Yahoo! Makes a Smart Move, For Once.

Speaking as a former Yahoo! employee, I’ve watched them make stupid move after stupid move the past few years. Their biggest, of course, was laying me off last year . For a struggling company it was odd to see them put so much money and time into projects that the everyone watching them just knew would go no where.

So it was with great relief today to see that Yahoo! made, what I think is a smart move today. They are reducing the scope of their mobile applications development to just the iPhone. They will no longer develop applications for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, or Java devices. Instead moving all of those devices and any other than the iPhone to their mobile web.

Yahoo! is going from having to support 300+ devices and dozens of different networks (each with different requirements and licensing fees) to just 1 device without the need to worry about the networks and their extended approval times of up to 6 months or more. This, hopefully, will save them a lot of money.

Yahoo currently has 4 applications released for the iPhone. For the list, check after the jump.

Continue reading Yahoo! Makes a Smart Move, For Once. »

Yahoo! Brings OneConnect Native App to iPhone OS

OneConnect is an attempt by Yahoo! to unify all of the social networks you use into one application. They have released this pretty interesting looking application to the iTunes App Store now. Downloading now…

Features:
* Get a full-featured phone book that can integrate contacts from your Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone, and your social networks (including: Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, hi5, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube).
* Connect with your friends via Yahoo! Messenger or SMS. Have fun with emoticons, avatars, and photos.
* See what’s happening on your favorite social networks with an at-a-glance view of status updates, photo uploads, and more.
* Find your favorite people quickly and call, message, or send an e-mail—with one tap.

[ Read More @ Yahoo! ]

Palringo is the first multiple IM service client released for the iPhone OS — hopefully it won’t be the best.