goowy media blog

Client UI Updates

You may have noticed subtle changes taking place inside of goowy.  We started with a new look and feel for the file storage and instant messaging modules and have begun migrating that look and feel to the other applications inside of goowy.

If you look at the Contacts, Calendar and Options you will see that they are all updated and have a new look and feel.  The primary reason we are updating the client is to simplify the experience and make the screens less cluttered, cleaner, and easier to use.  The mail portion will be the last to get this new face lift.

Mail will take a little longer as we are not only cleaning it up, but also adding new functionality including support for unlimited mail folders (not really unlimited :) but many more than today), support for subfolders, a classic view as well as 3 column view, and pop out email windows so that you can review, draft and edit multiple emails at the same time.   

We are also working on improving the IM and file storage with the comments we have been getting from everyone.  Some things we are going to work on in the near future - more features for email, contacts and calendar, personal profile pages, premium services and more.  Thanks for your support!

- Alex

IM and File Storage Update

Last night we launched a limited Alpha release of Goowy IM and File Storage.   We are rolling it out to everyone in phases.  If you want to be part of the early Alpha, please send us an email to comments@goowy.com requesting activation.  This functionality is only available to people with Flash 8.

So whats it all about.  Below are some screen shots and cool things you can do with both.  Let us know what you think.  Thanks for your support.

Things to check out in goowy IM:

Goowy IM is a web based integrated instant messenger that allows you to message in real time with your goowy, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and ICQ buddies. Simply click on IM, select manage your accounts and enter your user name and password for any of the services you currently have.

We will load up all of your buddies and allow you to message with them in real time.

You should check out the following cool features:

1. Pop out of IM conversation windows - You can pop out an IM window into a separate browser window to message with your friends
2. Personalization You can personalize the color of each IM window or even the buddy list to create your own theme
3. Sounds and Alerts We have sounds and alerts to notify you of new messages, online / offline etc.

Things to check out in goowy File Storage:

Goowy file storage allows you to upload and share your personal files with friends and family. Click on File Storage and create a Box.net account. You will then have access to uploading your files.

You should check out the following cool features:

1. Folders and Tags Create your own folders and tags to manage your files
2. Drag and Drop Drag files into the folders you want to organize your files
3. Music player If you upload music files you can listen to them while you are in goowy by selecting the music files you want to listen to and selecting play.

Have fun and let us know what you think. There will be a lot more on the way shortly.

IM and File Storage - Right around the corner!

System Maintenance: We will be performing system maintenance on Monday, March 27th from 10pm Pacific, until 1am the following morning.  The system will be unavailble during that time.

IM & Virtual File Storage Update: The good news is that once we perform this update, we will be ready to begin rolling out our integrated IM and Virtual File Storage systems.  We are planning on rolling out these specific pieces of functionality in stages, so you may not see your them enabled immediately (or at the same time), but rest assured that you will get access to both of these awesome new features in the next few weeks.

Survey Results

On behalf of everyone at goowy team we want to thank everyone who participated in the Member Satisfaction Survey. Your responses were honest, articulate and we are extremely grateful for your time and support. In some cases the responses reinforced things we already suspected but in many other cases, you have provided us with valuable insight into how we can improve your goowy experience.

What we learned.
Here are some highlights from the survey. First of all, we learned a lot about you the user. Roughly 47% of you considered yourselves advanced internet users. Although the vast majority of our current users are from North America we were happy to see that many of you are also connecting from places like the UK, France, India and China. Most of you use goowy from home and work with a percentage of you connecting from places like internet cafes, schools, libraries and university computers. We were really excited to hear that for many of you, goowy is becoming a part of your daily lives. Over half of you said you are using goowy at least once a day. And a good portion of you are using goowy several times a day.

What you think about goowy.
We learned that almost 40% of you like goowy primarily for its user experience with email functionality a close second. Over 90 % of you had a favorable rating of goowy and an even higher percentage of members said you would recommend the service to a friend.

What’s Next…
You also shared a number of ideas and suggestions with us on how to make your experience even better. You told us that you wanted more tools to communicate with the people that are important to you. In support of this we are about to release integrated instant messaging and virtual file storage and sharing (we are going to start enabling groups of accounts next week).

You told us that you wanted us to improve some of our email and calendaring functionality. Because of that, we have begun working on major upgrades to both email and calendar. These are just some of the things we have learned from you. Our sole mission is to make goowy the best it can be for users like you.

Thanks again for your constant input and support. If you have additional comments, suggestions or questions, please drop us a note at comments@goowy.com. We have some great stuff in store for you so please stay tuned…

Your goowy team.

Why Flash?

This is my first post on our blog, and being the chief architect of the product, I'd like to address the most common technology question we receive from our user base and the community in general...Why Flash? 

To best answer this question, it's important to understand the history of the people at goowy, the evolution of the product, and the vision for the future collectively.  Take a look at the 3 part email interview with Ryan Stewart concerning this topic, our decision to go with flash, and it's role in the current and future product set.  Thanks Ryan!

- Jeremy

 

New updates!

We are updating our site tonight to better reflect the overall vision for goowy to help you better organize your digital lifestyle, manage your personal communications and share information with your friends and family. 

You will also notice that we have added a member's comments area on the homepage where we are adding some of the great comments we have received.   Thanks to everyone for your continued comments and support.

We aslo added the ability to rearrange the icons on your navigation toolbar.  Just click and drag them around to configure it to your preference.   :)

Finally, we are hard at work on finalizing integrated instant messaging and virtual file storage which we will start releasing in limited amounts over the next few weeks!  Stay tuned!

- alex

More changes tonight (2/7/2006)

We've got another great upgrade planned for tonight.  A couple of changes that you can look forward to:

• HTML editing in Firefox - along with the much anticipated smilies support!
• Simplified POP Configuration - we've made it really easy to configure your account for POP access to the major providers - Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN and GMail, both when creating a new account and from the options screen.  It should also be more intuitive to setup other systems as well.  Once you setup one of these vendors, you'll be able to distinguish messages from these providers based on the icons in the mail list.
• Improved Options - In addition to making POP configuration easier, we've cleaned up all of the options, making it easy to find what you're looking for and to make the appropriate changes.
• New and improved login screen - We've made it even easier to sign into your account.  If you check the remember me checkbox, and close the browser to exit, your information will be recalled on a subsequent login.  If you want to make sure that your account is secure on a public computer, make sure to logout of your account, prior to closing the browser.
• Large cookie - We resolved a problem which made it difficult for some users to login and/or logout due to a large cookie being set.  This change has also allowed us to slightly decrease the amount of time it takes to login for all users.

Please note that while this update will have minimal impact, users that are logged in at 9pm pacific will be forced to log out and log back in after approximately 5 minutes.

New Hires!

We're very pleased to announce two new additions to the goowy team!  Seddu Namakajo and Hart Woolery are offically onboard as of this past Monday.

Seddu is our Director of Marketing & Business Development.  He's got a lot of work ahead of him.  His first core responsibility will be to figure out what our users really want from a product perspective and ensuring that we get there quick.  Once he gets going on this, his next major task will be to expand our presence, helping to turn us into a household name by the end of the year - not an easy task to be sure, but we have a lot of confidence in him.

Hart is a Software Engineer, providing us with some much needed support in bringing out cool functionality faster.  In his first week here, Hart has already made significant contributions.  He's working on revamping our widgets - making them more lightweight intuitive and useful, while ensuring that they stay "fun".  Hart's also made great strides on the much anticipated notepad/memo/tasks widget.  Here's a preview of what the final widget may end up looking like:

Please join us in welcoming these great new additions to our team !

New Dashboard added to Desktop

We have made a change to the desktop which you see when you first log into goowy.  This desktop page is now meant to be a dashboard for all of the things that you can do with the goowy (re) application.  The page is divided into 3 columns:

1.  Use goowy - These are typical actions that you would perform in goowy on a daily basis for example check email, compose a new message, add a calendar event, view widgets, play games, etc. 

2.  Configure Settings - These commands can be used to personalize your goowy experience.  They include configurations such as mail settings (to add external accounts to goowy - we currently support one other account),  importing contacts, setting up your email signature, skins, etc.

3.  Other - We just didnt know where to put these so we addded them under "other" :)  Here you can view the goowy blog for updates, read our news, contact us, etc.

We also added the ability to set your default page.  Prior to this new dashboard you used to automatically log into the "Widgets" view.  You can now change your default view to any screen i.e. mail, contacts, calendar, widgets, etc.  To do this either click on "Select default view" under the "Configure Settings" options on the new default page or go to options > general settings.

We hope you enjoy this new dashboard view.  We have a lot more coming soon including making adding external accounts very simple, adding virtual storage (allowing you to store and manage files inside of the goowy virutal desktop), integrated IM and more! 

Please let us know what is important to you so that we can add it to goowy.

Correction for import / invite of contacts

It has come to our attention that a few people, while going through the sign up process, imported their contacts and unintentionally invited their contacts to join goowy.  We added the invite functionality to let your contacts know about goowy because it is something our users were asking for. 

We thought we did a good job of making it clear (the text was large and red to let people know) that if you clicked "import" and had the invite box checked that it would invite your contacts and you were doing so willingly.  This was not at all intended as a malicious way to spam a user's contacts.

Since a few people have made this mistake we are removing the check from the check box.  If you want to help goowy grow and invite your contacts please check it manually. 

We are sincerely very sorry for any problems this may have caused and want you to know that this was not our intent.  We hope that anyone affected by this understand and continues to support goowy. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.