Soon, AOL will "got mail" again

America Online has developed a web-based email service called Alto (altomail.com), and early reports sure sound promising. Alto is not a new email provider (no @alto.com email addresses, at least not yet), but an inbox-replacement for your current email address(es). Read your Gmail, Yahoo, Mac, or other accounts; import Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter messages. Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider has a review. Mat Honan at Wired gave it a whirl. Daniel Terdiman at CNET liked it. The service is launching as a private beta, with public availability sometime in Q1 2013. Alto is free for now, but expect ads or a paid "premium" option later on. It's browser-based, and there's an HTML5 version optimized for iPad (and, presumably, other tablets).

(Screengrab from Business Insider's review.)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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AOL? What’s that?
http://beautifulsynthesis.com Andrea

I wondered how long it would take before someone developed this kind of thing. Never expected it to be AOL, though!
http://twitter.com/stuck411 David

Another contender for my email client? I’m just now messing around with outlook.com. Should I give that one up and try this? Thoughts?
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Wait… They expect me to pay for that UI, without even providing the service behind it?

Those AOL guys have spent too many years fleecing helpless old people…
http://sr105.com/ Harvey

I hope this works. I’ve been wanting a gmail-ish interface for my imap servers for years.
Daemonworks

I’m pretty happy with gmail, honestly. For one thing, it doesn’t come with an interface that wastes 90% of the screen real-estate…
http://twitter.com/transiit Erik Lehtonen

I’d think Mat Honan of Wired would be the most hesitant to use a service that links so many accounts together.