Rob Larsen

In the middle of moving all those underscore delineated URLs to dash delineated URLs*, Google went ahead and announced the rel="canonical" scheme for defining the preferred URL for a piece of content. While it's not the biggest deal for me, other than the "/" vs "/index.php" question, for many people with more dynamic systems it's a big deal. Bravo to everyone involved as it's a really straightforward, easy-to-implement solution to a common, troublesome problem.
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Apparently, Yahoo! is resurrecting their Rocketmail.com domain name for freemail accounts. For this of you who don't know, Rocketmail was one of the the first free email services out there. Yahoo! purchased them all the way back in 1997. Which scares the hell out of me since I had a Rocketmail account and 1997 seems like an entire lifetime ago at this point (and in some senses it is since I've embarked on an entirely new career since that time.) Interestingly, my day-to-day Yahoo! account is actually that same converted Rocketmail account, a fact I'm reminded of often as my login has .rm appended to the end of my old Rocketmail username.

I wonder how many of those are still in operation?

Considering I'm a pro flickr user and use several other Yahoo! services I think I'm at least one user who has converted profitably from the Four11 purchase all those years ago.

Experienced surfers (that’s a nice way to say “old”) will recognize Rocketmail as one of the first free e-mail services around, acquired by Yahoo (along with its owner, Four11) back in 1997. Other than for nostalgic reasons, I doubt many surfers will run to register their name@rocketmail.com accounts; the domain name is a bit too long for today’s standards.

Ymail And Rocketmail? Sorry, Yahoo, But That’s Not Enough to Thwart Gmail