As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of e-mail users in the world: Those for whom bundling up a thread of messages into a “conversation” makes perfect sense, and those who would much rather have an inbox sorted in strictly reverse-chronological order. The Business Insider’s Henry Blodget among the latter type: Yesterday, he posted a testy item (one of several he’s lobbed) begging Google to let Gmail users opt out of conversation view. Then he followed up with good news: Two Google executives, who he refused to name, had written him to say that Gmail will get a “normal” view in the next few months.
Tag Archives | E-Mail
Hotmail Reviewed
Nice review of the upcoming new Hotmail by Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.
2 comments
Webmail: Is It Ever Too Late to Switch?
The upcoming Hotmail upgrade looks like it’ll be the first Web-based mail client since Yahoo’s 2005 makeover with enough tangible benefits to make the idea of switching from another service worth contemplating, at least. Which got me to thinking: Do very many people really jump from one Webmail client to another these days?
Hotmail uses technology from TrueSwitch to import mail and contacts, so it should be possible for a Gmail user (for instance) to transition to Hotmail without too much in the way of technical challenges. Or you can use techniques such as POP access or forwarding to get e-mail from your old service into Hotmail without having to give up the old address.
4 comments
Hotmail Heats Up: Major Upgrade On Its Way
For several years, describing the competition between the three major Webmail providers as a race has failed to adequately capture what’s been going on. Google has been adding features to Gmail at a breakneck pace–sometimes several in one week–while Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have been ambling along as if they weren’t in it to win it. (At least in terms of quality–Yahoo Mail remains the most widely-used service in the U.S., with Hotmail in second place and the less-venerable Gmail still playing catchup.)
Now Microsoft is giving Hotmail–which is still the most popular service internationally–its first major makeover in a long time. The company expects to make the new version available in July or August; it gave me early access to a preliminary version. It’s not about aiming for feature parity with Gmail: The basics of Hotmail’s look and feel remain largely unchanged, and there are many, many useful Gmail features that have no counterparts, such as one-click archiving, a built-in task manager, and the ability to insert applets such as Google’s calendar gadget.
Judged on its own terms, though, this new Hotmail is appealing–and most of what’s new really is new, with no precise equivalent in Gmail. Hotmail also feels less densely packaged with stuff, I could see some folks preferring it to Gmail, which is beginning to flirt with bloat. (Bonus point in Hotmail’s favor: You can now choose either a threaded inbox or a traditional flat one, a pleasant change from Gmail’s mandatory conversation view.) Continue Reading →
29 comments
Threadsy Goes Public
At last fall’s TechCrunch50 conference, my personal best-of-show was probably Threadsy. It’s an integrated inbox that gives you access to multiple e-mail accounts, Twitter, and your Facebook inbox all in one place–and weaves them together, so, for instance, you can view a bio, updates, and photos for the person who sent you an e-mail message. (That feature reminds me of the Outlook plugin Xobni.)
Back then, I called Threadsy an intriguing first draft. Now it’s addressed some of my initial concerns: For instance, it supports folders (Labels in Gmail parlance), making it a plausible full-time or part-time replacement for your current e-mail client rather than a severely limited compliment. And Threadsy finally moved from private beta into general availability yesterday, so anyone who’s interested can give it a try.
Threadsy could still use some more polishing (it has a neat photo viewer, but I’m finding the photos are sometimes partially obscured by misplaced text). And it’s still impossible to be a better Gmail than Gmail (when I’m in Threadsy, I miss features like the Google Calendar widget and the ability to open up attachments in Google Docs). Overall, though, it’s inventive and useful–if you try it out, let us know what you think.
3 comments
My New iMac: Nice, But Not Without its Snags
My new 21.5” iMac arrived on Friday. I spent the weekend transferring files from my old machine and installing the applications that I wanted. The experience was overwhelmingly positive, but it wasn’t as seamless as it could have been.
Unpacking and setting up the machine was a breeze, and its quality was excellent-even though I purchased it from Apple’s refurbished Mac store. (I saved around $200.) The machine booted up, instantly recognizing the wireless keyboard and mouse. It then asked me if I wanted to migrate from another machine.
I lacked the necessary cable, so I opted not to use the transfer wizard; I had already shared folders on my old Mac. Files transferred over the air through my home network, and everything went smoothly–until I tried to set up my machine for work.
12 comments
Thrilling News! reMail is Going Bye-Bye!
Remember reMail, the clever iPhone app that let you store massive amounts of e-mail on your phone and search it instantly? Google was apparently impressed–reMail founder Gabor Cselle, a former Gmail engineer, has announced news he says he’s “thrilled” by: Google has bought reMail and he’ll be rejoining the Gmail team.
And then he shares news that doesn’t sound all that thrilling to me: Google has discontinued reMail and yanked it off the iPhone App Store. Previously-downloaded copies will still work, and users of the free version can get all the features of the paid edition. But Google will stop supporting the app at the end of next month, and there will never be another update. Starting today, reMail is a Dead App Walking.
Oddly enough, Cselle says all this on a blog with a profile that says that (A) reMail exists to radically improve mobile e-mail; and (B) it hasn’t launched yet. That’s out of date on both fronts: It did launch–in beta form, at least, to an enthusiastic reception–and it won’t be improving e-mail from here on out.
Cselle doesn’t explain why Google is killing reMail. It’s possible that the company remained impressed by Cselle and wasn’t interested in reMail itself. But it’s also conceivable that it sees reMail as the foundation of an ambitious Gmail app, and that everything that was cool about reMail will reappear at some point in a new form. We just don’t know, and Google doesn’t seem to be dropping hints.
The search-engine behemoth has acquired an infinite number of interesting startups over the years. In certain cases, that’s been good news for fans of the products those companies made–Google Earth (nee Keyhole 3D Earth Viewer) and Picasa spring to mind. (Oh, and YouTube.) And Google says that the neat Q&A service Aardvark, which it bought last week, will live on as a Google Labs project.
Unfortunately, though, what’s good news for Google and startup founders is often a bummer–at least in the short term–for everyone else who cared about the startup in question.
One comment
Am I the Only One Who Likes My Facebook Inbox the Way It Is?
Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington is reporting that a source has told him that Facebook is working on a full-blown e-mail service. It’s supposedly known internally as Project Titan, or “Gmail Killer.”
The only details Arrington mentions are that the new version is said to offer POP3/IMAP access (so you can get into your Facebook messages from anywhere) and that your e-mail address will be in the format harrymccracken@facebook.com.
Sounds good–but one of the things I like about my Facebook inbox is that it’s a spam-free island unto itself, populated only by people who I’ve granted permission to contact me. Whatever Project Titan is, I hope it doesn’t turn Facebook messaging into…well, e-mail as we know it.
3 comments
Offline Gmail Leaves Labs…But Doesn’t Arrive in Snow Leopard
(UPDATE: Google says it’s figured out how to make Gears work in Firefox within Snow Leopard.)
Gmail’s extremely useful offline access feature has graduated from Labs and is now “a regular part of Gmail.” Users of Google’s mail service can now read, compose, and manage mail even when they don’t have a working Internet connection. Well, many folks can–but not Mac users who are running the current version of Apple’s operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Offline Gmail depends on Google’s Gears framework, and Gears doesn’t work in Snow Leopard.
3 comments
Yahoo Mail is Unhappy This Morning
TechCrunch’s Leena Rao is reporting that Yahoo Mail is suffering a widespread but non-universal outage at the moment. Yup, I can’t get in to my account, but the first person I asked to check was fine.
Rao also says that Yahoo Mail is the most popular Webmail service, with over 300 million users. Let’s see if this glitch attracts even a meaningful fraction of the attention that the smaller-but-higher-profile Gmail’s hiccups prompt…