Fuser: Manage All Your E-Mail in one Convenient Spot
September 26th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 12 Comments
Consider the universal mailbox. The concept of a single place to collect messages of all kinds has been buzzworthy for many years, but it’s never been implemented perfectly. There are universal mailbox applications, but they often include a fair amount of complexity and cost. Now, a new beta online application called Fuser is approaching the concept in a very simple way—focusing on letting you get e-mail from all your accounts in one place, and messages from your social networks in the same place.
I’ve been using Fuser, have added a number of my e-mail and social network accounts to it, and I am a fan. Although I initially balked at the idea of supplying all of my user names and passwords to one aggregator, the service is useful enough that I overcame these concerns.
Fuser keeps it simple. Unlike the many other universal mailbox concepts I’ve seen, which usually attempt to put voice mail, e-mail, and other types of messages altogether in one complicated view, Fuser just provides you an aerial view of your e-mail messaging engines, and the ability to check, send, delete and compose in one place.
In general, the more e-mail and social network accounts you have, the more useful you’ll find Fuser to be. I registered for free at the site in about 60 seconds, supplied a code to launch Fuser (I was required to upgrade a version of Java first), and then it took about three minutes to supply six e-mail account and social network user names and passwords. Anyone on a Windows PC, a Mac, or Linux can do the same.
Once my accounts were specified, I was able to look at an aerial view of all of them, including my MySpace account, where read messages and unread messages were conveniently broken out according to which account they were in. It was also quick and easy to compose hotmail and gmail messages directly from within Fuser, without having to go launch separate applications.
A piece of documentation I got with Fuser cites a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that found that the average user has 3.1 e-mail accounts. I have more than 10 if you count social networking messaging systems in. If you use fewer than three, Fuser is probably not for you. But if you’re like me, and you’re able to tolerate the idea of supplying user names and passwords for your accounts, you’ll appreciate this free application.
Do you have any good tips on e-mail tools or how to be more efficient with e-mail?
12 Comments Post your own comment
Brian D. Johnson says: September 26th, 2007 7:20pm
Just signed up and tried Fuser. So, I have scads of email accounts that I’ve consolidated into gmail but I’m always looking for a better mousetrap and if Fuser would also let me track Facebook, I’ll give it a whirl.
Sign up was easy. Set up was fairly easy although Fuser did seem to get “stuck” twice when it was trying to verify an account. Facebook was configured quite well.
So, I think I get the upside of Fuser in that I’m really looking at a common interface for all my email accounts, and I’m really using each different email account. But, by consolidating all my mail on gmail, I get to handle my mail as a complete and total “gestalt” rather than individual boxes. Also, the interface seemed slow but that might be the result of all of us kicking the tires after reading the posting.
Then, there’s the issue about an addressbook. Thanks to a couple of good hacks, I’ve been able to consolidate my addressbooks into gmail. I haven’t found any sort of addressbook feature in fuser … yet.
It’s a neat service that’s has a subtle benefit that some people may need. For me, gmail still rocks.
notfuser says: September 26th, 2007 7:54pm
Now they (Fuser.com) have to compete with the established email web sites in functionality and User Experience. Not to mention re-inventing the wheel.
Their chances are better than none iff they provide something that not every email servce provider has.
Dutch Dude says: September 27th, 2007 12:38am
I for one cannot believe anyone would like give up everything to a third party (especially with servers in the US, which fall under the PATRIOT Act). Why would you trust complete strangers with:
1) all your username/password combinations
2) all your email (for I bet they store it)
Seriously, this must be one of the worst ideas ever.
GTD Power Links 09-27-07 « Geeks Guide To GTD says: September 27th, 2007 1:51am
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Frank says: September 27th, 2007 6:21am
I fully agree with Dutch Dude. In addition, I can not imagine to give ony tiny(!) company all my passwords.
Why not use a local aggregator? There is some good software available. What I use is something inbetween. I let the iMacros Firefox add-on automate all the logins for me, so with one click I can open all email/facebook/… accounts in the morning and navigate directly to the inbox. And since my macro (but not the master password!!!) is stored on del.icio.us this work on every PC that I use.
Turn Gmail into Your Social Brain « Web Worker Daily says: September 27th, 2007 6:38am
[...] harder for you to keep track of all your contacts and what’s happening with them. Yesterday, Web Worker Daily’s Samuel Dean reviewed Fuser, a universal inbox that lets you get email from all your accounts and messages from your social [...]
Martin says: September 27th, 2007 8:06am
Nope, it doesn’t work on Linux. I was thinking “Hey, I’ll try it out,” but I got this error message:
Upgrade your browser to one of our supported browsers. On Windows, we support Internet Explorer 6 and up, Firefox 1.5 and up. On Mac OSX, we support Firefox 2.0.0.6 and up, Safari 2.0 and up.
So, since I spend 40 hours each week in front of a Linux machine, I guess I’m not gonna try Fuser.
Drainedge Link Tank | Links From Around the Web says: September 27th, 2007 2:52pm
[...] Fuser: Manage All Your E-Mail in one Convenient Spot - Web Worker Daily [...]
Jeff says: September 28th, 2007 12:01am
So I was one of 4 original developers for fuser - I’ve recently moved on to other things, but to answer DUTCH DUDE - nope the messages are NOT stored by fuser. If you delete it from the underlying service you won’t see a copy of it in fuser.
And I sit in front of a linux box 40+ hours a day too (hell I spent time developing the product from a linux box) But I won’t be using it either Martin…. what a shame.
Andreas says: September 29th, 2007 1:46am
You should consider paragraph 9.1 of the service agreement which grants Fuser the right to review and even delete your third party service content.
Blog of Blogs » Blog Archive » Turn Gmail into Your Social Brain « Web Worker Daily says: October 1st, 2007 6:14am
[...] harder for you to keep track of all your contacts and what’s happening with them. Yesterday, Web Worker Daily’s Samuel Dean reviewed Fuser, a universal inbox that lets you get email from all your accounts and messages from your social [...]
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