turnipville dot comarooski

I just spent the last few minutes catching up on the latest Web 2.0 stuff over at TechCrunch, and noticed an older article about 30 Boxes – the online calendar that’s all the buzz lately.

Now, I played with 30 Boxes a few weeks back, and it’s cool. Don’t get me wrong…it’s a super slick calendar.

But at what point does the average user tire of having 15 difference specialized applications, and default back to suites like Outlook?

There’s a lot to be said for doing one thing, and doing it really well. I think we’ve seen that with things like Gmail, Bloglines, and Backpackit (just because Backpack isn’t meeting my GTD needs doesn’t mean it’s not awesome). But at what point do the specialty features of these customized services stop outweighing the inconvenience of having numerous different services?

It’s been well documented here that I’m a gadget geek, and as such, it’s important that I’m able to keep my information synchronized across all of my machines. Obviously, the web is an excellent way to do that. But can you imagine bouncing between six different sites on your handheld, trying to check your e-mail, to-do lists, appointments, instant messages, etc.?

I don’t mean to rain on the 30 Boxes parade, because it’s actually super slick. It’s just that every time I see something super cool like this, I end up having to make adjustments in my overall scheme. My question is: how important is convenience, and how does it stack up against feature-sets?

30 Boxes, Outlook, Web 2.0