AOL Phoenix: one email box to rule them all

If you’re like me, you have an email address (or two) for work, one for your private matters, and a third for registering for accounts or services likely to be bombarded with spam. You also may tire of switching between all of these accounts, especially if on multiple services.

AOL has announced a preview of an upcoming service nicknamed Phoenix that promises to aggregate your AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail in one place. You’ll be able to access all of your messages, send from any address, and search through all of the messages sent to any account. This will be incredibly useful to people with multiple online email accounts.

Phoenix is currently in testing, so users can request an invitation at http://phoenix.aol.com (Click on the “Please add me to the invite list” link). Registration should open next year, but you can get  early access by signing-up now. Once involved, you’ll also get the following features:

• Quick Bar – send mail, instant message, send SMS, update Facebook/Twitter/Lifestream
• Smart View – Integrated maps, photos or file attachments, and previous conversations are displayed on the right. This is by design so users get additional information without having to leave the message.
• Single-click search – search though all email accounts or filter according to folder or other options.
• Premium features – unlimited storage, POP or IMAP support (use your address on a mobile phone, tablet, or email client like Outlook), send attachments up to 25MB, and get customer support.
• Domain selection – AOL has plans to let member choose their address from a variety of domains. For instance, I could be andrew@aol.com, but why not spice things up and be andrew@love.com, andrew@wow.com, or andrew@games.com? Considering that AOL has a long list of websites that it owns, I’m guessing you’ll have plenty of places to park your email.