Ultimate guide to Yahoo! services

Believe it or not, Yahoo! has many more services than Google! Some of these are well known, particularly Flickr and the various search features, but some you may never have heard of, or even known that they were part of the Yahoo! family. Read on for the full guide.

Here’s the big list of Yahoo! services.

• Ask Yahoo ! lets you ask a question in every day language, and it will find an answer for you.
• Blo.gs lets you create blogrolls or receive feed updates via e-mail, but it’s probably most known as a blog pinging service. It was acquired by Yahoo! in the summer of 2005.
• Buzz Game is a joint venture between Yahoo! and O’Reilly and a pretty interesting project. Buzz Game is sort of like a fantasy stock market for ideas and products. You can bid on emerging technologies and buy (fake) stock in it. In some ways, it’s similar to BlogShares but not limited to blogs.
• Dialpad was acquired by Yahoo! in the summer of 2005 and offers a somewhat popular voice over IP application which also lets users call PSTN (landlines and mobile) phones for a low rate. Some of these technologies are being rolled into Yahoo! Messenger.
• Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing websites on the web, and of course, they are owned by Yahoo! Flickr provides 20MB of uploads per month. I’m sure I don’t really need to discuss just what Flickr is and offers.
• Kelkoo is a comparison shopping website which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004 in order to power their European shopping services.
• My Yahoo! is a personalized portal which lets you customize what type of information you’d like to receive. It combines news, bookmarking, stock information, weather, sports scores, and tons more.
• My Yahoo! Ticker is a downloadable application which provides realtime stock, news, and weather information and lets you add RSS feeds as well. The information scrolls across your screen, hence the ticker name.
• Oddpost is a fantastic web-based e-mail client and news aggregator which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004 and is being used as the basis for the next version of Yahoo! Mail.
• SBC Yahoo! DSL is a joint venture/promotional stunt between Yahoo! and SBC to provide Yahoo! members with DSL service.
• Upcoming is a social event calendar. Members can add events, and share them with others. You can then add those events to your calendar if they interest you.
• Yahoo! is the familiar portal page which provides a gateway to all of Yahoo!’s services.
• Yahoo! 360 is a service still in beta which aims to connect friends into groups, lets you create blogs, and share photographs with friends. You can also add RSS feeds to your page, and keep multiple lists, as well.
• Yahoo! Address Book is a part of Yahoo! Mail, but can be accessed via it’s own subdomain. It lets you keep track of all your contacts easily.
• Yahoo! Alerts lets you subscribe to certain search terms and receive results via e-mail, instant messaging, or via text messaging to your mobile phone.
• Yahoo! Auctions is basically an eBay clone. You can sell and buy items, set prices, and more.
• Yahoo! Astrology provides you with daily horoscopes, and other astrology information.
• Yahoo! Audio Search helps you find freely available audio files, music and podcasts from around the web.
• Yahoo! Autos is part of the Shopping services and lets you find new and used cars, insurance, financing options, and more. You can also add your automobile to the service if you have a Yahoo! account, and keep track of vehicles you own.
• Yahoo! Avatars lets you create custom avatars which can then be displayed to buddies on your Yahoo! Messenger buddy list.
• Yahoo! Banking Center lets you search for bank rates, saving rates, home equity loans, and more. There is also a handy calculator application to calculate interest rates and more.
• Yahoo! Bill Pay lets you create a list of any bills you may have and gives you a convenient way to pay for them on time, automatically if you so wish.
• Yahoo! Bookmarks lets you save your bookmarks online, giving you a great way to protect bookmarks in case your computer crashes.
• Yahoo! Briefcase lets all Yahoo! members upload files to the web and share them with friends. The account only offers 30MB of storage but that’s probably enough if you only want to share pictures or documents.
• Yahoo! By Phone is an interesting concept; it lets you access your Yahoo! account by calling an 800 number so you can get all your personalized information like weather, e-mail, news and more, all through voice commands. Yahoo! does not offer a free version of this. You must pay $4.95 per month to access the service.
• Yahoo! Calendar is integrated into the e-mail service, but can be accessed on its own and lets you add all kinds of events and set up reminders.
• Yahoo! Chat is a web-based interface to Yahoo! chat rooms. Chat rooms range in topics from business to dating to technology, so there’s bound to be something for everyone.
• Yahoo! Classifieds lets you post items for sale, find potential dates, get a roommate and more. The classifieds service is very similar to Craigslist and (ugh!) Google Base.
• Yahoo! Conversion Calculator lets you convert nearly any unit to another.
• Yahoo! Desktop Search is a downloadable application which indexes your hard drive and then lets you quickly find it.
• Yahoo! Dictionary lets you find definitions to search terms you may not know.
• Yahoo! Directory which is similiar to Google’s and dmoz’s services, letting you search by category.
• Yahoo! Domains lets you buy a domain and Yahoo! Web Hosting helps you buy web hosting directly from Yahoo! I’d think these two would be under the same banner.
• Yahoo! Downloads has a list of all the software which Yahoo! offers like the toolbar and its IM client.
• Yahoo! Education offers all kinds of education resources like course and deree finders, scholarship information, campus searches, and a few research tools like a dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and a translator.
• Yahoo! Encyclopedia gives users access to the Columbia Press encyclopedia and search through thousands of articles.
• Yahoo! Entertainment offers movie, music, and television news and gossip.
• Yahoo! Family Accounts is an account which lets parents control what kind of information children have access to with Yahoo! All activity is monitored on an ongoing basis.
• Yahoo! Fantasy Sports lets you enter the growing hobby of fantasy sports where you can trade players and create your own teams.
• Yahoo! Farechase is still in beta and part of the Yahoo! Travel service. WIth Farechase, you can specify a travel destination and other criteria, and when the service finds a fare that matches those criteria, it will inform you automatically, making finding better travel deals easier. Farechase works for both airline tickets and hotel reservations.
• Yahoo! Finance offers financial news, stock updates and information, and more.
• Yahoo! Games has an extensive and continously growing list of time wasting games which can be played online or downloaded. Some people (like my wife), spend hours on this little site.
• Yahoo! Gear is still not officially released, but will let you buy all kinds of Yahoo! branded merchandise, like shirts and hats.
• Yahoo! Geocities is a free web hosting service which is ad supported. There are various packages which users can upgrade to if they wish which are ad free and offer extra (but paltry) features. n the old days, Geocities was a popular place to host free sites and was bought by Yahoo! a few years ago.
• Yahoo! Greetings is a collaboration with American Greetings which lets you send eCards to friends and family for any occassion.
• Yahoo! Groups allows you to create a mailing list, read Usenet posts, and generally collaborate with others who share a similar interest.
• Yahoo! Health offers health news and information, including a medical term encyclopedia, drug guides, and more.
• Yahoo! Help has answers and FAQs for various Yahoo! service and software problems.
• Yahoo! HotJobs is a job searching service (formerly simply HotJobs), and one of the better ones on the web. You can search by location or type of job.
• Yahoo! Image Search lets you quickly find images from around the web.
• Yahoo! Instant Search is still a work-in-progess, but provides you with instant searches (get it) as you type a search term. Instant Search will automatically display the most relevant search result by default with a neat AJAX effect, or you can click on the search button to search via the traditional search engine.
• Yahoo! International provides a list to all the Yahoo! services which are available in other languages and for users around the world.
• Yahoo! LAUNCHcast is one of the best directories of streaming radio stations available on the web. The directory is pretty extensive and includes nearly any genre.
• Yahooligans! is a portal for kids where they can find games, jokes, tips for school, and whatever else children are into nowadays.
• Yahoo! Local lets you find businesses and venues near your area. Simply type the name of your city or your zip code, and get relevant information, as well as a handy map of the area.
• Yahoo! Lottery gives you access to lottery results from around the United States, Germany, Spain, and China.
• Yahoo! Mail is Yahoo!’s e-mail service which provides 2GB of storage, calendar and address book capabilities, and more.
• Yahoo! Maps is a mapping service which has recently been revamped to use a fantastic Flash interface. It’s extremely quick and responsive and lets you find businesses and venues via the Yahoo! Local integration, as well as directions to and from places.
• Yahoo! Message Board is basically a giant forums service for Yahoo! members.
• Yahoo! Messenger is Yahoo!’s instant messaging application which contains all the features we’ve come to know and love like file transfers, buddy icons, e-mail notifications, free PC-to-PC voice calls and more.
• Yahoo! Mindset is still very much in development, but is an interesting proof-of concept. With Mindset, you can enter any search term, and then filter out results depending on the type of information you want. By moving a slider around, you can decide to view commerical (sites that want to sell you something) or non-commercial (generally information sites, reviews, etc.) sites. By default, the slider is in the middle and combines both types of results.
• Yahoo! Mobile lets you enter your mobile phone service provider, manufacturer, and model, and gives you information as to what services are available from Yahoo! for use on that particular phone.
• Yahoo! Movies lets you enter a city or zipcode so that you can find movie theaters and movie times near your location. You also get reviews and other movie news.
• Yahoo! Music has access to music video downloads, streaming radio, music news, charts, and more. There is also a Music Backstage service which will inform you via e-mail when your favorite artists are in the news or they release a new album.
• Yahoo! Music Engine is Yahoo!’s foray into the digital music market. The store provides either monthly download plans ($4.99 per month), or per song payments (99 cents per song). The player offers recommendations based on music preferences, music charts, and pretty good jukebox functionality.
• Yahoo! My Web 2.0 is an experiment in social bookmarking and social searching which works very well. Yahoo! members can bookmark sites into their accounts, tag them, and share them with others. My Web 2.0 is similar to del.icio.us and other similar services, but with much more powerful searching capabilities.
• Yahoo! News aggregates news content from various sources around the Internet and displays it in a newspaper-like fashion.
• Yahoo! News Search is a quick way to use search queries to find relevant news from across the web, though probably not as useful if you’re a Yahoo! News user.
• Yahoo! Next is like Google Labs where you can see what kind of services Yahoo! has in the works.
• Yahoo! Notepad is part of the e-mail service but can be accessed on its own as well. Like the title suggests, Notepad lets you take notes and save them for later.
• Yahoo! Parental Controls lets you create certain filters to stop unauthorized web access from children, should you get internet access from a Yahoo! partner like SBC or Verizon.
• Yahoo! People Search lets you find anyone’s address by providing some basic information like name or general location (like country). Additionally, you can also find someone’s e-mail address by entering their full name (kind of scary).
• Yahoo! Personals lets you find people with similar interests and helps you get hooked up.
• Yahoo! Pets lets you find a pet, or any type of pet-related information you could possibly imagine.
• Yahoo! Phonecard…what else is there to say. Is there anything Yahoo! is not into?
• Yahoo! Photos lets you upload photos and share them with friends. Additionally, you can upload photos directly from your mobile phone to Yahoo! Photos. This service will probably be phased out or maybe integrated with Flickr since Yahoo! now owns them.
• Yahoo! Picks is not a service, but more like a blog of sorts. Yahoo!’s staff picks their favorite websites and editors choose from that list and feature a different site every day. The blogs picked come from all categories.
• Yahoo! Podcasts is an extensive podcast directory which lets you subscribe to podcast, and play them directly from Yahoo!’s website. Not quite as intuitive as iTunes, but a good resource nevertheless.
• Yahoo! Points is part of the rewards program for users of the Yahoo! Visa card. Points earned through the use of the credit card can be redeemed here.
• Yahoo! Real Estate will help you find a home, insurance, and anything real estate related.
• Yahoo! Reference is part of the education service and has reference tools like a World Fact book, dictionaries, and more.
• Yahoo! Research is the place where new Yahoo! services are created. You may not find as much about future services here as on Google Labs, but you will find related news stories.
• Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! search page. From this page, you can do web searches, or access any other search feature Yahoo! offers like images, video, etc. If you have a Yahoo! account, you can also get your e-mail and news listed on this page.
• Yahoo! Search Marketing is the place where publishers and advertisers can go to learn about Yahoo!’s various advertisement solutions.
• Yahoo! Security Center is not a service per se, but rather a collection of security-related articles like how to choose a password, how to protect yourself from viruses and trojans, and other important information which is definitely worth a look.
• Yahoo! Shoposphere is a brand new service, still in beta, which is basically a wish list service. Sign in with your Yahoo! account, and you’ll be able to add items you want for the holidays or your birthday to a list. This list can be shared with friends and family, or be published publicly to give shopping ideas to other users. An example of this public listing is the Wine Essentials wish list.
• Yahoo! Shopping is Yahoo!’s one stop shopping portal. You can browse for items by category, price range, or just a good old-fashioned search term. Each item listed also includes a handy review. They also offer this service on mobile phones.
• Yahoo! Shortcuts is a reference guide of all the search shortcuts you can type into Yahoo! Search, with examples, and prefilled forms ready to test out.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search and check out pages only from a particular site.
• Yahoo! Spanish Dictionary lets you translate text from English to Spanish.
• Yahoo! Sports provides sports news, and helps you keep up with your favorite teams and players.
• Yahoo! Subscriptions lets your search only for predefined queries like news or references which are normally not listed by default on Yahoo! Search.
• Yahoo! Thesaurus helps you find words which are similar in meaning to others.
• Yahoo! Tickets is a search service for concert and event tickets. You can search by keyboard, artist, venue, or location.
• Yahoo! Toolbar is a browser toolbar which integrates many of Yahoo!’s services, perform searches, view RSS feeds, and even integrates anti-spyware software.
• Yahoo! Travel is one of my favorite websites for searching for travel-related information, including plane tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, and more. The travel service also provides travel guides for various locations, and deals on trips.
• Yahoo! TV provides TV related news, show information, and lets browse local TV listings by time, date, location, or keyword.
• Yahoo! Videogames provides videogame information, news and reviews. Gamers can also find previews, cheats, and other cool things. This site is very much like IGN, GameSpot and other large gaming sites.
• Yahoo! Video Search lets you find (legal) videos from across the web. Unlike Google’s video service, you cannot upload your own videos to it.
• Yahoo! Yellow Pages lets you find business addresses and phone numbers, though it’s probably redundant since the introduction of Yahoo! Local.
• Yahoo! Wallet lets you store all your shipping, billing, and credit card information so you never forget it again. This service is encrypted and secure (according to Yahoo!).
• Yahoo! Weather, for when you need to know if it’s going to be a rainy day
• Yahoo! Widgets is the new name for Konfabulator, an application which Yahoo! bought up not long ago. Widgets is a downloadable application which lets you add tons of different widgets to your desktop like weather, search, RSS feeds, CPU and other PC information, and more. This is one of the coolest applications available.
• Yahoo! World Factbook is a complete geographical handbook with maps, flags, and other important information about countries from around the world.
• Y!Q is a new contextual search feature that can be added to websites which automatically performs searches on terms in a post and provides those results via a tooltip window, all through the magic of AJAX.

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