Yahoo Launched Off Line Email Client Zimbra
Yahoo’s Zimbra launches version 3 beta of its open source desktop email client this morning that is designed to compete with Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc. This is a new iteration of their browser-based offline product announced in March 2007. Zimbra, which we’ve written about before, was acquired by Yahoo for $350 million in 2007.
“Zimbra is focused on creating communication and collaboration solutions that ease the pain points of traditional e-mail, and switching between multiple e-mail accounts is one of the communication headaches that users encounter on a daily basis,” said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra’s co-founder and a Yahoo vice president. “With Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop, we have taken our world-class collaboration suite and made it available for everyone for use anywhere, anytime, with any email account.”
Users can access Yahoo mail accounts, Zimbra accounts, or any Pop/IMAP supported email boxes. Zimbra Desktop also includes a calendar, contact list and other features. Zimbra also lets you tag email and calendar items for easy search-and-find; and it provides a framework for creating “Zimlets,” applets that allow mashups combining data from contact or calendaring information.
Zimbra Desktop, while using browser interface technology called Ajax that can give Web browsers an elaborate interface, actually runs as a standalone application. It employs Java software to store data locally, and it’s a hefty download–38MB for Windows, 34MB for Mac OS X, and 44MB for Linux.
Source: TechCrunch
Filed under Email, Internet, Mail, Open Source Platform