TechAddress

Zoho Mail: Now With Offline and Mobile Support

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:33:10 +0000

It’s tough being a competitor to Gmail. Google has been the first major company to offer virtually unlimited storage for e-mails, and the simplicity of the service, solid spam filtering and good integration with other Google services has made Gmail a favorite for many.

Zoho Mail has been in private beta stage so far and thus it is definitely not as widespread as Gmail, but it has always been a worthy competitor. It’s a slick, feature-rich client that tries to marry Gmail’s simplicity with the overall look and feel of a full featured desktop email client, such as Outlook. Today, they’ve reached an important milestone - Zoho Mail is coming out of private beta, and it has some new features to show off.

First, through Google Gears, Zoho Mail now supports offline mode. To access, it, you must have Google Gears installed in either IE or Firefox, and click on the “Setup Offline” link on the top. Zoho Mail will recognize your connection status and switch between online and offline mode seamlessly. It may not be a killer feature, but it’s useful, and the fact that Gmail has been dabbling with it for quite a while but the official offline mode is still not out there is in Zoho’s favor.

Another important feature is mobile support - oops, did I say mobile? I meant iPhone, since Zoho Mail currently only works with Apple’s phone, and support for other devices is “in the works.” Just login to zoho.com from your iPhone and you’ll find the mobile version of Zoho Mail right there.

These two features, along with some others, for example support for Gmail-style labels as well as Outlook-style folders, and integrated chat, make Zoho Mail an interesting competitor in the Web mail field and a great addition to the already very solid Zoho Office suite.

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Mail Goggles Prevent You From Sending Drunken E-Mails

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:30:05 +0000

Source:Mashable!

You know how it goes: it’s the weekend, all your friends are busy with their own affairs, you’re bored and slightly inebriated, and what do you do: you come home and start sending e-mails you’ll later probably regret. Actually, I’m more of an SMS sender with this regard, but regardless of the medium, we all know how bad it feels the morning after when you’re afraid to check out the “sent messages” folder.

To fix this, there’s a funny new feature from Gmail Labs. Called Mail Goggles, it activates only late at night (you can, of course, set the time of activation as you please) and over the weekend, and gives you a couple of math problems to solve before your e-mail is sent.

Now, although this feature sounds like something you might converse about over a coffee but never actually use, I’m sure that many late night e-mail senders will eventually realize that it’s better to get frustrated with your inability to solve a simple math puzzle than to be sorry the morning after.

There is, however, one fundamental flaw with the feature. However drunk I may be, I’m sure I’ll always be able to switch the damn thing off in the settings. For the real deal, you should be required to solve an equally hard math puzzle to be able to switch the feature off, otherwise it won’t stop anyone from sending anything.

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13 Gmail Extensions for Firefox 3

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:41:53 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Fuser has just launched a major update to their email aggregation service. This evening, members were introduced to the new and improved Fuser, which sports a fresh look and feel.

The welcome page is the first sign that things have changed for Fuser members. There’s an entirely different design, which visually explains what the services does: Aggregation of email, social networking messages, and even Twitter messages.

By far, though, the biggest change besides the user interface is the performance, which has been sometimes sluggish because of the intense processing that’s required for connecting to so many different services at one time. They’ve redesigned the entire backend to vastly improve the speed and stability of their service.

For the purpose of this review, we set up several different accounts in order to test the new service, with something an average user would actually use. For example, accounts for Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail, as well as MySpace and Facebook.

Once you’re logged into the new Fuser you’ll see an entirely different inbox setup. There’s a tabbed navigation system for access to email and Twitter messages. Here’s a glimpse:

Notice the checkboxes next to each service under the Add/Edit Accounts tab. That’s the new way to filter which messages you want to appear in your universal inbox. For example, because all of the checkboxes are enabled, all emails and social networking messages will appear in my inbox.

As for those that prefer to view their Gmail messages in the normal threaded display, Fuser has ensured that you still have the option to do so. It will open a new tab to the right and show Gmail emails in the usual manner. Here’s a brief screencast that demonstrates this.

There’s also a handy option to filter which messages you want to view for each social networking service. For example, for MySpace you can choose to read all messages, comments and bulletins, or whichever ones you want. As for Facebook, you have options for messages as well as wall posts.

The email reading and composition tab area is also improved. Besides the general tab for reading all messages, there will be other tabs for each mail system. For example, Gmail’s mail tab will display all emails in the familiar threaded method while Yahoo, Hotmail and others systems will appear as they do on their systems.

At the top right side of the new home screen is the control box. This provides access to several key areas on Fuser. The first one being your Account preferences. The envelope icon goes to your inbox, the dialogue icon lets you share feedback with the Fuser team. Next is the community icon, which provides access to the Forum, Blog and a new video help center that contains useful screencasts such as the one above about threaded messages. The last two are for searching and logging off.

Here’s a list of all the different email and social networks that Fuser supports at this point in time. They plan to add many more services as members request them.

It’s taken a long time for Fuser to release this update, but judging from initial testing it appears that it’s well worth the wait. The performance is vastly improved and the new interface makes it easier to navigate and control all of your different messaging systems. Being able to quickly filter messages is an important feature. So, it appears Fuser is the ideal service for anyone that wants to consolidate all of their messages from email accounts, Facebook and MySpace and even Twitter.

Source:Mashable!

Richard Stallman is going berserk over cloud computing. In an interview with the Guardian, he claims that the whole thing is “stupidity.” He claims that “you should not use web applications to do your computing,” because it’s “just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

It seems to me he’s talking about web applications and not cloud computing, which is not entirely the same thing, but nevertheless the sad thing about it is the fact that…

…he’s right. Well, partially.

Yup, it’s not smart to use Gmail. Adam discussed the problem of being addicted to Google’s apps and services length in the past. From a privacy point of view, it’s not smart to leave your personal data on Facebook, either. It’s definitely not smart to do your business online on a bunch of free apps which perhaps don’t really guarantee that your data is safe or - which is a much bigger problem in the startup world today - that they will exist in a year or two.

The problem, however, is that Stallman doesn’t realize that some web apps are not easily replicable as desktop open source applications. Give me an open source desktop version of Facebook, and I’ll use it, but it simply doesn’t exist. It’s a common error; many IT geeks and diehards are used to using a relatively limited set of applications and something along the lines of MySpace or perhaps Netvibes seems like a toy or a complete waste of time. Well, it isn’t: these apps are used by millions and mose of them wouldn’t trade it for the world, and like it or not, there’s simply no open source alternative.

Furthermore, not all web applications are created equal. For example, I regularly backup all my feeds in Netvibes into a nifty OPML file. If Netvibes ever goes out of business or turns into crap, I have pretty much all the data I need and I can easily move to another, similar service. I don’t really feel like the folks over at Netvibes are keeping me hostage; not more than any open source, desktop application could do.

Of course, if you’re really serious about your privacy, you’ll probably stay away from web apps and do as Stallman advises. But you can’t call everyone else stupid simply because they’re using web apps; there are many flavors of web apps and many different ways to use them, and while I wouldn’t advise anyone to go head first and give all their private/sensitive data away without backuping it, I definitely cannot say that web applications should be avoided at all cost. As always, it’s a matter of making an informed decision and knowing all the upsides as well as the downsides.

Source:Mashable!

Gmail turned online email on its ear when it popped up a few years back. Naturally, there are more than just a few Gmail extensions for Firefox for an improved user experience. Want a more dynamic signature? How about the ability to open multiple Gmail accounts at once in the same browser? What about the chance to write your emails from right to left? All of these and more are available via these 13 Gmail extensions.

As with any list of Firefox tools, please do not install all of these at once unless you’d like to slow down your browser.

Better Gmail 2 - A Firefox extension that combines some of the most popular Greasmonkey scripts for Gmail into an easy to install extension. You can control which ones are operating by use of a simple checkbox interface.

Blank Canvas - Lets you create multiple HTML signatures that are inserted where you choose in your emails.

Email This! Bookmarklet Extension - Will send your chosen recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are currently viewing. Will work with multiple emails such as Yahoo and stand-alone clients, but is focused on Gmail (as if you couldn’t tell from their logo).

Gmail Checker - Will allow you to check for new emails on traditional Gmail accounts and Google Apps accounts.

Gmail Manager - Beyond just giving you a visual and audio notification that you have new email, it will also allow you to log in to multiple Gmail accounts at once from the same browser. For more solutions to the multiple login problem, see Stan Schroeder’s “5 Ways To Log Into Several Gmail Accounts at the Same Time”.

Gmail Notifier - Allows you to keep an eye on multiple Gmail accounts as well as hosted domain accounts.

Gmail RTL - Adds the ability to write from right to left in Gmail, which is only offered in the Hebrew and Arabic versions of the service.

Gmail S/MIME - Allows you to send and receive S/MIME encrypted messages via your Gmail system.

Gspace - Have oodles of unused space in your disk quota on your Gmail account? Why not turn it into a virtual storage facility for files?

GTDInbox - GTDInbox turns your Gmail inbox into an organizational tool, allowing you easy integration between your mail and projects you are working on.

WebMail Notifier - While WebMail Notifier is not exclusively a Gmail extension, it is still an easy way to receive notifications of when you’ve received new emails.

WiseStamp - Allows you to create a much more dynamic signature for your Gmail accounts that will show off your social networking links, IM names and more. Can also set up business and personal signatures if you choose. See our previous review of WiseStamp here.

Xoopit - Xoopit will modify your Gmail search so that you can search your attachments, pictures and videos as well as the emails themselves. You can also add comments to pictures and pass them on to your blog or Facebook.

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SocialMinder Helps You Strengthen Your LinkedIn Relationships (The Startup Review) - 200 Invites

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:35:04 +0000

Source:Mashable!

This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.

Future planning is a big part of what the national security apparatus of the United States does, and it is incredibly difficult to do well. As the national security writer William Arkin relates in his 2005 book Code Names: “Our Intelligence Community is constantly being surprised by events in the world and misreads what is happening.” Along the same lines, Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his must-read book The Black Swan explains why and how we are often surprised by rare, extraordinary events of huge consequence.

Such events elude the analysis of even the smartest person. Most have heard the term “Renaissance Man” – a person of many diverse talents like athletic prowess, intellectual power, musical ability, street smarts, and a way with the ladies. But we may not need them anymore, with access to “Renaissance Networks,” a term recently coined by a new media analyst at CIA’s Open Source Center. Why have a genius in a cubicle when a person who’s merely “smart” can utilize global crowd wisdom?

Recently, I attended a small conference about using social tools for information sharing hosted at Johns Hopkins University and sponsored by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Our hosts for three days were the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Intelligence Review (WIRe) and the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES). They were able to bring together the people who build social tools, those who evangelize about them, and influential end users to have candid and open discussions about them.

In the intelligence community, as in the defense community where I primarily work, there are what people call “cylinders of excellence” – different agencies and units that internally may perform their functions very well, but they do not necessarily have a culture of community leadership and partnership in something larger than themselves. Some in the IC have been promoting information sharing as opposed to keeping secrets. (What’s the joke about secrets? Only two people know, and one of them is dead.) Lately, a big part of information sharing has been the INTELINK system, which is closed to outsiders and includes terrific “clones” of Wikipedia, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, AIM, Wordpress, and more – “These tools have no respect for the formal org chart,” Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee put it to the audience.

And the toolkit is expanding. The big development in IC social networking tools hitting the news recently is A-Space, essentially a mashup of Facebook, LinkedIn, and GoogleDocs designed to be an addictive work environment for analysts with access to sensitive human intelligence (HUMINT). A-Space will have status updates a la Twitter, subscriptions to updates, feeds and friends, activity streams, content management a la Sharepoint, a community grid tag cloud, RSS feeds from outside, drag and drop capability, discussion/question threads, a ’scrapbook,’ and widgets. This system – frankly better than anything I know about in the private sector at the moment – should increase collaboration and analytical thinking.

All the talk about collaboration inspired an interesting formal debate among two IC thought leaders, Geoff Fowler of the WIRe, and Chris Rasmussen, an IC 2.0 evangelist based at NGA. In a fun twist, the debate was moderated using a public Twitter feed by Carmen Medina, a former CIA Associate Deputy Director (Intelligence). The debaters were influenced by Medina’s comments and also by the audience’s, and by the end, participants from outside the conference were asking questions – which for the very private IC is quite profound. Debate largely centered around the question, “Who is an expert?” with the general acknowledgement being that despite the need for subject matter experts, “Buford T. Justice is now involved in the national security process.”

More futuristically, analysts will be able to use A-Space feeds for more than news and personality information. One the government connects the huge number of sensors and other devices reading all sorts of information (temperature, heat, satellite imagery, sonar, radar, robotic sensors, RFID tags, biometric scanners, law enforcement raid cams, views from pilots’ cockpits…) to these feeds (for example, a Navy analyst could subscribe to a feed from underwater sensors looking for suspicious activity happening near underwater cables), the possibilities are endless.

In the private sector, there is discussion about barriers to adopting social tools. These include concerns about computer and information security, side-effects due to using unproven technologies, and concerns about negative impacts on productivity. But, a recent Gartner study suggests that if IT departments do not implement social technology tool use, worker bees will find workarounds. Therefore, a fair amount of time at the WIRe/ICES conference was spent discussing how to change the culture of organizations to take best advantage of the inevitable use of these social tools.

At the end of the film The Good Shepherd, the new CIA director says to Matt Damon’s character, “A Senator once asked me, ‘Why don’t you say ‘the’ before CIA? And I asked him, Do you say ‘the’ before God?” With regard to integrating social technology tools into everyday intelligence operations and analysis the IC is not quite godlike yet… but they’re getting awfully close.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. If you think this commentary is weak sauce, find him on Twitter and tell him about it!

Source:Mashable!

In the quest for URL shortener dominance in this era of the microblog and limited message space, BudURL comes out swinging. Going toe to toe with other URL shrinkers, BudURL combines metrics with URL shortening.

I am always wary of tools that try to combine metrics with social media, like Twitter Grader and Twitter Follower Friend Ratio. The main reason for this is the risk that people who don’t understand the nature of social media (engagement, conversation and a way to make being genuine a real part of business and personal online interaction) will use the metrics they attain to spam or abuse those in the social media space. Also, turning it into a competition defeats the whole concept of microsharing.

BudURL seems to have found the right mix of metric and social by keeping it simple. Unlike Bit.ly with its custom keywords or TinyUrl with its custom URL feature, BudURL gives you a way to track where your link was clicked. Keywords take time to track and rely on third party software for adequate information, and custom URLs are handy for sharing a link but offer no tracking. To see your referrers without any keywords involved is useful.

The lack of a keyword metric also helps prevent certain kinds of spamming. There is a huge subset of people and businesses out there who watch keywords like a hawk, looking for any opportunity to “game” a system with keyword metrics. By concentrating on where your link was seen and not the keywords around it, you are getting useful information and not contributing directly to a potential spam issue.

My favorite part of BudURL is the real time aspect of the referrer list - it auto refreshes every few seconds as people stop by your page. It was fascinating to me to see the test link I tossed up on Twitter get sent around the Internet. I got a fair share from Twitter, but I also got to see when someone else picked up the link and put it on other sites.

For people concerned with privacy, they may take issue with BudURL’s tracking of visiting IPs. In addition to referring URLs showing on the list, the visitor’s IP is tracked as well. I love this feature - I have a burning desire to see where my readers live and work. I find it interesting. However, if you are nervous when people know too much about you, it may help to keep in mind that clicking on a BudURL will give the person who made the URL your IP.

BudURL also gives you a way to track your BudURLs and create notes to help you remember what they were for. It also offers a toolbar button you can use to easily create BudURLs. Just add it to your toolbar with a simple drag and drop and click it when you are on a page you want to make into a BudURL. It took less than a minute to sign up for the service and install the button for me, and I didn’t even have to wait for a confirmation email. My account was active right away. Additionally, my URL tracking was active from the moment I first sent the URL out into the Twitterverse. Instant gratification is always a winner for me with a new application.

Overall, I think BudURL is going to hold its own against existing Bit.ly and TinyUrl. It isn’t as short as is.gd, so if you are looking for super-short, stick with what you know. I love the metrics feature even more than I love TinyUrl’s custom URLs (I never found a need for Bit.ly’s keywords). I think I’ll be using BudURL from now on to help keep a better eye on my links in microblogging and microsharing services.

Source:Mashable!

Company Name

SocialMinder

20-Word Description

SocialMinder is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network.

CEO’s Pitch

No one keeps in touch with their network the way that they should - that’s why there is SocialMinder! SocialMinder is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network. It learns from your previous email patterns, reminds you when losing connection, and gives you relevant news items to send to people in your network to make sure that your relationships are not stale. SocialMinder is not like classic CRM solutions which require the user to enter information about each person in their network (since we get that from LinkedIn) and we also do not need for you to enter every interaction that you have with your contacts (since, SocialMinder gets that from your sent email headers).

Mashable’s Take

SocialMinder seems to provide artificial intelligence for members of LinkedIn and Gmail by scanning the email headers and mapping them to their Linkedin network. It then analyzes the health status of your relationships and identifies those that need strengthening.

One of the most useful features is the way SocialMinder identifies recent business news to discuss with your contacts no matter how long it’s been since you’ve touched base. The other handy feature is the smart weekly report that identifies the top opportunities to improve your network and relationships. The best thing about this service is that they do not ever contact anyone in your network or address book, unlike too many other services.

SocialMinder could be described as a social CRM service in a way. Whereas traditional CRM services focus on closing deals, SocialMinder instead concentrates on building those relationships which could ultimately lead to improved chances of success when it comes to working with those contacts in your network.

As far as constructive criticism goes, SocialMinder could become more useful and successful themselves if they eventually include the option to work with other email systems such as Yahoo Mail, MSN/Hotmail, and traditional Pop/IMAP mail services. It might also become beneficial if they someday provide the same intelligence for other social networking relationships such as on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Over all, SocialMinder has developed something useful and full of potential.

SocialMinder is providing invites for 200 Mashable readers. To get your invite go to SocialMinder SignUp and enter “Mashable” in the “Priority Code” field.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

OtherInbox - Email Management (video) (invites)

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:30:20 +0000

Source:CenterNetworks

One of the companies I met this past week was OtherInbox. OtherInbox is a mail management tool whereby it allows you to give out anything@domain.com and it automatically routes it to a newly-created mailbox. This allows you to give out macys@ for Macy’s, contest1@ for a contest and so on. It is one of the most useful tools I’ve seen in recent months. Check out reviews on CNET, Download Squad, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb.

Here’s my interview with Josh Baer, OtherInbox founder. If you’d like an invite, go to: http://beta.otherinbox.com/signup/centernetworks

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
– DEMO
– Techcrunch50
– Event and Interview Videos

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Three New Ways To Play With Gmail Labels

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:30:08 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Gmail blog has announced three new Gmail experiments you can try out, all three having to do with labels.

Custom label colors lets you, well, choose custom colors for your labels, giving you far more options than the standard 24 color combinations.

Go to label keyboard shortcut adds a new shortcut combination to Gmail; press “g” then “l” to display the “Go to label” pop-up. If you’re into shortcuts, you might want to check one of our older lists with many keyboard shortcuts for various online applications.

The last option, Navbar drag and drop, lets you reorder the items in Gmail’s lefthand navigation bar by dragging and dropping.

Short and sweet. If you haven’t enabled these extra options yet, you can do it under the “Labs” tab in Gmail’s settings.

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