Amazing all-in-one Personal Portal. Review on Yahoo

This is more about my.yahoo.com than yahoo.com

In one word - its about customizability.

You have an online personality. That has its own tastes, reading habits, friend circle, knowledge base, consumer needs, even an online version of your family life! The online life helps your real one - organizing it a bit, adding a touch of info here and a joke there.

My.yahoo is your one stop alter ego on the web. Yes their India specific shopping is a tad weak - but everything else is just amazing. Its my real mail id - more than my office id. Its my family photo album which I share with people across countries and continents. Its my source of local, global, tech news and views. Its my portfolio tracker, and my personal assistant.

Look and Feel

There are so many options you can choose to make it look absolutely different from anyone else's Yahoo page!

Colours, layouts, content (and sub categories which can be chosen from these), your bookmarks, your favourite tools, address book.....

Mail

This is one primary reason we all took to the web so easily - communication. Yahoo's new version of Mail is not just a web mail client - but also a common place for your other pop accounts, notes you may want to keep for your reference, your reminders etc.

Calendar

and scheduler rolled into one. You can view it by the day, hour,week,month - whatever! You can share it with people (and I know one guy in office who uses this over the in house stuff we have to set up meetings etc!). I've used the reminders extensively for a huge variety of purposes - and they've always worked. They're easy to set up and have lots of delivery options, recurrence etc.

The one gripe I do have is you cannot access Yahoo thru a pop client any longer for free ($25 is a lot of cash in India).

Briefcase

This is a great place to start an online photo album and share other files with friends/family. I don't need to keep taking multiple prints to send to people anymore.

YahooGroups

This is a grea place to form mailing lists of old pals, colleagues, special interest groups

Geocities

Easily build you personal site - and link to all ur other yahoo pages!

Messenger

Need I say anything on this at all ?

The best part is that all of the above is seamlessly integrated and accessible through a single sign-in! Also, its all free....

Wishlist

A Yahoo Mobile service accessible in bangalore too and preferably free.... :)

Yahoo Messenger (Java) which works from behind firewalls

Better localised content for Bangalore and other Indian cities (movies reviews, tickets, DVD rentals, faster news updates etc etc etc)