As most of you probably know, I’m quite fond of my GMail Inbox.  Due to its popularity there exists an impressive array of add-ons, extensions, scripts and tools to enhance the service even more.

But even though I’m fond of GMail, that doesn’t stop my fickle mind from constantly searching for something that may be better.

A tool that might be is Zenbe. Breaking down the name into its components, it suggests that its users will be in a Zen-like state using their service. I’ve never bought into the whole Zen thing (that’s why I’ve never even attempted to reach what David Allen calls a “mind like water”), but I do have to concede that Zenbe does a few pretty nice things.

Posing as a webmail-service, it actually combines all your communication needs. While you do get a free email-address when you sign up, you might as well keep using any address you’ve had before, provided it offers pop3 support. Fortunately, GMail does, so I was able to simply plug it into Zenbe.

The webmail side of Zenbe offers the usual shenanigans of later services, including the tagging of mails and conversation view of your messages. But that’s where the similarities end and the awesomeness starts.

In addition to the webmail part, Zenbe offers a plethora of tools that are designed to simplify your life. First of all, they offer a “Files”-view, displaying all the attachments you’ve received via mail, with the option of viewing certain filetype directly inside Zenbe.

Next up is a calendar, which is always handy to have right by your mail. The calendar is rather basic and doesn’t offer as much bells and whistles as Google calendar, but it lets you import calendars from wherever you want.

And then there’s Zenpages. Basically, Zenpages provides space for projects. You can add emails, tasks,  links, maps, videos, discussions and even an RSS feed. These pages can then be shared with and edited by whomever you like, regardless of whether they’ve got a Zenbe account or not. It’s a great way of sharing information and collaborating with friends and teams.

And since you’re already pretty overwhelmed by what Zenbe can do, I’ll just quickly fill you in on what the sidebar does. It holds your contacts, which can of course be imported from your other webmail services as well. Another tab holds a task list system. You can create as many lists as you like, lists you create in Zenpages also show up there. And then there’s Twitter, Facebook and GTalk ingetration, meaning you’ll never have to leave your Zenbe Inbox to check on your contacts from all over the web.

Now, the whole thing isn’t just very functional, the GUI is also very beautiful. Which could be where parts of the whole Zen-thing come in.

However, regardless of all its functionality and beauty, Zenbe has one big downside that makes me hesitant from using it as much as I would like to. It’s not a big player. The thing is, communication is the key to everything we do online nowadays. Giving that into the hands of a company that might not be here a year from now is just too risky.

In addition, I read through their blog and encountered this posting in which they are elaborating on future implementations of Zenbe. They disclose that new iterations of Zenbe will be focused on getting businesses on board. As a private user, that sounds just a bit too discouraging from future use, considering that new features will most likely be implemented in the business, rather than the private version.

In July 2008 Google released a new service called Knol. You’re probably wondering what sort of funny name that is, and after I’ve told you what Knol does, you’ll still think that, but at least the name will make sense.

So what is a knol? Google describes it like this:

Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we’re making Knol available to everyone.

Knol has been described by others as a Wikipedia of sorts, but that’s not quite right. While Wikipedia is structured like a classical encyclopedia, with editors guarding like watchdogs what is added or edited, Knol lets many people write many different articles on the same topic. Readers can then rate, review and sometimes even edit other authors articles (via something called moderated editing, meaning edits by others must be approved by the author of the knol). Compared to Wikipedia, that’s about as laissez fair as it can get.

So, how has Google Knol been doing since the start? As the official Google blog announced last month, the 100,000 knols barrier was broken sometime at the end of 2008. That’s not too bad for a service that’s only been around for a mere six months. I guess the fact that Google lets you display ads on your knol’s page didn’t hurt either.

Which is where it becomes tricky. Right now one of the featured knols is an article that deals with plagiarism on Google Knol. According to the article, especially Wikipedia articles get copied massively without attribution, which is simply against the Wikipedia license. And if those people who’ve copied Wikipedia articles also earn money by having ads displayed on their stolen content, it gets a bit nasty.

The measures you can take if you feel content has been plagiarized are absurdly complicated. The owner of the copyrighted material has to contact Google in writing. That’s right, a letter on actual paper. Why on earth they wouldn’t simply let them contact them via e-mail or a form or whatever else people have been using on the Interwebs for the last 15 years is beyond me.

Anyway, I accidentally stumbled over a how-to contest Google Knol is holding in cooperation with Dummies.com, so I decided to add another knol to those 100,000. Since there’s at least a thousands things I could write the most splendid how-tos on, it was tough for me to decide, but I chose something that most people would be able to connect with. That’s right, I wrote a how-to on the perfect Martini. Check it out! And don’t copy it without attribution!

For someone who’s been signing up for web-services for the last couple of years, it’s nothing new to receive notice that one of those services has gone, as Google would put it, the way of the dinosaur.

And most of the time, it’s a natural thing. If a service is unpopular, lacks originality or simply function, it’ll be closed down sooner or later. Just check out the TechCrunch deadpool.

But what about services that thrive, are popular but are shut down nonetheless? For example, I Want Sandy, which was a very innovative productivity tool. The company that created it, headed by Rael Dornfest, was bought out by Twitter. And since Twitter was only interested in Dornfest’s mind and not the matter he had created, it was decided to shut Sandy and its base service Stikkitdown.

Now, I personally think it’s a rotten thing to do. Sure, it’s a great career move I guess, but how much would it have cost Twitter to keep a server with I Want Sandy and someone who once in a while looks after that server? For a service that is getting funding in the millions, that shouldn’t pose that much of an obstacle, now should it?

And apart from the individual implications, I feel that moves like that will also greatly hurt the adoption of new small-scale web-services. It takes faith to really start using a web-service, to feed it with your data and your time. Shutting the door right in your user’s face is not going to sit well with most of them. And they are going to remember it.

If people would have known one year ago, that Sandy or Stikkit were mere testbeds for Dornfest’s ideas, they wouldn’t have opted for using it as extensively as they did.

And a very similar thing happened to Pownce recently. It was bought by Six Apart, and again, the only thing they cared about were the two main developers. Pownce will be shut down in a few days, and all the people who came to like it (admittedly, they’re not that great in number) will have to deal with it and move on.

Again, it’s probably a splendid career move for the developers, but it gives small web-services a bad rep. In the future, disappointed ex-users will think twice before trusting small web-services again. Instead, they’ll always opt for similar services created by one of the big players like Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft.

But seeing how I’m a generally positive person, I won’t leave you with this bleak forecast. Instead, I’ll show you how the Internets are fast-paced enough to latch onto unfortunate events like the one above and turn them into cuddly, little feelgood-stories ready for the closing seconds of a Fox newscast.

When Pownce announced that it would close doors, the good people at Soup.io didn’t hesitate for a second and created a very elegant tool that lets Pownce users import their accounts right into Soup. So Soup, which has functionality that greatly exceeds anything Pownce ever offered anyway, not only helped the poor souls stranded after the Pownce closing, but also added a whole bunch of new, happy people to their user-base.

And when it comes to the shutdown of I Want Sandy, a couple of things happened. A similar service, Zetetic’s PingMe, put up a primer on how to most effectively switch from Sandy to their service. And a couple of die-hard Sandy-fans actually started an open-source project that should sooner or later reproduce the functionality of Sandy.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the looming recession will kill off all services that don’t have a few millions stashed under their pillows anyway, but until then, it would be wise not to piss off and abandon your users when a bit of effort could ensure their everlasting gratitude and undying love.