Goowy

Goowy's name is derived from the pronunciation of the common computer acronym GUI, which stands for graphical user interface. Its aim is to become an online desktop that can be accessed from anywhere for people who need to access information remotely. Goowy unifies email, calendar, contacts, RSS, games and widgets functions into one central interface within your browser window. It looks just like a desktop application, albeit with a Macintosh-like feel.

To get started, you simply go straight to the Goowy Web site (www.goowy.com) and sign up. You can then easily import your contacts from Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo. From here, you can manage your contacts and calendar entries in a similar way that you would organise these on your Windows desktop using Outlook.

Since the contacts and calendar data is constantly being pulled from the Web, there is a little more lag than you would experience if the data was being pulled off your hard drive, however it was fast on my ADSL2 connection, and there is a "lite version" for those with lower bandwidths. A downloadable desktop client is also available, which can receive e-mails.

As it stands - without file storage implemented - Goowy is almost on par with Windows Live Mail Beta, which has calendar integration. The most impressive part of Goowy is that it is a platform that will hopefully unify the online workspace, something that Google is looking to do with their new acquisition of Writely, the online word processor.