While I'd love to be able to find the time to do a proper roundup of recent online productivty suites and email apps.. That's something of a herculean task. In the meantime, I'll just mention that the Goowy public beta is out there and has far exceed my expectations.

The sole Flash suite out there fighting a wave of Ajaxian productivity suites and email doodads (read: Zimbra, Roundcube, et al), Goowy certainly had potential, but also the stink of the many failed Flash apps to come before it. Goowy, however, has so far proven itself to be a quick, intuitive, and pleasant experience. Some might have sought to hide the fact that this is a Flash app at all, as it's clean lines and svelt aesthetic seem to blur the line, but alas! The good people at Goowy fly the Flash flag proudly, as any right click will instantly reveal the app's true nature.

The Goowy desktop worries me a bit. There's nothing overly iffy about it, it has a news aggregater, an inbox, and an unobtrusize look, but I'm always wary of solutions that offer me yet another 'desktop'. If the aggregation were as powerful and comfortable as Netvibes, this might be a particularly useful state. I'm sure additional data sources are coming.

The mail interface should be instantly familiar, and the folder structure is typical and flexible. I didn't have any luck getting Goowy to play nice with my existing POP email accounts, but I'm sure that will eventually be a transparent feature.

The highlight for me was the games. I don't want games. I don't want to sign up for email and get a 'community', or a chat client or a bundle of games, but as soon as I clicked on the games button, my eyes focused on Sonic's spikey blue head. Immediately, I clicked on said head, and found myself immersed in a genuine platformer, right there in a Flash popup window. It was truly a blast and when I completed the first level and was congratulate in questionable English "Sonic got trough act 1!", I decided to do this write-up.

I'll have to spend some time with Goowy to decide whether it's really a viable alternate, but so far, I'm impressed. My gut tells me that I may end up with a cleaner, more streamlined approach, such as Roundcube. Either way, it'll be better than Squirrel Mail. Man, I hate Squirrel Mail.