IMified - Useful and Secure?

February 7, 2007 in Applications, Web by Carsten Pötter | 1 comment

IMified is a service which allows users to add to-do’s, calendar entries, and blog posts to various applications (30 Boxes, Remember The Milk, Basecamp, Blogger, Google Calendar,…) by using their favourite instant messenger. Most instant messengers are supported: AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger. The service was launched last weekend.

Controlling various applications from just one central service sounds like a splendid idea at first. Considering I am using 30 Boxes as well as Remember The Milk makes IMified look like an even more appealing productivity tool. At least theoretically.
Signing up is simple. Send an IM to IMified and you are ready to start. You can even add notes, to-do’s, and reminders within IMified. No need to add any of your other applications at this point. This works fine. However then I have stopped using the tool.

Why? I simply don’t know who is running the service. Well, Dave and Anthony seem to be the guys. Any surnames? No. Any contact address? No. Phone number? No. Fax? No. Email? Oh yes. Call me paranoid but I am not giving away my login details of my calendar and to-do list to some Dave and Anthony. They claim there was AES encryption and my precious data was securely stored at a data center in the Rocky Mountains. Does it make any difference if servers were in the Rockies or at Venice Beach? No. So why do they emphasise this?

I am probably all wrong and Dave and Anthony are two really nice guys who just forgot to put some contact information on their website. I don’t know. Anyway, is it really more productive using IM than adding entries directly to your favourite application? You decide.