Archive for November, 2005

I was looking for the url that points to my links on Yahoo!’s MyWeb 2.0 social search and social bookmarking product. When I’m logged in, it shows a clean url, but if you’re not logged in as me that generic url wouldn’t take you to my links.

I’m sure there’s an easier way to find this “public url” for your links, but I had a hard time finding it just now. Here’s how you can do it relatively quickly:

1. Remember one of your most-recent or unique tags (that you’ve used to save a bookmark to MyWeb)
2. Log out of Yahoo!
3. Go to the “Everyone’s Tags” page and do a search for your tag.
4. In the results, find your name in the “Shared by” of a link with that tag. Click your name.
5. Copy that url, it’s the public view of your MyWeb page. Here’s mine.

This process could be smoother, but it must be on the to-do list. Others get it right, like Y!360, Y!Calendar, del.icio.us and Flickr. They all use your username in the url of your page: http://360.yahoo.com/trizn, http://calendar.yahoo.com/trizn, http://del.icio.us/natekoechley, http://flickr.com/photos/natekoechley/.

By the way, have you claimed your MyWeb badge yet?

The folks over in Yahoo! Mobile have just launched a new product called Contacts Back-up. Can you guess what it does? It’s about time, if you ask me. I’ve always been suprised that the carriers didn’t use they their network to offer this service.

Now save your contacts from your mobile phone into your Yahoo! account.

• Combine your contacts on your phone with those already in your Yahoo! Address Book.
• Synchronize your phone contacts with your Yahoo! Address Book as often as you like.
• Synchronize your calendar and tasks as well.

It’s only for Cingular and T-Mobile at the moment. (Grrr, annoying how everything in the mobile space is so often carrier-exclusive.)

How else will the always-on network connection of phones change the services offered by carriers, the orthodox web, and the interactions of both?