Yahoo! Acquires Oddpost

weiyuent writes "We all know the arrival of Gmail has initiated a new round of competition amongst the major webmail providers. Well, Yahoo! has acquired Oddpost and will be integrating Oddpost's amazing interface to strengthen its offerings. One might wonder though how to reconcile Oddpost's MSIE requirement with Yahoo!'s (thus far) cross-platform approach. Oh well, at least it will likely put an end to Oddpost's exasperating attempt to be cute in their communication."

Comments

Not cross platform

[beforewisdom]

One might wonder though how to reconcile Oddpost's MSIE requirement with Yahoo!'s (thus far) cross-platform approach.

It is not cross platform. They do not support the ical standard or any non-windows calendar clients. ( yes, I sent them a polite suggestion )

Re:Not cross platform

[lessthanjakejohn]

Launchcast does not work in Firefox on windows either.

Re:Not cross platform

[bwy]

Cross platform? Hell, their home page is not even cross-browser apparently.

This page seems to not scroll in Mozilla 1.5 even if all the content can't be shown in the browser window because of size. You know you're in trouble when they fuck up their main marketing page.

Re:Not cross platform

[sasha328]

Mouse wheel works, but the up/down arrow keys don't work.

The source has the following interesting snippet:

/*var isIE55upForPC = ( ( ua.indexOf( "MSIE" ) != -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "Windows" ) != -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "MSIE 5.0" ) == -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "MSIE 4" ) == -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "MSIE 3" ) == -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "MSIE 2" ) == -1 )
&& ( ua.indexOf( "Opera" ) == -1 ) );*/

var isIE55upForPC = false; // for purposes of disabling signup

Notice the "disabling signup" comment for non-IE or Opera browsers.
I do not use Yahoo, but hope they change this silliness.

Photo management is another one

[prostoalex]

Google bought a photo management firm today, meanwhile Yahoo! Photos changed its disk space restrictions to unlimited quite a while ago.

Re:Photo management is another one

[LiquidCoooled]

Speaking of benefits,

Any existing Oddpost subscribers have a special bonus:

Until then, all Oddpost subscriptions will be extended, free of charge. After the migration, you'll get an additional free year of premium Yahoo! Mail service including two gigs of storage, SpamGuard Plus, advanced virus protection and lots of other goodies.

Thats from the OddPost announcement to subscribers page.

I think thats quite a sweetener. gMail certainly has rocked the boat, and competition is good.

Re:Oddpost Features

[LostCluster]

We don't know if Yahoo's going to muck up Oddpost's killer features by trying to merge it into Yahoo... or if this is going to be a premium service that they're going to try to upsell their freeloaders into, at which point it may be allowed to run as-is with a much higher userbase and budget.

Mozilla support is coming

[Ars-Fartsica]

Oddpost has stated that they are working on cross-browser support right now.

Re:Client-side 2GB goodness

[FU_Fish]

Try Fusemail. They offer an imap and webmail interface for something like $4 quarterly and they can pull your e-mail from your yahoo account and others.