The Connected Circuit

Ten years ago logging onto a website to do your work was unheard of, at least for the everyday user. However, with today’s ever expanding nebulous that is the internet, it is becoming increasingly common for one to log onto a webmail service that provides the same or similar functionality as a full fledged desktop email client. For this post I will outline some useful web applications and services that replace desktop applications, giving similar if not the same experience as if you were never connected at all. Here is part one

First off chatting. Are those ads getting to you when using Yahoo, AIM, or Windows Live Messenger? Well you weren’t the only one. Four years ago, while using the AIM client provided by the wonderful people at AOL left this distaste in my mouth. It was crude, video ads would start to randomly play at the most inopportune moments and it came with the option of installing it’s own spyware, WeatherBug. I decided to search for other applications that would replace it, a few years later I stumbled upon Meebo. I scoffed at the mention that a web application that could replace and be more robust than a desktop equivalent, but I gave it a whirl anyway (at the time I was using Trillian and GAIM, unsatisfied with both). At first glance I was quite surprised at how nice the interface was. It was simple and clean and it left you to decide which service you wanted to log into, AIM, Yahoo, MSN and ICQ (I believe GTalk support was added later) and the part was that it worked without the need to install any applications on the browser, since it is DHTML based. Meebo appeared on the early days of the AJAX rage, so unlike other web chatting applications like yahoo’s webmessenger or aimexpress that need you to install a plugin to work, meebo works out of the box, no plugin needed. Best of all, since it was built off the same libraries created by the GAIM (now known as Pidgin) crew, it emulates the desktop experience of GAIM. However, meebo has recently partnered up with AOL, so it could mean many things both good and bad, but that is a discussion left for an entirely different post. So, yeah meebo is awesome, give it a whirl if you don’t believe me. To get full functionality of all of meebo’s features you need to create an account which is relatively painless and won’t take you more than a few minutes.

Next up email. Outlook is arguably the best email client there is, with Thunderbird coming in at a very close second, so while investigating which web email app could replace Outlook or Thunderbird left me extremely skeptical, but I was up for a challenge. So here are my findings. It was a close race between two very great clients, but Gmail came out on top of Yahoo!’s email service. Particularly because of its zippiness and ease of use. Both services offer very similar functionalities, both can recieve mail from other account (POP only), both can write email that appears as like it is from another account, both have chatting capabilites, and both has its upsides and downsides, but the one I ultimately use and like more is Gmail.

The key differences between Gmail and Yahoo! Mail:

• Gmail supports tagging as opposed to Yahoo’s folder’s
• Gmail’s chatting supports both AIM and GTalk, Yahoo’s is only Yahoo
• I find that Gmail’s spam filter is much better than Yahoo’s, but Yahoo’s seem to be improving over time
• Yahoo has tab support ala Firefox, a feature that Gmail sorely lacks
• Gmail has less obtrusive, but arguably privacy invading context relevant ads
• Yahoo’s interface is much nicer than Gmail’s

Overall I liked both services, but Gmail is something I just can’t live without. Yahoo’s UI feels more desktopy than Gmail’s but Gmail’s has a tad more functionality and its zippierness won me over. I have had problems with Yahoo’s new interface at times, but had very little trouble with Gmail’s other than the occassional problem loading, which was impart to my crappy DSL connection.

News Reader, RSS Reader,
This was a complete tie between Google Reader and Bloglines. Both are pretty awesome, the only reason why I use Google Reader over Bloglines is because of its stat tracking and ability to share and star items. I like Bloglines interface and media rendering much better than Google Reader’s, but the sharing and stat tracking is unparalleled. For those who don’t know what RSS is, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a stream of news that is automatically updated using XML, so instead of going onto say Engadget to read up on new gadgets, just enter the RSS feed address into the news reader and it will aggregate all the posts for you. It is a pretty awesome technology, essentially cut the amount of time I browse the interwebs by half. The only downside is the loss of random discovery that you get from browsing the interwebs or using a service like StumbleUpon. For more a more technical overview of RSS go here: RSS Wikipedia Page, RSS Spec on XML.com and here.

This concludes part one of this series. Stay tuned for part two of this series

--written by Peter To--