Chat and e-mail

I've been agitating with e-mail vendors for years to integrate instant messaging. After all, why should e-mail and IM be two completely different applications, on two different networks, with two different address books? Both applications are forms of person-to-person text communication. They belong together.

It took a few years of kvetching and waiting, but the major online e-mail providers have started to integrate the two experiences. Google lets you kick off a chat from its Gmail interface, for example. But that's nothing like what Yahoo is showing off today at the Web 2.0 Conference: The first real … Read more

From the Web 2.0 Conference:

Most of us waste a lot of time trying to find times for meetings. Inside a company, Microsoft Outlook users (on Exchange servers) can see the times their coworkers are free and busy. It's a good start, but when we want to schedule a meeting with multiple people or meet with people outside our company, everything can quickly fall apart. TimeBridge is trying to solve this problem, with a system that handles the negotiation of finding meeting times.

Like the ultrasimple Doodle, TimeBridge lets you set up multiple options for a meeting, and … Read more

Could this be "Third Life"? Gemini Mobile Technologies is unveiling "S! Town," which it calls the world's first 3D community for cell phones. Mobile Magazine says this third dimension, based on Gemini's patented eXplo software, can be used for such activities as chatting with other avatars, buying goods in virtual stores and sharing multimedia content.

S! Town, which is cutting its ribbon on the Japanese market first with phones from Sharp and Toshiba, would obviously like to duplicate the success of that nation's Mixi social network. But even if it wins popularity there, … Read more

There are several new companies and products being unveiled at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week. I'll be reporting on as many of them as I can.

Only 13 companies were selected to participate in the "Launchpad" sessions on Tuesday. Chosen from more than 200 applicants (I'm trying to get ahold of that list), these are supposed to be the most promising of the current crop of Web 2.0 start-ups. I'm not sure they are hands-down the best the Web has to offer, but they are all very interesting. The … Read more