technical solutions and commentary

I recently listened to the podcast “Inside the Net” in which they interviewed the Alex Bard of Goowy.com (pronounced goo-e). Goowy is a web based and client based “desktop” that provides webmail, contacts, calendaring, RSS feeds, on-screen widgets, and games using flash. What’s cool about goowy is that you have the ability to retrive external POP e-mail (inclusing gmail) through the web desktop. It’s easy to customize the dektop layout although it could be a bit confusing for a non-technical person.
Oh yeah, registration is required to use goowy. There is no preview version or basic version that can remember you using cookies.

Goowy.com reminded me a lot of what ProtoPage.com has been doing but to the third degree. ProtoPage gives you the option to register, which you have to if you want to really be able to customize your settings. Protopage also does not have any games which will probably be a big draw to the younger audience. While protopage still feels like a “prototype”, which would make sense given the name, goowy is more of a fun service in which to play. Unfortunately, if more than basic services are not included with these types of web sites, much more than what hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail already offer, I can’t see them really evolving into a serious business or consumer service.

My take is gowwy and protopage is fun to play with, but I’ll stick to yahoo mail for online based calendaring, mail, contacts and RSS services.