Here at Yahoo! we’re always striving to give our users the best possible communications experience across all the devices they use. In recent months we’ve released some great new Yahoo! Mail products for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod touch and Android phones. Now we are setting our sights on the iPad.

If you’ve used our recently launched HTML5 mobile Web mail for iPhone you’ll feel right at home. We’ve kept all the things users love about our new mobile Web mail experience, while also optimizing for the gorgeous large screen of the iPad. You can expect the iPad experience to be:

• Faster and more reliable: If you’re offline, Yahoo! Mail uses local caching capabilities to help you access and search your messages even without an Internet connection.

• Smart: You can find and organize your messages using Full Search, personal folders and Smart Folders with messages from your most important contacts and optimized views for photos and file attachments.

• Feature Rich: View rich photo attachments in their full form, or as previews directly in the inbox view. Also includes a dual-pane view to make reading and organizing a breeze.

The new Yahoo! Mail experience will be available globally to anyone who has an iPad. So if you do have one, simply open up Safari and head on over to http://mail.yahoo.com to try it for yourself.

Of course this is just the first version, and we’ll be constantly iterating to add new features, improve performance, and make Yahoo! Mail for iPad the best it can possibly be. And please let us know what you think. One of the great things about working on Yahoo! Mail is getting so much direct feedback from our users. It’s so exciting to hear about how people are using the products, and also to hear your ideas for how we can make our experiences even better.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about the new Yahoo! Mail for iPad. Enjoy!

Tasla – Yahoo!7 Mail team

Just a quick recap: Apps in Mail let you activate all sorts of additional features that enhance your experience.

And to introduce this new app, here’s Fernando Saturno (a former Yahoo! and friend), Director of Product for Fontself in his own words.

Enjoy, Tasla Worth – Yahoo!7 Mail Team

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We are really proud to announce that Fontself is now available in Yahoo!7 Mail. With the new My Cool Fonts application, now you can add a bit of colour and style to your messages using a variety of original hand-drawn fonts, and send eye-catching emails to your friends.

Just remembered it was your friend’s birthday? Want to let someone know how much you miss them? How about making the invite for your upcoming party a bit more memorable? Or even better, why not send a funky message to your friends just for fun?

With My Cool Fonts you can always find a cool font that suits your mood and gives your email messages that very personal touch. Your personalised emails will not only stand out in a crowded inbox, but will also surprise your friends and even put a smile on their faces.

Creating colourful emails using our original fonts is very easy. First, click on this link to take you to the Applications gallery where you can install the My Cool Fonts application. Just launch the My Cool Fonts app from the Applications menu, select a font, type a message, click on “Create email” and Voilà!! A new email gets created, and you can then add any other text or attachments to your illustrated message.

Be creative! Whether you are trying to impress your friends or getting your point across in a funny way, there are plenty of styles and colours to choose from in our growing library of free fonts.

Below are samples from just of few of them:

Most of these fonts have its own set of smileys, which you can browse and easily insert into your message from the Smileys menu. See the complete list of smileys here

We’ll also be adding some very cool personalisation features very soon, so keep an eye out for them!

Enjoy!

Fernando Saturno – Fontself

As Yahoo!’s head of Customer Advocacy, I would like to share another great online safety tool we’ve created to help protect your vital and private information while using the web.

Have you ever wondered how online hackers gain access to your personal information? What if I told you that in many cases it was YOU who provided them with the information they need to gain access to the data you value most? It’s true, but a free tool called the “sign-in seal” is one way to avoid becoming victim to piracy.

What’s a sign-in seal and why do you need one? Great questions!

A sign-in seal is a secret message or image that you select to help protect your account from fraud such as password phishing. When you create a sign-in seal for your computer, you can be sure you’re on a legitimate Yahoo! site each time you use your computer to log in to your Yahoo! account. You’ll see the text or image you set up on your computer. If it’s not there, you might have landed on a “spoofed” site.

The sign-in seal you designated is only saved on the computer you created it on – therefore if you log in using a different computer, you will not see the sign-in seal. If you use more than one computer or browser, you can choose to create a sign-in seal for each. If you don’t see your sign-in seal on the sign-in page, the webpage you’ve opened is likely a fake Yahoo! page. If this happens, you should report the incident to Yahoo! customer care immediately!

Another important tip: do NOT create a sign-in seal on a computer you share with strangers such as those in libraries, Internet cafes, and other public hot spots.

For more information on online safety, please visit: http://security.yahoo.com
Have a wonderful day!

Jeff Russakow
EVP of Customer Advocacy
Yahoo! Inc.
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Caitlin – Yahoo!7 Membership team

Here’s how it works. Starting today, you will see a flag icon in the status area – the flag is based on the regional version and language of Yahoo! Mail that you use – If you have a Yahoo!7 Mail account, you will see the Australian flag.

By clicking on the flag, Yahoo!7 Mail will auto-fill your status message with a short phrase of support for that country.

Like any status message, you can customise it to your liking – most importantly, you can change the country you are rooting for by clicking on the drop-down arrow next to the flag. Once you do so, you can see the full list of countries that are participating. Click on the country you support and a suggested status message will populate just like before.

Once you click “Share”, your message will be broadcast to people who view your Updates on Yahoo!7. What’s even better is that you can also share your passion to your Facebook friends by clicking “Add Facebook” and linking your account (and there are many, many, many other benefits of linking your accounts). Sharing on Yahoo!7 and Facebook definitely gets the conversation going, even if everyone doesn’t always agree…

Share your passion for your team and don’t forget to check out the sweet smorgasbord of World Cup activities across Yahoo!7, sure to satisfy even the most ardent of fans.

Who are you shouting for in South Africa? (Tasla’s comment: Brazil and Australia, of course!)

Cheers,
Tasla – Yahoo!7 Mail team

Note: This post was written by Rick Pal, from the Yahoo! Mail Product Management group in the US. I have “localised” it by including screen shots from my Yahoo!7 Mail account to make it easier for users to learn how to use this feature. You can find the original post here.

As most of you know, Yahoo! takes security and spam infiltration seriously and employs various measures to help protect our users.Very recently we learned of an issue where some users have received spam messages in Yahoo! Messenger from their contact list. Yahoo! Messenger has quickly worked to resolve the situation.

As always, we recommend that any Yahoo! Messenger user who receives a suspicious IM containing a link should first IM the friend to ensure the message is legitimate before moving forward. We strongly advise users to not download executable (.exe) files that are sent through Yahoo! Messenger. Also, we recommend that users that have anti-virus software on their computer employ the latest anti-virus updates.

Thanks,
Tasla – Yahoo!7 Messenger team

To download the new version, tap the App Store icon on your iPhone and search for Yahoo! Messenger (you may also see an update alert on your App Store icon). Or click here to download it through iTunes. We hope you enjoy this latest version. If you have any technical issues with Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone, please send us feedback by tapping on “Settings”, then scrolling down and tapping on “Report Problem”.

This was announced earlier this month, by our Global Product Manager in the US, Thyaga Vasudevan.

Now you can enjoy IMing on the go with your friends from WLM too!

Tasla – Yahoo!7 Messenger team

If you use Facebook, Yahoo! Mail is getting better for you! As you may have heard, Yahoo! is putting a big focus on bringing you more social features, and this evening Yahoo! Mail is rolling out another handy way to connect with your friends. In select markets, we’re adding the ability to update your Facebook status right from Yahoo! Mail and see your friends’ Facebook profile photos when they email you. This quickly follows the feature we added last month that lets you easily import your Facebook friends’ email addresses to Yahoo! Contacts.

To turn on these features, first link your Yahoo! and Facebook accounts by clicking on the “Add to Facebook” link in the status section on the What’s New page in Yahoo! Mail.

After you log in with your Facebook credentials, you are good to go! Here’s what you’ll be able to do right from Yahoo! Mail:

Update your Facebook Status: Simply start typing what’s on your mind in the status box, and then choose where you want to share it – Yahoo!, Facebook or both.

Now hit “Share” and it gets posted where you want, including Facebook!

See Facebook profile photos when people email you: With this feature, you will see people’s Facebook profile photos – if available – anytime someone emails you.  In addition, by clicking on the profile image, you will go right to that person’s Facebook page.

Now, whether you want to send an email, IM, or update your Yahoo! or Facebook status, you can do it all from your Yahoo! Mail inbox. This integration of Facebook is just the start of how we plan to make it easier to do more right from Yahoo! Mail. Watch this space for more ways you can bridge your social worlds and Yahoo! Mail in the weeks and months ahead!

If your account is not showing the Facebook integration yet, don’t worry.  This feature is being rolled out gradually and soon it will be available across everyone’s mailboxes!

Happy Easter!

Tasla W. – Yahoo!7 Mail team

Yahoo! turns 15 today!

And what’s a birthday party without cake? There are celebrations happening at Yahoo! offices all over the world on this special occasion. This is the cake we had in the Yahoo!7 offices this morning.

Happy Birthday and best wishes to each and every one of you, you are all part of what makes Yahoo!7 a great place to be

Kate
Yahoo!7 Mail Team

I will try to provide more practical info about online scams here. In return, please, please, please be sure to share this post with everyone you consider at risk of falling victim to one of the many scams around. And there are so many people at risk…  According to the NSW Fair Trading website “every year 1 in 20 Aussies fall victim to scams.”

“Scams target everyone regardless of background, age and income and they come in many forms and reach you in many ways – by mail, online through e-mail, telephone and door-to-door. Scams are often designed to trick you into giving away your money or your personal details. Scams succeed because they look like the real thing. Scammers are manipulative – they push the right buttons to produce the response they want.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission run the SCAMwatch website, which provides information to consumers and small businesses about how to recognise, avoid and report scams.  One common type of online scam is called ‘requests for your account information’ or ‘phishing scams’.

“Phishing refers to emails that trick people into giving out their personal and banking information; they can also be sent by SMS. These messages seem to come from legitimate businesses, normally banks or other financial institutions or telecommunications providers. The scammers are generally trying to get information like your bank account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers, which they will then use to steal your money. Phishing emails often look genuine and use what look to be genuine internet addresses—in fact, they often copy an institution’s logo and message format, which is very easy to do. It is also common for phishing messages to contain links to websites that are convincing fakes of real companies’ home pages. The website that the scammer’s email links to will have an address (URL) that is similar to but not the same as a real bank’s or financial institution’s site. For example, if the genuine site is at ‘www.realbank.com.au’, the scammer may use an address like ‘www.realbank.com.au.log107.biz’ or ‘www.phoneybank.com/realbank.com.au/login’.”

The following information was extracted from the SCAMWatch site:

Warning signs

• You receive an email or SMS claiming to be from a financial institution, telecommunication or email provider. This message may seem to be from your bank, service or email provider or a business you don’t have an account with. The email contains a link that leads you to a website where you are prompted to enter your bank account details or email account details.
• The email does not address you by your proper name.
• The email might contain typing errors and grammatical mistakes.
• The email might claim that your details are needed for a security and maintenance upgrade, to ‘verify’ your account or to protect you from a fraud threat. The email might even state that you are due to receive a refund for a bill or other fee that it claims you have been charged.

Protect yourself from phishing scams

• NEVER send money or give credit card or online account details to anyone you do not know and trust.
• Do not give out your personal, credit card or online account details over the phone unless you made the call and know that the phone number came from a trusted source.
• Do not open suspicious or unsolicited emails (spam)—ignore them. You can report spam to Australian Communications and Media Authority. If you do not wish to report the message, delete it.
• Do not click on any links in a spam email or open any files attached to them.
• Never call a telephone number that you see in a spam email or SMS.
• If you want to access an internet account website, use a bookmarked link or type the address in yourself—NEVER follow a link in an email.
• Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.
• Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website if you are not certain it is genuine.
• Never send your personal, credit card or online account details through an email.

As well as following these specific tips, find out how to protect yourself from all sorts of other scams. Download our Phishing scams fact sheet for more information.

Do your homework

If you receive an email claiming to be from a bank, other financial institution, telecommunications or email provider that asks you to enter your details—delete it! A legitimate bank or financial institution will NEVER send an email like this.

If the email appears to be from your bank or financial institution and you think it might be genuine, telephone your bank or financial institution to let them know about the email and ask their advice. DO NOT call any telephone number listed in the email; instead, use a phone number that appears on your bank statement or card or in the telephone directory. Many banks and financial institutions now have specialised internet security staff that can help you.

Decide

You should NEVER give your personal or bank account details to people you don’t know and trust. Don’t be fooled by an email that looks legitimate or appears to link to a genuine website. If you think the email may be genuine, ALWAYS contact your bank to confirm an email’s legitimacy before replying. Your best defence is to delete the email straight away.

For me, this paragraph summarises everything:

“My top advice is to be mindful of any Web page that requests your Yahoo! password. The #1 way people get their passwords stolen is by typing them into lookalike “phishing” web sites, pages that pretend to be Yahoo! or another trusted Web site but actually are run by the bad guys. Scrutinise carefully any page that requests your Yahoo! password.” – Mark Risher, Director of Product Management for Mail.

For more tips and information on how to keep yourself and your computer safe online, check this post on our Yahoo!7 Answers Blog.

If you’ve reached this post and you’ve already fallen victim to a phishing scam with your Yahoo!7 Mail account, read this post to find out what to do next.

Finally, please report any suspicious emails to Yahoo!7 Customer Care via this form.

Cheers,
Tasla – Yahoo!7 Mail Team

What best way to start the new year than with a recap of all the good things that we did for Mail in 2009?  The following highlights were posted by our Program Manager Andrew, from the Global Mail team  based in Sunnyvale in the  US:

What a year it’s been for Yahoo! Mail. I can tell you that all of us on the Global Yahoo! Mail team have been working hard throughout 2009 to deliver you a more social and more productive Yahoo! Mail that lets you get the important things done quickly and easily. In short, we’re working to give you the best email experience on the Web. I think you’ll agree with me, all that hard work has paid off. We’ve delivered some pretty great things to your Yahoo! Mailbox (pun intended).

As is usual at this time of year, it’s time to take a look back and see what we’ve been able to accomplish in these short 12 months. Here are the highlights (in no particular order):

• To kick off 2009 we gave you a smarter, more social Mailbox. With the new welcome page “What’s New” in Yahoo! Mail you can now easily find the important mail from those who matter most. In addition you can now get updates from your connections. And from the Inbox you can filter your mail to see just the mail from your contacts or connections.
• We launched Yahoo! Messenger in Classic Mail. It seems like it’s been a part of the Classic Mail forever, but the ability to instantly chat with your friends and family in the classic version of Yahoo! Mail has only been around since the beginning of the year.
• We’ve added fantastic new Apps in Yahoo! Mail to let you be more productive right from your Inbox. (Of course we have to thank our Apps partners who also worked very hard to deliver you these great tools.) Apps like Edit Photos from Picnik let you easily share and edit photos right from within your Inbox. The ‘Attach Large Files’ from ZumoDrive lets you share up to 100MB files. Apps like Pingg and Evite allow you easily manage your social calendar.
• One of our goals is to help you do more with your photos in your Yahoo! Mailbox. We want to make photos an integral part of your Mail experience. Our acquisition of Xoopit will go a long way to make that a reality.
• In order to send all those photos (and other attachment types) we recently launched the ability for you to add attachments up to 25MB to a single email. That’s about 12 photos if your camera takes about 2MB photos. And to help you attach those files, we launched an enhanced attachment feature for the all-new version of Yahoo! Mail. It allows you drag and drop your attachments right into your email. Plus you can scale and rotate your photo attachments.
• We’ve also been working hard behind the scenes to improve the speed of Yahoo! Mail. In the US we have achieved more than a 16% improvement in performance over the year. And, Yahoo! Mail is the fastest Webmail in the UK (based on our tests using 3rd party tools). So, not only have we given you more tools to increase your productivity, we’ve made it even faster to get things done.
• Our friends on the Address book team recently launched the updated Yahoo! Contacts. It goes a long way to unify the Contacts experience across the Yahoo! network and fits seamlessly into the all-new Yahoo! Mail. Plus the new clean-up duplicates tool is a great way to clean up your list of contacts.
• Our ongoing efforts to reduce spam and helping you keep safe in Mail have seen our lowest level of spam in recent history. We told you back at the beginning of the year about some of what the anti-spam team has been working on in the background, and we hope you’re all seeing the continued improvement. Plus we are always committed to keeping you safer online through safety tips on this blog.
• Finally, we know that many of you are mobile with your mail. So we have to give a shout out and congratulations to the Mobile Team who just went GA with an updated Mobile mail experience. Just point your mobile browser over to m.yahoo.com/mail to have a look. I definitely give it two thumbs up, way up!

Wow! That’s a lot, and those are just the highlights! Rest assured, we are prepared to work even harder next year. We are aiming to give you a better photo sharing experience, more amazing third party Apps and an enhanced Yahoo! Calendar to name just a few.

Yep, as per our product  roadmap for this year, 2010 is  certainly going to be a busy year for the entire Yahoo! Mail team.

Cheers,

Tasla – Yahoo!7 Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Messenger