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Yahoo! gets its claws into mobiles and more
All systems Go...

By Elinor Mills

Published: Monday 09 January 2006

Yahoo!'s email, instant messaging, photo and other services are now available on mobile phones and PC-connected TVs, as well as on personal computers without using a browser.

Yahoo! Go Mobile, which the internet company launched on Friday, is a set of communications and media applications, including Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Photos, calendar, address book, web and image search, news, sports and finance.

The services will be preloaded on Nokia Series 60 mobile phones and available in 10 countries worldwide. They will also be available to Cingular and AT&T customers in the US, Yahoo! said. Additions and updates to the information in the applications will be automatically synched between the mobile phone and the user account on Yahoo! servers.

Yahoo! Go TV, which will be available before April, will make entertainment-related services available on any PC-connected TV through a small downloadable application on the PC. The services include local and video search, including access to content from CNN and MTV, movie trailers, information on movie times, TV shows, user ratings and weather, sports scores, stock data and news from My Yahoo!. The service will be free but will have ads, a Yahoo! spokeswoman said.

Yahoo! Go Desktop brings a suite of services to personal computers that do not rely on a browser. The initial applications will be Yahoo! Widgets Engine - small applications that perform tasks for users like checking for the presence of a wireless network - and Yahoo! dashboard, which provides one-click access to Flickr photos, Yahoo! Messenger, news, web search, address book and calendar as well as blogs, photos and other items posted to Yahoo! 360 by friends.

Marco Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo! Connected Life, said: "We have more than 450 million people coming to us every month, and their lives are locked into the PC browser. With a Yahoo! ID we connect the whole internet to your device."

Later in the year, Yahoo! plans to launch a service that will allow mobile users to programme the recording of TV shows remotely over mobile phones, and eventually offer music services through the TV, Yahoo! said.

Yahoo! announced in November a partnership with TiVo to allow users to schedule downloads to TiVo boxes from any internet connection. Yahoo! also said it would preload its email, instant messenger, address book and calendar applications on Motorola phones to be sold globally.

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com