When we first looked at Zenbe two months ago, the service was still in private beta. Now anyone can sign up for Zenbe. The company has also added several new features that help transform the service from a simple webmail client to a personalized start page.
For example, you can now sign into Google Talk and Twitter in the Quick View area on the right side of the page. This lets you chat with your contacts without leaving the email/calendar client. You can update your twitter status or read updates from your contacts.
Zenbe has also created a new email notification script for Firefox, redesigned the task list, and added buttons for easily deleting all items in your deleted and spam folders. Zenbe also says it's working on adding a Gmail-style conversation e-mail view, and is working to add IMAP support.
On July 11th, Zenbe will also be launching an iPhone list application. This is described as the company's first foray into bringing Zenbe to a mobile platform, so we expect we'll see a full Zenbe client for the iPhone and other mobile devices in the future.
Your co-workers use MSN Messenger, your family is partial to AOL Instant Messenger, and your friends use Google Talk. There are plenty of utilities that let you keep in touch with all of your contacts regardless of the IM platform they're using. But while we love Digsby, Trillian, Pidgin, and Adium most of the time, there are a few features missing from those apps:
Support for voice and video chats
The ability to invite friends from different IM networks into a single chat room
And that's where Instan-T comes in. This multi-protocol chat client for Windows supports AOL, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Messengers. It also supports voice and video chat across each network, although we've found that feature to be a bit finnicky. When we tested out a voice chat, we were able to the person speaking on the other end, but she couldn't hear us. We'll chalk that up to a hardware problem.
Probably the most interesting thing about Instan-T is that it lets you set up a chat room that you can invite contacts from any service to participate in. Just click on a contact name and select multi-person chat. They'll receive an invitation with a URL to click on that will open up a Flash-based chat room, which also features voice and video support.
We'll be honest. The Instan-T interface is a little cluttered and confusing when compared with other multi-protocol chat clients. But the application definitely shows promise. If you want to try the service without downloading and installing anything, you Instan-T also has a Meebo-like web based instant messenger. The web client supports Internet Explorer and Firefox, which means you should be able to access the service whether you're using Windows, Linux or OS X.
While Google's online office suite might not have all the features of Microsoft Office, one area where Google's word processor, spreadsheet, calendar, and IM client excel is in letting you easily collaborate with other users. Want to share a Word document or spreadsheet with other users, just click the share button.
But that only works if the people you want to share with have already registered for Google Apps accounts. Now Google has launched a new version of Google Apps that makes it a whole lot easier to get a group of people registered quickly.
Google Apps Team Edition packs all the basic features like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. But when you sign up for Team Edition, Google Apps will automatically recognize your company or school email address and locate other users affiliated with the same organization and add them to your contact list. Now when you want to share a document or send a message, you should have a list of all the other people who have registered for Google Apps with email addresses from the same domain.
For example, if your email address is address@domain.com, you can share documents with any other uses who has a @domain.com address. Alternately, you can choose to share your documents with everyone that has a @domain.com address. While Google Apps Team Edition doesn't offer any features that you can't get with a basic account, the move should help Google grow its user base by making signup much easier.
That said, we've tried to sign up several times today, and we keep getting a server error message from Google. Hopefully that problem will be fixed soon.
A few weeks ago Google launched a new feature that makes Google Reader a bit more social. Whenever you mark an item as "Shared," your Gmail/Google Talk contacts will be able to find that article by following a new "Friends' shared items" link in Google Reader.
Now here's the thing: Google Reader shared items have always been available to the public. But in order to find a shared item feed you need to enter a rather complicated string of characters in your web browser's URL bar. The result is that you're probably not going to find anyone's shared items unless they give you a link. Some people have made their shared items available to the public buy putting a link on their blog. Robert Scoble is famously almost as proud of his "link blog," as he is of his actual blog. But other readers assumed they had some level of privacy and only shared items with a handful of friends.
Now that anyone you've ever corresponded with over Google Talk can see your shared items, you might be a bit more careful of what you share. And some people aren't particularly pleased with that situation.
Is the new Google Reader shared items feature an invasion of privacy? We're going to go out on a limb here and say no. If you don't want the whole world to see your shared items, there's an easy answer: don't click the share button. But we can imagine plenty of situations where you would want to share some stories with the whole world and other stories with just a select group of people. Or where you might want to be able to differentiate between "friends," and family, colleagues or other people who might not find some of your shared items so amusing.
So while we don't think Google necessarily did anything wrong by adding this feature, we don't really understand why the feature is one size fits all. There's no option for users to opt out of having their items shared other than to stop sharing items at all. And there's no way to share your items with some friends, but not others.
What do you think? Is the new Google Reader friends' shared items feature a privacy violation or just a poorly implemented attempt to make RSS reading a more social experience?
Update: The author of the original article wrote in to let us know that it's moved. Same article, new URL.
GTalk Profile is a site for finding Google Talk related profiles that makes use of the recently launched Google Profiles.
GTalk Profile uses the Google Maps API to pinpoint locations of users worldwide. Each pinpoint has a link to a users Google Profile, including their interests, location and profile photo. The site is relatively young, but there are already over 7400 users that have chosen to include their GTalk profiles.
While checking in with the site over the past few days, it seemed that they might have an inadequate hosting plan. There were numerous instances where the site was either offline, or the map and profiles were not showing up at all. Since Google Profiles are on the move to becoming an emerging way to identify each other in a social setting, it might be time for GTalk Profile to rethink their data plans.
Google has added a new way to share your favorite feeds and articles with friends, through Google Talk, aka the Gmail address book.
Google Reader has included a "Share" button for a while now, but if you wanted people to actually read your shared listings, you had to direct them to a URL or RSS feed. Now your Google Talk contacts can also see the items you're sharing on their Google Reader page.
Next time you login to Google Reader, you should notice a few of your Google Talk contacts' names hanging out in the navigation panel on the left side of the screen. Google Reader will tell you how many items they're sharing, and let you scroll through their shared item feed as if you have subscribed to it. You can also manage your friends list so that only certain people can see your shared items.
This is a great way to check in with friends to get feed recommendations for websites you might have never visited before, or interesting articles that you have passed by. Or is it Google's stealth social network in the works?
With Google's Gmail you can now chat with friends that have an AIM account through the Google Talk interface. When you sign into your AIM account through Gmail, your AIM buddies will be populated in your Contact list. Of course you need an AIM account to use this feature.
To check to see if you have a lucky account (we're sure they'll be rolling this out to all users soon) logout, then log back into your account and click on Settings, from there visit the Chat tab and look at the bottom of the list for the section named AIM. Sign in, and your ready to go.
UPDATE; TIP: Make sure you are signed into Gmail chat in order for AIM chat to be activated.
There are plenty of instant messaging applications available for Windows Mobile phones and PDAs. But ever since Agile Messenger went and started charging money for their excellent IM client, there's been a dearth of good free IM clients.
Palringo is stepping up to the plate with a full-featured freeware app for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. Palringo supports several of the most popular instant messaging services, including MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, and Google Talk/Jabber.
Palringo sports a few unusual options like the ability to logon to the same service multiple times. So if you've got two AIM names, you can use both at the same time. You can also send voice clips, although Palringo doesn't support real time voice chat.
Oh, and one of our favorite things about Palringo is that it's got support for older Windows Mobile devices. Unlike many newer applications, it supports Windows Mobile 2003 and up.
Imo.Im is a web based instant messaging service, from former Google employees, that lets you IM your friends from various IM clients, such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo Messenger. This aggregator service is similar to Meebo and e-buddy.
Now that's all well and good, but they just added video chat to really get the party going. Now you can video chat with your friends using a web cam with just one click via an invite button. You can also do a three way chat with the first two chatters each opening a separate window with the third party.
Another feature sure to be the ultimate party starter, is Imo's group chat, which lets you chat across multiple IM clients, although this feature is still under development.
Imo.Im was launched in April and its creators are fomer employees of Google. It has about 70,000 users.
Get ready for a whole new Facebook. Instant Messaging is getting set to find a home in the ever expanding, bulging at the seams social network.
Just when you thought that all that news about Facebook's valuation, the developer grants, and the possible Microsoft investment was enough to raise the roof on their worth, we hear news that the site is launching an IM client.. A new Facebook IM is set to go into Beta this Friday and will take on the likes of MSN, AIM, Google Talk, and Yahoo. We would imagine that this could not be used as a standalone application, and would work inline with Facebook profiles. Sam Sethi has received an early look at the beta, and enjoys the fact that there is no download or install necessary. But will it replace your standard IM?
With Yahoo! and MSN being somewhat locked down in their protocols, we are sure that things will change as the Facebook IM becomes the new in "instant messaging application". But for now, it looks like only chatting between Facebook friends is possible.
UPDATE: The Facebook IM application FriendVox, is rumored to be in development by a third party called Techlightenment, who specialize in Facebook application development.
