Yahoo’s Tools for “Anyone Creating Content”

Yahoo! offers a whole slew of free tools for “anyone creating content” (their words, not mine) on the web. Although some of the tools are only related to their companies (like del.icio.us for bookmarking), overall they provide quick functionality to make your blog or web site a little user-friendlish.

Y!Q (beta)

Y!Q allows you to place contextual searches within your posts or content. Unlike other contextual linking tools, this one doesn’t create a pop-up javascript window as soon as you rollover. So it stops your visitors from wanting to chuck their computer out the window while reading your content.

It also comes in two flavors “contextual” and “inline”. I prefer the inline, since it is less intrusive and doesn’t require the reader to jump pages unless they find something of interest.

Collin Grady put together a Wordpress Plugin for Y!Q.

This tool has been around, and in beta, for a couple years. Please leave a comment on why you would or wouldn’t use this.

Yahoo! Action Buttons

These buttons allow you to quickly add functionality for: bookmarking (only on del.icio.us), sending (via default email client), blogging (via Yahoo! 360), and printing.

Ok Yahoo, so I can see how you want to promote your own companies, but limiting how it’s blogged and how it’s bookmarked really limits the number of people that would want to really use these tools for their full potential anyway (leave a comment if you agree or disagree). Del.icio.us is the select choice for online bookmarking, by providing capabilities for other tools, you would probably get more users for del.icio.us anyway.

Unlike the Y!Q, this is actually very easy to place into a blog post. For WordPress, use the HeadSpace 2 plugin to include the required javascript on the individual posts you would want to include these buttons on.

Either way, the bookmarking, print, and emailing quick links have their purposes.

Yahoo! Search

You have three options: search your site, search Yahoo! News, and search the web. All of which you can turn on or off. It does include the Yahoo! logo beneath the search box, but it also includes the functionality for “popular searches”. I thought this was pretty nifty.

You are able to specify the width that you want, so it’s easy to fit it in any layout. And last but not least, you can adjust the color themes.

All this is done in a couple steps, and Yahoo! provides a management tool to handle the search engines you create. I can’t complain there.