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Figure out who's bringing what with MyPunchBowl's checklists

There's something to be said about Web services that have been set up to help people coordinate things in the least stressful way as possible. I dig sites like CircleUp (coverage) that offer a way to set up polls, or to solve quick logistical questions within a group, without requiring the creator or the users to agonize over the interface and execution. That's why MyPunchBowl's new checklist feature is pretty much the best addition to a party-planning service yet.

The idea is simple: you, as party creator, make a list of things you need for the party. … Read more

Handy e-mail helper: Xobni

The first demo at the TechCrunch 40 conference today is from Xobni ("inbox" backwards, oh how clever), which makes the "Insight" plug-in for Outlook that looks like it will be worth installing when it opens up to the public later this fall. When you highlight an e-mail, it gives you useful intelligence related to the sender: other messages from him or her, who the sender is connected to (via cc), and a graphic showing when the sender's previous e-mails have been received.

It also extracts phone numbers and other contact info from e-mail message bodies … Read more

Orgoo mashes up your mail and IM in a good way

Orgoo is a new service for aggregating all sorts of communication platforms together, in one solution. The easiest way to describe it is a mix between a Web mail client and an IM app. You might say, "well my Gmail and Yahoo Mail already have IM built in." To that I'd say you're right, but Orgoo's take is a little bit like Meebo--take all your existing services and integrate them together in one place.

To start out, just plug in any accounts you want to access. Orgoo will handle five of the major IM clients, along with a handful of Web mail providers including Gmail, .Mac, and Yahoo and Microsoft's premium Hotmail services. You can also drop in any old e-mail account that can be accessed via POP or IMAP. The service can save your passwords and login information, so every time you log in to Orgoo, it will pull in each and every account. I found it really helpful with Gmail, since I could be logged into several accounts at once--which usually requires juggling two different kinds of browsers.

Orgoo's interface is a mishmash of the classical mail inbox. Besides your e-mail reader, which takes on an appearance much like that of Yahoo Mail, you've also got an entire buddy list that resides on the right side of the screen. Orgoo employs drag-and-drop to organize your messages and IMchat logs, and you've got a list of folders which can contain several levels of user created nesting; meaning you can store a message within a folder within a folder within a folder, to your heart's content. You can also organize your IMs into tabs on the top, or pop them out (virtual-desktop style) if it's easier for you to manage.… Read more

Yahoo buys e-mail software firm Zimbra

Yahoo is buying e-mail software provider Zimbra for about $350 million, the companies announced on Monday. Zimbra offers branded e-mail with calendar and mobile features as well as the ability to work offline. The company has more than 200 educational, business and ISP partners, including Comcast, that offer branded e-mail service to roughly 9 million subscribers.

What differentiates Zimbra are the "Zimlet," Web service mashups that offer richer functionality in e-mail. For instance, people can simply mouse over airline flight information in an e-mail to check on flight status. Users are also able to track FedEx deliveries and … Read more

Report:MediaDefender e-mails leaked to Web

MediaDefender, a company that offers to protect copyright content from illegal file sharing, saw private internal e-mails leaked to the Web over the weekend. The e-mails appear to reveal some controversial tactics used by the firm to fight piracy.

The e-mails indicate that MediaDefender, which works closely with the music and movie industries, may have been secretly behind MiiVii, a Web site that promised to enable people to upload and download copyright movies, TV shows and music, according to a report Sunday evening in The Wall Street Journal.

The e-mails indicate that the site was a ruse. The MiiVii software … Read more

Mozilla offers open-source Eudora beta

Qualcomm's handoff of its Eudora e-mail software to the Mozilla Foundation has taken an important step: release of the first beta version of the software, 8.0.0b1.

Mozilla already has an open-source e-mail program, Thunderbird, and the new Eudora will be a branded offshoot with some new features, according to the release site. In addition, a related extension called Penelope will provide some extra features to both Eudora and the regular Thunderbird.

Eudora rose to popularity in the dial-up days of the Internet, but it was mostly supplanted by Microsoft Outlook Express and by Web-based e-mail services. Qualcomm … Read more

Yahoo Mail adds SMS, drops beta tag

The new version of Yahoo Mail comes out of beta on Monday, and it sports some spiffy new features, like the ability to send text messages to a cell phone--the first free Web-based mail provider to offer that function.

A button at the top of the page gives you the option to choose between sending an e-mail, chatting over IM or sending a text, or SMS, message, for free. You enter a contact's name, type in the mobile phone number, and send a message. It appears in a talk bubble next to your avatar in the Yahoo Mail window. … Read more

Trendy Terminology: Bacn

Despite the obligatory missing vowel, bacn (pronounced "bacon") isn't a hot Web 2.0 start-up. It's "the middle class of e-mail," the stuff that isn't really spam because it's not totally unwanted, but isn't really wanted either. Case in point: Pownce messages, Facebook friend requests, Amazon "recommendations."

Unlike many dorky tech terms, the origins of bacn aren't especially apocryphal; we've got a real (electronic) paper trail. The term arose during a discussion at Podcamp2 Pittsburgh earlier in August and slipped onto my radar via Twitter feeds from … Read more

Facebook messaging gets some new juice

Facebook, according to a post on the company blog, has added new functionality to its internal messaging service that allows you to share select content and send messages to e-mail addresses rather than just other Facebook accounts. This means, effectively, that Facebook junkies can do all of their e-mailing through the social network's interface without needing to open up their e-mail accounts at all.

The person with the e-mail address in question will then be able to read the message and respond without needing to sign up for a Facebook account. Members can also use the enhanced messaging to … Read more

Google offers shared storage on Gmail and Picasa

Are you the kind of person who posts a ton of photos and videos online but uses very little e-mail storage?

Well, Google is now offering consumers the ability to buy additional, or overflow, storage when they reach the free limit in Gmail or in Picasa Web Albums (2.8GB and 1GB, respectively), instead of having to pay for more storage in each program separately. Eventually, other applications like Google Docs & Spreadsheets will be included.

Prices range from $20 per year for 6GB of overflow storage to $500 a year for 250GB.

The news was released by Google after … Read more