Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Bad! Yahoo! Mail!

For many years I’ve used a Yahoo! Mail account for blog-related correspondence. But no more. Lately there are problems: messages that won’t open (widely reported) and a redesign that keeps the mobile interface from automatically going to the Inbox (which is, after all, what you want to see when you check the mail). Instead Yahoo! is pushing bits of news, sports, weather, and what’s “Trending Now”:

[Trending now, or then: Herman Cain and SimCity.]

Worst of all: when I checked my Sent mail the other day to see when I requested a review-copy of a recently published book (opportunities to make such requests are a nice extra of keeping a blog), I discovered that Yahoo! Mail had turned my words into gibberish. My message began, “I’m writing to request a review copy.” But it came out like so:


Similar errors ran through the rest: blog turned into `b,og, from into `fpom. Yikes: my `credibikity was breaking into little pieces. The stranger part: Yahoo! Mail’s Preview still shows my e-mail error-free, just as I wrote it.¹ In Preview, the message begins,


It’s only in the sent message — where it counts — that everything’s a mess. I sent the publisher a second e-mail explaining what happened. No reply yet. No reply from Yahoo! either, to whom I reported the problem. In retaliation, I’ve created a Gmail account for blog-related matters: the address is in the sidebar if you need it.

¹ In other words, I don’t type when drunk. But also: I don’t get drunk. And also: I’m not joking. The gibberish is real, and embarrassing.

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