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SocialPo.st

Social media news and reviews.

When Will TechCrunch Stop Hating Yahoo?October 15 2008

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 8 2008

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

Could Jaiku Make Inbox 2.0 Possible?June 23 2008

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

Soocial: Universal Contacts…Sort OfJune 17 2008

Soocial is a new private beta that hopes to solve the problem of contact management and syncronization. They are right in saying that “there is no good hassle-free solution yet to the contact management problem,” but I’m not quite sure they have the solution– at least yet. More on that in a minute.

Soocial has a nice concept in theory. The goal is to sync and backup all your contacts from your email account, cell phone, desktop client, and web services and provide one online portal for them all. When you sign up for a new web service that wants to import your contacts, you send them to Soocial instead of uploading a .csv. Again, it’s a good idea, but there are definitely some problems.

The biggest problem is that the devices Soocial connects to are very limited; at least for the moment. For example, the only email client that Soocial syncs with right now is Gmail, and the only type of computer it syncs with is Mac. While lots of people use Macs and lots use Gmail, the majority of the worlds population don’t use either. Ironically, even though Soocial supports Macs, it has no support for syncing contacts with the iPhone. Indeed, their selection of supported phones is extremely limited. Soocial does support 37signals’ Highrise, though.

That’s the problem with trying to provide universal syncronization of anything, there will always be compatibility issues that will limit

Social Getting Site Wishli.st RelaunchesJune 13 2008

Previously reviewed service Wishli.st has relaunched, bringing a much improved interface and more features. Wishli.st’s purpose is to use the power of social networking to help you get the things you want. Friends and family donate small amounts, “micropayments”, and help you get the things you wish for, or if they are feeling really generous, they can buy your wish for you outright. It’s a neat concept, but up until now it was only limited to users in the UK. With the relaunch, though, Wishli.st is now open to anyone anywhere in the world. This obviously is a huge improvement, and it should make Wishli.st useful to the majority of the world’s population.

Another nice feature that arrived with the relaunch is the optional use of OpenID’s for authentication. This should really make things easier for a lot of people and make signing up slightly less painful. After signing up, you have to choose your desired items from a list of partners, which is somewhat limiting. It’s not too bad, though, as the partners that have signed on offer something for everyone, from books to Skype phones to gaming systems. If you still can’t find something you want, be patient; the founder of Wishli.st has told me that they are working on increasing their number of partners. To help users locate things they want, Wishli.st has added product search; again a big im