laslocomm.net technical journal #1

article: communicating on the street using yahoo! phone

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in

laslocomm technical journal

· 8 months ago

laslocomm.net presents
the laslocomm.net technical journal

"what, you were expecting the Bell System?"

volume 1, issue 1 | march 2001

in this issue

editorial comments
interesting news items
communicating on the street using yahoo! phone
call for authors
copyrights
redistribution

editorial comments

welcome to the first issue. there are major changes going on in the world of "free services"; as dot coms who provided these services discover that they need money to operate, several are switching to fee based access. bluelight.com and ureach.com, among others, now give users a little less in terms of services for free. others, such as tellme.com and bevocal.com use their voice portals to raise awareness of the power of their product. and still others, such as yahoo!, seem to just want you to do everything through their portal. it seems a whole bunch of people just figured out what TAASTAAFL really means. ;) laslocomm.net will continue to keep track of the really useful services that are available for free, plus those few that are really worth a couple of dollars a month.

so why, you ask, spend the time to put together yet another list of free things that are likely to disappear into dot com never never land? other than I think of this as an interesting thing to do, because I think it important to realize that just because ideas fail to become commercial successes for the first company to try them does *not* mean they weren't good ideas. of all the computers, radios, and other gear I have, my TI-85 graphing calculator is one of the most useful, and it's running a Z-80. my point is this: you are going to hear voice enabled, database driven, internet connected applications using the phone for input and output. the distinction between internet, phone, and everything else is going to continue to blur, until you really do not know which is which. all is one, and one is all. (what does that have to with a TI-85?) knowing how these systems work, knowing how to set things up for yourself, having an old machine set up running linux; this is power. a pair of old 49mhz walkie talkies is power, if having them means you can communicate. if you cannot route mail for some reason on the net, can you set up a small UUCP network to get messages to someone who can? what if you can't use the phone, can you still send mail?

watch what's going on with technology, and learn what it means, what it does, what controls are being added. nameless faceless companies will change the way you live, and that will happen no matter what; but if you keep your eyes and ears open, use the system where you can, and go around it where you must; you will retain the freedom of choice and movement you're used to having. you have a choice.

-laslo@laslocomm.net

interesting news items

disposable paper phones

pay phone use declining

http://www.wral-tv.com/news/wral/2000/0130-pay-phones/
many more articles on payphones assembled at http://payphone-project.com

ed note: I've seen some articles saying that throw-away phones will replace pay phones... certainly something to keep an eye on this year

communicating on the street using yahoo!

Yahoo! provides a free service called My Yahoo!, which allows you to set up a web page that contains news headlines, sports scores, stock quotes, weather, and all sorts of other sources of information. Yahoo! also offers their own instant messaging software (creatively titled Yahoo! Messenger), which supports VoIP phone calls, mail alerts, news alerts, and the same content as your custom web page; email accounts (@yahoo.com) with web and pop3 access, plus integration with wireless devices such as pagers and cell phones; and 1-800-MY-YAHOO, which is an interactive voice response system that gives you access to your My Yahoo! content and email over the phone. 1-800-MY-YAHOO also gives you a voice mail box that is accessible on both the phone and web.

in this article, I will concentrate first on the phone accessible portion of Yahoo!'s service, specifically your ability to use email and voicemail from any phone. I will generally lean towards pay phone users, but you can access the system via any phone. if you do not already have a Yahoo! account, you will need to set one up before using any of the services described here. the easiest way is to visit http://my.yahoo.com, and follow the instructions to set up an account; you also need to visit http://phone.yahoo.com to activate the phone portion of the service. once you're logged in, you can wait until later to fully customize your content (stocks, weather, whatever).

email access on the web is through http://mail.yahoo.com, which provides a standard web email interface with features such as vacation messages, automatic spam filter, personal filters, folder management, access to other pop3 accounts, and pop3/smtp. if you are running windows, you can also access your voice messages through the email interface, although you need to download a small plugin. I've been using my email account for about three years, and I'm happy with it. Yahoo! gives you 6mb of storage, which I've found is enough. access to Yahoo!'s pop3 and smtp servers is very useful as well. the only service I have not used is forwarding to a cell phone or pager; my pager is numeric only.

voice mail is available on the web, and on the phone at 1-800-MY-YAHOO. you can send messages to Yahoo! Phone users without logging in by hitting # when the system answers, or you can login by entering your 10-digit mailbox number, after which you'll enter your pin. you can also hit '2' to send a message "with caller id", which will include your *mailbox* number in the from: field of the voice message (no, not your real caller id). be patient; it will take a second for the main menu to load up, at which point you'll be given a list of options. pressing '1' will take you to the messaging menu, where you can access voice messages (1), email messages (2), or compose a voice message (3). if you hear a "service is unavailable" type message, you can usually try your selection again and get whereever you are trying to go; breaks in service are quite short.

so where does communicating on the street using Yahoo! Phone happen? from payphones, of course. while some services are restricting access from payphones, Yahoo! is still being generous. I use the service to check email, and have found the service very useful for keeping in touch with people who do not have (or want to reveal) personal phone numbers. since the number is a nationwide 800 number, it is accessible by anyone, anywhere in the US (I don't know about alaska and hawaii, or canada. someone let me know.) especially handy is the ability to send (or forward) specific content via email to your Yahoo! Mail address, for later retrieval via the phone. at times, I've used this method to email status reports on processes I have running on one of my home machines to myself and others who have Yahoo! accounts.

what about the future of the service, especially in light of Yahoo!'s recent stock price drop? hard to tell; when the phone service first started, audio ads were inserted before most of the menus. as the dot com companies doing the advertising began to disappear, so the advertising disappeared from Yahoo! Phone. I hope the service remains free; as much as I find it useful, however, I don't know if I would pay per month. if anyone reading has an opinion, I'd like to hear what you think.

in summary: Yahoo! Phone (and Yahoo!'s other integrated services) is a well thought out, well planned service that I use fairly often, if for no other reason than something to do while waiting for a bus. one nitpick is windows being required for voice(e)mail on the web; everything else seems to work equally well on any platform (windows, mac, linux). Yahoo! also collects demographic and user data almost everywhere; I have not had problems with spam originating from Yahoo!, but you should be aware that you are being logged. the service is well worth your time. my only real complaint is the lack of support for platforms other than windows on the web access to voicemail.

call for authors

the laslocomm.net technical journal is open to ideas from others. if you wish to have an article or column included in a future issue, please send your submission, article idea, or wacked news item via email (plain text is fine, don't *even* send it in word) to webmaster@laslocomm.net or use the submit form at http://www.laslocomm.net/submit.html. pgp key available on request.