Let’s take a look at GMX Mail, its features and caveats.

GMX, with an interface similar to Yahoo! Mail, makes it very easy to import other email accounts and contacts – the wizard only asks for the email address and the password, everything else is automatically configured behind the scenes for you.

There’s nothing exceptional about GMX; Yes, it integrates iGoogle gadgets into the frontpage – Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more – but do you really want that in your email application? Personally, I prefer simplicity, and the option to disable these add-ons if I don’t require them.

Although I missed the Gmail labels and the ‘conversation view’, I’d switch in a minute from an Yahoo! Mail account.

The usual suspects – an Address Book and an Organizer  – are also present. The File Storage section gives you 1GB of free space, without the possibility to upgrade. Share high-resolution photos with a couple of friends and you’ll risk running out of bandwidth, at just 1 GB/month.

You can use GMX as a proxy to get POP3/IMAP access from your Yahoo! Mail accounts – without paying the premium subscription. Import your account into GMX then set it up in Outlook, Thunderbird or any other email client.

Signing up for GMX now gives you the chance to have a short and personalized email address like “yourname@gmx.com”.

If it doesn’t impress you with its features or interface, will surely impress you with the fact that they don’t show ads. Yes, that blew my mind too. If you’re tired of those annoying credit score banners in Yahoo! Mail or the Adwords in GMail, be prepared to meet GMX.

Here’s an excerpt from an email conversation with Olivia Hine from Groshelle:

Q: I’ve been looking at GMX and it struck me that this service does not have a business model. No ads and no subscription fees? How is this possible?

A: […]UIG was founded in 1988 and has a market cap of $5 Billion US, 4,000 employees in the US, Europe and Asia.  The company has the largest global web hosting service, supports over 10 million domains, and has 50K hosted servers.  They already have a rate of over 5 billion emails a month through their service.[…]

A classic bait and switch, we don’t receive a clear answer regarding the question and instead we get some facts about the company – which, admittedly, is quite large. Pushing the envelope, I tried to bait and switch myself, giving an improbable reason for this no ads policy hoping to get a clear answer.

Q: And still, why would a corporation willingly choose not to monetize a service? My conspiracy mind would suggest a data mining scheme.

A: That is not the case, especially because GMX.com follows German privacy laws. Data of any kind is simply not available to anyone for any reason. GMX.com is a service that the company is offering, just as Google is offering Gmail.

Why would GMX, apparently defy logic, and remove any kind of ads from its service? It wants to attract users that need an incentive to switch from their current provider. After they reach a magical number of users, say 1 million, they flip the switch and start making money. At least that’s how I see things – this is not confirmed by GMX.

YawnLog

YawnLog, by far the cutest startup I’ve had the chance to review, helps you quickly set up an account and monitor your sleep – how many hours you slept the past week, you even have to make up for lost sleep if you stay up late on Saturdays… You can rate your sleep – and then compare it to how others in your area did or just observe how final exams take a toll on your rest. And it sure is a cool pickup line: “Hey Dear, did you see my YawnLog yesterday? That was hell of a party.”

And the guys behind YawnLog sure do have a sense of humor – the whole press release is written in that official lingo with spiced phrases like ‘after a breakneck 24 hours development, YawnLog was released’ or [launched to] ‘an assembled audience at the annual SleepDex ‘09 conference.’

Greg Marra, founder and CEO of YawnLog, was inspired to create the product by his own study habits. “As a college student,” he explained during questions at the public launch of the site, “I find myself frequently staying up late . . . . I wanted a way to collect informatics on my own sleep habits so I could better learn how stress affects my sleep schedule.” He figured if he could make use of a tool for monitoring his sleep, others could as well.

Here’s a screenshot of my stats:

Get in touch with your sheep and sleep at YawnLog.

RadioBeta

RadioBeta allows you to listen to radio stations around the globe, create your playlists, all with a easy to use, intuitive design. The site is public and free to listen to, you don’t even need an account. If you ever wondered what the French are listening to, now’s your chance to find out. There’s not much you can say about this service other than its great, free and not many people know about it. The founders are pretty big on electronic music, so you might want to take a look at their blog, which is filled with music recommendations and videos from concerts all around the world. Check it out at RadioBeta.

Here’s a screenshot:

Jinni

It’s no magic but it works like nothing else. If you’re a movie buff like me – you always wanted an easy way to browse movies and get recommendations based on what you like. Jinni does just that, with a Google style search engine interface.

Although it is in private beta, you can sign up for an invite on the homepage. You need to create a profile for best results, but that should take you more than 10 minutes; then you’re free to search for movies and get awesome recommendations based on your tastes and previously watched movies.

It meshes information from around the web, bringing reviews, ratings, complete information about cast and set, pictures and video. You can rate the movie and choose whether or not you want to see more like that one.

And as a nice bonus – if you invite your friends to the service you get a chance to win a brand new iPod Touch. You can’t beat that!