Showing posts with label Yahoo Mail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yahoo Mail. Show all posts

Saturday, February 15, 2014

House Of Cards: Binge Watching



I never thought I'd do that. I never thought I'd binge watch, but that is exactly what I have been doing for the past few days. For as political as I am, my interest in House Of Cards comes from the tech, Netflix angle. Netflix is supposed to challenge the movie and TV industries at a most fundamental level, and it has with these episodes. I want more.

Washington, DC Is Officially OBSESSED With 'House Of Cards'
Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., who also appears in the video, won’t attend the premiere, but she said she does plan to binge-watch the series over the weekend...... With much of Washington snowed-in on Thursday, Cards fans inside the Beltway called for the early release of season two — but to no avail. “HBO made a brutal mistake by not timing the release of House of Cards with the snowstorm,” quipped Amanda Carpenter, an adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
I finished the first 13 episodes of Season 1 Thursday just in time for the release of Season 2, pure coincidence. I only started two days before. No, I did not have a subscription. I have had Netflix subscription before, but I let it pass. They don't have enough movies in the purely digital section.

A few days back I got a free month trial with my Hotmail account. I knew my Hotmail account would amount to something. Just kidding. Today both Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are competitive to Gmail, Yahoo Mail for offering a terabyte of free space, and Hotmail for having a much cleaner experience than both. But when Gmail is your default email, and it is still very good, you don't switch. You use Yahoo Mail for Dropbox like storage. And, well, on Hotmail I have turned on and off the switches such that unless I have saved your email address in my address book, you can't even reach me.

Kevin Spacey Goes All House-of-Cards on Hollywood (Video)
Kevin Spacey gave what is perhaps the most cogent call to arms for the entertainment industry to please get with this Internet thing. ...... Francis Underwood — the political nightmare Spacey plays with glee — said in the first lines of “House of Cards,” as he mercy-strangles a dog, hurt badly by a car: “There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain. The sort of pain that’s only suffering. I have no patience for useless things. Moments like this require someone who will act, do the unpleasant thing, the necessary thing.”
I lost some respect for House Of Cards and for Hollywood for the sex and murder. I mean, come on, don't insult my intelligence. In this day and age you can not be so close to being Secretary of State or Vice President and be flinging a young reporter - granted she is pretty - and not have anyone find out. You certainly can't kill - twice - and be Vice President. You can't kill when you are maybe only a day away from being sworn in. I mean, like Michael Corleone says in Godfather, "Who is being naive, Kay?" Presidents and Vice Presidents do get people killed, lots of them, but they don't get involved in petty murder.

I have personally been party to political events - and I am talking small events - that the following day made it into news, and the distortions have blown my mind. I have been like, I was there, I know all the details. And this news report is so off. So media has its prisms, and Hollywood has to have sex and murder. But then perhaps Hollywood knows how to keep people interested. You throw in the sex and the murder and people will watch. It is not Hollywood to be blamed. People get what they want. It is the masses, collectively speaking.




But then what respect House Of Cards lost with the sex and murder it gained by covering the political process well. The give and take on the Education Bill? I mean, wow. Very well done. Also, lifting the age of retirement by a few years. Kevin Spacey did it before America will. That makes this sci-fi. I guess there is such a thing as political sci-fi. We do say Political Science, don't we? At one point I was a Political Science major.

I grew up knowing Hindi movies were almost three hours, English movies were shorter - two hours. Well, this thing goes on and on, but it does because it needs to. When the treatment of the material is fair, the length does not matter. This is not a movie, yes, I know that. But then this is not television either. It is just video content. I, for one, would like numerous 30 minute movies. Of course online, preferably for free on YouTube, supported by ads, or 10 cents to watch for pay. If you did not turn a profit, it was because you could not get enough people to watch you, and that is fair.

And you thought Ashton Kutcher was the movie star who is also a tech entrepreneur. No, it's Kevin Spacey.

Kevin Spacey takes 26 hours to become President Of The United States, talk about a plot spoiler. Barack Obama has or will watch all 26 episodes. I will bet you a hundred dollars he will.



I believe The Mahabharata is over 100 episodes and way more complex a plot, way more gripping.



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Tuesday, October 08, 2013

1 TB: Yahoo Mail's Reentry With A Bang

August 2000 Issue of Yahoo! Internet Life
August 2000 Issue of Yahoo! Internet Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Of all things Yahoo Mail could have done, 1 TB in free storage tops the charts. It totally grabbed my attention. Already in recent weeks I have been mass labeling a bunch of mail in my Yahoo inbox as spam so as to declutter.

Getting only relevant mail and 1 TB of free storage surely gets me to give Yahoo Mail a second look. There is no way I am walking away from Gmail. But we all can use a good second email address. I know I need one. Heck, I could use three. Let Hotmail compete.

I could use a Yahoo version of Google Drive for free online storage.
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Monday, June 24, 2013

Ugh, Finally


Hotmail Has Come A Long Way


I have been aware of Microsoft's overhaul of its email service, but I only today tried to log in and use it. (I am a comfortable, happy user of Gmail) And, gosh, it is so impressive. It is a cleaner experience than Gmail. Although I don't see me switching. I still have my hotmail address from the late 1990s before Microsoft bought it. And it still works fine.

Yahoo Mail, on the other hand, continues to be confounding. It still is so very loaded. It is like having at least three different televisions on in your living room, at least two of which were turned on by others. I logged in there as well this morning. After trying to delete 25 messages at a time for over 30 minutes I gave up. Can I please have the option to delete all 12,000 messages in my inbox at once? Please? Maybe the feature exists, but with three televisions on, it is hard to figure out. With Hotmail on the other hand I was able to delete all 180 messages in the inbox at once. Okay, that is a hint. Yahoo's spam filter is sub par.
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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Yahoo Mail Overhaul In The Offing

Image representing Yahoo! as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase
I do have a Yahoo Mail account. It is the one I never shut down. But it is not one I use. I do use it for Craig's List. But other than that.

I think I left after I'd click saying this is spam and emails from that same address would still show up.

'Age of Marissa' to kick in with Yahoo Mail overhaul?
Yahoo is readying "a major overhaul" of Yahoo Mail for December that will sport "a cleaner, 'more Gmail-like' design." .... Gmail saw 287.9 million unique worldwide visitors during the period, edging out Hotmail, which finished with 286.2 million unique visitors. Yahoo -- the once mighty e-mail power -- came in third with 281.7 million. ..... Yahoo, however, holds a comfortable lead in the United States with 76.7 million, compared to second-place Gmail with 69.1 million and third-place Hotmail with 35.5 million.
Along With New Homepage, Yahoo Also Set to Launch a “Gmail-Like” Email Reboot to Slow Gmail Gains
the latest iteration of Yahoo Mail will be released in early December, just after the new homepage is rolled out widely ..... has publicly committed the company to releasing innovative and mobile-focused products as a key differentiator
As Fantasy Football Servers Fumble on Game Day, Yahoo Rolls Out More Homepage Tests Ahead of December Launch
upwards of $350,000 for a prime placement for a day, rising in price depending on complexity. ..... Yahoo was going to veer toward a “mobile first” sensibility. “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company”
Marissa Mayer Makes Her Move at Yahoo!
At Friday's close of $17.26, the stock is up 20% from its 52-week low. ..... Mayer, who sources tell me is greatly respected in Silicon Valley, has a sort of Obama moment, if you will—in the '08 sense, not the '12 sense. Having taken a rather bad hand, she enjoys tremendous good will in her effort to restore hope to Yahoo! and engender change. ..... As powerful data centers churn out incredible computing power and analyze every single move a Web user makes on every fast new gizmo in their hands, it's time to be aggressive, Ms. Mayer.
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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

What Yahoo Could Have Done With $4.3 Billion?

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 18:  Foursquare co...
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - OCTOBER 18: Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley speaks during the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit on October 18, 2011 in San Francisco, California. The 2011 Web 2.0 Summit features keynote addresses by Internet and Technology leaders and runs through Wednesday. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Bad Move For Yahoo

$1 billion -- Try to buy FourSquare. They will not be bought. But the noise would be good for Yahoo. Go buy someone else in the local space for $500 million or less.

$500 million -- Revamp Flickr. Make it mobile first. Make it free.

$500 million -- Revamp Yahoo Mail.

$1 billion -- Make another attempt at FourSquare six months later. They will not be bought. Go buy someone else for $300 million.

$500 million -- Hire some of the best of the best engineers in the Valley, like 100 of them. Make many small acquisitions just to get the talent.

$1 billion -- Keep in the bank, just in case.

Yahoo To Give Shareholders $3.65 Billion, Mayer Explains Why In Leaked Memo

Giving money back to shareholders makes no sense. I no longer see Yahoo getting the sexy back. Or at least it just made that task so much harder for itself. Why? But why?


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Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Flickr And Yahoo Mail


Those two need obvious work and are relatively easy to do.

Can Marissa Mayer turn Yahoo around?

Flickr

Make it free again. There should be no limit to how many pictures you can upload.

Give the option to embed. I should be able to embed a Flickr picture - not just mine, but of anyone who will allow it - into a blog post of mine.

Yahoo Mail

There is a need for cloud storage, like Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive. So all email attachments go to the cloud. Inboxes don't have space limits these days.

Yahoo Mail spam protection sucks. I can block email from an email address, and the next time I get an email from that address, it still gets delivered! Fix this.

Social Graph

Tap into them. Facebook has one. Twitter has one. LinkedIn has one. Google Plus has one.

Overlap these graphs onto my Flickr and Yahoo Mail.

Mobile

Go mobile on both.


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