Jason Calcanis has started a thread titled The Official Meta Lockin Shame and Short-term Solution List describing how various service providers do not provide an easy way to export your data. With e-mail services such as Hotmail or GMail, functions to import addresses are provided. However, when it comes to getting these addresses out of Hotmail or GMail you literally need to pay the company to export your data. For example, Hotmail has recently begun introducing services such as Outlook Live as a way to synchronize contacts with Outlook or as an alternative if you were really that desperate you could sign up for the MSN service just to use Intellisync. So with all these issues how do you decide which service provider to choose? Do you go with GMail because of it’s slick interface and constant onshoot of new features or do you stick with the old player on the block and hope that they’re still willing to compete with all these other service providers? As David Worthington reports, Microsoft is testing a new Hotmail interface. Considering that Hotmail has been around for 10 years and has racked up over 200 million users expect this testing to be one that could drag on until all kinks have been ironed out.