Yahoo Go! -- Ahh just can't doooo it kapptannnn

I’ve been reading copious amounts of notes and reviews about the Yahoo Go! service.  I was very excited to hear about it at the recent CES show and I watched Terry Semel’s pitch.  I got very excited.  From what Terry and everyone else was describing, someone had finally done it: that is, knock the phone handset into a usable syncrhonised information repository. 

I just can’t use normal phones because I cannot stand the fact I can only store 100 names and numbers.  Or 200.  Or 500.  I have 3,500+ contacts in my Outlook — which, incidentally, synchronises perfectly well with any Windows Mobile device.  Why not your sexy Nokia?

I wrote a comment, somewhere recently criticising the stupid way in which consumers have to install the Yahoo Go! application.

If you’d like to try it out on your Nokia, you need to download the install file on you computer.  Plug in your phone and then get the Nokia Suite to install the application for you.  I understand why this is a necessary step, because I’m a huge computer geek.  Unfortunately my brothers couldn’t give a toss.  Too difficult.  Can’t be bothered.  Move on.  So there needs to be some sort of over-the-air provisioning…… which, as far as I know in this context is nigh on impossible.  Plus it’s almost 2meg to download.

When your Nokia or Motorola comes pre-installed with Yahoo Go!, well, … no you’re talking.  Sort of.

I spent all yesterday trying to get it to work on my brother’s N70.  He got it ‘free’ with a Vodafone contract recently and hasn’t done anything with it.  So I took control of it, found the Nokia install CD and went ahead and installed the application.  It all looked good — I was dreaming of a near-Blackberry style experience *in* a normal phone handset.   I even remarked publicly that I would consider redirecting my main email account to my Yahoo address if I could properly use Yahoo Go! as described on its website.  However when it came to connecting to the Yahoo Go! service – to download and to synchronise, my dream slammed into a brick wall. 

Can’t connect, it said.  I tried with "Vodafone Contract Internet".  Connecting… no, er, can’t connect, it said, again.  I tried again with "Vodafone Contract MMS".  Nothing.  Tried with Vodafone GPRS.  Nope.  After about 6 hours on and off, some how, the application connected to Yahoo’s servers to verify my username.  Then it began synchronising……….. and promptly failed. 

What a frustrating experience. It’s not all Yahoo’s problem.  It’s probably some stupid flag misconfigured at Vodafone or on the phone’s account.  Or somebody’s servers, somewhere in the chain, were up the spout. 

Yahoo! Instant Messenger works fine — but it seems that this is a separate application to the whole synchronisation business. 

So if you’ve got Yahoo Go! working — excellent.  Keep writing about it, so I can read with a level of envy.  Meantime I’ll keep pressing connect using random bearers until something else happens.