The screenshots and website are polished and look really interesting, however without a "free" trial upon registration a working demo is lacking. Am I missing it?

Thanks! Every plan comes with a 50 message free trial.

Looks a lot like the Sparrow Mac OSX client turned into a web interface. While it looks good, do we really need another webmail service ?

Thanks for the feedback. I think it's a lot more than that, picture drag and drop blog creation meets email. Because it sits on top of the normal email protocol, what it can deliver is significantly less restricted.