If you use a web based mail service and are tired of all the clutter on the pages slowing load times and ads getting in your way of quickly reading, and writing email, then Litepost is a service you should keep an eye on.

Litepost is aiming to ease the job of reading and replying to email by decluttering the interface and focusing on the two main functions of email, writing and reading. The interface is designed to be streamlined for these two functions and nothing else. And if the interface they designed is not to your liking they also allow you to upload your own skin for use by you.

And they have taken the "free web-mail" a step farther and will be releasing Litepost mail server as an Open Source download so that it can be installed on your server and you don't need to rely on another company for your mail hosting. And being Web 2.0 savvy they know that users would not do anything anymore without tagging and ratings. That's right not only can you tag your messages for easier retrieval later, but you can rate emails to find the important ones first.

They are currently working on finishing up their initial beta release, and will be coming out soon with the web mail service, followed by the server component after that. You can go to their site and sign up to be notified when these events happen. They are also developing an API for the service, as well as having the source code repository link posted publicly so that all those open source loving developers out there can make use of the service.