Yahoo Geocities will be closed on October 26, 2009

This morning I received an announcement from Yahoo Geocities that Yahoo Geocities will be closed on October 26, 2009. For those of you who store any file there, you had better backup from now, whether you want to move those files to another place or to your computer. Below is the announcement from Yahoo Geocities:

Important notice: GeoCities is closing.

Dear Yahoo! GeoCities customer,

We're writing to let you know that Yahoo! GeoCities, our free web site building service and community, is closing on October 26, 2009.

On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files.

What You Need to Do
If you'd like to move your web site, or save the images and other files you've posted online, you need to act now by choosing one of the following options:

• Move your site to Yahoo! Web Hosting.
We know your files are important to you, and we want to make moving to Web Hosting as easy and affordable as we can. For a limited time, you can move your files automatically, take advantage of terrific features like a personalized domain name and email, even redirect your GeoCities web address to your new site — all for only $4.99 a month for a full year.
For more information and complete terms, please see our special offer now.

• Download your files to your own computer.
With your pages and images saved offline, you can re-create your site with any hosting provider.

To quickly download your published files, visit your GeoCities web site, right-click on each page, and choose Save Page As... from the menu that appears. Choose a location on your computer to save your files, then click OK or Save. Learn more about downloading your files.

Don't Wait
Please be aware that after October 26, your GeoCities files will be deleted from our servers, and will not be recoverable. If you'd like to save your files, you must download them now or move to Yahoo! Web Hosting. If you need assistance, please visit the help center.
We want to thank you for being a GeoCities customer, and hope you continue to enjoy our other Yahoo! services.

Best regards,

The Yahoo! GeoCities team

If there is very important file, you had better backup from now because when ht time comes, your file will be deleted by Yahoo Geocities.

Music labels strike a deal over internet radio

Good news has arrived to the millions of streaming music fans of the world. Internet radio that was once almost killed off by the record labels because of new royalty fees, has been saved.

In 2007 the federal royalty board ruled that streaming music websites, such as Pandora, need to pay a fee for each song played. Starting next year the rate would have jumped to 19 cents a song and that would have severely hurt the streaming services.

"Webcasters with significant advertising revenue, like Pandora or Slacker, will pay the greater of 25 percent of revenue or a fee each time a listener hears a song, starting at .08 cent for songs streamed in 2006 and increasing to .14 cent in 2015. Pandora had $19 million in revenue last year and expects that to rise to $40 million this year"

Record labels are increasingly seeing the benefit of the streaming sites that allow you to alter your listening habits. Because of this, many users discover new bands or songs that they like and will then likely purchase more music. If record labels would have killed off internet radio they would have lost even more money because of the loss of music purchases.

If you're one of the millions of music streamers you do not have to worry about your favorite service being taken offline by the industry.

Yahoo to Retire Yahoo Messenger 6.0 Through 7.5

Yahoo Messenger is one of the most widely used Instant Messaging clients in the world but with a large install base comes a large set of problems, one of them being that many users don't update to the latest version as soon as it is available so backwards compatibility and interoperability is a main concern. However, at some point users will have to be 'convinced' to upgrade and this is what Yahoo is doing as it has announced the 'retirement' of the old Yahoo Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5.

“As Yahoo! Messenger gets older so too do some of the “vintage” versions that are still in use by some users. In an effort to provide the best experience for our users and maintain high security standards, we will officially retire Yahoo! Messenger versions 6.0 through 7.5,” announced Yahoo.

The official retirement date is set for August 2009, after which only Yahoo Messenger 8.0 and above will be supported. People still using the old versions will be notified of the retirement inside the application and after the date limit they will not be able to sign in and use the service with those clients.

Yahoo offers several options for those affected. The most obvious one is to upgrade to the latest version of Yahoo Messenger, 9.0.0.2162 at the time of writing, available right here on Shaz3e. The latest version of the IM client offers enhanced security as well as some advanced features like voice calling and the possibility to chat with friends using the Windows Live Messenger.

If upgrading to Yahoo Messenger 9 isn't an option, you can always use the web client available at webmessenger.yahoo.com, which has the advantage of being platform-agnostic, requiring only a browser. The web client offers some benefits too, a useful one being the ability to access your message history from anywhere. And if you still aren't satisfied you could also use the built IM client in Yahoo! Mail, also available for users of Yahoo! Mail Classic.

Blind Search

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Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2162 Released

Yahoo! Messenger allows you to quickly exchange messages with your online friends. Unlike e-mail, instant messages appear as soon they're sent. By downloading the application to your computer, you can send instant messages. Other features include voice chat, file transfer, mail and stock quote alerts, sports scores, news, and much more.



Download: Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2162

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2161 Released

Yahoo! Messenger allows you to quickly exchange messages with your online friends. Unlike e-mail, instant messages appear as soon they're sent. By downloading the application to your computer, you can send instant messages. Other features include voice chat, file transfer, mail and stock quote alerts, sports scores, news, and much more.



Download: Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2161

Yahoo seeks social media acquisition

While much news has surrounded Yahoo in regards to its own acquisition, at the hands of Microsoft, reports indicate that Yahoo is doing some shopping of its own.

Ari Balogh, Chief Technology Officer told Reuters, "It's a good time to be buying now."

No specific names were given by Yahoo. Balogh would only mention "interesting possibilities."

He also stated that Google is indeed the victor when it comes to the current generation of search, however, Balogh stated, "I believe search is going to be far richer... there's a whole other round or two to go in the search game and that's where we intend on playing."

Meanwhile, talks continue between Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in regards to a search partnership.