new ocean of email addresses with its 2 new domains; namely; ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

Email addresses created on these domains will work exactly like any other yahoo email with all the features and most importantly it is FREE of cost :)

Visit http://in.promos.yahoo.com/address/ to get your email address before it is taken away by someone else again.

If you want to create or join Yahoo! group with your new email addresses of these domain i.e. xyz@ymail.com or xyz@rocketmail.com; you will be prompted to create a new public profile with a screen name that will display for your communications on Group. Once you create your new profile, you will be taken back into the normal "join" or "start a group" flow.

For more information; please visit Yahoo! Groups Blog

Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008

I skipped a heart beat the moment I landed up with two other team mates on Mumbai Airport at 1:00 am on June 7, 2008. It was raining cats and dogs and the airport has turned into a huge but shallow pond. If it continues who will come to the event for which we were working for the last one month, namely, Moderators Union.

All those late night meetings for defining process of registrations, invitations, devising communication strategy, planning, goodies shopping, everything seems to be floating away with the empty paper cups near the coffee vending machine at the airport.

Thanks to the spirit of Mumbai and Mumbaikars (as they rightly say the city just never stops) we had an amazing turnaround at the event and the event was HOUSEFUL! :)

As usual we started the event with an official welcome from IM Swaminathan, Director Communication and Community Products, Yahoo! India and then came the most interesting part of the event – Moderators Introduction.

I was so touched after listening to each and every moderator, after realizing their enthusiasm for being on stage and speaking publicly for the first time in their life, after witnessing their passion for the cause for which they are running their respective group and above all after feeling their love for Yahoo! and me. Without any hesitation, I can proudly say that I am one of those few lucky ones who got the opportunity to receive an ocean of love in a four hour event. Some of the feedbacks have really touched my heart and soul.

After four rounds of introductions with interesting quiz and cool prizes, Raj Reddy, Product Manager Yahoo! Groups from Sunnyvale, US has given the updates on upcoming features in Yahoo! Group and two brand new Yahoo! India products were showcased to moderators. Yahoo! India Local and new Yahoo! India Search called Glue.

We wrapped up the event with even more goodies and a sumptuous dinner.

Special thanks to Dr. Leo Rebello, who distributed his book on Yoga to every moderator.

Testimonials recieved by Moderators about Moderators Union in Mumbai on June 7, 2008

From Cyrus Malaowala - Moderator of Have-a-Heart
THREE CHEERS..!! and my HEARTY APPRECIATIONS for SHEFALI GAUR,Community Manger, for wonderfully organising, presenting and conducting theYahoo India Moderators’ Union in Mumbai.It was a great event ,informative, interactive and enjoyable.CONGATULATIONS to Yahoo India, and SHEFALI.for making this event so interesting and allowing us group Moderators to express ourselves, and showcase our aims and objectives in forming our groups.Its indeed heartening to see Yahoo India recognising the value and role played by small groups like my Have-A-Heart Group.I will cherish these moments of being together with many larger groups.and wish that Yahoo India and SHEFALI ( she gets BEST MANAGER Award from me ) will remember me and my Have-A-Heart Group for the next event .
Regards, —CYRUS—

From GG Dalal - Moderator of IAEMP
Dear Madam,
It was a very exalting & memorable experience to be with you & the executives of Yahoo on June, 7 ,2008 in Moderator's Union at Mumbai.
Our IAEMP Indian Association of Energy Management Professionals took birth in 2006 with the on-line networking platform provided by Yahoo to IAEMP President Mr. S.K.Sood who pioneered the cause of "conscience keeping to the Nation on energy matters".
You really brought dynamism to the whole gathering in Moderator's Union throughout the meeting.
In order to interact with various groups who participated in the Moderator's Union, I request you to send the list of E-mail addresses for integrating human skill to produce refreshing creations for social welfare.
Best Regards,
G.G.Dalal
Vice-President
IAEMP, Mumbai

From Amar Gutta - Moderator of alumni94
Hi Shefali,
I would want to take a moment of your time and appreciate you and Yahoo team for putting up such a great event in Mumbai. My associate with Yahoo groups has been since I had started the "Alumni94" group and my primary reason for using the group was to keep in touch in with my batch mates but I was amazed to see how people use the Yahoo group for various things like spreading awareness (Whistle Blowers) , answering queries (Accounting & Shares) and also pursuing their hobbies like (Bike Nomads). Infact I am so inspired by the event that I am planning to start a new group for public which can use skills of people like me (into technical background of IT networking). Though the event was delayed due to the incessant rains in Mumbai still you have covered all the moderator introductions and let them speak on stage. I was also fortunate to share the stage time with other moderators and introduce my group to others. I would like to be invited to such events in future and in case you have a mailer group where such announcements are made then please add my email id to that group. Thanks and Congrats once again for hosting such a great event. Regards,Amar Gutta

From Bilquis - Moderator of Dil Maange More
Dear Shefali I am very much thankful of being a part of moderator union which was held on 7th june 2008 in mumbai.I heartily thank the yahoo groups once more for promoting new talents and giving recognition.I thought i was confined to the four walls and be only a homemaker but yesterday event boosted me a lot. Is it possible that you can send pictures taken during the events. Thanking You Bilquis Take Care

From Melvin Dalmeida - Moderator of sharetrading
Hi Shefali and the others at Yahoo team,The moderators union at mumbai was really good and exceeded my expectations. It was nice interacting with moderators and moreso with the yahoo team at least we knew what was the plan of the yahoo team. Most of the groups were quite impressive each one dedicated to their own cause. It was quite nice to know about yahoo locals. Do let your staff who was presenting know that I am trying my best to promote yahoo locals between my friends also I have written about 10-15 different reviews on restuarant and plan to write many more as I come across them. If at all he wants he may feel free to mail me. I have a lot of suggestions and tips to improve the quality at yahoo locals. Do let me know if I could be of any help to you guys in anyway. All the best and keep up the good work!!!Regards,Melvin...

From P. Shrinivasan - Moderator of ANSH2007
Dear Ms. Shefali,Thank you and every team member of YAHOO who has put in a great effort in making the Moderators Meet a grand event. As a moderator if you feel you would need my help at any point of time please do not hesitate to let me know.
I would like to inform that being in Internal Audit field my nature of job is touring almost 15-20 days a month. So whenever you mark any mail to me I shall kindly request you to mark the mail at both my Official mail ID as well as my personal Yahoo ID.
At any point of time if you feel that I can be of any help to you please do not hesitate to contact me.
I can also be contacted at any of the numbers given below.
With Best Regards,P. Shrinivasan

From Vibhu Rishi - Moderator of bikenomads
hi Shefali,
Thanks for giving me the wonderful opportunity of meeting you folks and other moderators whom I do not think I would have met if not for the moderator's union. I have written a short writeup on my blog at :
http://vibhurishi.blogspot.com/2008/06/yahoo-moderators-conference.html
I did not get much time to talk about the Yahoo group features on stage, as time was running out. However, here are a few things I would like to share with the Yahoo Groups team.
1. Please remove alternate yahoo ids if possible. We have had trouble makers whom we had moderated create alternate ids and slip in and again create issues on the group.
2. Can they provide a way of allowing 'n' number of moderated posts (setting depending on the moderators) after which the members posts follows the group rules ? e.g. on BikeNomads, we have the first posts moderated. We use this to check the first few mails of people and see if they are posting proper stuff, after which we have to manually go and change the settings. This is a pain, would be good if Ygroup had a setting for this.
3. Can we lock email threads ? e.g. if mods lock a thread , anyone replying to that gets the mail bounced. ?
4. better threading. its slow and clunky. would be good to have threading on the ygroup page like on slashdot.
i was quite excited about the demos shown.
in.maps.yahoo.com -> we have been using that for finding distances. We got to know about it 2 weeks back by a post on the group.
in.glue.yahoo.com -> looks very neat.
Ygroups 2.0
I was blown away with what you guys are doing, as I was myself wishing for those things. Let me know if you guys want any help from me. I would love to sign up for a pre-alpha if available :D
- I am not sure if there is a provision for adding a blog to it or not. if you check http://www.blogger.com/www.bikenomads.com , we have a blog and a wiki. We would love to have something like that on yahoo group.
Vibhu..

From Jayesh Sampat - Moderator of HRCommunity
Hi Shefali,Thank you for the wonderful evening at the Moderators Meet. I had a great time. It was good to meet you in person.I am looking forward to these interactions with the Yahoo team.Regards,Jayesh Sampat

From Manoj Karam - Moderator of Indian Whistlers
Hi Shefali
At the onset let me thank you and your team for the wonderful event that you organised last evening. This was a first time for me and a great experience. Looking forward to many more similar events from the Yahoo team.
I wish I could have given your team and the audience few more minutes of our unique entertainment programme of whislting. May be next time I should take the liberty of exceeding the time limit that had been set for each speaker :)
Anyways you can always visit our website http://www.blogger.com/www.whistleindia.org for lots of such entertaining events.
As discussed with you I have attached a list of Suggestions, Limitations, Problems which I have come across while moderating our group. I am sure your team may have already noticed most of these and would be alread working on them.
I have made it in a format which should be convenient for all to track the issues and give feedback. Being from the IT industry I can understand how important it is to receive clear problem reports :)
For convenience I have also cc'd this emali to Swami and Prakash.
I am sure your team will do their best to look into these issues.
Regards & Thanks
Manoj Karam

From Kush Singh - Moderator of Bombaynet
Hi Shefali,Thanks for inviting me at the yahoogroups moderators union meet!I LOVED every moment of it and regret not having been able to talk to you adequately enough. There were so many INTERESTING people to meet and network with that day. Wish the momentum is maintained and you continue to play an important role in all this NETWORKING. Its good that Yahoo India is strengthened further in order to make social networking by internet/email a success for the development of the country and the world. I must also congratulate the organising Team once again for a wonderful/splendid/outstanding job that they did. All those who helped organise this event did a SUPERB job.( Don't remember everybody's names so can only mention in no particular order --Diti Shah, Shridhar, Prakash, Swaminathan, Sundeep, Abhishek, Raj and others )I have a few requests/suggestions --1 Would the unedited video of this meet be available somewhere on youtube etc? How can one get a copy of it?2 How could one remain in touch with the moderators who attended this meet? I was able to find only a few moderator groups on yahoogroups and the yahoogroup search is something which needs drastic improvement. Is there any yahoogroup for those who attended these PHYSICAL meetings at Bangalore and Mumbai?3 Who was the videographer/sound specialist contractor for this meeting? Could I have their contact details? Pls keep in touch once in a while.Thanks and regards,Kush

From Bhaskar Jyotish - Moderator of Jyotish Ganga
Dear Shefaliji and Sridharji,
I thank you for inviting me to this great event, which was very well organised, and we really felt special seated with your presence amongst us invitees. You made us feel distinguished and pampered us with your warmth , gifts and the lovely dinner.
We were working silently in our Groups. You brought us from obscurity to the limelight.
Most of all, Yahoo has proved that its not business all the time, but more than that, its about making relations and keeping eternal connections with people, for you have focused on quality within us and not the numbers, as was evident when we went through the programme of the introductions. For this Group who attended the event , Yahoo would always remain their favourites. And so would it be for me. I would always remain grateful to Yahoo and your goodselves for you warmth sharing and and giving us importance.
Yes, one more point, before I leave. All of You speak so well, it was great to hear you talking so effortlessly the flow of words putting us at ease during the function.
best wishes,
Bhaskar.

From Arun Raj - Moderator of Fun_Kingdom
Hey Shefali
It was really a Grand event that took place at sahara star hotel & it was so enchanting than the last event at bangalore, You are doing some great job in Yahoo india & i must also thank you for giving me a chance to share my experience with some older ppls & i was happy to hear from some moderators that they started their group for some noble cause like DR.abhishek having group dealing with blood banks etc & some unique group like the bike normads , illaiyaraja,The_development_cafe, i was lucky to have look at product launch of Yahoo! locals,Really i had nice time there, once Again Thanks for inviting us to such a grand event .With Regards~Arun~

From Arun Vishwanath - Moderator of trainers_forum
Dear Team Yahoo,
Let me at the outset thank you all for organising this wonderful event called the “Moderators Union”.
Yahoogroups while being easy to use and administer is connecting people worldwide!
The introductions from various groups gave us great insights and demonstrated the passion with which the Moderators are working on their pet causes.
Of course, this event personally helped me in benchmarking Trainers Forum. With the planned changes to the Yahoogroups, as presented by Raj Reddy, Yahoogroups would be a great force to reckon with!
We certainly look forward to many more events like this.......
Thanks once again..............
With Warm regards,
Arun Vishwanath
Head - Training

From Dr. Valentine J Gandhi - Moderator of the_development_cafe
Hello and how are you?I just wanted to thank you for organizing a wonderful meet and a great evening. Hats of to you and TEAM YAHOO for organizing the program as well as running a wonderful service as the yahoo groups. Keep up the good work. We are expecting the new features to be introduced soon. I would appreciate if you can show the_development_cafe groups as a featured group. You can use the existing logo. Thank you and regards, Val

PC World names Yahoo! India best Web Portal in the country

It’s official – Yahoo! India is the undoubted no. 1 web portal in the country. PC World announced the 2008 Web Awards recently and picked Yahoo! India as the overall winner of the very coveted title of best Web Portal in India.

Yahoo! India swept this title by a huge margin, leaving several able contenders for the award way behind in therace. Not surprisingly, Yahoo! India picks up this award for the second year in a row! We also picked up the the sub-category win for the portal with the Best Design, under this title.A much deserved win to the outstanding team of Yahoos behind this fantastic web portal.

Here’s what the PC World team had to say:
“Among the many sites in the reckoning, AOL India, MSN, and Yahoo! India raced ahead of the others but the clear winner here was Yahoo! India, which also won last year. It edged out MSN because of its superior design and visual appeal, with the user-friendly interface making it a pleasant experience for the users.”

Read more about the win here - http://www.pcworld.in/india/features/Communications/Web_AwardsPortal/4325504/12

Or simply continue to discover the best Web Portal experience at http://www.yahoo.in/

Yahoo! Messenger's latest version 9.0 Beta is launched

Yahoo! has launched the latest version of its Messenger 9.0 Beta on 30th May 2008. Some of the feature enhancements of this version are as follows:

· Pulls user generated content from Buzz and Avatars
· Improved discoverability of status message – choose from 3 states only (thankfully)– Available, Busy, and Invisible; remembers last 5 custom status messages. You can enter the custom messgae in a text field.
· Contact List improvements – contact list can be displayed in either detailed or compact view
· Improved games – Games can be accessed from the Activities button and appear in the same list as plug-ins
· Plug-in selector and skin fixes – new plugin manager and new skins
· Import contacts from other Email, IM and SN sites like facebook , myspace , orkut etc.
· Voice in chat rooms for Vista users

To check the demo of all new features of Yahoo! Messenger 9 go to http://messenger.yahoo.com/promo/demovideo9

To try it yourself download it from http://messenger.yahoo.com/win/

Groups PA button on yahoo.in

Anyone who has joined the world of Internet recently doesn’t have many online friends. They open their inbox everyday and get disappointed to find few or no emails lying there. In such case, the best way to receive emails in your inbox or to know people online is to join online groups.

The next problem is how to find out the best group of their interest category? Which groups to join? How to know which group is interesting? Which group does not have spam messages?

To answer all such questions Yahoo! India has added a PA (Personal Assistant) button for Groups on its home page at http://yahoo.in/.

If you are logged-in on the page; the PA button will show you all the groups that you are member of and if you are not logged-in then it will show you featured groups. Featured groups are groups short-listed by Yahoo! after proper screening to give you a wonderful and spam free groups experience.

So if you want to add some interesting groups in your kitty, just visit the Yahoo! home page and find out the group of your choice and let those interesting emails flowing in.