GMail started the trend of offering huge email space. Yahoo and Hotmail followed.

Now a similar path is being pursued with something connected albeit a tad late - the user interface. No matter how much space is offered, a bad ( or rather not too feature-rich) user interface might just send a prospective user to the competition.

Hotmail is currently BETA testing its new webmail interface and is calling it "Kahuna". It's currently an invite-only test, so you need to be brought in ( shades of GMail exclusivity at work here ).

At first glance, it looks like someone ripped the Outlook 2003 interface and placed it within the website framework. A similar 3-pane concept is used as can be seen below:



As expected, it's based on AJAX and has many of the features we've come to know and love from GMail inluding but not limited to keyboard shortcuts and thumbnail previews of images.

A small reminder: After buying out OddPost.com, Yahoo have already embarked on their version of a site interface re-design. Here's one more way that GMail has made life for the everyday mail user more comfortable - increasing competition leading to several degrees of enhancement in service levels and "What do the users want?" being asked repeatedly.

So, how can I get an account of that now. I'm currently having an hotmail account. Can I upgrade it to the new version?

Try this URL if you want to try to sign up for the beta hotmail.

Hotmail Beta

This dows look like the Outlook interface.. I do believe that the paned interface will provide a more comprehensive overview of the mailbox as well as other related features. What does seem surprising though is that Hotmail has always responded slowly and has usually been trailing in feature implimentation. It seems like there's just a handfull of dedicated staff on the Hotmail rolls who're there just to look after the service and upkeep of the current site.

But the above statement of mine may not hold water if it turns out that Hotmail is one of the most secure sites/ the template is rich in its simplicity itself. In the early days of Hotmail, the servers were pretty slow and they'd only buckled up and worked on correcting the problem once they noticed a considerable shift towards users migrating to other web-mail services like Yahoo.

Overall, Hotmail and MS as a whole has had a history for being reactive instead of pro-active in development. This may result in someone coming in someday with a well rounded package of a complete computing solution, for a much lesser cost along with a great interface that may result in the demise of Hotmail and other MS harboured products.

The layout looks alright actually except you can tell that it ripped of Outlook and Gmail with the design and the invites system! Anyway, I never thought hotmail was that good at it will always be under gmail!

Before some weeks I have seen screenshots of Yahoo mail new user interface which was also just like outlook. Now this is the turn of Hotmail. After coming of gmail the web mail competition is really very very tough. I hope sooner or later Gmail will also change its interface and will make it more attractive.

hmm, this looks very great i joined the mail list in Hotmail Beta

in my opinion gmail and hotmail or google and msn rival each other.
So this quality higher than now quality..

Actually, the Outlook 2003 look is not that original. In Egypt, a Web portal called Masrawy - which means and Egyptian - has been using the Outlook Exchange Server for their e-mail services since the beginning of this year. Believe you me, the interface looks exactly as if you were using your Outlook 2003. That's not a bad thing, really, because although I'm not a big Microsoft fanatic, I believe they hire quite the brilliant artist, psychologist, and marketer to do their interface. The implementation seemed somewhat slow, but I suppose it depends on the computer itself.

Now as for Microsoft and Yahoo! changing gears toward newer looks and bigger storage space, I suppose that's only natural. It's not a requirement, because whoever uses their services probably will keep using them, at least for their Instant Messaging services. But it's good marketing thinking. They can't let their names be overshadowed - at least not too much - by GMail.

I won't get into a discussion about which is better and which is more likely to win the battle, or if there even was a battle. I just thought I should share my mind with you guys.

Anyway, I don't think Microsoft's release of the new e-mail system is going to be too far away, since Microsoft is so notorious for its short BETA-testing time and its truckload of post-release patches. Hmm, I guess it's obvious I'm not a Microsoft fanatic, huh?!!