14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo will introduce a number of new applications as part of its Open Strategy program that integrates third-party services into its homepage, Yahoo Mail, TV widgets or Zimbra. For Yahoo Mail the company will roll out four new applications, namely PayPal, Edit Photos by Picnik, My Photos by Xoopit and Share It by Zumo Drive, to complement the ones already available.
"We've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can ease the pain of site-hopping to help you do more things at once," Tapan Bhat, a senior vice president at Yahoo, wrote in a blog post.
The new applications, as well as the already available ones, are designed to shorten the amount of time it takes to get certain online tasks done by making them all available inside Yahoo Mail. With PayPal users will be able to send or request money worldwide right from their mail client. Edit Photos from Picnik is a basic online photo editor that allows users to touch up their photos before sending them.
Another new app is My Photos by Xoopnit, which will gather all the photos from different emails in your inbox in one place, making it easier to view and organize them. The app will have a shuffle feature and will also allow uploads. The last one, Zumo Drive, is a file-sharing application that allows Yahoo Mail users to send very large attachments, up to 100MB, share large files like videos and photos and even entire folders, but also collaborate and edit documents with their friends and family. All the new applications are available now but users who want to test them will have to sign up for the beta service.
The new apps should prove useful and it's nice not to have to let your inbox do all these simple things. Also welcomed is Yahoo's choice to use third-party applications and not go for some proprietary alternatives.