Today Zimbra announced version 6.0 of their popular collaboration software. So what makes this update so amazing that they had to skip several numbers from version 5.4? Rumors are already flying that this is a publicity stunt during a potential sale of the company. Is there enough meat in this release? Lets take a look.
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Open-Xchange adds support for Push and Over-The-Air Synchronization
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September 30th, 2009
The up-and-coming collaborating software Open-Xchange today announced a new mobility add-on to their platform. Thew new add-on is named OXtender for Business Mobility (apparently that’s the shortest name they could come up with).
For those of you who never heard about Open-Xchange before, it is an open source groupware software. In many ways, it resembles Microsoft Exchange (hence the name Open-Xchange).
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Google Wave Gears up for Massive Preview
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September 29th, 2009
As readers of this site are well aware, e-mail has a good solid 30 year history of being the internet communication method of choice. It certainly has not gone unchallenged during this time – ideas such as instant messaging, forums, wikis and recently Twitter and social networks have all tried to establish themselves in the communication business with varying degrees of success. At the end of the day e-mail is by far in the lead and most of these services hook into e-mail as the de facto base line for communication online. A forum may send you an e-mail when your thread is replied to, and heavy users of social networking tools actually use e-mail even more.
Now for the first time Google’s challenge to e-mail is becoming available to the public. Google Wave is a new communication and collaboration tool from Google which tomorrow will launch for public testing by 100,000 selected users.
Gmail Offers iPhone Push Service
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September 29th, 2009
Imagine this scenario: your boss sends an e-mail, and he needs a “yes” or “no” answer immediately. If you use a Gmail or Google Apps account with your iPhone, the e-mail won’t drop into your iPhone inbox immediately, even if you use IMAP to sync your e-mail. This has caused many users to devise workarounds and “hacks” to set up push-like technology on their iPhones (Push e-mail means that whenever an e-mail is sent to a Gmail account, it is instantly sent to the mobile device. This is in contrast to the usual method of downloading Gmail e-mail messages to iPhones, which is based on a refresh rate.). In late September however, Google heard the cries of Gmail/iPhone users without push e-mail and delivered with Google Sync.
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Bank emails wrong person, sues
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September 25th, 2009
Photo by Flickr user dbking
It has probably happened to all of us: you click send and that sinking feeling that you just made a mistake hits. You sent the email to the wrong person. Imagine what that might be like if your email contained complete personal information and economic details for over 1,300 of your clients.
In an oddly backwards case of the wrongdoer suing the victim, a Wyoming bank emailed sensitive account information to the wrong Gmail account last month. The mistake was discovered and the bank sent two followup emails ordering the recipient to immediately delete the previous email – without opening it.
Although it’s not clear what the recipient could have replied to convince the bank they really never opened the email, the mystery email account did not reply at all. The bank turned to Google, asking them to reveal information about the account. Google refused in accordance to their privacy policy and the bank responded by suing. At the time of this writing a judge has ordered Google to deactivate the account and reveal information about its owner.
Google has stated it will give the account holder a chance to respond to the court’s request before turning over the information.
Taking Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 for Mac OS X out for a spin
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September 25th, 2009
While Mozilla is best known for their web browser FireFox they also develop the Thunderbird email client with the catchy slogan “Reclaim your inbox”. A few days ago Mozilla launched a new beta version of Thunderbird. Today I took it out for a spin. I haven’t used Thunderbird in quite a while, so a lot of things are new to me, but I’ll try to focus on the new features in this release.
First impression
My first impression of this new version of Thunderbird is that it is a major improvement over the 2.0 series. While 2.0 felt old and bulky, the new version feels much more modern and light. As far as design goes, Apple Mail is still ahead of Thunderbird. Yet, if features are more important than looks, Thunderbird is probably a winner already.
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Google Gmail Suffers Slowdowns, Degraded Service
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September 24th, 2009
For the second time in a month, Google’s email service Gmail has suffered from technical difficulties. The Google Apps Status page reported:
We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail, but we’ve provided a workaround below.
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You can access Gmail via IMAP
Can’t Access Your Hotmail with Outlook, Outlook Express or Entourage?
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September 24th, 2009
On 1st September 2009, Microsoft finally dumped the Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) protocol that had previously enabled Hotmail users to access their email through Outlook Express, Outlook and Entourage. What this means is that people attempting to access their Hotmail account with one of these email clients after 1st September will be presented with an error message:
Hotmail – Sending reported error (0x800CCC33): “Access to the account was denied. Verify that your username and password are correct. The server responded ‘forbidden’.
Review of LifeIO
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September 24th, 2009
The Dashboard in LifeIO
LifeIO is one of the new kids on the block in the increasingly crowded space of email/social networks/news feed aggregators. The first wave hit back in 2006 when both Fuser and Orgoo stole a lot of attention in online media. However, none of them really seem to have taken off. This year at TechCrunch 50 there were (at least) two new competitors present: LifeIO and threadsy.
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Welcome to ESG News!
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September 21st, 2009
A Google search for "email news" on September 21, 2009.
When we started Email Service Guide we intended to make a searchable guide to help clear up the email hosting jungle. The initial feedback has been great and we have expanded our guide in several ways based on the early responses. But we realized there was a void in the email sector online. Not only had no-one really created a comprehensive guide before – there weren’t even any blogs or news sites dedicated to the topic. Google “email news” or “email blog” and all you find is the automatic emailing feature of various news sites.