RSSGeocities Developers Turn to Web Mail
By David Worthington | Published April 15, 2005, 8:31 AM
The same Web entrepreneurs that developed the original portal software behind Geocities chat and bulletin board systems are on a mission to turn Web mail on its head. Goowy Mail, which is currently in beta, uses Flash-based software to produce a rich Internet application that functions like a desktop e-mail client.
Goowy Mail reproduces the majority of a desktop e-mail application's functionality with features like keyboard shortcuts, right-clicking, animations, alerts, sounds, and spell checker. In addition to its core feature set, Goowy has POP3 support, advanced mail and contact management and the ability to multitask - meaning e-mail is sent and received in the background while the user performs other tasks.
Reflecting today's hostile Internet environment, the service also has the standard issue of malware and spam blocking tools. Upcoming features are calendaring and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed support.
Earthlink will launch a similar service for it members in May called EarthLink Enhanced Webmail. Like Goowy, EarthLink's offering follows a Flash-based development model that uses software created by Laszlo.
When asked why a Flash-powered interface was chosen, Goowy co-founder Alex Bard explained that support for multiple platforms was hard to do with programming languages like DHTML, and that Flash was the right model from a proprietary distribution perspective.
Unlike Laszlo, which licenses out its technology to clients, Goowy will run its service independently as a hosted enterprise-scale competitor to other Web mail services.
Bard also said that Goowy will not play the "numbers game" by offering massive storage. Instead, Goowy is offering just 100 MB of space that it will "dynamically adjust" with real-time analysis of user behavior. Google recently upped its Gmail storage capacity to over 2GB, with Yahoo set to offering 1GB of space.
"People do not want to mill through five years of e-mail," said Bard. "People like to be more organized with their files but at the same time we do not want to be prohibitive."
Goowy is enticing users to register for its service with weekly giveaways. This week, new members have a chance to win a drawing for an iPod Shuffle. The company claims that it already has in excess of 4,000 active accounts through word of mouth advertising alone, and projects a total of 10,000 members within the next month.
Accounts are free of cost and ad-supported; more advanced services will require a subscription.
Why is it we all hate visiting Geocities sites... Ads Ads Ads... so what will be the big problem with their great web mail idea??? Ads Ads Ads... what else?
So guess what folks like the man said... 2 Gigs and counting.
Score: 0
|Over 2 gigs and counting!!
Score: 0
|They don't stand a chance with their curent model.
They're asking people to choose between either a flashy-interface or 20x the storage space just because they don't have the loot to support giving people a gig (or more) of space. In addition, they are throwing ads right up in your grill instead of following the Google trend of leveraging less in-your-face advertisement placements.
They need to re-model their connections to support everything from POP3 (already their) to IMAP4 to HttpMail to Exchange web store... then they can create a subscription model that allows people to pay a small monthly fee to use their flashy interface to work with their own email services. I would pay to have this replace my hotmail account's interface. Even though it doesn't compel me to replace my Gmail or OWA interfaces.
Score: 0
|It's not too bad. I like the UI and responsiveness.
I dislike the fact that when they want to bring in ads, my FireFox AdBlock is not going to work properly.
Score: 0
|This is not something I would use on dial up I can see where it will be slow. Also there does not seem to be a way to format text, center text and etc if you are using firefox. And I agree about the ads, you will not be able to do a universal adblock (*) in Firefox or Maxthon because this will shutdown the whole interface since it is based on flash. I suppose it would be a nice alternate to a regular e-mail account but it needs a lot of work before I use it over hotmail or yahoo.
Edit: 15 April....2025 PDT
I received this reply when I asked them about the formating issue. At least they respond in a timely manner.
"Thanks for your feedback and continued use of goowy mail.
We expect to introduce a way to send formatted text within Firefox within the next 4-6 weeks. This is the largest functional difference in the implementation of our UI between IE and Firefox, meaning that everything else should pretty much work consistently between the two browsers.
Please keep using the system and sending us feedback. It is how we will make goowy mail better. Also, please help us by spreading the word about goowy mail to all of your friends and family. Thanks for your support.
goowy mail team"
Score: 0
|