Boxbe Blog

I scour the web every day for email related news, how-to’s and other items of interest. Most of those end up in our link feed over to the right.

Here are some of the latest cool tools I’ve found on the web.

Better Gmail 2
Our friends over at Lifehacker have updated their Better Gmail Firefox plugin to work with the new Gmail interface. We don’t have the new interface yet, so can’t say too much about it. If you do, download the plugin and let us know.

ClearContext, helping with your email overload
New plugin for Outlook "that helps with project management: sorting and categorizing emails relating to a particular subject".

Six Top Ways to Tame Your E-Mail
Web Worker Daily gives us their top 6 email add ons for increasing email productivity.

Batch Add Email Addresses with AddressContext
"The addressContext Thunderbird extension batch processes to and from email addresses for a set of messages from the context menu."

It’s been a while since we’ve posted any news about other places here on the blog, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been watching. Here’s the latest and greatest from the world of email.

Happy 10th Birthday, Yahoo! Mail
We’ve had a great time working with the team down in Sunnyvale on the new Yahoo! Mail application and wish them the best on this momentous occasion. Congrats!

Yahoo Mail to block fake eBay and PayPal e-mail - CNET News.com
Good news for eBay and Paypal users, Yahoo! will be blocking spoofed emails from senders claiming to be Paypal and eBay. We have to applaud Yahoo! for taking steps to curb these phishing emails.

Mac e-mail showdown: Which program delivers? - Computerworld
Looking to switch email apps on the Mac? Or maybe coming from the PC world and wanted to know what your Mac options are? Computerworld takes a look at Mail.app, Thunderbird and Microsoft Entourage desktop mail applications for OSX.

Techies take on spam zombies -San Francisco Chronicle
“Computer scientists in Menlo Park are releasing a free diagnostic program today to help network administrators find PCs infected with an insidious new type of virus that has already tainted millions of computers.” Strangely, SFGate doesn’t link directly to the software page, but if you want to check it out, go to the BotHunter Free Internet Distribution Page.

Wow, that was fast.

I mentioned last week that Thunderbird 2.0 RC1 was released. Yesterday, the Mozilla foundation released Thunderbird 2.0.

From Wired.com:

Thunderbird 2.0 is a major leap forward for the Mozilla email client and boasts much improved performance as well as some great new features like support for message tagging, a customizable folder pane and one click integration with popular webmail services like GMail and .Mac.

Fire up your browser and go download it!

Release info [via Lifehacker]

Over the weekend, our friends over at Mozilla, shipped the release candidate (RC1) of the their Thunderbird 2.0 mail client..

Thunderbird’s update promises a slew of new features for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems designed around usability, better integration with online email applications and to “address information overload for users.”

New features include:

• Tagging
• Search as you type
• Gmail & .Mac integration
• Better filing tools
• Better support for extensions

If you love online email, why might you use Thunderbird instead?

Scott Gilbertson from Wired asked Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird’s lead engineer that very question today -

We believe the Thunderbird experience is better for moderate to heavy e-mail use. It’s much easier to process incoming mail — anyone who’s had to use web mail on vacation to deal with dozens of e-mails can testify to how tedious it can be.

Read more here.

Richard McManus, over at Read/Write Web has a fantastic overview as well.

Now, if they would just get Mac OS X Address Book integration, I’d be converted.

Download

As you might imagine, we think about email a lot here at Boxbe. Email consumes a lot of everyone’s time, so there are always ways to get more efficient at getting through it. We’ll be sharing our favorite email tips on the blog from time to time. This first set is from the top notch productivity blog, Lifehacker.

• Backing up Gmail with Thunderbird
  
• How to set up a smart Out-of-Office auto-reply with Gmail
• 8 killer Thunderbird plug-ins
• Outlook Tip: Send an email without touching the mouse
• Mailredirect - Thunderbird plugin