Posted 08/25/09 at 03:39:28 PM by Andy Salisbury

Earlier this week Yahoo announced that it would be tweaking its mail and messenger services to be more social by letting users update their status, share photos easily and partake in video calls.

Along with the new and improved mail and messenger programs, Yahoo plans to overhaul its search engine with a new results page that will let users retrieve the content they’re looking for, without leaving the safety of the results page.

The idea behind these upgrades comes in two flavors: firstly Yahoo hopes to bring in more people who are not already familiar with the inner workings of their products, as well as to entice those that are already using Yahoo products to spend more time on their site. “Our user base grows when things are simpler and more delightful,” said Elisa Steele, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Yahoo.

There was also an acknowledgement that Yahoo’s new hope page was being worked on, but wasn’t done just yet.

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Posted 07/13/09 at 06:45:05 PM by Paul Lilly

You probably pay your cell phone, cable TV, Internet, and several other bills online, and even so, you probably also receive a stack of mail in your mailbox every day. Enter the Swiss postal service which, starting in June, will offer subscribers a digital delivery option.

The service, called Swiss Post Box, will send subscribers scanned images of their unopened envelopes to their email address. Subscribers can then decide which ones they want opened and have the contents scanned so that it can be read online. In addition, the Swiss Post Box will offer to archive contents, send unopened letters to another address, or shred and recycle unwanted mail, The New York Times reports.

"There are very few things you get that you actually have to have in your hand," said Michael Laprade, a two year subscriber to Earth Class Mail, a Seattle-based company licensing its technology to the Swiss postal service.

The new service will start at about $18.35 per month. In the U.S., Earth Class Mail subscribers pay anywhere from $10 to $60 per month depending on how much mail is scanned.

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