e-mail

Postbox is a new cross platform e-mail client for Windows and Mac computers. It's an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, and manages to bring some of the benefits of Web e-mail to a desktop application.

Things like a conversation view, tagging, and search that indexes both mail and attachments are all features Gmail users have been enjoying for years. The problem is, those features and several others have not gone over to the desktop side of things without additional software plug-ins from third-party providers.

Postbox answers that by taking many of these single features sought after by other third-party developers and blending them into a standalone client. For example, if it sees an address it will pull up a quick map link complete with business information. When you're offline you still get this information.

As some of the session judges at the TechCrunch50 conference noted, some of the things this product does would be much better suited as an extension to the software e-mail client you're already using. I'd certainly love the photo browsing client and conversation view in my Outlook, but I definitely can't ditch it until this product gets rock solid Microsoft Exchange support with a built-in calendar (a feature the product does not have).

Postbox currently works with IMAP, POP, and SMTP protocols, letting you tie in your Web mail accounts. Unless your business is running off Google apps this probably won't be a good companion for anything besides your personal accounts. That said, compared with something like Apple's Mail application, it looks like a nice step up.

Update: Postbox will be available for download in "a few weeks" time. Only the sign-ups were opened up today. I've also thrown in another screenshot after the jump.… Read more

One of the downfalls of conferences where you're scrambling to cover things live is that you don't actually get to test out the products you're writing about. Between the spotty Internet connection and end of day fatigue, one company that I think deserved a little more of a look was OtherInbox, the service that helps you fight both bacn and spam from services you've sign up for.

A day later I've already run into one somewhat serious problem: upon sign-up, it automatically sets you up to receive daily notifications of your in-box status, even if … Read more

OtherInbox is a service that helps with one of the growing problems of using Web services: e-mail overload. More specifically, services that take your information and sell it to third parties--thus filling up your in-box with decentralized junk.

OtherInbox works by giving you a special address you can use when you sign up for things and it helps you filter them in a central location with tags and layout akin to Apple's Mail application. Each "subscription" reads like its own in-box.

The service may be most useful for figuring out what services are selling out your e-mail … Read more

There's a lot of action in the browser market these days: Google just launched its Chrome browser, Firefox 3.1 is due in months, Apple hopes Safari will spread across the world of Windows, and Microsoft is touting its second beta of Internet Explorer 8.

But a huge swath of Internet users is still getting by with IE 6, which is no doubt is why Google just released a new version of Gmail for the vintage 2001-era browser.

The update means IE 6 users will get access to colored labels for messages, Gmail Labs features, integration with AOL Instant … Read more

Last Thursday, I took a look at Peek, a handheld device that does e-mail, and only e-mail. And by the end of the review, I was left wondering if I was missing something. Do people really want an e-mail-only device? Are there people out there who have cell phones, but want another gadget just for checking e-mail?

And it's not like the Peek has an Internet browser, or an instant-messaging client, or a personal organizer. No, all it does is e-mail. That's it. It's not even compatible with Microsoft Exchange, so we can't say it'd be good for corporate use.

And if that doesn't make you skeptical about it, the Peek costs a whopping $100. plus it has a $20 monthly fee. Sure there are no pesky cell phone contracts involved, but what good is having an unlocked device if it isn't a phone?

Now, this is not to say the device itself is bad. On the contrary, we like the Peek's ease of use, and the QWERTY keyboard is a joy to type on. I also really like the jog dial on the side, which lets you scroll through messages quickly and easily. Importing your e-mail account is as easy as entering in your e-mail address and password (do note that it uses POP and not IMAP, so you'll end up deleting e-mail from both in-boxes, which is a pain). The battery life is also pretty good, lasting about two or three days with a typical day's usage.

But, well, that's about it. Peek claims that its value is its simplicity, and we can't fault them for that. But for such a simple device, shouldn't it be cheaper? … Read more

Microsoft Office Labs has launched a new product called E-mail Prioritizer that will not only sort through your in-box to figure out what's important, but also give you an honest-to-goodness pause button in case you want to escape an Exchange server e-mail avalanche.

Users must be running the latest version of Outlook (2007), and for now the tool is PC-only. After installing it, you'll get a new toolbar menu option that lets you toggle on the "do not disturb" mode for a certain period of time or based on your meeting schedule. Once you return, or the timer runs out, it'll sync back up and grab new messages.

Unfortunately this is a client-side stop-gap on the way to having such an option on the Exchange server itself. Sure your server admin can put a pause on your account, but you can't. This option simply turns off Outlook's software-based e-mail antenna, so messages will still dutifully arrive on your mobile phone if you've got it set up to receive push mail.

The far more interesting half of this tool is the prioritizer itself. This will rate messages in your in box from zero to three stars. The ratings come from a system used by many folks, including several Microsoft employees I talked to back in March. For instance, e-mails sent to you and nobody else, or those from your bosses gets three stars, whereas mail you're carbon-copied on, or where you're part of a large list, scores far lower.

In my case, my in-box had about 450 messages on it, and it was prioritized in about a minute's time. To make use of it, you must learn from and train Microsoft's system, which could become second nature after a week or two of honing your in-box skills.… Read more

Thinking about switching e-mail providers but don't want to lose all the messages from your old in box? For $10 an account a service called Yippie Move will do all the heavy lifting for you. It works with about 40 various Web and educational e-mail providers, or with any account that supports IMAP. Just plug in the credentials from your old mail service with your new account and it will do the migration for you.

While advanced users could do all of this themselves simply by mass forwarding, Yippie Move is aimed at e-mail newbies and those who don'… Read more

Return Path, maker of verification systems for e-mail, said Tuesday that it bought its rival Habeas for an undisclosed sum.

New York-based Return Path, which had a tense relationship with its left-coast competitor, said the deal will give it more scale in the "trusted e-mail delivery" market.

"While fiercely competing in the marketplace does create some degree of tension or even mistrust between two companies, that activity also creates a lot of common ground for discussion about the market and the future," Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg said in a statement on the company's Web … Read more

Zimbra, the open-source e-mail software that Yahoo acquired for $350 million last year, is officially coming to Ubuntu Linux.

Coinciding with this week's LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, Zimbra has announced a partnership with Ubuntu parent company Canonical.

Ubuntu users have been able to access Zimbra for the past year. But now, the e-mail software will be in the Ubuntu Partner Repository, providing easy access to both offline and online Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, and any IMAP or POP e-mail accounts. Zimbra also offers document and spreadsheet functions, as well as mashup features with services like Flickr, Amazon.… Read more