When keeping in touch with my family and friends these days it's usually via text messaging and Facebook - along with the occasional phone call. Email is used primarily for work purposes. I do have a personal Yahoo email account, but it is used mostly for registering with various websites and to send the occasional e-card.I have been using a Zenbe email account for the past few weeks, however, after a friend sent me an invitation to join the private beta. Zenbe is a beautiful thing. It has a simple, sleek, intuitive interface that is not cluttered with ads. A fully integrated calendar, task list, and address book are all easily accessible through an ever-present sidebar. There is a tab that allows you to browse all the files contained across your emails by type - images, documents, spreadsheets, audio/video files, and events. You can "star" emails to indicate their importance and hover over them to see a preview. It's all very, well, zen-like.Zenbe also features ZenPages. They are "build your own" collaboration web pages to email to your contacts with the following options: discussion, agenda, page activity, tasks, shared mail, shared files, links, Google chat, Flickr, photos, Picasa photos, Youtube videos, and RSS feed. Zenpage does limit the invitee's access only to the page you have selected to share, so invitees would not have access to your inbox or the rest of the data in your account. Great idea, but I don't know how much I'll actually use it.One of the features that I will use? Facebook integration! You didn't think I could stray too far away from social media now did you? The Facebook tab in the sidebar let's you easily change your status message, see updates from your friends, and get notified of new messages and friend requests.Shoot me an email sometime at chadrichards at zenbe dot com. Maybe we can bring back that ancient art called email.- Chad Richards
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