Goowy Updates – Beta’s of IM and File Storage

Last night, Goowy made some updates to their web desktop app (blog entry). Some of the hilights:

• Reduced login time – making it faster than ever to access you goowy account
• Enhanced mail view, with both classic and modern views, and resizeable panels
• Support for additional folders
• Public release of IM and File Storage – Although we still consider this functionality to be Beta, we are opening it up to all of our users. Thanks to our Alpha users for your great feedback!
• Automated contact import for AOL and support for manual import for Hotmail
• Guest accounts – allowing your friends to preview goowy functionality prior to creating a real account – and simplification of the account creation process – this should make it easier than ever to get them to join in the fun!
• And as always, some bug fixes thanks to comments that our members have submitted to us!

I took the liberty of bolding the items that interested me the most. And yes, login time is significantly quicker in my unmeasured, non-standardized and all too random experimenting. How about the IM aspect? First off, here’s a little screen shot (click for larger view).

Pretty easy to figure out, eh? Just to try it out, I logged in my MSN account and gave it quick test. That’s when the beta jumped out and rubbed itself all over me. Is it functional? certainly! Is it gorgeous? Well… no. Easy on the eye, yeah. But just not fully baked yet.

Took me a while to figure it out, but you can arrange your IM contacts in groups. Reason it took time is at first glance, there’s no way to create groups. However, I noticed that if I right-clicked on a contact and chose to Update them I could type in an alias for that use and type in a group name. Typing in a group name that doesn’t yet exist creates it. ok. not obvious but functional. In time, it’d be nice to see a group pulldown list somewhere… but this works for now. You won’t be able to see the buddy pictures, but you will be able to easily change the color of the various windows. Long story short: it seems to work fine.

What would I like to see added over time? Logging. Ability to alias myself. A bit more intuitive way to manage groups. Tabbed chat windows (yes, Gaim and Mabber have ruined me). Dare I ask for the ability to invite more than one person into a chat?

The File Storage uses good ol’ Box.Net. And, in a pleasant change of pace, it uses it quickly! File upload tests were very fast. Oh, and I’m pleased to note that I can use my existing box.net account. So now I can get to the same stuff directly from Box.net or via NetVibes, Pageflakes or Goowy. I bet it is a good time to be a box.net employee…

Quick note and shot of the web mail interface. In my opinion you’ll have a hard time finding a better looking web based email interface.

You can get a lot done from one Goowy desktop session now. Read feeds, manage email, play games (some good ones!), IM, manage contacts, use a calendar and move files around. There’s a lot going on here — worth a look, for sure.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Goowy IM/Storage getting closer
2. Goowy, yet another quick look
3. Netvibes adds online storage
4. Mabber, Pageflakes, Goowy
5. Goowy and ListMixer – features