As you may have read in Brad's post, Joe and I will be moving over to the Download Squad blog.

Don't worry, you'll still get to see the fanatical obsession of new Y! builds and services that you've come to know from us (in fact, I noticed today a new Y! Mail build...)

I'd like to thank everyone that's read my drivel here and taken the time to comment on the posts.

So, come on over to the new location -- we'll be sure to have cold one's in the fridge for you...

Even though my actual cell phone isn't listed on Y! Mobile, I can still access the website just fine from the phone's browser.

Today, when I connected I came across a link to a Beta of the Y! Mobile Mail service. We all know it takes far less than that to convince me to activate \ download a beta application...

Instead of the Folder list of old, you are now presented with the Inbox messages at the top. You can still get to the rest of your Folders further down the page. As with the Y! Mail Beta, really Search is also prominent, making it easier to find the messages you want to read.

At first glance, I like it - I'm only really interested in new messages, so this new layout puts what I want up front and center.

Thanks to the Y! Mobile folks for continuing to modify the service for those that use it.

I have to admit - I do love new toys, and cell phones are no exception...

I recently dropped my old phone due to poor service and replaced it with a shiny new Samsung A900. I did get to transfer the number, so all I really wanted to do is tell Y! Mobile about the change in the handset.

I go through the registration process and discover that Y! doesn't have my model listed as available - the nearest is the A700 which isn't really the same.

Does anyone out there know how to get the newer models listed on the service?

I noticed last night a new update for the Y! Toolbar for Firefox extension has been released, taking us up to v1.2.1.20060626

I don't notice anything that's significantly changes, maybe our readers can help me out there (or the devs themselves).

As usual, either grab it from the Y! Toolbar site, or just have Firefox check for updates.

From the comments to my last post, it looks like I'm not the only one that's taken longer than the 10 days to get into the new Y! Photos beta.

It appears that there is a bug with Y! Users that also have tied their ID and Phones together on Y! Mobile. Maybe it's related to the Y! Photos Mobile beta that I posted about before.

I'm told that this is why my access is delayed, how many others have the same problem is unknown.

The good news is that the developers are aware of the problem and are squashing that bug - hopefully that'll get us on soon...

According to this post on Yahoo! Next, the Yahoo! Mobile folks are testing some new feature that get you directly from your cellphone to some of their services - IM, Mail, Address Book.

Of particular interest is that Mail access is done via IMAP and appears to work on any IMAP email client - including Thunderbird. Non-web client access has been a Plus feature for a long time now - and is arguably why so many people subscribe to the upgrade.

Just plug the following into your client and use your Y! Account \ Password to access it:

• IMAP: imap.next.mail.yahoo.com
• SMTP: smtp.next.mail.yahoo.com

Using these settings, you can access free accounts with a full client (I never upgraded after Yahoo! Plus was discontinued) - does this mean that the feature will become more generally available in the future?

[Update] As JR mentioned in the Comments - don't all go IMAP crazy and crash the servers. He suggests setting your client to poll every hour.

Alternatively - just use the Y! Mail Beta - real-time messages and most of the functionality of a desktop client, but in your browser.

As we've posted, the new Yahoo! Photos has gone into Closed Beta. Some of us have been lucky enough to get on the new version earlier than others.

When I requested the beta access, it mentioned it would take 7-10 business days to convert me - well that was yesterday and I'm still not there.

I'm guessing that demand was greater than the capacity, but I would've liked being told that when I signed up.

Any of our readers actually sign up and get converted yet? I'm going to stick with my Flickr Pro account for now...

Yahoo! Messenger is about to get a significant new feature in the upcoming Yahoo! Messenger v8.0 beta that's to be released real soon now.

Consistent with other things on the Yahoo Developers Network, this release will allow 3rd parties to hook directly into the Messenger client to provide functions not currently available. Plug-ins will be held in the Developers Gallery that Yahoo! is moving all it's add-ons to.

Plug-ins can interact with Messenger in a couple of ways:

• Tab plug-ins will allow you to display information in Messenger windows
• Conversation plug-ins will let you interact with other users

The Messenger Gallery is live now, but it doesn't look like the Download and Developer pages are up yet.

I'll post impressions once I can grab the latest beta (regular readers know I'm a sucker for beta code...)

This past week, the Yahoo! 360 team let loose a slew of new features that the community has been wanting for some time now.

Several of the features look to bring in some of the functionality of MySpace - we've seen many complaints \ comparisons of the 2 services on the Y-360 Groups for a while.

Custom Themes - Now you can make your page look as nice, or as ugly as you want. Thankfully, the team realized that there are issues with this approach and give you an option to 'View without this Theme' when viewing a 360 page.
Mature Content - I've seen more requests for being able to block Mature content than anything else. Now, you can designate your Blog Posts as Mature - either individual posts, or the entire Blog. Users can then tell 360 if they want to be able to view them - the service will automatically move them out of the view if so desired.
Personalized Comments - This is a 'shoutbox' type function that applies to your Main page - you can leave short messages that can be read by all visitors.
Embedded Media - Joe just posted about getting creative with embedded Video, the team just made it a whole lot easier. Music can be added to your Blast and Video to your Blog.  I'm happy to see that neither will play automatically - that turns me off faster than the bad themes...

Thanks to the developers for listening to the Community and giving us these new things to play with.

With the glorious weather we have in my area today, thoughts turn to being outside and listening to tunes while napping doing yard work.

So, ready to kick my Outside Mix playlist, I launched Yahoo! Music Engine and was greeted by an Update message.

The message gave little details on the changes - mentions a security issue, but it is just a minor Build number change so I don't think there are any feature changes.

Grab it by either letting your current YME! pull it for you, or from the Yahoo! Music Engine download page.

Here we are, in the middle of the USA vs ITA game and I'm sorry to report that Yahoo! is doing better with the FIFA World Cup than their Home Team...

In addition to the wonderful Officlal FIFA World Cup site, the Yahoo! Search team recently announced they've added a set of Y! Shortcuts to make it easy to get the latest juice.

All you do is prefix the Search with the word FIFA followed by the information you want - you can search on Team, Group, Game

I love these Shortcuts - Go England!!

[Update - Fixed the link for Shortcuts]

I'm so excited - today is the kick-off of the World's biggest sporting event in Germany, and our favorite portal is charged with the official website of the FIFA World Cup.

Yahoo! has done a stellar job of collapsing all the news and atmosphere of this month-long festival of the best football (soccer) you'll see.

You can customize the site to track your favorite team, track all the match scores and standings.

I'm looking forward to the Matchcast presentations of the Live Games, followed by the Video highlights that Yahoo! has secured for us.

If you're lucky enough to have a Nokia or SonyEricsson phone, you can get the beta of the Mobile Matchcast (I'd be really happy to see this on my new Samsung A900, so devs - get cracking on a port...) There's plenty of other ways to get updates to your phone as well from the Mobile section.

As Joe mentions in his Review post, he doesn't know how you get on the new beta without just seeing the link.

I just want our readers (and the Yahoo! Photos folks) know that we don't get special privileges here on the Unofficial Yahoo! Blog - I don't get the new version that I can compare to my Flickr Pro account :(

So, if the devs have any influence on who gets to see the new code, I'd be happy to post a comparison :)

The impending release of the new Yahoo! Video site with social networking goodness has been all over the news today.

Most of them say it's due at 9.00pm PDT, but I can tell you it's live now.

There are a few videos there now, ready to be Rated and Tagged. You can collect your own set of favorites, and for the budding filmmakers out there, you can also Submit your own.

Uploaded videos are subject to the Y! Terms of Service, so it'll be interesting to see how they deal with potential copyright and offensive issues. Movies can be up to 100MB in size and in wmv, flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, or avi formats,

The Yahoo! Video team also has launched a Y! 360 based blog.

I guess the rumored YouTube acquisition was just a rumor...

With the release of the Yahoo! Application Gallery beta, the Yahoo! Music Engine team have announce they are moving their old stand-alone site for plug-ins to the Music Engine application.

Plug-ins need to be re-submitted to continue to be publicly available, and the "Unofficial" plug-in site will be going away soon (although how long is not mentioned).

This post to their blog talks more about the move: