Secrets of the Internet Portals
Chapter 1: Yahoo! Secrets Chapter 2: MSN Secrets Chapter 3: AOL.com Secrets Chapter 4: Excite Secrets Chapter 5: Lycos Secrets
Yahoo!
Secrets
Secrets in This Chapter
#1: Go Directly to Almost Any Yahoo! Page—No Clicking Necessary 6
#2: The Yahoo! Directory Has Higher-Quality Results than Yahoo! Web Search—but Fewer of Them 9
#3: When You Search Yahoo!, You're Searching Google 10
#4: Yahoo!'s Advanced Search Page 11
#5: Search for Images (Using Google Image Search) 12
#6: Access All of Yahoo!'s Searches from a Single Page 12
#7: Expand Your Search Results 13
#8: Search for the Weather Forecast 13
#9: Search for News 14
#10: Search for Maps 14
#11: Search for Definitions 15
#13: Add a Yahoo! Toolbar to Internet Explorer 16
#14: Create Your Own Personal My Yahoo! 17
#15: Make Yahoo! Safe for Kids 18
#17: Search for People 22
#18: Search for Businesses 24
#19: Look Up Reference Information—for Free 25
#21: Listen to Your E-Mail by Phone 26
#22: Chat with Other Yahoo! Users 27
#23: Share Your Interests with Yahoo! Message Boards and Groups 29
#24: Use Yahoo! to Manage Your Schedule and Contacts 31
#25: Share Your Files and Photos with Other Users 33
#26: Use Yahoo! to Print Your Favorite Photos 33
#27: Use Yahoo! to Get the Latest News, Weather, and Sports 34
#28: Use Yahoo! to Run a Fantasy Sports League 37
#29: Use Yahoo! to Manage Your Finances and Pay Your Bills 37
#30: Use Yahoo! to Shop Online 39
#31: Use Yahoo! (and Travelocity) to Plan Your Next Vacation or Business Trip 43
#32: Use Yahoo! to Listen to Your Favorite Music 45
#33: Use Yahoo! to Listen to Internet Radio 46
#34: Use Yahoo! to Play Games 46
#35: Use Yahoo! to Send Online Greeting Cards 47
#36: Use Yahoo! to Advance Your Education 48
#37: Use Yahoo! to Advance Your Career 48
#38: Use Yahoo! to Stay Healthy—or Find a Doctor if You Need One 49
#39: Yahoo! Isn't Just for Humans—It's Also for Pets 49
#40: Use Yahoo! to Track Your Packages 50
#41: Use Yahoo! to Create Your Own Web Page 50
#42: Add a Yahoo! Search Button to Your Own Web Page 52
#44: Access Bookmarked Pages from Anywhere 52
#45: Get Alerted to the Latest News and Developments 53
o you Yahoo!? If you connect to the Internet, chances are that you do.
Yahoo! is the most popular site on the Internet. More people visit Yahoo! every day than visit America Online or Google or Amazon.com or eBay or any other Internet destination. With more than 237 million users in 25 different countries (and 13 different languages), Yahoo! is visited by more than two-thirds of all Internet users at least once a month.
It's fair to assume that you're one of those 237 million users, and that you use Yahoo! to find other sites on the Web. But do you know everything you can do at Yahoo!? Do you know all about Yahoo! services, including free e-mail and online shopping and personal ads and stock quotes and TV schedules and travel reservations and interactive games and downloadable music radio and real-time chat and instant messaging and... well, do you?
Yahoo! At a Glance
You know, it's hard to believe that Yahoo! is ten years old. It was back in January of 1994 that Stanford University PhD students David Filo and Jerry Yang started keeping track of their favorite sites on the Web, collecting and classifying hundreds and then thousands of different Web pages. As their little hobby grew more time-consuming, Filo and Yang created a custom database to house their Web links, and they made the database available for free on the Web. They named the database Yahoo! (an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) and, after about a year, moved their site from the overloaded Stanford servers to the larger-capacity servers of Netscape Communications Corporation.
In the spring of 1995, Yang and Filo began to realize the commercial appeal of their increasingly popular site; they accepted some venture capital and turned Yahoo! into a full-time business. Of course, the Yahoo! of today is a far cry from the database that resided on Filo and Yang's personal workstations at Stanford. Yahoo! has expanded well beyond a simple Web directory (even though most Yahoo! visitors still use the site primarily for searching). Today, Yahoo! is a full-fledged Web portal, a site that not only guides you to content across the Internet, but also contains its own proprietary content and services—everything from stock quotes to online auctions to interactive chat to free e-mail.
Just about everything you want to do with Yahoo! can be accessed from the Yahoo! home page (www.yahoo.com). You can use the home page to click through to other Yahoo! sites and services, as well as search or browse through the Yahoo! directory.
As you can see in Figure 1-1, even though the Yahoo! home page is crammed full of links, it's divided into just a few major sections.
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Figure 1-1: The Yahoo! home page.
At the top of the page, on either side of the Yahoo! logo, are icons that link to Yahoo!'s most popular services: My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Shop, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, and Yahoo! HotJobs. Click these icons to go directly to those services.
Just below the Yahoo! logo is a set of tabs. These tabs change the type of search enabled from the search box—Web (default), Images, Yellow Pages, and Products. The tabs sit on top of the search box, along with the Search button and links to the advanced search and preferences pages.
Below the search box, on the left side of the page (the main column), are links to almost every other Yahoo! service. Below this section is normally an ad for one of the many Yahoo! services, then links to Yahoo!'s business and premium services. The entire right-hand side of the page is devoted to news headlines and advertising links.
The next section in the main column contains the main categories of the Yahoo! Web Site Directory; click any link to start browsing. Then, at the bottom of the page, you find links to local and international versions of Yahoo!, as well as links to additional Yahoo! services.
There are two ways to use the Yahoo! site to find information on the Web. The first is to browse through the categories in the Yahoo! directory; you do this directly from the category links on the Yahoo! home page. The second method is to search the Web for information (what Yahoo! calls Web Search), which you do from the search box at the top of the Yahoo! home page. The results you get from each search are quite different, as you'll learn later in this chapter.
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