The big news from Yahoo yesterday may have been the fact they has decided to add an RSS folder to Yahoo Mail as reported here by SiliconBeat. I am not part of the beta group therefore have not seen this new folder quite yet. Though to do think it will help the general non-RSS using population have a better handle on RSS. RSS folder aside, I did notice yesterday while checking my Yahoo email account that I had an unusual grayed out picture next to my name in my inbox. Upon click the image area I found out that Yahoo had implemented a new feature into Yahoo Mail in the form of Yahoo! Avatars. At first I had never seen the product before but apparently Yahoo has been offering them as an emoticon for Yahoo Instant Messenger since April of 2004. I use Trillian or AOL for instant messaging therefore was not familiar with the feature.
What is an avatar? An avatar is an icon that you can create in Yahoo similar to making a cutout character that you can customize to express yourself online. You can select what this person wears, hair color, eye color, face shape, clothing, background and even add props. Avatars also let you display your current mood similar to iMood discussed previously (September 25, 2005) on Somewhat Frank. I now am quite familiar with Avatars as you can see I have
created one here of myself, Frank Gruber, with my hazel green eyes and everything. So
now everytime I go into my Yahoo mail account I see a blinking animated image that
looks strikingly similar to me.
It appears others in the blogosphere were just as surprised to find Yahoo Avatar in their inbox judging by these posts on astrochimp, Phil's Slice and Aspiring Minimalist. I am not quite as cynical of the idea, I like it. Avatar is a cleaver name. Though it isn't new technology or groundbreaking my any means but I appreciate that Yahoo is giving me the freedom and ability to express myself in another form. In this instance it is that of an animated state with penguins at my feet.
UPDATE: My girlfriend read this post and wanted to create her own Avatar. So we had to create a Yahoo account for her but after the initial set-up she was able to create her Avatar shown here.
