Goowy – What’s this on my shoe?
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The idea of having a Flash based email service may dissuade quite a number of potential users from even trying a new service. Other than the visual eye candy, I see no real advantage to utilizing Flash as the backbone of a service. Nonetheless, I gave Goowy a chance and must admit that I walked away impressed. Temporarily. Although the occasional 2 – 3 second load times between switching / saving tasks seemed like eternity, the overall package will suffice to keep average users content.
Goowy aims at providing a completely web based “desktop” environment. After logging into Goowy, users are presented with a “Today” page which provides a summary of your email and a basic RSS reader (no option to import .OPML feeds). Goowy provides a free 100MB email service (@goowy.com & one POP3 account), games (Flash based of course), an address book (with the option to import 500 contacts via .CSV), and calendar.
Again, the major downside which will prevent potential new users is the fact that the service is completely Flash based. Even the “lite” version is Flash based. While a good percentage of browsers these days have the required plugin installed, terminals without Flash will prevent many users from accessing their accounts. Personally, I can’t stand flash. If Goowy plans on appealing to the masses, the “lite” version should be Flash-free. The Gant icons are a nice touch though.
I wanted to share with you an update on goowy since your last review. We released an update this weekend including the following.
1. Storage increase
All existing and future members of goowy will now receive 2GB of free web mail storage, up from 100 MB.
2. Desktop client
A new desktop client is now available for download for Windows (Mac coming soon!). The client includes the goowy toolbar which allows you to automatically launch all of goowys services right from the desktop, mail and calendar notification, auto-login, widgets, rss, games and more.
You can download the goowy desktop client at http://www.goowy.com/download.html
3. Web client improvements
We have also done a bunch of cool things in the web client including new navigation icons (reply, forward, etc.), improved drag & drop of messages, tool tips, and google maps integrated with contacts.
4. Updated logo and branding
We have updated the branding to better reflect our image.
We have a lot more on the way soon. Thanks again for your support.
I have Goowy, but couldn’t get my E-mail @ the public library as they did not allow flash download. Very inconvenient.