visto.com

I only found visto.com very recently when I was browsing through ciao, just looking for something to write about. I enjoy writing about things that haven’t been written about before, because I think that it is more helpful to people sometimes, when I can introduce them to something that they might otherwise not have heard of.

Anyway, visto.com is a free email service with a bit of a difference. It’s more of an organiser ...
...remind yourself about how good visto.com is. They have a system where your tasks are rated according to whether they’ve been completed or not. A task that’s been completed is, for example, given a tick. A task that is overdue is given a red card, and a task which is due today, is given a yellow card. If I used it to its full potential, I am 100% sure it would work well.

ADDRESS BOOK
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This is the ... more

I only found visto.com very recently when I was browsing through ciao, just looking for something to write about. I enjoy writing about things that haven’t been written about before, because I think that it is more helpful to people sometimes, when I can introduce them to something that they might otherwise not have heard of.

Anyway, visto.com is a free email service with a bit of a difference. It’s more of an organiser really. Ideally suited to the businessman or woman.

To begin, you obviously have to register. Instead of having to flick through millions of pages, answering millions of questions about yourself, at visto, it was simple. Just one page of simple questions, name, age, password and username etc. It’s obviously based at the American user, but everything is easily fixed. It took my registration very quickly, and I had my own account in probably less than 1 minute from first entering the site.

When you get in, it actually looks a little confusing. I was very impressed though. Despite the cluttered look of the page, a closer inspection actually reveals that there isn’t much to be worried about.

START
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They start you off at the ‘start’. This is kind of your overview. It tells you what’s in your inbox, if you’ve got any jobs that you should be doing today, and about any appointments you have (the latter 2 of those can be programmed in through their respective sections – tell you about that later).

From here you have easy access to all of the other important areas of the site.

So where do you want to go?? Well……………..

Listed on the left of their screen are your options. These follow you wherever you go (scary huh!!), so you’re always just a click away from whichever part of the site it is that you want to visit.

EMAIL
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One of the great thing about this site is how simple everything is kept. Despite it having such a complicated content (being aimed at the business-minded, there’s some stuff here I’d never even think of using in a billion years – but you don’t have to use them). There are nice little diagrams indicating these options.

By clicking the nice little envelope, you’re whisked away into your inbox. This is just as nicely laid out as the ‘start’. Even for simpletons like myself, this one is easy to use.

On opening your mail, I have been very impressed with the way it is shown. I have never used a service like this where everything is so clear. Instead of everything being all clumped up with little annoying scrolling things all over the place, this one is just given to you like a ‘word’ document or something. Taking up 80% of the page. I can’t quite tell you how impressed I am.

Outgoing and incoming emails always arrive and are delivered quickly. I played around a bit sending myself some at my other address. Good service!!

Also from here, you obviously have access to the address book etc. All that stuff can obviously be got at from the ‘start’ though, so I’ll get to it in a minute.

CALENDER
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The next one down is the calendar service. This actually is just what it says. I’ve never used one of these before, but this one is so simple. You click on a time on a certain day, and then it lets you leave yourself a little reminder, along with an email address. Then, it will email you a reminder at the address you just put in, so that you don't forget. Used for appointments and things.

No worries about it being an American site with American times though, because it lets you set the time zone for where ever you require.

TASKS
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This one is all about reminding yourself about things you must do. It gives you an example where you’re supposed to remind yourself about how good visto.com is. They have a system where your tasks are rated according to whether they’ve been completed or not. A task that’s been completed is, for example, given a tick. A task that is overdue is given a red card, and a task which is due today, is given a yellow card. If I used it to its full potential, I am 100% sure it would work well.

ADDRESS BOOK
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This is the one thing that really quite confuses me. Being so business minded, the site has a lot of stuff here that I won’t be needing, but you don’t have to fill in all the options they give you.

It all does look quite confusing to start. They even talk about you having the chance to upload your email addresses from another account. Sounds really good if I got the right idea. Still sounds a bit too complicated to me though.

When you have input a few addresses though, they’re displayed clearly and are very easy to access. The site runs VERY quickly, which is another brownie point for visto.

FILES
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This is your next option on the list. It’s an excellent little feature that lets you store up to 15MB of information. It’s meant to be used for storing presentations or reports. So I suppose if you don’t want to leave them on your desktop or anything, you can safely keep them here. One obvious advantage to this is that they can follow you wherever you go. So you don’t have to copy things on to disc and them take them with you. 15 megs also means that you can keep pictures stored, which may be too big for a floppy.

These files are very easy to set up. Although I have not used one properly, I did open kind of a fake one, just to see what it was like. Easy access too, as with all parts of the site.

BOOKMARKS
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Yet another brilliant feature from this company I’d never heard of. Much like the ‘files’ part, the bookmarks are exactly as they say. It means that you can transport your favourite URL’s around with you. So no matter what computer, wherever in the World, they’ll always be there.

Away from their main list of options, laid out nicely at the top of the screen are a few more. They are mostly, once again, of little real use to me, however……

There is this thing where they let you create ‘groups’. This is a place where you can set up groups of your friends email addresses, so that you can keep in contact with them all at the same time. It isn’t just as simple as having a list of addresses though. They also provide you with separate calendars, directories and a message board, just for these groups. You can set up as many groups as you like and they reckon it will take about 3 minutes for each one to be processes. Each one can even be password protected, just in case (for whatever reason that might be).

They also have ANOTHER section on ‘new features’.

Here they tell you about how they work well with WAP technology (but I think all of that takes quite a bit of setting up by the looks of it).

They also have EMAIL ALERTS in this section, so that when you are expecting an important message, you can be told about its arrival via a number of other routes. They will send something to your phone, pager, ICQ or any other alternative email account you wish. I’m not too sure if all of the phone stuff will work in the UK though.

They also have a filter system. One for SPAM and another for your friends or colleagues. So messages can be sorted directly in to your separate folders, or in the case of the SPAM, totally blocked.

It all seems to jut work so well. Glad I found it. Thanks CIAO!
 

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