2. I’m uploading a W2 form I found online. Like all other PDF documents on the web I would normally have to print it out and fill it out by hand. Luckily PDFfiller will allow me to input text right onto the screen. At this point it is loading the PDF and converting it.

3. After it is done uploading I get a large view of the first page. As you can see PDFfiller handles multiple pages with ease. I can move between pages and it will save all the edits to each page.

4. Adding text is as easy as clicking in the document. Unfortunately you will have to experiment with aligning text based on where you click. I found that I had to click a little bit below where I thought the text should go and it would align right. It would be helpful if they could parse the form fields to make them editable as regions instead of anywhere on the page (or make it an option).

PDFfiller takes care of a need that I’ve had for awhile. I think there are a lot of ways they could expand their service. I would allow the option to sign up and save filled out forms to a storage space (possibly building a business model into it by offering X forms for $N). Also parsing form fields and making the text align right would make the resulting forms look a lot cleaner. Still this service was much needed by me and hopefully it will make your life easier as it has mine.

2. As I went to fill out a quick note about a meeting I have later I ran into a few issues. First of all the time and date settings are European. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the time zone setting completely confused me. Honestly how many people know right off the bat where they stand with GMT time zones. I didn’t, and there was no preview to make sure the time I entered was going to be correct. Also I somehow got the captcha spam blocking filter wrong the first time, even though the letters seemed pretty clear. Eventually I got the form to submit, though these hurdles made the initial experience less than smooth.

3. I get a confirmation that the email will be sent and I’m done. That’s literally all it took! I’m also back at the main form again so I could quickly fire off more emails to be sent in the future.

Ok, so this review is a bit short, but seriously the service was that simple. I can see how this could be used for a GTD (Getting Things Done) mentality of managing all of your items and setting yourself up for reminders. Many people live and die by their email and I’m one of them. I would definitely like to see them possibly expand this to offer text message support and maybe fix the few hurdles with regards to time zones and spam filtering, but all in all I think this is a simple, clean service that doesn’t require 200 new features and a blog. It does what it says and it works.

Plan2Spend focuses on this task, money in and money out, find out where it’s going and help manage that flow. It’s a simple idea but one that requires great execution to compete in this marketplace. I’m giving their service a trial today to see if they live up to the promise to “Say goodbye to overdraft.”

1. Staring into the river on the homepage I’m immediately at ease. I can control my expenses. Plan2Spend can help. Drink the kool-aid. But I never judge a book by its cover so we’ll need to get our feet wet to really see what the service has to offer.

2. The first step in the signup process is a fairly lengthy EULA. It’s rare that I encounter these and I have to wonder if it really needs to exist. I understand the need to protect your company but do they really expect anyone to read all this legal garbage to use the service? It could potentially scare away users. Nevertheless I do the right thing and skip right over it and agree to whatever it says.

3. In contrast to a lengthy terms of service, the actual signup form is short and sweet. Username, email, and password is all it takes to get started.

4. After signing up I’m taken to a landing page with my goals split up into 3 steps, Enter my deposits, enter my bills, and enter my expenses. I’m not too sure how an expense is different from a bill but I’m sure we’ll get to that in a minute. So I click through to the first step.

5. The first page will let me add any deposits to my account. Whether it be one-time gifts of bi-monthly salary payments all incoming money goes here. The interface is clean and organized and I appreciated the bit of ajaxy pop-in for adding deposits. So far it seems like they’ve left out all the extra cruft and really focused on the basics for their forms.

6. Once I’ve put in the deposit amount and chosen the category it’s updated on the main deposit page. Fairly simple stuff so far so I head over to start adding my bills.

7. Adding bills and other recurring expenses is pretty straightforward with the same interface as adding deposits. My only problem here was the lack of ability to add new categories. For example, with my mortgage, the only category that applied was “Household” but I would have liked to see the ability to tag much like Wesabe offers so specific categories could be chosen (and perhaps more than one).

8. In the last step we record our expenses. It seems that unlike recurring bills, daily expenses are considered one-time things. A new lawnmower, a weed eater (can you tell I’m in the process of buying landscaping equipment at the moment?). The only confusion is that the “Add a Bill” section allowed for one-time payments. It seems these two sections could be combined. I do really enjoy the fact that they go ahead and factor in recurring deposits and payments all the way up to the end of the following month. This really allows you to see the total picture of expenditures and see where you stand now and where you’re going next month based on your bills.

9. The budget area is where everything comes together. You will see a horizontal bar graph showing where your money is going based on the different categories. You can also choose to set a budgeted amount for each category and see how that relates to the average user. Currently this only shows the active month and no previous or coming months. It would be helpful to allow that, as well as the ability to export graphs and things of that nature. This is the area people will use the most to help monitor their expenses and I think it’s where Plan2Spend needs to focus the most.

10. After logon each time I am brought back to a landing page that lets me know where I currently stand moneywise. Helpful things like when my next payments are coming and when I’m getting paid are also great additions. Overall I get a general picture of what my account looks like and how I can start editing things.

Plan2Spend has made a worthy product in this playing field. Although the service could use quite a bit of extra features, the ones that are currently enabled shine. They take the simple idea of inputing your expenses and deposits and budgeting where they go and they’ve made it work in a clean way. However, the competition is fierce and already offers much more in terms of uploading Quicken files, tagging all payments and deposits, and exporting reports of your budget. While Plan2Spend is a great beta, it will need much more refinement to become a contender in this market.

BuyersVine bills itself as the middleman that connects buyers directly with Wineries. To help consumers they’ve added in the ability to tag wine and search it, comment on it, and even added in WineVideos for those less sophisticated (yes, that would be me). Today I’m going to demo all the features that come with the sign-up and see how it ranks against Cork’d, Vinorati, and other players in this field.

1. BuyersVine has a very simple homepage that is quite effective in my opinion. Their mission statement is clear and prominent, we quickly see a few of the features of their service, and we’re given the option of signing up. One thing to note is that many of the features do not require a login (searching, maps, and videos) but we’ll be setting up an account just to see what benefits we can gather from that as well.

2. Setting up an account can be done either as a user or as a Winery. This is the “connecting users directly with the merchants” idea being carried out. We will be a user so I start to put in my information. The only extra fluff I’d like to see them get rid of here is the “About Me” section. There’s no need for it in the initial signup and should be an optional area to be filled in later in the profile.

3. After signup I’m taken directly to the Account page where I’m asked to upload a photo. No verification emails. Really no emails of any kind. After adding a photo I’m taken right back to this page. If the account section looks pretty sparse to you then I think we’re both seeing the same thing. To be fair BuyersVine is still in beta (isn’t everyone) but if there’s any area that needs the most attention it’s the account view. I could see this area being used to show wine’s I’ve tested, wine’s I’ve purchase or nominated, and other information.

4. One area of the account page allows you to nominate a wine. This mindset is a bit different from sites like Cork’d which allow you to upload any wine yourself. Here you suggest wines listing the winery and they are then invited to join BuyersVine. This strikes me as a bit of a hinderance for filling their database for a usable search. The extra steps are roadblocks in making the community grow.

5. Near the bottom of the screen I also noticed they had a link to a form for suggesting the service to a friend. In the interest of including everything I figured I’d mention it.

6. I’m on to the search now for the perfect wine. The search page was the first time my jaw dropped while on this site. From a design standpoint all the other pages looked clean (if a bit sparse on content) but we come to the search and it’s a minefield of tags. I hardly could figure out how to use it at first. Apparently you drag and drop tags into the upper-righthand boxes to search the combinations. The interface is clunky, slow, and I kept just wanting to type in the information instead of dragging and dropping. It seems like in a rush to add in the latest trends they’ve missed the ball on usability.

7. After applying a few tags, Red and California in this instance, I’m taken to the results page which is clean and organized. Users are given the option right away of commenting on wines, buying them, and you can click through to view details about a wine. Interesting to note is that the “Buy” link is simply a link to the Winery’s site. This surprised me because I expected some sort of special price negotiation for BuyersVine users (giving BV a business model as well) but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

8. The detail view shows more information about the individual wines. All comments can be read and you can add your own. I do wish they had a rating scale here instead of simply “I’m a fan or I’m not.” Life is never so black and white, and neither is wine. It seems there are a lot of superfluous tags applied to wines. I noticed many tags with words like “Monday, Wednesday, Professor, Student, etc.” applied to the wine. While I can somewhat understand the concept I can’t imagine a wine only tasting well on a certain day of the week or from a specific occupation.

9. Done with my searching I decide to check out WineMaps. It’s a simple interface built off of Google Maps. If I lived near many wineries it would have been more useful perhaps but alas I’m in the middle of the country with my choices being limited to Mad Dog and Thunderbird.

10. The WineVideos section is a simple blog with posts of wine videos found primarily on Youtube (The embedded videos are hidden here because of Flash). The section is helpful for learning about pairing wines, tasting notes, and a bit of humor. Some users may be misled to think the BuyersVine produced some of these videos but these are all found on Youtube and produced by others.

BuyersVine is a good idea that is perhaps a bit late to the game. I found the service a bit clunky to use when searching and the problems seemed to outweigh the benefits. The design of the site is quite pleasing but in the end I don’t think they offer enough of an advantage to the user and there’s a lot of extra fluff intended to build up the site (Videos, Maps) that doesn’t quite add much to the experience. I think price negotiations with wineries could be a niche area that might push their service along, but without some sort of business model they will not be able to survive with a lackluster service and lack of community to the site.

2Prong is an email spoofing system that takes inspiration from apps like Mailinator and MyTrashMail but it has a lot more to offer in a slick interface. The idea is simple, get a fake email address that is disposable and receive the “verification email” for signing up to prove that the email address is valid. After that, you don’t ever come back and you don’t have to receive more junk from companies. 2Prong has added some extra features that will allow it to never get blocked by sites and provide quick copy and pasting for signups. Let’s take a look at the service.

1. The first step is to signup for 2Prong. Ha! Just kidding, of course you don’t have to sign up. That would be ridiculous. You actually will receive an email address the moment you visit the page (it is displayed here in the top right corner) and the address is automatically saved to your clipboard for pasting into an online form. As you can see there is a rotating animation telling me that the inbox is actively being checked for new mail.

2. I’m going to send a message to the inbox to see if it really works. I head over to gmail and create a test message to send out.

3. Quick as hell 2Prong uses an AJAX call to display the message on screen.

4. Keep in mind that these inboxes are temporary. Even though you have the option of going back to the inbox, if refresh the homepage as I have done, you will get a completely new email address and the process will repeat.

2Prong is one of those services that you didn’t think you needed until you start using it. It’s so simple and easy to use and in the long run could save you from tons of spam flooding your inbox as a result of all the registration forms we invariably fill out from one day to the next (Now that I think about it, DemoMarks should use this service for all our registrations). Every week a new domain is assigned to all generated email addresses so you won’t gat an email address that is widely recognized as temporary (like Mailinator). The sponsor of the week also gets to keep whatever domain was used. Don’t you want to own Iheartspam.org or KFedsibroke.com?

For quick registration I think you can’t go wrong with a site like this. It’s free, easy to use, fast, and fixes a lot of the problems with services like Mailinator. I highly recommend giving it a try next time you need to sign up for something online.

2. Registration is free and fairly simple. It looks like you have to be a certain age to use Zikle based on the fact that they ask for a birthdate, but I can’t find any current information on their site about what that cutoff age is. After verifying my email address I log in.

3. Before I get started setting up my site I’m asked to upload an avatar. This hints at Zikle’s underlying social aspect to site publishing. We will see many more areas that all bring in more social features such as commenting and adding friends.

4. In order to find out who else uses Zikle we are given the option of putting in our MSN account information. I like the idea of viewing my contacts for friends, but MSN is an odd choice. I don’t use it and I would think they would want to expand this feature to a few other contact lists (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.). Since I don’t have an MSN account I choose to skip ahead.

5. I now get to the main area of Zikle where they remind me again how lonely I am. They’re obviously pushing the idea of having friends and connecting through Zikle sites. I decide to click over to the Manage Pages tab to see what I’m given by default.

6. You start off with just a simple Start page. Here in the Manage Pages screen you have the option of editing what you already created, deleting pages, and creating whole new pages. I’m jumping in headfirst so I decide to create a new page.

7. The first step to creating a page is to give it a name and title. Zikle doesn’t explain the difference at all which could be confusing. I would assume the title is what actually shows on the page and the name is what you give it that shows in the Manage Pages screen. The addition of privacy features to make a page public or not is also available.

8. I’m sent to the default view of the webpage. Here I can drag and drop windows, editing contents of the dialog boxes, and removing certain things. I also have a menu up top where I can choose to include pictures and clipart as well as edit the background.

9. Adding an image gives me a Lightbox effect where I can choose from the images I’ve already used in the past or upload a new one.

10. The interface can be somewhat problematic to work with. Although the boxes are drag and drop, the positioning is very hit or miss and from what I can tell there is no way to decide how the dialog boxes get layered. Here I have an image inserted but in some cases it is behind other text boxes causing problems.

11. Adding a text box is much like adding an image. The WYSIWYG interface is easy to use and advanced users could choose to insert html code if they wish.

12. Zikle has included a lot of clipart split up into categories to help the common user pimp out their page. Here’s a screen with a couple banners to put into the site.

13. You can also upload an image to replace the background. It would be nice for Zikle to include some backgrounds to choose from much like with the Clipart screen. Also it would be great to have the option to make the background fixed and choice of whether it repeats or not.

14. After doing a few edits my page is already starting to look like a Myspace profile.

Although Zikle has included many features for making it easy to add content, there’s little in the way of organizing it. The drag-and-drop interface is not very intuitive because of the layering that is going on and the inability to align elements in a grid-like fashion. I think this is a great start for Zikle (it’s a free beta, there are always going to be some rough edges). Addition of video content from YouTube and other sites, maybe even photos from Webshots or Photobucket, would be another great addition. In the end Zikle is making leaps and bounds with regards to online publishing but the end results are still very much average.

2. The interface is very easy to use and the black background helps to make the design all about the colors themselves. Clicking on a color scheme fills the whole screen with the palette, allowing you to really experience it up close.

3. Adobe also has a page of links to other content and information on color theory and forums about the application.

4. One of the really great features that I’m seeing in a lot of apps these days is the ability to use the interface without signing in. Here we’ve gone to create our own color scheme and we can mix and match colors to our hearts content without signing up. Signing up gives you the advantage of downloading, saving, and sharing your color schemes as well as commenting on others.

5. You can move the sliders around, remove specific colors, add new ones, and change the rules (monotone, triad schemes, etc.) until you’ve found the perfect colors for your project. It’s hard to show in screenshots just how lovely this all works so I really encourage you to head over there and give it a try. I did notice that more often than not the color palettes being generated were quite pleasing, so that’s a plus.

6. Of course I also wanted to see what other things I could do with a logged in account so that requires signing up with Adobe. If you already have an Adobe account you’re good to go, if not just sign up using the form that you’re redirected to when clicking “Sign Up”.

7. Once registered you can log in at Kuler with a drop-down box. Everything is quick to load thanks to the flash interface and while usually I’m not a fan of Flash sites, Adobe rightly has done well with this app.

8. After logging in you’ll have the ability to Title, Tag, and Save your palette of colors as well as publish the scheme for all to see. When testing this I had trouble saving the scheme, possibly due to the heavy use their servers are getting at the moment, so I’ll just have to remember my beautiful color scheme for now.

9. When signed in you will also have a “MyKuler” section that shows you all the color palettes you have created thus far. Since I had difficulty saving mine, I’m empty inside. How appropriate.

10. When browsing the list of popular color schemes you will also notice that after signing in you have the option of saving the scheme to your computer for use in Photoshop, Illustrator, and other applications (the filetype is ASE, Adobe Swatch Exchange File). You can also open the scheme in the Create section and edit the colors if you like where something is headed but want to change one or two of the colors.

There’s no doubt when Adobe decides to enter a market they mean serious business. There’s not a single person who thinks they won’t dominate the Online Photo Editing marketplace by brand alone. This color application is no exception and they’ve really made a product that does one thing and does it well. From the design to the interface, all aspects of the site are aimed at getting good color schemes for your project. It would be nice if they incorporated a more social feel to it. You can currently comment on color schemes but that option is not immediately obvious. Despite this and the fact that I had some trouble saving my schemes, the product as a whole is a killer application that I’ll definitely be using in the future for my projects.

All of this sounds very promising but as the owner of a less than spectacular broadband connection I’m all too familiar with the amount of bandwidth needed to make streaming television and movies look seamless to the enduser. Plus, as all the hype builds around the secrecy of this project I’ve become more skeptical that perhaps in this case the magic might be in the mystery of the product. I recently managed to get my hand on a beta token and got permission to demo the product here so today we’ll be giving it a run for its money and see if Joost lives up to the hype.

1. Our trek to Joostonia begins at the lowly hills of the homepage where our brave hero DemoMarks will attempt to gain access to the prized holy grail of the Joost Lord. As you can see with Joost being in private beta they are holding most of their cards real close and only offer a link to a few screenshots, some frequently asked questions, and the chance to sign up to test Joost or receive their newsletter.

2. The signup to beta test Joost is simple but getting in is not. The waiting list is long and at this point you’re better off gaining an invitation token to get in to the site instead of trying to get one from Joost directly.

3. Luckily for me I managed to get ahold of a token provided by CenterNetworks so I head on over to the login page and enter my details.

4. The Joost website is basically serving the purpose of a general hub for all news and activity related to the program for testers. We’ve got a blog with all the latest release announcements as well as information on Downloading, Sharing, and a Forum. Of course what we’re most interested in is downloading and trying out the program so I click to download.

5. Joost recently released a Mac version of their software so I’m given the option of downloading either and since I’m on at Mac at the moment I’ve decided that will be my platform of choice.

6. Setup is typical for Mac applications and doesn’t take long at all. Once I’ve unpacked and installed the program I go ahead and add a beautiful little icon to my dock.

7. After watching a short introduction video that basically advertised what’s being shown recently at Joost I start seeing some content, namely Green Day. The interface is full screen by default making the video a tad choppy. I will note that I’m currently at work on a T3 dedicated line, not my crappy “broadband” DSL at home. The interface menu only shows up when the mouse is moved across the screen and disappears when idle.

8. I clicked the “My Channels” button to see what that had to offer and I get a few options. Because Joost is still in beta there’s not a ton of content to offer but it’s a decent offering and nothing at all like the YouTube fare.

9. I’ve gone into the “What’s Popular” channel to see what’s kickin at Joost. All of these listings are only a few minutes a piece so you’re basically just getting snippets of entertainment at this point. One thing that changes your view of television when using this app is that, much like with a Tivo, you are in control of what you get to watch. You have the ability to restart a program, pause it, etc. That’s one of the key features that sets this apart from anything else.

10. After making my selection the video loads and begins. Loading for me is taking about 6-7 seconds per video, sometimes a bit longer. This is not horrible considering the type of loading times I’ve experienced in the past with streaming sites, but I’d be interested to see how it does on a home connection.

11. Another wild features is that Joost has built widgets into the interface. You remember the button to the right, when you click it you get a screen showing the default chat widget along with a notice and the option to add more. The chat functionality is pretty interesting, offering users the ability to talk about what’s being showed on a specific channel. I could see this having the quality of AOL chatrooms or Metafilter depending on whether you’re on MTV or the History Channel, but the concept is definitely intriguing. When I had this up there were 2-3 people in the room (no names are displayed except when messaging) and no one was talking.

12. Clicking the Add Widget button gives me a few other default options for adding in widgets to the screen. I assume developers will be able to create any widget ala Dashboard/Yahoo/Windows Sidebar et. al. Another thing you’ll notice here and with other menus is that the interface is designed to repeat options continually. While this works well for say 60 channels where you start over again at channel 1, in menus like this it’s confusing because what looks like a large list of widgets is only really a small handful.

13. After clicking a widget it is added to the screen and I can drag it around, placing it where I wish. Widgets make for interesting interaction but I doubt I’d use them in real life rather than actually just watching programming.

Right now there are still a lot of things being ironed out at Joost which is very typically with a full fledged beta and I expect much more programming, widgets, and features will be added in the coming months as the service gets more use. After announcing at the end of last year they’ve already come a long way. Does it live up to the hype? For me it hasn’t yet. The resolution made watching the programming somewhat unattractive compared to downloading movies and television shows in iTunes. However the interface is slick and with deals being made for major television programming Joost has a big opportunity to go big with this application. It is currently free and ad-supported and there have been no mentions of any pricing in the future (it will likely stay ad-supported and free of charge).

Also if you’ve gone through this whole review and now you’re itching to get your hands on the program, I happen to have 2 invites and I’m willing to share the love. Simply review any of our demos and the first 2 will get token invites to take Joost for a whirl.

2. You know the drill by this point, signup, verify, login. Nothing really new, though it’s interesting to note you need to be 13 years of age or older to use Ratepoint (most likely due to the adult nature of some of the sites being rated).

3. After logging in for the first time I’m given the option to take a tour of the place or get down to business. I appreciate the option of learning more about the site, but these days I’m the tour guide so I skip ahead of the line and get right to business.

4. My next step in the process of logging in (and yes there are a few steps apparently) is to add friends. Unfortunately I can’t think of anyone who likes me enough to add them at the moment so I’m skipping this step.

5. Ratepoint has the ability to import links from del.icio.us and apply mass ratings to them all. Though I was getting rather annoyed by all the steps of logging in for the first time I do really enjoy this feature since it will fill my account up nicely right off the start. Ratings have to be applied as a group to the whole import, which is hopefully something that could be resolved in later releases, though it’s not a huge deal since most of my bookmarks are sites I enjoy so a 5 will do nicely.

6. After giving me del.icio.us user information I’m notified that it will take up to 30 minutes for my bookmarks to appear in Ratepoint. That’s somewhat annoying since the process should be pretty immediate, but it’s not as annoying as the fact that 3 screens in I still haven’t reached the main landing page for Ratepoint and now I’m requested to give even more information. I should note that all of the information being requested in these screens is available through the Tools and Profile page of the Ratepoint site. It seems like these options, while helpful for users who want to build up their account immediately, are really serving as barriers for those who want to get to the main site immediately.

7. I’ve finally made it to the main page, logged in and ready to go. The main landing page has a lot going on, but they’ve made good use of tabs to separate the content appropriately. I have the option of viewing the latest ratings from the community as a whole or just my own personal ratings in the main content window. The sidebar keeps track of keywords (basically like a tag cloud) for myself and the community as well as my friends and “dittos” (users that have similiar interests based on sites reviewed).

8. I definitely want to try adding a rating so I click the “Rate a New Site” button. I also had the option of rating any of the sites that have already been added by other users at Ratepoint. The interface is very nicely built with auto-completion of tags and “hover-highlighting” of the rating stars (and yes, I just made up the word “hover-highlighting” and I think it works beautifully in this case).

9. I’ll be adding DemoMarks today with a big fat 5 stars because we rock, in my respective opinion of course. Adding it was just a few clicks and we’re on the list.

10. I start to check out the other options available (assuming I haven’t seen everything by way of the 20 screens to make it to the main page that is). The profile page again uses tabs to present quite a bit of information about users with similiar interests, my friends, the ratings I’ve completed, and the keywords tagged onto those ratings. I think the layout of the site and interface is something Ratepoint really excels at and it definitely shows as their strong point.

11. Going into the tools page I see a few options that Ratepoint already covered with the initial login but one great feature that I find is the prominently displayed toolbar available for install on Firefox and Internet Explorer. The toolbar gives all the functions of adding ratings for a site as well as forwarding it on to other friends right in your browser so you don’t even have to be at Ratepoint all the time to use the service. It’s a great feature that will help users adopt the service over time and build up their list of sites.

12. On the invite page I’m given the option of sending a message to a friend inviting them to join. I also have a referral link that I can use which will add them as my friend when they sign up using it. One nice thing that wasn’t included is the ability to send invitations to multiple people at once.

I may have given Ratepoint a hard time because of the initial login process but that’s a simple usability issue they could easily address. On the upside they’ve mastered the rest of the interface and manage to provide a lot of information in a clean and organized matter. It says a lot that at no point in the process did I feel overwhelmed by the information on the page. The AJAX autocomplete and highlighting features are nice and the toolbar is a wonderful addition that will aid in the addition of multiple site ratings without visiting Ratepoint each time and manually entering them. For a free web application I think it had its ups and downs but it’s an interesting idea and I’ll probably be back to visit and find out what friends match up with my interests.

There’s no shortage of information on RSS, gathering feeds, and the abundance of feed readers available, so I won’t bore you with all those gritty details. Basically it’s a way for you to get all the latest updates from a website in one location (your feed reader) instead of navigating to each site. There are many people that still don’t know about RSS or find the jump from reading on the web to browsing a feed reader too confusing. Feedmailer is just one company that is likely to change that.

Feedmailer allows anyone to subscribe to feeds through their email address, getting the latest content from their favorite sites delivered directly to their inbox. For many users this makes a bit more sense, after all everyone uses email these days, why require a feed reader to deliver the content? It’s a free, ad-supported service and I wanted to find out if it helped bridge the gap between RSS and the average user so I’m testing Feedmailer out today.

1. The homepage shows me the basic 3 step process that will be needed to make use of Feedmailer’s services. Register, Add Feeds, and Receive. So I’m off to do step one by clicking on the “register now” link. One thing I’ll go ahead and say is that I wish the large “Register” circle had been a link to actually register since that was my first instinct for signing up, not the tiny link under the sign-in form.

2. Register is fairly simple, same old information so just sign up.

3. After registering I have to validate my email address. Once that’s done I’m taken back to the Feedmailer homepage to login.

4. Logging in should have been simple but I ran into a problem here. It’s a minor thing and I know I’m always cranky about user interface design, but the button to login does not look like a button, which made me skip right over it and accidently hit “register” again. I think a border or something is needed to make the word “Login” look more like a clickable button than simply a heading.

5. Once I’m logged in I’m directed to a page that looks strangely familiar. It’s the homepage with a new menu to the left. I can view some of the recent additions by users and additions to the Global Directory. Let’s give it a whirl by adding a Feed of our own. To do this I select the Feed Manager on menu to the left.

6. To subscribe to a feed I need to copy the XML link into the first field and then choose how often I want to receive updates and how many updates at a time I would like to receive.

7. Let’s try it out by adding the feed for TechMeme. The first step is to go to the Techmeme Homepage and find the XML button (you see it here to the right). In many cases it is also an icon that looks like this . Go ahead and click it.

8. Depending on what browser you use the next screen could be different for you. Firefox 2.0 is what I’m on so I get a screen that shows me what the feed looks like and some options to subscribe. Since I only need the URL for the feed I will simply copy the address from the top of the browser instead of choosing any of these options. You should do the same in whatever browser you are using.

9. We’re back at Feedmailer again and I’ve copied the XML link into the form and chosen to receive hourly updates with a maximum of 5 updates. Now I just click add and I’m done.

10. After a short popup notifying me that the feed has been added I’m taken back to the feed manager where my new Techmeme feed shows up with the option to edit or delete it. I should now receive hourly updates by email for that website. However, the process was not all that easy, but Feedmailer knows this and that’s why they’ve added in a Global Directory of popular feeds. Let’s check that out next.

11. The global directory is an area where users who aren’t familiar with how to add feeds on their own can find popular websites and add them to their list without worrying about XML URLs. The sites are split up by category and ignoring the cheesy icons it’s actually a very handy feature.

12. Taking a look at the Technology section all the big sites are listed. I’m a bit disappointed that there’s no option to search for feeds. Who wants to click through 20 pages to see if a site is listed or not? But nevertheless the directory makes it easy for someone to find interesting sites and adding a feed is as easy as a click of the button.

13. Feedmailer has built in two other handy features that will greatly appeal to the average user. The first is the ability to create a Youtube feed based on a username or tag. Using there form I can simply input a topic or certain user and receive email updates when a video is posted with that criteria.

14. Another handy addition is the Myspace Feed creator where users can put in a Username or Photo Page URL and get a feed based on that. Feedmailer does a great job of highlighting where the user can find this information to create their feed and these extra features are a great addition to the service.

Feedmailer has managed to take quite a bit of the mysterious nature of RSS away with their ability to provide content from a variety of sites and deliver directly to email without the use of a feedreader or any prior knowledge. There are options for the advanced user (manual feed additions) as well as the novice. It’s questionable how popular this service can become since sites like Feedburner already allow publishers to provide email subscriptions (see the DemoMarks sidebar for an example of this), but nevertheless Feedmailer has a great product here that delivers, literally! (Ok, even I’ll admit that was cheesy, but I could do worse for closing lines)