Michael Yuan

Yahoo! Go is a mobile application that I use every day. It integrates with my personal online Yahoo account to provide mobile access to Yahoo email, customized news and RSS feeds, stock quotes, local maps, flickr photos from friends, and local search. It has a very slick mac-like UI that allows me to thumb through the screens quickly. Overall, the Yahoo! Go rich client user experience is much much better than the Yahoo Mobile thin client web site.

Yahoo! Go is only available on a selected list of Java devices — the idea is that the application will be “ported” and customized for each device for the best user experience. For instance, on my Nokia N80, the application graphics are optimized to look good on the large screen. However, IMHO, Yahoo! Go’s device-specific port is superficial at best. It misses some real opportunities to take advantage of what the device has to offer.

For instance, my Nokia N80 supports the J2ME File Connection and PIM API. That means the Java app will have permission to write to the local file system. Then, why on earth did the N80 version of Yahoo! Go NOT offer an option to save a Flickr image to the device gallery? If the image could be saved to device gallery, I would have been able to use it as the wallpaper or do any number of cool things with it.

Instead, Yahoo! Go took a “lowest common denominator” approach with the application — it only provides features that are common to all the phones it support and focuses the porting effort on polishing the UI. I believe that is the wrong approach. If we are porting a J2ME app to multiple devices, we should take max advantage of the device’s built-in features.