Phil Bradley's weblog

Yahoo maps show old Wembley

I couldn't really believe this, but Yahoo is using a satellite map of London that is so old you can still see the Wembley Twin Towers:

Really am quite speechless on this one! The old stadium - the one you're seeing here was demolished in 2003. So at a guess, we're looking at an image that's about a decade old.

Here it is again, closer:

What's interesting are the Copyright dates, of 2008 for GeoEye, I-cubed and 2011 for Yahoo! Inc. I'm still astonished.

Searching for other engines on Yahoo!

Ohh, little bit of sour grapes here, or a twisted sense of humour - you pays your money and you takes your choice. Anyhow, search for MSN, Google or Ask on Yahoo and you'll get something like:

Funny, but just a little ... petty?

Risky websites to be flagged in Yahoo! Search

SiliconRepublic.com: Risky websites to be flagged in Yahoo! Search. From the news report:
Websites that may harm a user’s computer just by visiting them will be omitted from Yahoo! search engine rankings, following a partnership between the search company and security firm McAfee. The new service, entitled SearchScan, also identifies sites that have shown bad email practices, flooding users’ inboxes with spam emails.

SearchScan launched in beta version today and is available for Yahoo! Search users in the UK, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Yahoo! Mindset disappears

Yahoo! Mindset was a great resource - it was the usual search engine, but with a slider option to allow users to re-rank results into either shopping or research relevance. It wasn't brilliant, but it was a great idea. And now it looks as though it's died a death. I found one recent reference in a blog to it, but nothing else. All the links (including those from Yahoo!) are dead, so I think we can say this is now defunct. Which is a shame.

Google priest at the Microsoft Yahoo wedding

News from the BBC: Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo. They're offering £22.4bn in cash and shares (which values Yahoo at three times the size of M&S), and that's 62% over Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday. This isn't really that much of a surprise, since neither has been able to really compete against Google. Yahoo particularly has been suffering recently (and in the light of my previous 5-year post where they were trying to make more money it's even less surprising), so it's not any great surprise. However, I don't think that either particularly want to get married, and it's really Google who is officiating at this particular joining.

Out of interest - do a search for the story on Google, Yahoo and Live. On the face of it, the Yahoo news is superior, offering me an article from Forbes which focuses on why Yahoo can't fix Microsoft. Really interesting story, until you realise that it's months old. Yahoo however is telling me that its only a minute old. Live is giving me next to no interesting stuff, while Google is right on the nail. I think that pretty much says it all.

Delicious Integrated Into Yahoo Search Results

Delicious Integrated Into Yahoo Search Results. Well, according to TechCrunch they are. I say 'according to' because I can't see any sign of it when I do the same search (java). Yahoo have slid this in quietly and there's just a little Delicious square icon with 'x people bookmarked this page under <tags>'. Makes sense to me - we've already seen FuzzFind incorporating Delicous results into the mix, and since Yahoo actually own Delicious you'd expect them to start using it sooner rather than later.

However... it's annoying that I can't see it! I'm still getting the plain old Yahoo results.

Newbie's Guide to Flickr

The Newbie's Guide to Flickr is a very good overview of what you can do with flickr. It's very well written and easy to follow. If you've been uncertain about trying this resource, read this and then give it a go!

Yahoo! UK Answers

Link: Yahoo! UK Answers. Yahoo is launching their very popular answers service in the UK, and it's already proving popular. In common with the .com version they've got a celebrity to ask a question - Jonathan Ross 'If mankind wipes itself out, what species will become the dominant life form, and why?' There are currently 360 answers, ranging from the serious (rats or cockroaches) to the silly (Z list celebrities). Yahoo is getting a different celebrity to ask a different question (obviously!) each week for the next 8 weeks.

It's going to be interesting to see how the UK version develops over time, and how it differs from the .com version (which, from my experience, is rampantly homophobic and rabidly right wing Christian fundamentalist). Of course, if you don't like it, there's always Google Answers, Answerbag, Wondir, Ask Philosophers, Otavo, or any of the others that I'm sure are out there.

Flickr #1 Photography Site in UK

Link: Flickr #1 Photography Site in UK. Not a stunning surprise this one - what's more surprising is that it's taken that long to get there. It's now 1st above Photobucket and Webshots Community, with ImageShack in 4th and Funtigo in 5th. There's a bunch of others behind that, most of which I don't know.

It's the little things that irritate

I'm putting a presentation together at the moment, and I want to refer to 'My Yahoo'. Now, when I click on the link my.yahoo.com I get sent to the fairly horrible URL http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/my_init?.intl=us&.partner=my&.from=i which I'd rather not include in my presentation. Sure, I could tinyurl it, but I prefer, when I can, to keep to original addresses when possible. So, if I cut the URL back to http://e.my.yahoo.com/ I get a page saying do you yahoo?. That's all. Nothing else. No 'I'm sorry, you're not in the right place' or 'I'll redirect you in a second'. No. Just nothing, except this sarcastic, pointless little message that isn't any use to anyone.
Is it too much to expect Yahoo to, y'know... be helpful about such things?