I’ll have more to say about some of the larger issues around this in a few days, but now that the embargo has been lifted (damn you, Om Malik), I wanted to point at the pair of announcements from Yahoo! Mail today and yesterday.
The Bottomless Inbox
Yesterday came word of “unlimited” storage for all mailboxes on Yahoo mail. What can I say, storage is getting cheaper all the time.
SOAP and JSON-RPC APIs
Today’s news is that the Yahoo! Mail API that we previewed at last year’s Open Hack Day is now available to all developers. It speaks both SOAP and JSON-RPC and is well documented. The SOAP API is the same API that the mail front-end uses to talk to the mail back-end mail system, so it’s the real deal. There’s sample code too. And even apps it the gallery.
Screencasts!
In the last few weeks, Matt McAlister and I sat down to talk with a few folks using our “screencast interview” style. So I present two videos for you Quicktime viewing pleasure:
- Yahoo! Mail API Overview where Matt and I talk to Ryan Kennedy (Y! Mail API Evangelist) about the API
- Flickr Postcard where we talk to Leah Culver about her Open Hack Day hack that use the Mail API, Flickr, and Greasemonkey
We’ll have lower fidelity versions up on Yahoo! Tube Yahoo! Video before too long.
Make Money Fast
Oh, I should also mention that if you build the next killer application and convince people to use it and upgrade to the premium version of Yahoo! Mail, we’ll pay you $10 per user. The sky’s the limit on how cool your mail front-end can be. We’ll handle the infrastructure.
This stuff has been in the works for quite a while and a whole team of people has been putting tons of work into make sure it all works right–especially Ryan Kennedy.
See Also
- Introducing the Yahoo! Mail Web Service (Chad on the Yahoo! Developer Network blog)
