I was never been much of a beta person. By that, I mean that I’ve always downloaded and installed stable versions of software which are comparatively safer and less error prone like the buggy Beta versions. This ofcourse changed since I started using Gmail. I’ve always been a reluctant admirer of Google. I never embraced it like everyone did. I’ve stuck with my favourite search engine Yahoo! for years. But sooner or later, I jumped the google bandwagon. And then came Gmail, and everyone was trying to get an invite by hook or crook. They resorted to all sorts of tricks and begging to get an invite. And like always, I’ve played down the hype and told myself its not that good(even if I heard it otherwise). I was happy with my Yahoo! Mail. It gave me filters that directly put my friends’ mail in their folders, it had its own Junk Mail folder which filters all the spam. I had enough to do basic emailing. While most of my friends had gmail id’s. I kept pretending that it wasnt a big deal even though i secretly wished to have jagadish@gmail.com all for myself first. But i was sure some other jagadish was faster than me. I always ridiculed my Gmail friends saying what they would do with a 1GB storage space while I used only some 2M odd on my Yahoo!.
But the yearning to have a Gmail ID increased the day my girl friend got her gmail invite. I just NEEDED to have one. And it isnt much matter of pride if you have to beg your own girl friend(i was quite sure it wouldnt get down to that). And I finally managed to get a invite to Gmail from her the following week when she got her first few invites. And my first impression were a little mixed. I was confused whether to like it or not, it was very different from all the other Free Mail Services. It had labels and no folders. That would means a lot of clutter in the Inbox. I liked to sort my mail out into their respective folders immediately after I finished reading it, keeping my inbox clean. But that meant, I had to archive the old mail. The jargon seemed all new but it took awhile to get a hang of it and after 2 years of using gmail, i’ve finally moved my base from Yahoo! to Gmail.
But Yahoo! wouldnt give up on its loyal consumers so easily, would it?? They’ve started their beta service a month back and I wouldnt be late this time.. 
. I signed up for the beta service and viola.. a week later I had an invitation lying in my inbox and i was ready for the switch to the new Beta service. And I must say i’m kinda impressed. Even though, the interface looks like the regular MS Outlook in a browser kinda thing, it was nice and easy. Everything was done in a matter of clicks without any huge webpage loading times. It was very neat and clutter free. There was even an RSS Reader to boot with. Well thats good too. I cant say i can leave Yahoo! behind now. *sigh*. Choices.. choices!!!
And then there are the IM services like MSN, Yahoo and Gtalk. The MSN Messenger 8 Beta is not in anyway different from 7.x series but it has its own variety of features like Sharing folders and it combines the power of new MSN Live with MSN Messenger. A lot of MSN services like MSN Spaces and the Live profiles have been merged with the Messenger making it a storehouse for everything that is MSN. And Yahoo! Messenger has a new Beta service which allows you to call Landlines all over the world a.l.a Skype. Never bothered to try it but everything else looks similar. There is also the new Gtalk with display pictures. Nice addition but makes a small program a memory hog.
And yesterday, I read that there was a new Google Calendar service available and I signed up for it immediately without waiting. And once again, Google has managed to do what it has always promised to do, “Keep it simple.” And it was a really simple interface which just required a click to add an event and you can even set reminders to be notified by Email. And you can even add a calendar of your friend to share appointments and stuff. Good idea for the wives to remind their hubbies of anniversaries and birthdays or vice versa(not all women have great memories). There are a multitude of options which require exploring. I will probably post details in an elaborate review. .
For now, thats a huge list of applications that i’m beta testing even though i never send any valuable feedback. It feels nice to be a little ahead of everyone, waiting for the world to catch up while you get a sneak peek of the future product. 
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