Yahoo upgrades Mail, Messenger and Search

New versions now available

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25 August 2009 12:28 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Yahoo has announced that it's upgrading three of its most-used products - Mail, Messenger and Search. "The evolution you see today reflects our focus on enabling people to connect with what matters to them most", said Ari Balogh, Yahoo's executive vice president of Products & Chief Technology Officer.

We'll run through them in order. First-up, Mail. The new features revolve around Yahoo's commitments to be more open. There's a new application box that combines calendar, notepad and a few other third party apps.

There's also enhanced photo sharing with drag-and-drop functionality, increased file size limits for attachments (from 10MB to 25MB), and a promise of more social features in the coming weeks that include auto-synced contact info.

A few improvements have also been made to the mobile version of Yahoo Mail. The company has introduced the ability to download Office docs, PDF files and photos, as well as the ability to access personal folders in your mail. At the moment, the new features are only available on the iPhone, but support for more devices is planned for 1 September.

Onto Messenger, which is seeing an improvement in video calling - a bump up in terms of quality. There's also the addition of a tab that'll let Yahoo Messenger function a little like a lifestream app - bringing in status updates from Yahoo and Twitter, as well as Flickr uploads and activity on Buzz.

Yahoo Insider has been redesigned and is now customizable by Zip Code. No idea if UK users are able to put in a postcode for the same functionality. It'll deliver localised news and weather info for where you live. Oh, and the Yahoo Messenger iPhone app has been improved too, adding the functionality to recieve messages weven when you're not using the Messenger app.

Lastly, the improvements in Search. New tools have been provided for refining search results - offering the choice to filter out all but popular sites, or select only certain types of content. Filters are also in place for spam, viruses and malware.

All the new features, unless specified, are in the process of being rolled out across the Yahoo network. If you don't see the feature you're after immediately, then try a couple of days later.