Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) will take its new e-mail service out of beta on Monday, finally, and roll out the service to around 254 million active users around the world—although they’ll have the option to keep the classic view. As well as improvements in performance and speed the new Yahoo Mail service adds some new features, notes PC World:
Integrated messaging: People will be able to access instant message chats with Yahoo IM and Live IM, and will also be able to send free text messages from within Yahoo and get the replies as e-mails (on certain carriers in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines).
Shortcuts: US users will be able to right click on underlined dates, names and keywords within messages and do things such as adding events to their Calendar, friends to their contacts, view a Yahoo Map of an address or perform a web search on a keyword.
Search: Yahoo has updated the e-mail search box by adding the ability to narrow results by sender, folder, data, attachment type and message status.
Color themes: Yahoo users will be able to select one of six customizable color themes.

PC World notes that this update is based on technology Yahoo acquired when it bought Oddpost in 2004. USA Today quotes John Kremer, VP/Yahoo Mail, as saying that a lot of the information added in the update is available elsewhere on Yahoo, “but this way, users don’t have to leave mail to perform the tasks”.