I’ve got two email-related news that I picked up from the press room that’s both Purple in nature and definitely worth checking out.

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop – your one stop shop for all email needs

Zimbra, a Yahoo! company known for its open source, next-generation messaging and collaboration software, announced a few days ago the release of Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop Beta.  The cool thing about Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop is that it allows you to access a simple, centralized place to manage your emails even if you’re not connected to the Internet.  Through POP and IMAP protocol support, you can access your Yahoo! Mail, GMail or AOL Mail (not sure if anyone I the Philippines has this one, hehehe) offline at the same time, from the same place.  Zimbra also allows you to use the iCal standard to bring your calendar offline.

The Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop gives users the same sleek Zimbra experience and showcases the latest technologies that have until now only been available via Web-based applications including:

• “Mash-ups” with other services; for example, when viewing an e-mail, users can see their schedule by hovering over a date, or see the status of a flight by looking at a flight number;
• Powerful search that can quickly scan a user’s e-mail and pull up relevant content;
• Built-in organization capabilities including automatically converting e-mails into conversations and advanced tagging; and
• Advanced calendaring that gives users access to their most important appointments and schedule even when they are on the go.

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop also includes a number of features designed to help users stay organized, such as document creation, spreadsheets, task management and document storage, giving users a robust alternative to other desktop applications. New features include online and offline access to:

• Zimbra Documents, a document and spreadsheet program, which gives users the ability to embed complex objects such as photos into documents and spreadsheets. With the addition of Zimbra Documents, Zimbra Desktop users can easily create and edit documents and simple spreadsheets without having to switch between desktop programs or e-mail large attachments.
• Zimbra Briefcase, which allows users to upload, store, and conveniently access any files including spreadsheets, documents, presentations and others. Instead of keeping all attachments in e-mail you can simply store them in the same place with Zimbra Briefcase, and access them from anywhere, online or offline.
• Zimbra Tasks, a task management system which allows users to manage to-do lists simply and easily by monitoring start and due dates, priority, progress and percent complete.

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop Beta Version 3 is available for free download at Zimbra.com/desktop.

Yahoo! Mail – Numero Uno in Mobile

Excerpted from VentureBeat.

Mobile web usage grows, and it’s not led by the iPhone — yet.

It’s been known for a while that iPhone users in the U.S. love the mobile Internet, but that love is spreading to the rest of the population rather quickly, according to a new study by Nielsen Mobile.

Of the countries surveyed, the United States was first in mobile Internet penetration with 15.6 percent of all mobile users accessing the web from their devices in May. The UK was second with 12.9 percent followed by Italy at 11.9 precent.

The report notes that advertising has reached a critical mass in the U.S. with its over 40 million active mobile Internet users. Considering that China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, still have low mobile Internet penetration numbers at 6.8 and 1.8 percent respectively, the opportunities worldwide should only grow.

It’s interesting to note that this study did not include several countries including Korea and Japan, where mobile web usage is likely very high as well.

Another interesting tidbit from the report is that Yahoo Mail beat out Google Search as the top mobile web channel in the U.S. — and by a large margin. Overall however, portals were more popular than web-based email.

I’m not sure what the statistics are in the Philippines but I find it very convenient to be able to check my email through my mobile, I’m wondering if this is the same for you?