Yahoo revamps local e-mail service

Yahoo Hong Kong has overhauled its free e-mail service, the city's most popular with an estimated 1.6 million users, to add more online social-networking features and custom applications.

The redesign and mail enhancements, which will be available to users from the end of this month, include a bigger attachment size limit for photographs and files to 25 megabytes, up from 10MB.

'The major improvements in design, photo-sharing and social features will help Hong Kong users connect with the people and information that matter most to them,' said John Kremer, the vice-president at Yahoo Mail.

The Chinese-language Yahoo Hong Kong's mail site has a streamlined design and features the Application Box. This allows users to better manage e-mail folders, personalise their calendar and notepad and add third-party applications, programmes created by outside developers approved by Yahoo Mail.

Common applications used include photo-hosting sites Flickr and Photobucket and online payments service PayPal. Social-networking links added in the new Yahoo Mail format include Twitter and YouTube.

'Yahoo Auctions and Yahoo Movies will be the first batch of our apps to be made available locally,' said Alfred Tsoi, the managing director at Yahoo Hong Kong.

He said the company would work with independent third-party developers to add more apps to its service.