Better Webmail?. MailBlocks is a new Web-based email service from Phil Goldman, one of the founders of WebTV. It's slickly done, with a significantly better user experience than Yahoo! or Hotmail. Unlike Oddpost, it doesn't require Internet Explorer, though there are still bugs in support for other browsers. Goldman wants to do to Web-based email what Google did to search. Mailblocks focuses on core functionality and performance, rather than blasting users with ads. The price, $9.95 per year, is reasonable for what Mailblocks delivers. Most of the coverage of MailBlocks focuses on its anti-spam features. Mailblocks uses a challenge-response mechanism (what I'd call a whitelist). In the past, I've predicted that most active email users would switch to whitelists to avoid spam. Goldman has done two things to make whitelists widespread. He's spent several months tweaking his system to make it easy and reliable. And he's purchased several patents that he believes give him ownership of the fundamental IP around the mechanism. There are several other whitelist applications and services available today, though none has set the world on fire. We'll see whether MailBlocks' patents help or hinder adoption. As for me, I'm quite interested in trying Mailblocks, since I get over 600 spams per day. Unfortunately, the feature to allow you to import existing contacts into your whitelist doesn't appear to be working yet. I don't want to make the 2000 people in my address book go through the challenge process. I think others will feel the same. If MailBlocks delivers on its promise, it could be a big success. Webmail is a big application that none of the existing providers is really focused on, much like search when Google came on the scene. Ten million users paying $9.95/year doesn't seem unrealistic in a couple years. However, the company needs to smooth out some rough edges. If you want to build a killer app, little things matter a lot. [Werblog]
8:46:14 PM  #  

PC Forum Day 2 Notes.

I have posted my session notes from PC Forum on the wiki.  Since they are notes, not analysis, its better to leave them open for others to edit and add to.  Today's notes:

Data at Large

Identity Management in Context

Identity Management, Who's in charge here?

Beyond Relational

Couterpoint: Open dialogue

Demo Gallery and Presentations [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]

8:39:07 PM  #  

My faceroll.

How do you like my new faceroll? It's on in my left sidebar. Jason explains how to do it here. You have to be a paying member of Blogrolling.com to use it. I have mine set up to pick 5 people randomly. If you see your picture and you don't want to be in the faceroll or have another picture you'd rather I used, let me know.

[Joi Ito's Web]
8:37:53 PM  #  

Democratizing access to info in places: Community Map Builder.

Who will have access to read and write information about places? Will groups of people be free to self-organize their own information maps and associate them with specific locations? Think about today's trends in regard the privatization of everything else and the distilled concentration of media ownership, and ask if it is far-fetched to imagine a battle between open access and proprietary information. Community Map-Builder is a quasi smart mob tool: an open source framework for grassroots Geographic Information Systems. When those systems become readable by a phone or PDA, there's your smart mob enabler.

(Thanks, Cameron!)

[Smart Mobs]
8:36:38 PM  #