Azooca: a new video mail provider
We didn't really like Azooca's video mail service; read why.
Azooca is a new video mail service that launched earlier this month. It joins the ranks of other video mail services like Springdoo, EyeJot, and Gabmail to let users send and receive video messages. Azooca steps it up a notch by giving its users a full-fledged e-mail in-box, along with 250MB to store attachments and incoming video messages.
Recording videos is managed entirely within the e-mail composition window, and users get three simple controls to record, play, and stop the recording. Users can also preview their video messages before sending, or save them as a draft. Video clips are limited to just one minute, although Azooca creator Brian Zheng tells me they'll be increasing that limit, along with the in-box size, in about two months.
At first glance, I felt like giving Azooca a little bit of flack for its 250MB cap on the in-box, although just a few years ago major e-mail companies were only able to offer e-mail in-boxes in the double digits of megabyte storage capacity. Still, compared to today's big guys like Gmail's 3 gigabytes and Yahoo's unlimited capacity, it's just hard for me to imagine running out of storage with Web mail.
In testing, I found a rather irritating snag. Messages sent showed up in the spam folders in Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. While this isn't really Azooca's fault, your messages could go unseen by potential recipients. I can't fully recommend Azooca for this reason, although I think it's a noble effort. I also wouldn't use it instead of a service like Gabmail, which doesn't try to take me away from my current Web mail provider.