Reality Check: Goowy

I'm going to add a new kind of posting. Sometimes I need a "reality check" on products or services--that is, I'd like to know what other people think of something I've found. (After all, what someone fifty-one years old thinks is cool, might not be cool.)

Here's the first one:

http://www.goowy.com/

This is a free product/service that integrates (ala AppleWorks back in the eighties) instant messaging from AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ plus email, calendar, contacts, games, and file storage.

Please send your comments. You can also vote here:

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Comments

[Eric Anderson]

"This is a free product/service that integrates (ala AppleWorks back in the eighties) instant messaging from AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ plus email, calendar, contacts, games, and file storage."

Sounds to me like a operating system. Except you are letting someone else choose all your apps for you and giving them complete control of all your information. As others noted, what is their business model?

[Alexey]

No real focus, it seems. It would be more of value, if it allows me to sync MyDocuments from my various PCs, my contacts from my various PDA / Mobile / Outlook / Lotus Notes repositories... you get the drift. Like someone above said, more like .mac for the rest of us.

[Creative One]

I have to agreed with everyone here...this is an old idea with a new User Interface. I don't see any WOW factors here!

[Phil]

Don't see anything here that I can't do better with Google and/or Backpack.

Plus the name is just bad--an obvious play on GUI and Google.

[Michiel]

While it is flash, it is also flash. By which I mean the interface look slick but its completely in flash. That might or might not be a bad thing depending on your view of flash.

I don't take to flash, but its nice to see people actually USING flash instead of coding pointless and annoying site intros that everybody skips.

It seems fairly feature-complete.

What it all comes down to is scalability and business model; I have no clue as to either.

[Mike Johnston]

Nice... However... Tee this one up:

http://www.adiumx.com

[Doug Hanna]

Guy,

If you haven't already heard of it, you may want to check out Meebo (meebo.com I believe). It's funded by Sequioa Capital and is pretty interesting.

[Daniel]

Cool toy, interesting from a technology perspective, but why / what for would I use it?

[smittie]

Cute interface. Looks just like the OS X running on my Mac. Nice to know Apple is still setting the pace.

I'd like to find a good, web based IM client. I need that occasionally. The rest of it? No thanks. It's very Web 2.0. I'm just not sure that I want to be there yet. I still like having my files on my computer. Wi-Fi is pretty ubiquitous at this point and laptops are cheap. 10, 12 years ago when Internet access was largely confined to desktops, this might have been more attractive. Today, I have no need or reason to have the functionality offered by goowy on the web.

Thanks for point it out though. It's always cool to see what people are doing out there.

[Rodolfo]

You forgot to add a 3rd option: irrelevant.

[Calvin Yu]

I think this is a "Jack of all trades, master of none" kind of product. It'll draw some people initially, but once people find out that there are other applications that will do some of these specific tasks better, they'll switch. I don't see how Goowy can keep up.

[Lorenzo Planas]

Looks good, however it is a bit slow for me.

I think by trying to do a bit of everything it's gonna be hard for them to stand out on anything.

[robster]

It's Flash, which is somehow annoying. I can't put my finger on it really, maybe it's the slightly sluggish performance, maybe it's the not-so-great thing that you can't really use the Refresh and Back buttons on the browser, maybe it's the slightly fuzzy text.

I did see all the features and think 'cool - if it was an Ajax app'.

I think the fact that a product like this is out reveals the serious lack of real web/rss/chat/integration of the OS, whether that be Windows or Mac. My desktop at home is my desktop at home and there's no real way right now I can share it so I can view it at work. Goowy, Netvibes etc are a kind of half-step to that. The real triumph will be when we can have a single space where we can run the apps we own, use our files, bookmarks, news feeds, email - and access that from everywhere in a united interface that runs smoothly...

[Edouard]

I left the service 4 weeks ago due to performance issues, third party to store my file and no undertanding of the business model...let me explain that, as a user I don't want to be used to a service storing all my datas if I don't undertsand how they can survive...and if they collapse, what happens ?

[ThePef]

Where to start. I like the interface, but I am not into the aggregation model on one webpage. It is kind of like having a desktop inside of a desktop. That being said, I do believe that the core model of moving traditional internet based applications to the browser is a great one. But I am just as happy to launch meebo.com under one tab, and another application within another tab.

So, I think the longterm move will be to move applications to the browser, but I don't thing aggregation is the answer. The more important aspect is the ability of these applications to interact with each other.

One other important note: at some point corporate IT will realize this is a great move, since it will greatly reduce the number of help desk calls and move material to locations where it can be properly backed up.

[jasonkolb]

It's nice because it brings everything together in one place. However, I've actually used it in the past and it has speed issues like a lot of Flash sites. That, and like others have mentioned, the idea of keeping all of my personal stuff on somebody's server frightens me a bit.

Now, if they allowed me the choice of storing my "stuff" in Amazon S3, or GDrive, or Microsoft's Live Drive, that's a different story, because I could easily cut off Goowy's access if I felt the need. Maybe that's already underway, the ability to do that is relatively new (about a month I believe for S3, the others aren't out yet).

[Gareth Bourne]

It is very interesting, and possibly very useful. There are a number of similar sites around. They have obviously 'borrowed' a lot from OS X, which I think is a little weak and unnecessary. If they could achieve two-way synchronisation between your existing desktop email, calendar, address book and data then it could be everything .Mac currently isn't, but open to Windows users as well. As it is then I don't think it will go very far.

[BC]

On the fence. A little nervous about running everything away from my personal laptop. Doubtful that corporate firewalls will like this site any more than the others.

1. Advertsising model for revenues -- I'm tired of advertising everywhere. For something I'm going to use frequently, I'd rather it look just like an app.
2. Maintenance issues right now (11am EST 2 May)
3. Good demo: clear, helpful, well-designed.
4. Does not yet have the one sentence summary of purpose.

[j.c.sackett]

I'm not sure--on the one hand, it does seem interesting. However, there are a *number* of applications that already perform a lot of this integration, at least for IM/IM analog services.

That, and it appears to be a strictly web based service, which I'm generally leery of. Such applications tend to either succumb to maintenance issues on the production side or ennui on the user side.