e-life

Like many people in business I have a smart phone. I don’t have a blackberry, instead I have the 8125 pocket pc from Cingular(now AT&T). The phone is a life line for business. It keeps me connected at all times where ever I am. I have my work email as well as a personal account set up as an IMAP accounts. The IMAP accounts are configured to automatically check for mail and notify me when I receive anything new.
However, my primary personal account is a Yahoo! Mail account. I use Yahoo! Mail suite for a lot of things including business. The suite includes a calendar, notes, tasks and an address book with options to enter email addresses, phone numbers and snail mail. I use the calendar and tasks functions for personal as well business. With Yahoo Go 1.0 I had live access to the full suite anytime anywhere and it synced directly with my phone.

For months maybe even close to a year, I have been using Yahoo’s service called Yahoo! Go 1.0. The service was great, because I was able to sync my calendar, notes, tasks, email and address book directly between my phone and my Yahoo! account. The software could be configured to periodically check for new email, and functioned like a POP3 or IMAP account. Plus, when it checked for new email the other functions were also synced on the fly. Pocket PCs have the ability to sync with MS Outlook, but this can’t be done on the fly like Yahoo! Go 1.0 worked. So, Yahoo! had me using their email service almost exclusively for my personal mail, appointments and for the address book.

Unfortunately this service has recently been discontinued and replaced with a new service: Yahoo Go! 2.0. The new service is blotted, slow, cumbersome and isolated. You can no longer directly sync anything with your phone. To check my mail I have to log into their slow memory eating software. Then navigate to the mail function and manually check my email. There seems to be an option in the mail settings called “Push email”. I’m not sure where it is “Pushed”… certainly not my phone. There is another setting called “Message alert”. Again, I’m not sure what the function is for as it isn’t notifying me when I receive a message. I still have to load the software to check mail. Granite the Cingular 8125 is not the most powerful phone on the market anymore, but the Yahoo! Go 2.0 software is so buggy that periodically when loading it will freeze the phone and reset the time and date to May 2000. Incidentally the phone is only 1 year old. Furthermore there doesn’t seem to be anyway to turn off functions that I do not use. (Unless I missed something.) I have no need for entertainment news, sports news or flicker. Yes, they may be interesting options and many people may use them, but why can’t the user streamline the software, so it only loads the functions they want?

Yahoo! is seemingly trying to emulate the functions of the iPhone. That might be a good idea if the software was integrated into the phone. Right now, that is definitely not the case. Yahoo! Go 2.0 has been such a disappointment for me that, after using Yahoo! Mail as my personal account for many years, I am considering, moving to another account that will directly sync with my phone. I don’t have time for blotware, as it slows down productivity and causes more headaches than it is worth. I sincerely hope that Yahoo! realizes what functionality is really important to their customers and adjusts it’s strategy accordingly.

-From Blackbird e-Solutions: e-Life