Webmail wars : Gmail vs Yahoo! Mail Beta

Just after getting my Orkut account and messing around with it, I got a mail from Yahoo! informing me that they've switched me over to the new Yahoo! Mail Beta and would I like to try it out? Heck yes. So here's a screenshot of it :

The first impression counts, and the first impression was : wow! Looks really nice doesn't it? So they've finally more or less caught up with Gmail in having a cutting-edge desktop-app-like interface. It actually looks and works very much like Outlook or Outlook Express now, with the familiar 3-pane interface for folders, list of emails and email content. Drag-and-drop actually works - I moved a bunch of emails from the Inbox to one of the folders. Very nice - that's one thing Gmail doesn't have. Keyboard shortcuts work, though the key for composing a new mail is slightly different, Gmail uses "c", Yahoo! uses "n" - *shrug*. The tabbed interface seems promising too, rather Firefox-like.

Okay that was the "effusive praise" section, now for the "room for improvement" section :

1. Layout a little screwed up under Firefox, links above Inbox tab barely visible.
2. Right-click brings up two overlapping context menus, browser's and mail's.
3. Response is noticeably slower than the snappy, "instant" feel of Gmail.
4. Can't find the folder for the reported RSS feed integration.

Switching over to IE, I find that the layout looks fine, and so does the context menu but the RSS is still nowhere to be found. Incidentally, Google seems to have launched their RSS integration with Gmail *just now*, which doesn't seem to work at the moment as well. Much work to be done in this RSS + Webmail department, folks.

So, just like the Browser Wars going on, it looks like the Webmail Wars have taken off once again.

(2005-12-09 15:11:56 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

Global house prices : Hear that hissing sound?

thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com -> economist.com :

The air is slowly leaking from the global housing bubble. In most of the countries that The Economist tracks each quarter the pace at which house prices are climbing has slowed over the past year. An overwhelming majority of experts are still predicting a soft landing with no drop in prices. But property in many countries is so overvalued that even if prices do not fall, they could stagnate for up to a decade.

America's market has remained hot for longer than most, but even it now seems to be coming off the boil. Prices of new homes rose by only 1% in the year to October, down from 16% in early 2004. A glut of new building is forcing developers to cut prices.

In Britain and Australia, housing bubbles started to deflate in 2004. The downturn in the Australian market has now spread beyond Sydney, where prices are already at least 10% below their peak. House-price inflation has also eased in France, Spain, Italy and Ireland. However, Japan's 14-year slide in house prices may at last be nearing an end: prices in central Tokyo are now rising, although the national average is still slipping and is now 40% below its peak in 1991. Japan shows what can happen when home prices lose touch with reality.

(2005-12-09 07:22:56 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

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