Zoho Mail: Now With Offline and Mobile Support

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.

Courtesy: Mashable

Yahoo Launches Web Analytics Beta

Back in April, Yahoo acquired IndexTools, a provider of analytics software based in Hungary. Today, that service has re-emerged as Yahoo Web Analytics, and is being offered as a limited beta to customers of Yahoo Small Business – the company’s suite of tools for helping small businesses market and sell products online. Additionally, the tool will also be made available to select Yahoo advertisers.

As you might expect, Yahoo Web Analytics includes integration with other Yahoo products. For example, you can analyze the effectiveness of Yahoo search marketing campaigns and track how well individual products within your e-commerce shop are trending. The product will naturally be compared to Google Analytics, the free offering from Google that has similar integration with AdWords.

While it may be late to the party, Yahoo Web Analytics is apparently a big upgrade for Yahoo Small Business customers. Mashable contributor Sean Aune is a user of the service, and sent along the following screenshot as an example of what the service’s rather archaic reporting looks like today:

If nothing else, if you look at the screenshot below of the new service, it would seem that Yahoo Web Analytics has just received a long overdue upgrade:

Yahoo plans to roll out the service gradually to its Small Business Customers through the end of the year and expand the offering to other users in 2009.

Courtesy: Mashable

Make VoIP Phone Calls Over Email with Momail and Jajah

JAJAH, a VoIP service provider that manages connections for social network users and mobile and non-mobile phones, has teamed up today with Momail, a free mobile mail operator, allowing users to make VoIP phone calls by simply sending an email.

All it takes for Momail users to implement this new option is to register with JAJAH under Momail’s “On Demand” feature page, located within a user’s member page. Once complete, you simply send an email to JAJAH with a phone number you intend to call. JAJAH will subsequently initiate a call to your handset, followed by a call to the intended party.

Momail alone is an interesting invention. Along with popular third-party webmail recognition and push mail for phones - which support the technology - Momail claims to compress data received by users by up to 99 percent its original size. For those operating on metered data plans or simply for phones that cannot consume large file sizes (or whose owners simply don’t have to patience for such transfers), this is handy indeed. Now with JAJAH’s VoIP feature on board, Momail is able to provide extra power with little or no extra investment on the user side.

Note:Momail is still in beta in some countries, including the United States. You’ll have to request a password in order to gain entry.

Courtesy: Mashable

Microsoft’s Next OS To Be Called “Windows 7″. Seriously.

Microsoft has announced that the latest version of Windows, due in the next couple of years, will be called - drumroll please - Windows 7. It’s about time Microsoft adopted a naming system that might actually make some sense to users, but I can’t wait for hordes of customers to start asking if they somehow missed Windows 1 through 6.

Windows has had one of the most ridiculous naming schemes in the history of software. First there were logical (but ugly) version numbers, like the once commonplace “Windows 3.1″. Then with the release of the overhauled Windows 95 the company adopted a naming system based on the year of release, which it continued until Windows 98.

Windows Me (perhaps the worst operating system I’ve ever used), sacrificed the scheme for a chance to be clever (it stood for “me” and the millennium at the same time!) Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. Fine.

Finally we had Windows Vista, which seemed to stick with the naming convention of “something that sounds sort of cool but didn’t really mean anything”. It had been more than five years since the release of XP, so there was little chance of confusion.

Microsoft is now in a hurry to push out its next operating system after the generally dismal response to Vista. And so we’ve come to Windows 7, which is apparently tied to the build numbers and not the actual releases. The new naming scheme lends itself well to faster, more incremental releases similar to what we’ve seen from Apple (about once every 18 months), but it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland.

You can read more at the company’s blog post here.

Courtesy: TechCrunch

Chrome Coming to Android

The browser-bearing world was atwitter yesterday with the announcement of Google’s Chrome browser. Just about overnight, they’ve managed to convince hordes of people that Chrome is the way to browse on your PC. Next step? They’re taking it mobile.

According to an interview with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the two projects will start working together more closely now that both are approached 1.0 releases, with the Android browser adopting much of Chrome’s inner workings. He also expects the mobile browser to pick up a new name to indicate the relation to it’s bigger, full-blown browsin’ brother.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch

Mozilla Fights Back With New Firefox Benchmarks

The dust hasn’t even settled on Chrome’s release and already Mozilla is feeling the pressure. The company today released a series of benchmarks showing Firefox 3.1 will be faster than anything Google can muster with Chrome.

Chrome is running V8, an open source Javascript engine, which Google claims, is faster than anything currently offered on the Web. And based on our tests of Chrome, we tend to agree.

But in the upcoming release of Firefox 3.1, which should be available by the end of the year, Mozilla will employ TraceMonkey, a new engine that according to one of its coders, Brendan Eich, will easily eclipse even the fastest instance of Chrome.

To prove it, Mozilla tested Firefox running on TraceMonkey and compared it to Google’s Chrome beta using its own benchmarking solution called SunSpider. According to the company, Chrome was 28 percent slower on Windows XP and 16 percent slower on Windows Vista.

Mozilla is quick to point out that TraceMonkey has only been in development for a few months and will only get better before it’s rolled out later this year, but the company has a vested interest in seeing Firefox come out on top in its benchmark testing, so all figures should probably be questioned, to say the least. And the same goes for Google’s five benchmarks.

For now, Chrome is the fastest browser in the market and anyone using both Firefox and Chrome will find that out quickly. But once Firefox 3.1 hits the Web, we’ll find out if Chrome has what it takes to stay on top after TraceMonkey becomes Mozilla’s engine of choice.

Courtesy: TechCrunch

Have The News Come To You With Alerts.com

With Alerts.com service, instead of visiting multiple sites to stay up-to-date with the latest news and and information, you can have the news come to you. You can configure alerts that are relevant to your interests and then have them arrive in the method you choose: SMS, voice, email, IM, or on your desktop via an Adobe Air app.

Types of Alerts

After signing up for the Alerts.com service, you can choose from all sorts of pre-configured alerts. For example, the site offers alerts for things like news, weather, gas prices, flight info, price watches, CraigsList, sports scores, press releases, birthday reminders, horoscopes, Amber Alerts, and so much more.

However, what really appealed to me was that you had the option to configure your own personalized alerts which could be anything you need to remember to do. I'm also excited to see an RSS Feed Alert option, as well. With this alert, you can monitor feeds for keywords and receive messages immediately or on a scheduled basis via email or SMS.

Types of Alerts

Configuring Alerts

You can see an overview of the different alerts you subscribe to on your personalized homepage, a page which somewhat resembles iGoogle and its gadgets. There's also a handy "list view" which presents the alerts in a list so you can easily sort through them and turn them on or off as desired. This page also displays how many alerts have been sent out so far.

Editing an Alert

Business Model

Alerts.com is an ad-supported service. Specific advertising is inserted into the emails, texts, and voice messages sent out. The ads will be relevant to the type of alert requested by the user. This doesn't seem like a bad deal to get this sort of useful tool for free.

The platform is open and an API is currently available so that developers can create unique reminders, alerts, and notifications of their own.

The company is also working with a number of educational institutions around the U.S. to deliver alerts to the enrolled students. Currently, there are 8 million students receiving alerts from the Alerts.com.

You can sign up to start receiving your own alerts today, too. Just click here.

Courtesy: TechCrunch

MySchoolAlerts Keeps Faculty, Parents, and Students Connected in Emergencies

Alerts.com has announced at DEMOfall 08 a free messaging and notification system called MySchoolAlerts that will allow schools to communicate instantly with teachers, parents and students.

This is a perfect solution for sharing information such as school closings due to inclement weather or enabling communication in the event of a campus security threat. Yes, every school has a phone number that parents and staff members can call to find out whether or not their school is open, but most of the time that information can be incorrect or the phone line busy or down. Enabling schools to send current news and alerts instantly to everyone connected to the school will be far more effective and truly appreciated by everyone.

How it works

MySchoolAlerts is free and there’s nothing to download or install for the school or parents. The school simply creates an account and the faculty members, parents and students just subscribe to the service. Everyone has the option to receive the messages any way they prefer because they can be delivered via e-mail, SMS, voice, widget or through a desktop application. Other types of alerts can be added as well, such as child safety alerts, severe weather warnings, gas price alerts and more.

Everysecond counts

Obviously, this messaging service will become invaluable in the event of campus security threats such as the tragic events that unfolded at schools like Columbine and more recently Virginia Tech. The horrific events were only intensified because school staff members and authorities had no way of communicating with parents or students in a timely manner. In situations like that, every second counts.

Schools are trying to remedy this problem by taking expensive and drastic measures such as providing laptops, cell phones and even iPhones to all students so they can communicate with them instantly. Some schools that have done this are Oklahoma Christian University and Abilene Christain University.

Conclusion

As a parent, I think this is a long overdue solution. I think every school needs to sign up and start communicating with teachers, parents and students in real time. The fact that it’s free and does not require any hardware or software should make this a no-brainer. This kind of solution can also work for other organizations that need to communicate with large numbers of people in a timely manner. Quite frankly, I will be very surprised if this service isn’t embraced immediately across the country by all schools.

Courtesy: Mashable

The OtherInbox Wants to be Your Mailman (Exclusive Invites!)

OtherInbox is a unique new email service that just launched today. It wants to provide a way to manage all of the emails that you don’t really want going to your personal or business email accounts. For example, emails from online shopping vendors, newsletters, news updates, social networking messages and more.

Howdoes it work?
Instead of having all of these emails flooding your inbox, OtherInbox allows you to maintain unlimited email addresses at your own domain name, such as JohnDoe.otherinbox.com.

Thegood news is that you don’t have to create these email addresses ahead of time before you can use them. You can create them on the fly as needed. For example, you can create a new email address amazon@JohnDoe.otherinbox.com for Amazong emails and Facebook@JohnDoe.otherinbox.com for Facebook and so on for all other sites. OtherInbox then sorts everything coming back into the appropriate folders.

Ifanyone sells your email address then you will know exactly who was responsible and you can then Block that one email address so that you’ll never see their emails again. It’s quite handy.

WhatElse can You Do with It?
Besides creating an email address for all websites you shop at, you can also create addresses for events and functions that you attend such as the TechCrunch50@JohnDoe.Otherinbox.com or DemoFall2008@JohnDoe.Otherinbox.com. It’s also handy when it comes to tracking rebates, coupons and shipment tracking information. It’s a powerful new weapon against spammers as well.

Conclusion
Mostof us already own many “other” inboxes on services like Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail to handle these types of emails but OtherInbox can replace them all. It could become SpamCentral Station, if you will. The interface is intuitive and it does make managing your emails much easier.

Youcan find emails a lot quicker as well thanks to the folder system it uses. Yes, some of you are saying “why not just use bloody rules and filters to automatically archives emails according to the sender!” Well, true, rules and filters can do something like that but it still requires a great deal of work on your part that would never end.

Everytime you joined a new site or service you would have to create a new rule or filter to handle it. With the Otherinbox all you have to do is create a new email address on the fly and you’re done.

***INVITES***
Special invites only for Mashable Readers! The first 25 readers can claim their own OtherInbox right now!

Courtesy: Mashable

Need Google Apps on Your Desktop? Try GMDesk.

A new service called GMDesk, according to a report from Cybernet, leverages Adobe AIR to provide Google Apps as desktop versions, with easy shortcut keys for toggling between the desktop and browser-based versions. In all, GMDesk supports Gmail, Google Calendar, Reader, Documents, Maps and Picasa through its service. Helpful for those that want immediate desktop access to their Google apps without having to open up a browser window.

Meanwhile, Google itself seems to be more focused on its Web-based and mobile efforts than rolling out desktop version for those apps that it hasn’t already created a desktop version. With more growth potential on a global scale available with an increased mobile presence, especially with Google Android and a majority of wireless providers on board for partnership deals, it looks like the mobile front is an ongoing point of effort for new offerings to consumers.