November 23, 1997

from the Friends-of-the-Revolution dept

I have been rather delinquent in sending out newsletters lately. This is for two reasons...

1. I went to Comdex for a couple of days

2. It has been rainy in California and it has been taking 3 hours to get home (because no one knows how to drive)

Nonetheless I would like to make it up to you by giving you two for the price of one. First we will look at

The new king of Groupware...

Secondly, we'll look at this years Comdex.
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The King of Groupware... Yahoo!

As a My Yahoo! user for over a year I may be slightly bias, but Yahoo!'s recent purchase of Rocketmail and the integration of this free mail service into My Yahoo! has exceeded my expectations. The mail interface is clean, fast and full-featured. It allows you to easily sort, filter, and keep addresses. It also has a spam guard to stop unsolicited mail. It also comes with the additional feature of being able to check my mail from anywhere I can get access to the net.

My only complaint was that it would not alert me when I received a new message. They have recently added two new features which address this issue. When looking at My Yahoo! there is a small section which appears and tells you how many unread messages you have. Secondly, if you use their Yahoo! Ticker (a ticker that resides on your taskbar) a red button appears and a yodeling "Yahoo....!" sounds when a new message arrives.

So why the king of groupware? What if Yahoo were to purchase an online Calendaring and Contact list manager like Planet All (www.planetall.com)? They would have...

• Mail (Yahoo Mail)
• Chat/Discussions (Yahoo Chat)
• Calendaring (Planet All)
• Contact Manager (Planet All)
• plus... News and Searching

They would be directly competing with the likes of Lotus Notes (Mail, Discussions, Calendaring), Netscape Communicator (Mail, Discussions, Calendaring, Chat, Audio Conferencing), and Microsoft Exchange (Mail, Discussions, Calendaring, Video Conferencing & File Sharing)

Except you could access your files from anywhere (including a phone, a PDA, or a Public Terminal), and of course it is FREE.

Do the big boys stand a chance?

----------------------------
Friends of the Revolution
by Brian Day

A column that comes out every so often, and talks about something or another... To subscribe to Friends of the Revolution email bcd2@cornell.edu

The information contained in this newsletter reflect the opinions of Brian Day, and do not represent actual fact. Any decisions made based on these opinions is your own fault. Yadda...Yadda... Yadda...

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