Monday, October 8, 2007

Fuser: Simplify Your Online Life...Not Quite...Yet!

I've been digging around researching some new online services that are trying to change the way we work online. I've been checking Mashable religiously and it is slowly becoming my favorite site in regards to this blog. If you have checked it out, do so now!

In the mix of it all, I've actually found something that has me excited and disappointed at the same time. The service known as Fuser is service that really tries to do it all but is completely inhibited by the ambition that is embodied in the service.

The basic overiew:

Fuser is an online service that allows you to have constant access and control to all of your favorite e-mail services (Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange, etc.) as well as the largest social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. Fuser basically pings all of these sites, color categorizes each account and arranges them into an all-in-one inbox. You can respond to e-mails while responding to a Facebook message, who wouldn't want that?!?! Great, right? In theory, yes! In reality, not quite!

The faults:

Fuser is still in beta and services are constantly being suggested and added or removed in response to what the current users feel to be necessary. The problem lies in the fact that the service is ungodly slow and the ping rate doesn't really ring true to events as they occur.

A great example of this is that I used this service almost exclusively for two days. I didn't check my Gmail, Web Exchange, Yahoo or Facebook account directly. I was a little perturb by how slow it was but I loved the fact that was checking my e-mail and Facebook and responded to all of my messages and I was given access to delete and remove the message from my common inbox. However, I came to find that after logging into each of my accounts individually the next day, I found that none of my messages had been deleted! A bit concerning and a lesson learned by me to not trust a beta program wholeheartedly.

Suggestions:

Fuser: Get some more server space and speed up the process and pinging. Work on the bugs and pay close attention to the user forum. The mobility option would be a high recommendation, especially with the new market of iPod Touch.

Readers: Give Fuser a try if you feel like utilizing a strong tool that still has a lot of kinks in the system. When everything is done at Fuser to enable a better experience, this service will be well worth your time!

As always, I could be wrong about this service, so PROVE IT!

Link up, subscribe, leave comments and enjoy!

Have a great day!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your feedback on Fuser! We really appreciate hearing what users like and don't like about Fuser. We know that our speed isn't optimal right now, but we have plans to optimize performance for our next release.

One point of clarification, we're not removing support for services, we're only adding support as users request. We're definitely on top of the requests in the forums and we're already working on new features, as well as bumping up the speed and troubleshooting bugs as they arise.

You're right, because we are just a window into your accounts, an email that you move to the trash in Fuser doesn't immediately move to the trash at the underlying service (although we're working on improving this). However, you can "Empty Trash" at Fuser which would remove the message from your underlying account, too.

Thanks again, I really appreciate your honest feedback and hope you'll continue to provide us with feedback as time allows.

-Emily