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SocialPo.st

Social media news and reviews.

When Will TechCrunch Stop Hating Yahoo?October 14

I’m sick of TechCrunch’s non-news. The unfortunately popular blog is little more than a platform to bash companies the authors don’t like– Yahoo in particular. Exhibit A: TechCrunch’s pathetic “review” of Yahoo’s new AJAX calendar.

The author, Erick Schonfeld, begins by whining about how long it’s been since Yahoo has updated it’s calendar. He then compares it to Google calendar– a product that has also seen very few updates. Why does he mention Google at all? Because he actually likes Google. That’s it. He wants to make Google look good and Yahoo look bad.

After his introduction, Erick goes on to minimize any interesting features that Yahoo has to offer with this all-around atrocious sentence: “Compared to other onlne calendar’s such as Google’s. there is nothing novel here other than the zoom-in function and the Flickr integration.” Not only does Mr. Schonfeld need to return to elementary school and learn basic principles of English, he also needs to try to veil his love-affair with all things Google just a little bit more.

Contrary to what Erick would have you believe, Yahoo Calendar does have some interesting features that Google doesn’t. For example, it has a To Do list– a feature conspicuously missing from Google’s calendar.  Google users have been asking for one since the beginning of Google Calendar, but,

Zenbe vs. OutlookOctober 7

For a long time, I’ve wanted to get Microsoft Outlook on my personal computer. I finally got it recently, but I find myself neglecting it in favor of Zenbe. Which is really better? Here’s a feature by feature comparison.

Mail

Both Zenbe and Outlook are designed to do roughly the same thing: manage your email. Of course they have many other functions, but that’s their main purpose. So who does a better job?

Manage Multiple Email Accounts

Both Zenbe and Outlook allow you to manage multiple email accounts from one window. This is useful for the vast majority of internet users who have multiple email accounts for school, work, and personal use.
+1 Zenbe
+1 Outlook

Organizing Email

Zenbe and Outlook have different systems for organizing your mail. The biggest difference is that Zenbe has tags while Outlook has folders. Tags are much more userful than folders because you can add multiple tags to one email. With folders, your email can only be in one folder at a time. Use both for any length of time and you will find tags superior to folders.

Zene and Outlook both have rules that can help you organize your mail. But Zenbe allows you to auto-tag your emails using your email address. For example, your

Zenbe Adds Twitter, Other Awesome FeaturesJune 26

Hot on the heels of my interview with the Zenbe CEO, the Zenbe team just released some awesome new features. The best email client on the web just got better. Here are some of the things they released with this mornings update:

• Gtalk support in Quick View
• Twitter support in Quick View (Twitter in your email! Beat that Gmail)
• Networks - group your contacts into networks for easily emailing multiple contacts and inviting them to zenpages.
• Calendar support for webcal:// and https:// calendar links when importing
• WebMailNotifier script for Firefox plugin

This doesn’t include lots of bug fixes and UI improvements. I hope to see more great things from Zenbe in the future!

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Could Jaiku Make Inbox 2.0 Possible?June 23

Many have called email the true social network. Anyone who emails on a regular basis already has a network of contacts to draw from, and these connections are just waiting to be capitalized on. While many have visualized “Inbox 2.0″ as a more social environment, one problem has always been the issue of profile pages. Social networks have always had one central page where you can view a particular contacts activities and information. Email has not developed a solution for profile pages– yet.

Recently, though, I read that Google has big plans for recently acquired Jaiku. Contrary to what most people think, their plans are far more extensive than a 20% time project. The Jaiku founder has all but said that Jaiku will be playing a major role in all or most of Google’s web services. What could this role be? I doubt it will necessarily be focused on status updates, though I’m sure that it will be part of it. My theory– and this is strictly conjecture– is that Jaiku may be the profile page that is the hub for a new kind of social network. In this social network, all of Google’s services could play a role: photos from Picasa, messaging from Gmail, blogging from Blogger,  events and invitations from Google Calendar, and of course status upda

Dear GmailJune 18

Dear Gmail team,
I don’t get it. Labs is a great way to test new features fast, and I think that’s fantastic. But why release such dumb features into labs? Users have been asking for new features for quite some time, and I have read several lists on major blogs of features users would like to see. I have a few myself. You all finally decide to release some experimental features, and instead of releasing ones that are actually useful, you release “Snake” and other such things. I have waited a few weeks to see if any of the features grew on me, but so far I am only using one. Maybe two of your labs features are actually useful. While Gmail groupies are trying to be optimistic and excited about these features, I’m completely underwhelmed.

I am really really surprised that the Google engineers, considering they are some of the best in the world, couldn’t come up with anything better in their free time. Don’t get me wrong, I love Gmail and I think it’s the best email client on the web. But honestly, I’m very disappointed with the features you folks have been working on in your 20% time. For example, it would be great to see features like auto tagging, better contact management, UI improvements, better integration with other Google services, etc. Gmail used to be the most innovative, and that’s why I switched to it, but you guys can’t rest on your laurels. Services like Zenbe are improving on Gmail features, and t