Take Yahoo! on the Go

Take Yahoo! on the Go

Yahoo! Mobile lets you take much of the power of Yahoo! with you.

Yahoo! Mobile gives you a subset of Yahoo! features for devices with small form factors such as your mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). Yahoo! Mobile is optimized for relatively slow wireless data connections similar to analog modem speeds. Many phones already provide a link to Yahoo! Mobile in the phone's browser, but if you don't spot a link, you can point your phone to http://mobile.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! Lite

When you browse to Yahoo! Mobile on your phone, you'll find a simplified home page with many familiar Yahoo! features, such as Search, News, Weather, Sports, and Movies. You'll also see a link that allows you to log in with your Yahoo! ID and password. Once you log in, you'll see personalized options like the ones shown in Figure.

If you have Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Finance portfolios, Yahoo! Movies theater preferences, and other customizations at the Yahoo! web site, you'll find them on Yahoo! Mobile as well.

Some mobile device browsers (such as the Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile PCs and Smartphone devices) do not store the Yahoo web cookies that allow a login session to persist when you revisit the Yahoo! Mobile page again. If this is the case for your PDA or phone, you might want to consider choosing a password that can be quickly entered using whatever data input options you have (e.g., phone keypad, thumb keyboard, handwriting recognition, etc.). Always keep the security implications for your account [Hack #3] in mind.

Yahoo! Mobile portal page

Yahoo! Mobile lets you choose the amount of graphics that appears on your mobile device. Figure shows a screen from a Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone device with the Lite Graphics option turned on. Use this setting if you have a relatively slow wireless data connection such as GPRS, which is about the same speed as some analog 56Kbps modem connections. Scroll to the bottom of the Yahoo! Mobile home page on your phone to change the graphics settings.

Yahoo! Mobile Features

Any of the options on the Yahoo! Mobile home page can be selected by either scrolling through the list or pressing the number on the keypad associated with an option. Here's a closer look at each feature and how it differs from what you'll find on the more familiar Yahoo! web site. Keep in mind that some features listed here aren't available for all mobile devices. You can find out which services are available for your phone or PDA by registering the device via your computer's web browser at the Yahoo! Mobile web site (http://mobile.yahoo.com).

Mail

Yahoo! Mail can display up to 200 messages on a single web page when used with a conventional desktop browser. However, Yahoo! Mobile Mail is limited to 10 messages per screen, numbered 1 through 0 (0 is used for the 10th message). The email text body is also truncated and might require several screen updates to display a long email message. You can use the Yahoo! Address Book to retrieve email addresses when composing an email message.

If the web-based email doesn't fit your work style, subscribing to the Yahoo! Plus premium service allows you to use your mobile device's POP3 email facility to retrieve Yahoo! Mail.

Messenger

The Yahoo! Messenger option works only on mobile devices that directly support it. Choosing it on an unsupported device such as a Microsoft Windows Mobilebased Pocket PC results in a blank screen.

Search

The Yahoo! Mobile Search page gives you a subset of search types, including Local, Images, and Web searches. The Video, Directory, News, and Shopping searches found on the desktop are not provided as search options.

Games

Six low-resolution (mostly text) games are available: Wordaholic, Blackjack, Video Poker, Hangman, 4-In-A-Row, and Dice Slider.

News

The News article selection is as comprehensive as the desktop Yahoo! News option. Thumbnail photographs might be presented along with the text. Selecting the thumbnail photo displays a larger version of the photograph.

Sports

Sports news and scores are provided in extremely brief forms. The scores for a particular game might provide only the score itself and not the more detailed team and individual statistics that many fans crave.

Finance

The portfolios you set up in a desktop browser all show up in Yahoo! Mobile. Drilling down to a specific company results in basic trade information, such as range and volume. You can also get company-specific news and a graphic trading chart for the day.

Weather

A brief version of your local weather is shown and linked at the top level of Yahoo! Mobile. Selecting that link gives you more detailed weather information. The My Weather page shows you eight of your selected cities at a time.

Movies

The Movies option shows you a list of current popular movies. Selecting a movie link leads you to a list of schedules of local theaters showing the movie as well as a summary of the movie itself.

Driving Directions

This feature has a default starting address (your home, for example) and lets you fill in a destination address. The driving directions are provided only in text. Graphic maps are not provided.

Address Book

The Address Book contains all the addresses found in the desktop browser version. One added bonus for phone users is that telephone numbers are presented using the tel: tag. If your phone browser supports it, selecting the web-linked telephone number initiates a voice call to that number.

Calendar

The Calendar shows you tasks and events. The events list can be viewed by day, week, or month.

The Yahoo! Mobile Search screen in Figure shows you how Yahoo! reformats the screen for mobile devices. This simplified view lets you work quickly on a small screen.

Yahoo! Mobile Search

If you want to browse the Yahoo! Mobile site in a web browser on your desktop before you try it on your phone, visit http://wap.oa.yahoo.com. This will give you a chance to try out the features with a quick connection before you need them in the wild. You won't find everything from Yahoo! on your mobile device, but you'll get the basics with Yahoo! Mobile. Many times when you're traveling, that's all you need.

Todd Ogasawara