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Mozilla Messaging has released the first release candidate of a Thunderbird 3, software it hopes will significantly improve how people read, write, catalog, and search their e-mail.

Mozilla released the software Tuesday for Windows, Mac, and Linux, several days later than predicted earlier this month but close to a year later than Mozilla planned in 2008. A final version of Thunderbird 3 is expected not long after the release candidate.

Thunderbird 3 has been years time in the making. For its next versions, the Mozilla Messaging group hopes to release new versions more frequently, said Mozilla Messaging programmer Dan Mosedale.

"Part of the plan for Thunderbird is to move our development process in a more agile direction...Rather than having super long releases, we'd like to release significantly more frequently than we have historically done," said a draft Mozilla proposal for what to do in the post-Thunderbird 3 era Mosedale posted. He proposed major Thunderbird releases every four to six months, starting with version 3.1, and also laid out some ideas for Thunderbird after version 3.1.

Thunderbird 3.0 adds a variety of features, according to Mozilla and the Thunderbird 3 RC1 release notes:

• A more elaborate search option to locate specific messages. People can employ a variety of methods to sift the wheat from the chaff.

• An e-mail archive a la Google's Gmail. Rather than filing every message in a folder, an organizational technique that can be hard to maintain with high volumes of messages, people can move them out of the inbox into the archive where search can find them later.

• A streamlined interface that cleans up the toolbar and moves some of its functions to the frame around e-mail messages.

• A new plug-in system designed to be easier to use to replicate some of the success of the Firefox browser. The browser, by the way, is built in so plug-ins can use it.

• A tabbed interface that can reduce clutter of e-mails, e-mail folders, and other tasks. A tab can, for example, house a version of Yahoo's online calendar.

• An easier process to set up new e-mail accounts. The software has preset settings for several e-mail services.

• "Smart folders" that can be customized in a variety of ways. For example, users with multiple e-mail accounts can create a smart folder that provides a unified inbox for all the accounts.

• An easier way to add people to the address book by clicking a star icon next to the sender's name.

Be sure to check the list of Thunderbird 3 RC1 issues if you're the cautious type.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Thunderbird 3, an update to the e-mail software that Mozilla hopes will give it some of the advantages its Firefox browser has enjoyed, is due to arrive in near-final form next week.

Mozilla Messaging plans to issue release candidate 1 of Thunderbird 3 as soon as Monday, with the final version expected later in November, the e-mail-focused subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation said Thursday.

"We're down to the last few bugs," said Chief Executive David Ascher. "Feedback with the last beta was enthusiastic." Thunderbird 3 beta 4 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Thunderbird doesn't get as much attention as Firefox, the chief product of the Mozilla Foundation's other subsidiary. But with Thunderbird 3, Ascher and Mozilla Messaging are trying harder to take advantage of one technology that's helped the browser's fortunes: add-ons. They could be written for Thunderbird 2, but only with what Ascher termed an act of heroism; Thunderbird 3 makes add-ons much easier.

One area where add-ons show up is a new Thunderbird 3 feature, Google and Yahoo calendar functions in the software--using its built-in Firefox engine for handling Web pages, naturally.

"There are a bunch of actions that start in e-mail that really involve the Web," Ascher said. Another example he said Mozilla Messaging will write if some enterprising person doesn't do it first: an add-on to help people assess whether to follow a particular Twitter user who just signed up to follow you.

Another add-on that's already under way is Lightning, which parallels Outlook's calendar functions. A Thunderbird 3-compatible version should arrive about the same time, he said. Ultimately, Thunderbird should be able to integrate with either Lightning or Web-based calendars, including the automation of operations such as accepting event invitations.

Better search
The add-ons also dovetail with a significant new Thunderbird feature, improved search. With Thunderbird 2's folder-based search approach, people often didn't set up searches so they could find what they needed. With Thunderbird 3, it returns all results that match the text, not just what's in a particular folder.

"It's really important to search everywhere," Ascher said. As with Google, "You type a word, and you get results."

Of course that can retrieve a lot of unwanted results. So the search results page offers a variety of ways to winnow that search down--limiting it to particular people, to messages with a specific tag, or to a particular time frame selected from a timeline that presents messages using the search term.

These functions to refine the search, which Mozilla Messaging calls "facets," are another area where add-ons can help, Ascher said.

Also coming in Thunderbird 3 is a simpler start-up process. The software is set up in advance to automatically set up the increasingly complicated server configuration for various accounts. I tried it with Gmail, and it indeed was up and running in moments after I entered only my name, e-mail address, and password. The software comes with several profiles built in, and it makes intelligent guesses if it doesn't know, but people will be able to write their own modules that can be shared, too.

Another feature in the new version is the archive, a feature borrowed from Google's Gmail that's a kind of digital purgatory. E-mails sent to the archive are still available through search, but they don't clutter up the inbox. Folders are still available for those who want to file messages the traditional way.

"The original idea of e-mail, putting messages in folders one by one, was reasonable when we got ten messages a day. Now that we get a couple hundred or more, that's a huge burden," Ascher said. "We made archive really easy and complemented it with (an) easy-to-use search experience.

Streamlined interface
One big interface change is the addition of tabs. Mail accounts, folders, and individual messages can show as new tabs rather than new windows. It's one of a number of efforts to provide a more streamlined interface.

One other is moving some message-specific operations to the message window--reply, reply to a mailing list, forward, archive, and other options. Another: the main toolbar has been cleaned up so only essential actions show, though others can be added through customization. And people can be added to the address book with a single click of a star next to their names--not unlike Firefox 3.5's one-click bookmark operation.

Some routine tasks--labeling a message as junk, for example--are designed to be faster, he added.

"If you look at the number of seconds saved over the population of Thunderbird users, it tends to be several lifetimes per year," Ascher said.

One new feature in Thunderbird 3 is a simplified account setup. You enter three bits of information, and Thunderbird often can take it from there.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

In a bid to make its online Google Apps more appealing to corporate customers, Google plans to release software in July to make its e-mail and calendar services work well on BlackBerry mobile phones.

Google Apps' e-mail and calendar services now get along better with BlackBerry phones.

(Credit: Google)

Today, corporate users can set up BlackBerry devices to check mail from Google's Gmail service, a part of Google Apps, but it works only in relatively rudimentary form. With a new product called--brace yourself--Google Apps Connector for Blackberry Enterprise Server, the company is adding much tighter integration with Research in Motion's BlackBerry technology.

Specifically, it synchronizes mail so a message marked as read on the BlackBerry will show that way on Gmail, and vice-versa, said Raju Gulabani, project management director for Google Apps. It also means people will be able to star, archive, and file messages in folders in either location.

In addition, people's BlackBerrys will be able to tap into corporate contact information, letting people use the device to retrieve e-mail addresses or phone numbers from the company directory. And calendar entries will be pushed to the device--though people won't be able to accept event invitations with the device until an update to the software is issued later this year, he said.

"In terms of the features we're delivering, (it's) not just nice to have, it's pretty critical," Gulabani said, because it means Google Apps users will get the full BlackBerry experience.

One reason for the change is because Google wants to make it easier for companies to switch from their own e-mail, contacts, and calendar systems--Microsoft Exchange being the most prominent example--to the Google-hosted replacement. "We want to make that change easier, and make it easier to deploy Google apps. One way is by giving them existing interfaces," so they don't have to use Google-specific software such as the downloadable Gmail for Mobile application for BlackBerry devices, he said.

Google Apps consists of a number of online services: e-mail, calendar, and the Google Docs suite for word processing, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations. Google Apps Standard Edition is free but limited to customers with 50 or fewer accounts; the Premier Edition costs $50 per user per year but doesn't have those limits. Google also offers a free version for customers in education that doesn't have any user limits.

The BlackBerry connector software comes free with the Premier or Education editions, Gulabani said.

Five years ago, Gmail launched with a splash big enough that many thought it was an April 1 joke: an entire gigabyte of online storage.

Larger online e-mail rivals Hotmail and Yahoo Mail quickly matched that advantage, but in the meantime, Gmail has grown to become a force to be reckoned with. It's got tens of millions of users, Google said, though it won't pin down a precise number. And its growth today, in terms of new users joining the service, is faster than it was four or five years ago, said Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail.

In a chat Monday, Jackson offered an assessment of what Google has accomplished with Gmail thus far and what it expects in the future.

Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

CNET News: First of all, you launched Gmail on April 1. Are you going to have an April Fools' stunt this year?
Jackson: Keep your eyes peeled. I can't tell too much. I can't spoil the joke.

The 1GB in-box was pretty surprising when Gmail arrived. Do you expect anything new from Gmail that's that shocking or paradigm-shifting?
Jackson: We've been working on innovating Gmail over the last five years. It's our goal to stay constantly on the leading edge of what users want--particularly the most demanding users. When we added chat to Gmail, I considered that a big milestone. Similarly when we added video chat. I thought these were really important in expanding the scope of communications that Gmail makes fun and possible and easy and fast.

Communication is more than just mail. It was a really good ground for us to start on. We want to stay on that bleeding edge. Gmail Labs is a good testing ground to be trying new things and getting stuff out there to the public fast even at the scale we're at. It becomes difficult at the scale we're at, with a large user base, to launch things at the same speed as when you were small. We want to think of ourselves as the start-up that happens to have tens of millions of users.

I think we got a lot of that big bang at the original launch because of the gigabyte of storage. That was the hook that got a lot of people interesting in checking Gmail out, but then what got a lot of them sticking with the product were things about the UI (user interface)--conversation view and search and the quality of the spam filter. All those things that don't add up to the same headline, but they're the things that really make the product great. We're going to be going for more of that.

Do you think the difference between Gmail at launch and today is going to be less or greater than the difference between Gmail today and where it's going to be in five years?
Jackson: Many of the things we've been working over the past five years were under-the-hood things. Things that don't dramatically change the visual look of the product but really people expect to have in a mail product. Things like POP support, IMAP support, a mobile UI. Little things like save draft or rich-text editing. We didn't have any of that at launch. You couldn't boldface, you couldn't italicize. We've been adding these things over the years that people just expect to have.

We've also been investing. The big change to our front-end infrastructure that we launched the year before last allowed us to have a larger number of engineers contributing to the code simultaneously and allowed front-end development to go a lot faster because of the new modular JavaScript architecture. It also made things like Labs possible because it allowed us to serve different modules of the code to different users. I view that as a huge enabling technology.

I think over the next five years you will probably see a large amount of visible change, maybe more so than in the past five years. That's because for the first five years we had to focus on all the nuts-and-bolts things people want. We did some very innovative thing in terms of chat and video chat and expanding the number of ways to communicate in Gmail. I think you're going to see more things in that direction, and things that directly impact the way the product looks and feels.

Correction, January 21, 9:14 a.m. PDT: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the scope of IBM's acquisition. IBM is acquiring only certain assets of Outblaze.

Computing giant IBM has announced its intention to acquire assets from a Chinese e-mail and messaging company.

Hong Kong-based firm Outblaze sells hosted multilingual e-mail and messaging services for other service providers, telecommunications companies, and corporations to operate under their own brands.

Outblaze intellectual assets, including code and staff, will become part of IBM Lotus' Bluehouse project, IBM's online-business and social-networking and collaboration service, IBM announced on Thursday. Bluehouse is currently in open beta testing.

"The acquisition of these Outblaze assets further demonstrates Lotus' commitment to delivering secure, scalable online solutions, and will help accelerate delivery of collaborative services, with little to no IT involvement," Bob Picciano, the general manager of IBM Lotus Software, said in a statement.

Security experts warned that companies considering moving to hosted e-mail services in developing countries should think about where their data will reside, and choose their provider carefully. While Hong Kong is a highly developed autonomous region of China, a report last week warned that emerging markets such as China are at greater risk of cybercrime, while the U.S. government warned in November that the Chinese government was using advanced cyberespionage techniques.

"With any hosted service, you have to do due diligence, look at the system and how it's being managed," said Andy Buss, a senior analyst at Canalys.

Buss recommended that businesses either use a trusted local company or one of the trusted larger providers, such as IBM, for hosted messaging services. The analyst added that as more workers start to rely on online tools, companies have to work out how to integrate tools and work flows.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.

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.

To toggle the 'away' mode you can just use the drop down menu. This menu also lets you sort through prioritized e-mails.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

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.