Goowy is a new email service service that's been out for just over a year. Goowy's defining feature is an interface completely designed in flash. The service was founded by four young people, all of whom were formerly involved in the design/ animation industry. As can be expected, Goowy features excellent graphics and a very intuitive user interface. In more ways than one, the buttons and fluid screen remind the user of sitting on a Macintosh OS desktop. Well, if you are on a Macintosh, then either you are going to be right at home and happy, or unimpressed and bored.

Note: The images on these pages have been optimized to 8 bit reduce size, so the colors look very plain and only show the outline of the features. The actual service looks a lot richer in color.

Goowy Services

1. Desktop

2. Email

3. Contact Manager

4. Calendar

5. Minis

6. Games!

7. Overall

1. Desktop

This is the screen you are logged into when you open Goowy. It presents links to all the individual functions with Instant Messaging and File storage disabled for now. The icons bounce like rubber balls when you click on them. Some people might like this, while others might get turned off by this. Fortunately, Goowy also offers a lite version of their service. The lite service looks and functions exactly the same, but these little animations are turned off. In addition to improving the speed of the service slightly, some people might find it less annoying and Macintosh like.

2. Email

The email interface is easy enough to understand. The list of messages are displayed on the left and the message is viewed on the right. This is much like the new Microsoft Mail Live, which I reviewed in an earlier post. I can't yet comment on whether this layout will improve productivity over what Gmail and Yahoo are using at the moment. Most people seem to be comfortable having it either way as long as there are no frames. Goowy offers 2 GB of email storage, which is clearly more than sufficient for most people.

Goowy features no advertisements in the email or web site as of this point. They would probably include them in the future though, since they need some form of revenue. The email does not seem to offer an option to send plain text mail, which I would consider to be a major disadvantage. The commonly accepted format for sending email is only pure text mail and several people, including myself prefer plain text when reading messages. I'd expect Goowy to find a way t introduce plain text option in email soon. Due to using flash, the interface is flexible enough to allow drag and drop functionality, which is a big plus in saving time.

3. Contact Manager

The contact manager allows importing from various existing services like Hotmail/MSN, Yahoo and Gmail as well as a .csv file for those using PIMs. It works quite well, but lacks he ability to add custom fields and even more fields of any sort. Most importantly, there is no way to add a photo or image of the person. The DOB also does not synchronize with the calendar application, so there is no automatic way to be aware of a person's birthday. These are things that Gmail and Yahoo have got done right and something Goowy must fix quickly to expand its appeal. Otherwise, the contact manager works well and has an interface much like the mail, where the list appears on the left and the contact details on the right.

4. Calendar

Also uses the two pane interface, with the month being displayed on the left and the daily details on the right. A somewhat simple calendar, I find that it lacks many advanced features found in PIMs or even Yahoo calendar, such as repeated events and synchronization with the contact manager. It works alright though and might meet the requirements of most people. One major feature is the support for the iCalendar protocol which means that Goowy can auto synchronize with your desktop applications like Outlook, Sunbird etc.

5. Minis

This is one feature that Goowy can take pride in offering. Minis are just like Widgets (e.g. Yahoo! Konfabulator, MSN Gadgets, Google Desktop). The mini application can be download to your computer and installed. It runs in your task bar and offers synchronization with the Goowy account for email and delivers RSS feeds as well. Minis can alternatively be run from within your browser and provide several functions like to-do lists, RSS and pod cast aggregators etc. Gmail doesn't quite offer several widgets, only a feed reader right now, but might bring in other features shortly. Yahoo offers some widget like features online in their user customized page. Goowy's advantage here is that they have more flexibility in working with flash and can design a much wider variety of online widgets, unlike Yahoo and Gmail who are stuck with AJAX. Thus goowy can offer more right within the browser instead of requiring programs to be installed on the computer.

6. Games

Yup, there are quite a number to choose from as well. These are also good addictive games, not lame ones like the several that Yahoo offers. I like some of Yahoo's games, but most of them are arcade or board games requiring two players or more. Some Yahoo games also require payment. Goowy's games are simple but enjoyable, providing a good way to simply kill time in the middle of work.

Also expect Goowy to introduce more games in the future. Here's a Goowy Tetris game:

7. Overall

Despite everything, Goowy isn't without its disadvantages though. In the options screen, clicking quickly on one setting while another is loading causes overlapping screens to appear as shown here. It could be called a minor bug, but probably won't affect the typical user since they are not likely to engage in erratic fast clicking like me.

Goowy seems decent, and certainly a whole lot better than Microsoft's Office Live which I reviewed earlier. Goowy's decision to use Flash probably raised a few eyebrows, since no experienced application developer, other than Macromedia, ever recommends flash in web applications. Despite this, I have to admit that Goowy is a work of art. The email service is likely to be enjoyable to most people who are looking for a different experience. If the user gets his hands on a flash browser, and that's over 94% of the computers on the internet (Alexa, 2004) then Goowy is an enjoyable experience. The speed of the service was the same as that of Gmail, Yahoo or any other decent internet provider, but I tested this on a 2 Mbps connection, so my judgment might be way off. I figure that kids are likely to be fascinated by Goowy's main features and are going to become a large part of Goowy's market. Another issue would be accessibility from mobile devices like cell phones and PDAs. This is becoming increasingly important and we'll have to wait and see how Goowy plans to offer that. For now, more people are still likely to use Gmail and Yahoo since both are larger companies, offer more reliability and easier access. For people whom email is a vital form of communication, either for work or school, Goowy might be a bad idea. The last thing these people need is technological glitches screwing up their work and you never know when they might come across a computer with an old version of flash or no flash at all.

In short, Goowy is suck in a niche market for now, but they are pioneers in the idea of making an entire desktop suite in flash. With flash, Goowy can offer more functions within the browser and might attract users to move away from Gmail and Yahoo. Their next two applications include a web based instant messenger like Meebo which can connect to multiple networks at once and a file storage facility, allowing better use of that 2 GB os space. Keep watching their official blog to know when these features are released. Also check out this interview with the Goowy chief architect to know about their company goals and reasons behind using flash.