Posted on August 23, 2007 at 12:03 PM in @earthlink
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
Late last week EarthLink made available a beta version of Montage, a new, free email/RSS/address book suite for Windows XP and Vista. It's a desktop application that lets you handle multiple email accounts along with RSS feeds and podcasts, all with a unified interface and organization system. Mike Strutton, Director of Client Software, calls the treatment of multiple inboxes "Separately/Together," and he explains how it works as follows:
"Using Montage you can manage multiple email accounts EarthLink/AOL/Yahoo/Gmail/Etc. in a way that other Windows clients don't do. You can view the inbox as an aggregate across all accounts, or just one account -- it's simple. No need for filters/folders or jumping back and forth between different webmail applications. This was one of two features that got the most reaction in our demonstrations and user testing."
Montage Mail View (click to see at screen resolution)
Smart Sorts are another Montage feature that help you bring order to your inbox. They allow you to automatically place email or feeds that match certain conditions into a folder or "sort". This is a way to nondestructively make piles of or views into your information without manually thinking about, keeping track of, and moving everything yourself. The productivity nerd sites abound with examples of how to use smart sorting to get a better handle on your overflowing inbox. If you're a Mac user familiar with the Apple approach to email and desktop management, you're probably already enjoying non-destructive sorting and easy mailbox aggregation.
On the RSS aggregation side of the application, Montage takes the RSS-as-email metaphor and treats individual articles within feeds as if they were email messages with the titles as subject lines and a read/unread state. There's a preview pane that shows either the article summary(referred to as the "abstract") or the fully-rendered web page the article comes from. You can also apply Smart Sorts and folders to feeds, and use tags to organize articles you'd like to hold on to in ways that are meaningful to you. There are also some good features behind the scenes, like it appears there is built-in support for authenticated feeds. The only one I know of off the top of my head today is Daring Fireball, but I expect to see lots more of these in the future.
If you're a regular Earthling reader, you know I've written a fair bit about how I strongly prefer and recommend the River of News approach to the Inbox approach. Email itself has become virtually unmanageable for most people I know, and I've grown very accustomed to the idea that articles just flow through my news reader, and if I don't get to all of them, nothing bad happens. I don't miss marking things as read/unread and clicking to view everything. Missing important articles has not been a problem.
Montage's RSS reader capability is a good platform, and I appreciate the folder features, but in the future I'd like to see at least an option or skin to treat RSS feeds in the scrolling River of News style that myEarthLink Reader and Google Reader offer. When I open up the RSS tab, I'd like a long scrolling list of all of the things I've subscribed to and their full text content where available. Having the option to view full feeds where available right in the application itself would be helpful -- instead of the fully rendered web page, which takes time to load up and isn't as handy as just the text if you just want to read the content quickly. I know there's something different about reading content within the context of the web page it comes from, but I gladly give that up for the convenience and rapid browsability of syndicated feed reading. I always have the option of viewing the full page in my browser if that's what I want to do. The ability to group feeds into folders is a nice touch, but to me the current Montage RSS interface emphasizes maintaining the states of all of your feeds, which adds to the time it takes to get through your daily reads, rather than letting the information flow through and taking sips of it when you need it.
Montage Feeds View (click to see at screen resolution)
Give Montage a try and let us know what you think. There are lots of helpful materials on the main product page, including a getting started guide, an FAQ, and our current list of known issues in the beta release. The Montage team invites your feedback (please use this form or just drop me a comment), and asks specifically what you think about the Separately/Together treatment of multiple email providers. Is this something you find useful, neat but not something you use much, or not really of interest at all for the way you use email?
Comments
Fantastic write up! Makes me want to try it (and I will this weekend on a home test laptop). Thanks again!
Posted by Ashley | August 23, 2007 5:04 PM
The mail client is good, the RSS needs work. I either get truncated posts or the entire website page. No matter what settings I use. (using the same feed addressed I get the full feed in my current reader RSSBandit.)
I am curious as to why you Earthlink didn't include a newsfeed reader as well?
Posted by Kevin | August 23, 2007 9:53 PM
Thanks, Ashley. Come back and let me know what you think.
Kevin: Thanks for your thoughts. It seems like there's no "full feed" option in the preferences, only "abstract" or fully rendered web page...I'd like to see that option too. I've suggested it to the product team.
What do you mean when you say "didn't include a newsfeed reader"? Unless I'm misunderstanding the question, that's the RSS part of the app.
Posted, in reply to Kevin's comment, by Dave C. | August 24, 2007 10:29 AM
Dave,
I think Kevin might be referring to a news group (aka: usenet) reading feature.
I could be wrong but that's what it sounds like to me.
Posted by Travis Metcalf | August 24, 2007 11:40 AM
Ah, ok, that makes sense. I'll ask the Montage team if that's on the roadmap for a future feature.
Posted, in reply to Travis Metcalf's comment, by Dave C. | August 24, 2007 11:49 AM
Currently we have no plans to include Usenet in Montage. We are working hard on email and feed enhancements at this time.
Our architecture is modular, and was designed to plugin other applications in the future.
Thanks Dave for the entry and opportunity to speak about our release.
-mike
Mike Strutton
Director of Product Management, Client Software
EarthLink, Inc.
Posted by Mike | August 24, 2007 5:04 PM