Ganyang Yahoo!

Yahoo! (bless its techies' hearts) has launched an improvement (ahem) of the Photos sections of all groups' homepages.  Those of you who visit the indonesian-studies list homepage and have Yahoo! accounts know I add regularly to the Researchers on Indonesia photos  folder.  Recently, it (harumph) vanished for three weeks while Yahoo! techies did their overhaul. 

Finally, it can be accessed again.  Now it is called an album.  But no more photos can be added to it, even though the help section insists an unlimited number of photos may be placed in any one album (subject to the overall Photos space quota the limit of which we are not near approaching, thankfully).  So I finally appended #1 to this album of 461 photos and created Researchers on Indonesia #2.  The gods in the machine were benevolent.  #2 accepted new photos (amen).

The buzz in Yahoo! Groups moderators' lists is that the new deal is not a big deal.  I agree.  It's no Picasa or Flickr.  The ability to list all photos in an album has been zapped.  Instead, you must page through the whole album (hit 'Next') to find out who's there.  There is a slideshow capability, but 'Next'  works better.  It's worth the extra clicks.  You can now click on nearly all photos to make them larger.  This is, of course, a disaster for people with facial blemishes (be forewarned).  Of course, if you're interested in such matters, I guess this is a good thing.

The order of photos within each album has also been re-arranged.  Now the most recently uploaded photos appear first.  Good.  But the album cover always depicts the visage of the first photo ever uploaded to the album.  Not so good.  Unless I move him, Adrian Vickers always will be the cover photo on #1 (not that he isn't sufficiently ganteng). 

So far, the one clear improvement I see (may it last) is that new photos (such as those in #2) are now reported quickly on the list homepage (before it took days).  You just click on New Photos in the homepage display, and you see thumbnails immediately.  That's neat. 

This tinkering goes on quite frequently in Yahoo! Groups.  Fortunately, most of the time it's not malevolent in outcome.  One recent innovation seriously slowed down the sending of mailed postings.  Another delayed their ever appearing for moderator approval (yes, I must approve my own postings, that's the Yahoo! way).  Yet another delayed their appearance in the Messages display. 

But searching messages has gotten faster again.  Try it.  But it's still not googlesque like it once was -- only a fraction of all messages is searched for keyword at a time.  Once upon it a time all messages were searched instantly and results were promptly listed. 

Well, maybe it is too harsh to ganyang Yahoo! Groups.  It's still free.  A blessing.  Maybe all the recent hustle and bustle is just related to Google Groups steady expansion.  If so, thank you, Google.  We forgive your recent realpolitik compromise with China's net censors.

Comments

[John]

Jangan takut, Syafa. Aku berpura saja dan sungguh-sungguh mencintai Yahoo! Marilah bersama-sama ganyang kemiskinan,
kesakitan, dan kekerasan. Siap?

[syafa]

wow, judul yang sangat provokatif! mengingatkan saya pada era 65 saat kata ini banyak dipakai dengan garang (hehe.. padahal saya belum lahir waktu itu). "Ganyang PKI dan antek-ateknya!"
33 tahun kemudian kata ini kembali diulang dengan bertukar subyek: "Ganyang Soeharto (dan antek-anteknya)!" ;-)