Online calendars have been around for more than a decade, and they’re tightly integrated with the leading Web mail services used by more than 680 million people per month (as of August, comScore). So it’s surprising to see how few people are actually using their Web calendars. Even the world’s most popular online calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, sees only a mere 8 million users per month.

So why, you may ask, is Yahoo! launching a new Yahoo! Calendar after ten years and why will it be better than your paper calendar or (gasp!) your desktop calendar? Because we think the time is right for these Web-based scheduling applications to finally take off. Here’s why:

• Open standards like iCalendar and CalDAV make all online calendars work together so people can share their schedules without the hiccups of the past.
• Broadband and mobile device ubiquity means you’re always connected, even if you don’t like to admit it. You need your busy life to be in order and for your calendar to be accessible wherever you go.
• Web 2.0 technologies have made it possible to incorporate very cool visual effects and practical functions like event discovery.

Thanks to the powerful technology that our Zimbra team built, and our involvement with the online calendaring community, we’ve been able to add some much-improved technical functionality to the new Yahoo! Calendar. Now you can better connect with your friends and family –- even those who aren’t using Yahoo! Calendar. Our new calendar is interoperable with the other popular services, including those from Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Mozilla, and Google, so you can share your upcoming plans and important dates with friends.

With the new Yahoo! Calendar you can:

• Subscribe to any iCalendar-based public calendar and add upcoming events and show times to your Yahoo! Calendar. This means you’ll be able to plan for a local concert when your favorite band comes to town and you’ll know when the next new episode of “Lost” will air.
• Easily drag and drop events to reschedule appointments without having to refresh your Web page.
• Set email, IM or SMS reminders for important activities and never miss a birthday or anniversary again.
• Personalize your Yahoo! Calendar with interesting photos from Flickr to make your online calendar as visually appealing as it is productive.

And this beta is just the first in a series of updates you’ll see coming from us. Imagine being able to download your favorite sports team’s schedule, your class schedule, or your child’s t-ball schedule and being constantly on top of everything. That’s coming soon, along with additional event discovery features, including integration with Upcoming.org and other Yahoo! properties. And soon your Yahoo! Calendar will even auto-synch with Outlook and your iPhone.

So if you’re looking to be even more connected with your friends and family and never miss an important appointment, sign up for the Yahoo! Calendar beta at http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com. We’ll be adding users from this list over the next few weeks. And check out this screencast of the new Yahoo! Calendar, narrated by our product manager Herbert Wang.

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

There are nearly 275 million Yahoo! Mail account holders worldwide.

Since one Yahoo! Mail address is in the news today, I thought this might be a good time to remind everyone about some online safety tips that will help protect your account. (In order to protect the privacy of our users, we can’t get into specific details of any of our users’ accounts — we know you’d want us to do the same for you!).

• Choose a strong password. It’s like a toothbrush – choose a good one and don’t share it. Your Yahoo! Mail password can be any length and can contain spaces, symbols, or numbers –- letting you come up with something that’s easy for you to remember but impossible for someone else to figure out.
• Avoid using a complete word from a dictionary (English or otherwise) or a name.
• Use at least 7 characters. The more the better. A long but simple password can be safer than a shorter complex one.
• Use a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and standard symbols (! @ # $ % ^ &, etc.).
• Don’t use personal information that someone could easily figure out. Avoid a password based on information easily obtained about your (a birthday, your child’s name, your phone number, school name, etc.). Don’t use a password you already use for another account, like your bank account PIN. And don’t’ use your Yahoo! ID (or other username) in any form (reversed, capitalized, doubled, etc.).
• Avoid the obvious. Attackers tend to first try repeating letters or number sequences (123456). Stay away from “test” or “password.” And when you change your password, which you should do relatively often, don’t just add a number to the end.
• Create a sign-in seal. Yahoo! and many financial institutions let you personalize your sign-in page to help you make absolutely sure you’re not falling victim to a phishing scam. See a photo of your cat Rupert? You know it’s safe to proceed.

Cybercrime is an industry-wide issue and we’ve been working with the industry in combating it (with innovations like Domain Keys). Rest assured that we take security and privacy very seriously here.

You are the first line of defense. Head over to antispam.yahoo.com and security.yahoo.com for more tips to help you protect your account, your privacy, and your identity.

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

Ever tried to sign up for a new email account, only to find that the name you want is unavailable? We hear you. As the most popular email service in the world, Yahoo! Mail has more than a quarter of a billion users worldwide *. That’s a LOT of email addresses in use already. With that in mind, we’re making millions of desirable email addresses available today with the launch of two shiny new domains: ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

If “rocketmail” rings a bell, it’s because it’s vintage Internet. Back in the ’90s, RocketMail was one of the very first free Webmail services. Yahoo! acquired it in 1997 and built the first version of Yahoo! Mail based on RocketMail technology. Some of the original RocketMail users chose to keep their RocketMail IDs to show that they had been among the first users of Webmail. Now, like so many beloved classics that are hip again –- cupcakes, big sunglasses, Indiana Jones, The New Kids on the Block –- RocketMail is back for a new generation to enjoy.

These new domains will offer the same great Yahoo! Mail experience, like unlimited storage, integrated instant messaging, free text messaging, and localized versions around the world. And, as always, a Yahoo! email address works for everything across Yahoo!, from checking Mail to using Messenger, Flickr, Groups, Finance and more. The added bonus is that with these two new domains, you’ll have the chance to land your perfect email address to help reflect who you are – which is what the majority of you are looking for according to a recent Yahoo! survey conducted by Harris Interactive**.

So whether your style is brand spanking new (ymail.com), hip vintage (rocketmail.com), or comfortable classic (yahoo.com), surf on over to http://new.mail.yahoo.com/addresses and get that email address you’ve always wanted.      

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

*According to comScore Media Matrix, April 2008.

**In a survey of 2,035 online adults ages 18+ conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Yahoo!, 56% of online adults indicated that they want their email address to reflect who they are.

Today marks a special milestone for Yahoo!. Ten years ago today, Yahoo! Mail was born. It’s hard to imagine that just a decade ago, the idea of free email accessible from anywhere was a novelty.

Think of how far we’ve come since then. Web mail now is one of the most popular ways to stay in touch. It’s brought families closer together, let travelers send regards from the road, and made the concept of change-of-address notices virtually obsolete.

Ten years ago, Yahoo! Mail launched with just 3 megabytes of storage and the only images you were likely to receive were ASCII Art. Today, JPEGs are by far the most popular attachment type in Yahoo! Mail. Ten years ago mobile phones were bulky, expensive luxuries that were basically used for one thing: to make important phone calls. These days, everyone from students to busy parents and grandparents use their cell phones to check email on the go. And ten years ago, many people didn’t “get” Web mail or why they would need an address that wasn’t tethered to their ISP. Now many use it as their primary personal mail address.

Since we’re feeling nostalgic, we’ve put together some email milestones from the last decade:

• October 1997: Yahoo! Mail launches following our acquisition of Four 11, creators of RocketMail.
• December 1998: The movie You’ve Got Mail debuts.
• March 1999: CNN’s Ten Commandments of Email cites that Americans sent 2.1 billion emails daily (vs. 196 billion per day this year).
• December 1999: Yahoo! Mail launches Spamguard to detect spam and banish it to a separate folder.
• January 2000: Web mail survives Y2K.
• November 2001: Pope John Paul II is the first pontiff to send an email apology.
• March 2002: It’s reported internationally that email outpaces snail mail as the preferred method for residential communication.
• December 2003: Congress passes the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to regulate the sending of commercial email.
• July 2004: Yahoo! acquires Oddpost, bringing AJAX to Yahoo! and inspiring Yahoo! Mail’s most significant upgrade ever.
• June 2005: Broadway’s “Spamalot” wins Tony Award for Best Musical.
• March 2006: IDG study shows that Americans sent 11.8 billion photos via email in 2005, compared with 2.6 billion in 2000. By 2009, this number is projected to 25.7 billion images.
• March 2007: Yahoo! Mail announces free, unlimited e-mail storage for all users.
• August 2007: According to Comscore , the worldwide Web mail market counts approximately 543 million people, with Yahoo! Mail alone representing 255 million.

It’s funny to reflect that when Rocketmail first started, many users chose to list their email addresses in a public directory because they wanted everyone to know how to contact them. Fast-forward to a world where we invest a huge amount of time and diligence protecting our users from spam (now estimated to represent more than 70% of all email) and phishing attacks.

So what about you? We put together a brief survey to find out how your email habits have evolved over the past 10 years. Please share your thoughts with us (or leave them as comments), and we’ll be sure to report back on our findings later this month.

Until then, happy emailing!

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

My kids, like most, love text messaging. But while their nimble fingers can easily navigate cell phone keypads at lightning speeds, I definitely prefer a full keyboard, and am much more inclined to use email than text messaging.

So I’m doubly excited to announce the launch of the all-new Yahoo! Mail today. Not only are we launching a brand new version of one of the most popular Web mail services in the world, but we’re unveiling a solution to my texting woes, and giving people around the world more ways to connect. With the new Yahoo! Mail, people can send and receive free text messages in their email to and from any mobile phone number in participating markets including the US, Canada, India and the Philippines.

It’s sure to come in handy for people like me who want to keep in touch with text-crazy friends and family. From my Yahoo! Mail window (and using my comfortably full-sized keyboard), I can type a note to my son, letting him know I’m on my way to his soccer practice, and send it straight to his phone. And he can send a text message right back to my email, letting me know where to meet him. The intuitive, chat-like interface makes it super easy, even if you’re a novice at text messaging.

We already have great integrated instant messaging features in Yahoo! Mail, so adding text messaging was a natural next step. It’s an increasingly popular way to keep in touch, especially among younger users. In fact, 69% of US mobile phone users between the ages of 18-39 use text messaging (Harris Interactive, June 2006), and half of Americans age 18-25 say they sent or received a text message over the phone in the past day (Pew Research Center, January 2007).

Today’s news doesn’t stop at text messaging — the all-new Yahoo! Mail also lets users send and receive instant messages in real-time to their friends who are logged into Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, without ever leaving the e-mail experience. You can even switch between emailing, instant messaging, and text messaging as your friends come online or go mobile. We want our users to be able to choose how they communicate with their friends and family, in the most appropriate method for the moment. By adding these new types of real-time communication into Yahoo! Mail, we’re laying the foundation for an even more social experience for our users.

For those of you who love the original Yahoo! Mail interface — not to worry. We’re keeping Yahoo! Mail Classic as well. Our goal is to provide the best email experience for everyone, whether that be familiar and comfortable or new and shiny.

To check out the brand new Yahoo! Mail, go on over to http://mail.yahoo.com. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Clarification that the new Yahoo! Mail will be rolled out globally over the next six weeks. You’ll know you have the new version because you’ll no longer see “beta” under the logo and you’ll find some helpful information within the product explaining the new features. If you’re a Classic user, you’ll be invited to try the new mail when it’s available to you.

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

As promised, we’ve started to roll out unlimited email storage to Yahoo! Mail users worldwide today. When it hits your account, you’ll notice the storage meter has disappeared — meaning, you just don’t have to worry about deleting old messages ever again!

As a reminder, while we wish we could simply flip a switch and “unlimit” everyone at once, we’ll be rolling this out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition. Thanks for your patience.

Happy emailing!

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail

As Yahoo! Mail approaches its 10-year anniversary, I’m the lucky one who gets to announce that we will begin offering everyone unlimited email storage starting in May 2007. To mark the occasion, I checked in with David Nakayama, our group vice president of engineering, for some perspective on this milestone. In case that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the developer of RocketMail, one of the world’s first webmail products, which Yahoo! acquired and relaunched as Yahoo! Mail in 1997.

Dave reminisced: “I remember getting in a room to plan our RocketMail launch over a decade ago and worrying that our original plan of a 2MB quota wasn’t enough, and that we needed to be radical and DOUBLE the storage to 4MB per account! It’s ironic that I routinely send and receive individual mail attachments bigger than that now. Our total capacity for mail accounts back then was 200GB for all of our customers. At Yahoo!, we’re now receiving more inbound mail than that every 10 minutes.”

When Yahoo! Mail launched 10 years ago, users got a whopping 4MB of storage for their entire mailbox. Today, you would fill that up with a single picture from your weekend.

This got me thinking about how the storage capacity of other popular technology products has changed. A quick snapshot:

1997: Yahoo! Mail launches with 4MB of storage

• SanDisk introduces 2MB flash card for the Canon PowerShot.
• Compaq announces “high capacity memory upgrades” in four capacities, including 16MB, 32MB, 64MB and 128MB capacities.
• Caleb introduces the Ultra High Density floppy disk drive that stores up to 144MB on a single disk.
• The first iPod is still a gleam in someone’s eye. It’s not introduced until 2001 and comes with 5GB of storage.

2004/2005: Yahoo! Mail upgrades in 2004 to 100MB of storage, followed by a jump to 1GB in 2005

• Olympus upgrades to 1GB flash memory card.
• HP announces 160GB storage upgrade for its Media Center PCs.
• Corsair in 2005 announces a USB flash drive with 4GB of storage.
• Apple announces the Fifth Generation iPod with 30GB capacity.

2007: Yahoo! Mail announces unlimited email storage

• SanDisk launches 8GB flash card for photo storage.
• Alienware introduces a desktop computer with 1 terabyte of storage.
• Apple currently ships the newest 80GB iPod, launched in 2006 and holds up to 100 hours of video.

We’re psyched to be breaking new ground in the digital storage frontier by giving our users the freedom to never worry about deleting old messages again. And, like any responsible webmail service, we have anti-abuse limits in place to protect our users. BTW: As much as we’d like to just flip a switch and “unlimit” everyone on the same day, we’ll be rolling this out over a few months to facilitate a smooth transition — we know there’s virtually nothing more precious than your inbox.

We hope we’re setting a precedent for the future. Someday, can you imagine a hard drive that you can never fill? Never having to empty your photo card on your camera to get space back? Enough storage to fit the world’s music, and then some, on your iPod? Sounds like a future without limits.

Beats a slice of birthday cake, eh?

John Kremer
Vice President, Yahoo! Mail