Goowy...
web home away from home
Many times people need a tool to travel with them where ever they go. They may not have a laptop nor can they afford one. They don't have a PDA like a Palm or a Windows Pocket PC device but they want to take their calendars, files, and email with them. This is where Goowy comes in.Goowy is a Web 2.0 service. You may be asking yourself, "what is this Web 2.0 he speaks of?" I'm glad you asked. Web 2.0 is not a new internet but several older technologies that have been combined, for instance using Flash, Java, PHP and Perl to make a web page that is almost like an application on your computer. That is what Goowy is made of.
Goowy Desktop
This service has email, instant messaging, online file storage, address book, calendar, mini applets, and games. The email part of Goowy allows you to forward up to 3 external email addresses to it in addition to the Goowy email address. Currently, they have settings for GMail, Yahoo, MSN, and Hotmail although you can setup a custom one for .Mac addresses or your current email provider. There is also an option to auto reply for incoming messages.
The instant messaging is what sold this writer. We all have them the friends that are the odd balls that are on Yahoo or AIM or MSN when everyone else is on one of the other clients. Now they do have applications that can log you on to several Instant Messaging services but this is on a web page that allows you to log on to these services from where ever you are or get to them when you are not an admin on your machine and thus can not install the applications. It works with all of the IM clients listed above and also ICQ for all of the old school IMers out there.
The address book feature works just like any other address book. It will allow you to import your contacts from online email services like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc You can also import them from your desktop client provided that you can export to a .csv file. Mac OS X's address book, by default, does not allow you to be able to do this.
Online file storage has been around for a while but it is also included in this. You get 1GB of storage space for all your files that are less than 10MBs.
Calendar is, well, a calendar. You can put all of your important dates and holidays in there. Pretty basic stuff.
Kind of like Konfabulator or Widgets in Mac OS X, Mini's are little apps that run on your screen. They have little weather minis and RSS feed minis. They are pretty limited on selection right now but from what I understand they are working on getting more of them.
Last but not least are the Games. They've got all kinds of games ranging from Pong to Donkey Kong. Very addicting games that I have honestly lost many hours on. The games all play within the web browser window so if you are using tabbed browsing you can easily switch back to looking at the company website when the boss comes walking by.
This is a great tool for people that are on the go or people that want everything all in one place. The best thing about this is the cost. It is all free unlike services like .Mac that cost $100 per year for basically many of the same services. Granted Goowy doesn't have all of the functionality, like integration with the iLife apps. that .Mac does, but it is a great free alternative.
Check it out at www.goowy.com
Requires Flash Player 8
J. David Wegley is from Phoenix Arizona and is a member of the Arizona Final Cut Pro Users Group. He currently is an Exchange administrator for a large marketing company but also owns his own video productions business called PowerOne Productions at http://www.poweronepro.com
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