Personalize My Yahoo!

Personalize My Yahoo!

My Yahoo! can be your window to the world, if you take some time to specify what you want to see and how you want to see it.

My Yahoo! is designed to be a one-stop spot for information that's important to you. Putting together a My Yahoo! space is a bit like editing your own newspaper. You can decide which news sources you'd like to see headlines from, where each source is placed on the page, and how the page itself appears. Every good editor needs to know what's available, and this hack should provide you with the tools to build your own personalized information hub.

Yahoo News! search results in NetNewsWire

To get started, browse to My Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com) and note the controls across the top of the page, as shown in Figure.

My Yahoo! controls

Each of these controls lets you personalize My Yahoo! in some way. Add Content lets you add information sources, Change Layout adjusts where each module is located, and Change Colors lets you specify a look and feel. With these three options, you can create a source of news and information tailored specifically for you.

Yahoo! Modules

A My Yahoo! module is simply a box on a My Yahoo! page. Each module typically contains information from a single source, and you can specify some preferences for each module.

Adding a module to your My Yahoo! page is simply a matter of browsing through a list of modules and clicking the Add button. Start by clicking Add Content at the top of the My Yahoo! page. From here, you can search for a specific type of content or news source, or browse lists of modules arranged by topic.

In addition to news headlines from sources such as the New York Times or USA Today, there are a number of modules powered by Yahoo! that add extra features to the page. Some of the Yahoo! modules go beyond a list of headlines and let you tap into some features from across Yahoo! web sites. You can find them under the Yahoo! Services link, and here are just a few of the Yahoo!-powered modules available:

Best Fare Tracker

Choose a departure city and an arrival city and you can monitor low fare prices for the trip. You can add several trips to the module, so you can keep your eye on prices for different areas.

Lottery Results

Select your state and see winning lottery numbers from lotteries in your area.

Package Tracker

This module provides links to the package tracking services at Yahoo! Small Business (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com). To track a package, click the link for Airborne Express, Federal Express, UPS, or the U.S. Postal Service and enter a tracking number. You can also quickly look up Zip Codes by address with this module.

HotJobs

View job openings in your city for a selected industry. If you use Yahoo! HotJobs (http://hotjobs.yahoo.com), you can also use this module to track your existing job searches and see how many people have viewed your resume.

Weather

Powered by Yahoo! Weather (http://weather.yahoo.com), this module tracks the daily high and low temperature in cities you specify, and it includes an icon that indicates whether it's a sunny, cloudy, or stormy day in that city.

Stock Portfolios

If you've created your own stock portfolios [Hack #23] at Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com), you can view them with this module.

Movie Showtimes

Based on your chosen cities and favorite theaters [Hack #41] at Yahoo! Movies (http://movies.yahoo.com), this module displays movies and their show times.

TV Schedule

This module shows what's on your channel lineup [Hack #44] at the time you specify. You can use the list of favorite channels that you set up at Yahoo! TV (http://tv.yahoo.com), or you can see a specified number of channels.

To add some visual interest to the page, try adding a few of the following modules that will show pictures:

Comics

This module is included by default and includes a daily comic strip or editorial cartoon. You can choose which comics you'd like to see each day by clicking the Edit link.

Photos

If you have personal photographs stored on Yahoo! Photos (http://photos.yahoo.com), you can add this module to see a random photo from your collection. You can choose which albums you want the module to draw from and how often you want the photo to change.

News

Photos You can choose from three different Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com) photo modules: Lead Photo with a single photo and story, News Photos showing popular photos from Yahoo! News, or Entertainment Photos for celebrity watching.

Once you've added a module to My Yahoo!, you can change the settings at any time by clicking the Edit button and then clicking Edit Content. Each Yahoo! module has its own settings page. For example, Figure shows the page that lets you add or remove cities from the Weather module.

Editing the My Yahoo! Weather module

You can completely remove a module from the page by clicking the box with the x in the upper-right corner of the module.

Of course, there are many options for content beyond those powered by Yahoo!, and chances are very good that you can add modules from your favorite web sites [Hack #35] with My Yahoo!.

Layout

There are a couple of different ways to move modules around within the page. The simplest way to move a module is to click the Edit button and from the menu choose a direction in which to move the module. You can move a module up or down or to the top or bottom within a column. Figure shows the Edit menu for the Weather module.

Moving the Weather module

For a more complex change in the layout, click the Change Layout link at the top of the page. From here, you can switch from the standard two-column layout to three columns and move modules up or down and between columns, as shown in Figure.

You can also have up to six My Yahoo! pages, if you have a lot of information to track. Click the Add New Page link in the upper-right corner of the page to create a new space to work with. You can name the pages anything you'd like. Once you've created your new page, you can choose a page to view by selecting it from the page menu as shown in Figure.

Layout settings page at My Yahoo!

Choose Add/Delete Page from the menu to organize your pages. You can rename them, remove them, set a default page, or change the refresh rates for the pages.

Colors

With modules and the layout tailored to your taste, the only piece left is the look and feel. Click the Change Colors link at the top of the page to browse through existing themes for My Yahoo! pages. The themes range from subtle to gaudy, and you'll have to browse around to find one you like.

If you ever change themes to something that makes your eyes bleed and you just want to get back to something readable, choose the Yahoo! category from the Theme Directory and look for My Yahoo! Basic. Click "Use this theme," and you'll go back to the default highly readable (though bland) theme.

If none of the themes quite fit the bill, you can always edit the theme colors by hand. On the left side of the page, you'll find a Customize Theme link that leads to the color editor. As you choose colors for parts of the My Yahoo! page, you can see the changes reflected in the preview in the bottom frame, as shown in Figure.

Choosing a My Yahoo! page

You can also choose between a half-dozen different fonts for the text on the page and increase or decrease the font size. You won't be able to add your own background graphics or logos to the page, but you can alter the colors for almost every element on the page.

Once you've taken the time to customize My Yahoo! by adding modules, adjusting the layout, and changing the colors, you'll find that it feels much more like your own space, with quick access to the information you want.