Rollout of messaging and mail integration begins this week.

Yahoo will soon start to fulfill a promise it made to users several months ago to tie its new Web mail service with its instant messaging application.

Starting today and continuing over the coming months, Yahoo will activate this feature for users of the new version of Yahoo Mail, which is in beta, or test, phase but available to all users of the service.
Chats Encouraged

Yahoo officials demonstrated the integration of the Yahoo Mail beta with Yahoo Messenger in November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The audience reacted enthusiastically to the plan.

The new feature alerts Yahoo Mail beta users if their contacts are logged on to Yahoo Messenger and gives them the option of starting a text chat session from within the mail interface. If the user is composing an e-mail message but wants to chat instead, Yahoo Mail can grab the text and paste it into the text chat window. Likewise, the chat session can be automatically imported to an e-mail message form.
More Links to Come

This integration with Yahoo Messenger is the first of several tie-ups the company plans to implement in the (Yahoo Mail beta), because it wants the service to offer multiple communication options to its users, said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

Although he declined to confirm future plans, he acknowledged it would make sense to let Yahoo Mail users launch voice conversations and to create links to the company's social networking service, Yahoo 360. Another likely development would be to extend Yahoo Messenger's interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger into the Yahoo Mail beta, he said.

The beta version, a free service, offers a number of improvements over the current version, including a more agile interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that works like a desktop application. The beta was introduced in September 2005. Unlike typical Web mail services, it lets users drag and drop messages into folders, provides a pane to preview messages' content and offers the ability to have multiple message windows open.

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Viacom Inc. on Friday demanded that Google Inc.'s online video service YouTube remove more than 100,000 video clips after they failed to reach a distribution agreement.

Viacom said it sent a notice to YouTube on Friday morning asking the popular video-sharing site to remove clips from Viacom-owned properties including MTV Networks and BET. The media company controlled by Sumner Redstone said its pirated programs on YouTube have generated about 1.2 billion video streams, based on a study by an outside consultant.

A YouTube spokeswoman said it would comply with the request and added, "It's unfortunate that Viacom will no longer be able to benefit from YouTube's passionate audience, which has helped to promote many of Viacom's shows." The company has historically removed clips at the request of copyright owners within hours.

"Filtering tools promised repeatedly by YouTube and Google have not been put in place, and they continue to host and stream vast amounts of unauthorized video," Viacom said in a statement.

The company is taking a hard stance against the Internet's most popular video service Youtube, which is renowned for its quirky, viewer-contributed video clips as much as for being a repository for unauthorized television shows.

"This is a negotiating tactic," UBS analyst Ben Schachter said. "We think a deal gets done ... The terms have major implications for the value of content online."

Viacom's move also runs counter to the strategies employed by other media companies, such as the Warner Music Group, Vivendi-owned Universal Music Group, and General Electric controlled NBC Universal, which have all landed deals with YouTube to test the service.

CBS Corp, which was spun off from Viacom, also has a deal with YouTube.

CBS, which last year said YouTube viewership of its clips contributed to traditional TV viewing, held a contest in which YouTube users submitted videos they created. The winners will have their videos aired on CBS television.

Hours after Viacom made its announcement, CBS said it would show the first winning video on Sunday.

Universal Music threatened to sue YouTube last year, but reached a partnership with them. Its deal included taking a small stake in the company, according to several published reports.

Even as some media companies have decided to experiment with YouTube, other companies including News Corp., NBC and Viacom have held discussions to create its own online video business, sources have said.

Last October, Viacom asked YouTube to take down some of its video clips including those from hit shows from cable network Comedy Central, whose on-air talent joked about the site's popularity during the shows. But thousands of clips remained on the service.

"YouTube and Google retain all of the revenue generated from this practice, without extending fair compensation to the people who have expended all of the effort and cost to create it," Viacom said. "The recent addition of YouTube-served content to Google Video Search simply compounds this issue."

It was not immediately clear what percentage of YouTube's estimated 100 million views per day Viacom clips represent.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told analysts on Wednesday YouTube was in "various stages" of introducing technology, such a digital "fingerprinting", to identify copyrighted material.

"That is an area of big research in the computer science community and also a significant investment here at Google," Schmidt said after Google's quarterly results.

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IT is clear that Apple is not a company that will sit back and relax while the money is flowing in. They have become the masters for developing cool and funky gadgets.

The iPhone has not yet disappeared from the front pages of technology reviews and the Apple TV has already been announced.

But the questions I have are: Is the Apple TV really cool enough and will this gadget make you rush to the closest vendor to buy one? Is this a new and fresh idea?

The cool factor

What will make this a cool product to own?

It firstly looks good; it has the ability to stream video and music from another source within its built-in wireless range.

The Apple TV has a built-in 40GB hard drive to store your music, digital photos and downloaded movies or TV episodes (not that I think any of these movies would be legal) and enjoy it on your television at any time.

All this features come with a funky new user interface and remote control.

The un-cool factor

Unfortunately for the Apple TV the list of un-cool factors is longer.

So what does make the Apple TV un-cool?

The first thing I'd like to have seen built-in to the Apple TV is an input channel, thus giving it the capability to record from your television reception.

The second thing - and this is probably one of my biggest considerations before I will buy one - is: It can't play standard DivX files.

For those of you who don't know, DivX files is an encoding for video and sound mostly used in internet downloaded movies and television episodes. Converters are available from third party developers to convert DivX files to work on the Apple TV, but this is time consuming.

And even though Apple TV looks good, and comes with a cool logo, there are lots of other similar and even better products on the market. Some have bigger hard drives, are compatible with DivX and other formats, utilise 5.1 surround sound and some even have the ability to record.

There have been reports that Cisco - under their Linksys brand - is also developing a product similar to the Apple TV, but with more capabilities. Cisco has a score to settle for the iPhone name, the name they allege Apple stole from them.

Although I still like the idea that Apple keeps developing new gadgets and broadening their focus, I think they could have done more with the Apple TV. I will definitely be the first in line when they bring out an updated version.

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