Apple is launching a new service called MobileMe that will provide push mail, contacts, and calendar data. In practical terms, that means you can synchronize your personal data across multiple computers and devices. And the service works with both Windows and OS X.

In other words, you can synchronize your Mac, PC, and iPhone. The service works with Mac's Mail.app, iCal, and Address book. On Windows, the service syncs with Outlook. In addition to PIM data, you can use MobileMe to syncrhonize photos from your iPhone.

Apple's Phil Schiller demonstrated the new service at WWDC this morning, showing you email gets pushed to all devices in a matter of seconds. There are also web based versions of the applications that look like desktop apps, including a photo application that looks like iPhoto.

The service will replace .Mac, and current .Mac users will automatically be upgraded to MobileMe. For new customers, the service will cost $99 per year for 20GB of online storage. There's a 60 day free trial available as well. MobileMe isn't live yet, but will be available at Me.com soon.

So you may have heard, Apple threw a little press event today. And while we won't get into all of the gritty details (our friends at Engadget have already done a pretty good job of that), we did want to highlight a few of the more exciting announcements related to the iPhone SDK:

• Apple has licensed Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to enable Exchange synchronization. That means Push email, calendar, and contacts.
• The iPhone SDK is available for free today to developers who want to create applications which can be run natively on the iPhone.
  
• Developers will have to pay $99 per year to have their items listed in the iPhone App Store. Apple will also take a 30% cut of any sales you make through the App Store.
• Users will be able to install 3rd party apps through iTunes or the App Store.
• Some of the applications demoed today include AOL Instant Messenger, a business tool from Salesforce.com, and several games including Spore. Yes, Spore.
  
• The iPhone 2.0 software that will let users run these 3rd party apps will be available as a free update in June.

One thing the iPhone SDK will not enable? Software that unlocks the iPhone so it can be used with different Wireless carriers. And that means that while there's now an official way for developers to get their software on the iPhone, there's at least one good reason that we still expect some lively updates from the iPhone hacking community.

Oh yeah, and the version 2.0 software will be available for the iPod Touch as well, but it won't be free. No price has been set yet.

We first heard that Mozilla might be ready to spin off Thunderbird as a separate corporation back in July. At the time, all we knew is that Mozilla wanted to focus on Firefox and allow Thunderbird to shed its overlooked stepsister status and get the attention it deserved.

Well, it turns out that Mozilla has pretty big plans for the little e-mail client. The goal is pretty much to make Thunderbird an Outlook killer much the same way Firefox has become something of an Internet Explorer killer.

Mozilla has announced that ActiveState CTO David Ascher will head up the new company. The new organization will be a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and will receive $3 million in seed funding from Mozilla to get started.

The new company will continue to support Thunderbird, but will also continue to build out its product and encourage a "robust developer ecosystem" to encourage open source involvement in the project. What would be most interesting is if Mozilla released a Thunderbird server that could compete with Microsoft's Exchange Server head-on.

While the iPhone's place in the business world is an evolving story, Synchronica has added their own chapter by shipping v3.0 of their Mobile Gateway service, adding support for Apple's shiny new phone to synchronize email with Microsoft Exchange. This could allow many a corporate user to finally justify that iPhone purchase to their boss, now that they can both send and receive email on it without needing to install software or being behind a firewall. Speaking of security, messages are sent over encrypted IMAP/SMTP and secure HTTPS connections to the Microsoft Exchange server, so it sounds like things are locked down pretty tightly.

Synchronica's iPhone-enabled service is available now with a 60-day free trial, though the demo signup page explains that the company has apparently been bowled over with requests since announcing iPhone Exchange compatibility. If you're still interested in exploring your chances of getting the boss to add an iPhone to the company's expense account, you can sign up to be notified when normal service resumes and you can get in on the action.

[via PC World]

This last Saturday I had the good fortune of being in the middle of a passionate debate between Roy Singham and another ThoughtWorker over iPhone vs. other smartphones. Roy argued that the iPhone is not the game changing device that most people claim it to be because his Nokia N95E90 smartphones can do more and better. The discussion was cut short due to scheduling pressure but it got me thinking, why do people lust after iPhone more than other smartphones? Is it because of the large touch screen? Is it because of the Safari browser? Is it because the iPhone is a video iPod and a cell phone? Or is it all just hype?

Ben Forta and Adobe are getting into full swing with ColdFusion 8 Scorpio Pre-Release tour. Last night Ben gave us in Seattle a taste of things to come. Here is why it will kick the tar balls out of everything else on the market.

1. Built in AJAX widgets. Create AJAX windows, auto complete forms, calendar popups, grids, WYSIWYG editors, and much more. All using simple ColdFusion based tags and generating industry standard solutions such as Prototype and Yahoo User Interface Javascript.
   
2. Native JSON support. ColdFusion components now know if they are called by a web browser and will return JSON formated data automatically. You can also create JSON packets directly or consume them and turn them into native ColdFusion objects.
3. .NET (and Java!) integration. Pull in .NET objects and use them like native ColdFusion objects. Combine .NET and Java on the same page if you like. Easily the best web based middleware solution.
4. Microsoft Exchange integration. Love it or hate it, most organizations use Exchange religiously. Now you can read and update email, calendars, tasks and much more. No change to the Exchange server is required.
5. Flash based presentation builder. Combine HTML, Audio, Flash Movies, Images, and CFCharts to create spiffy flash based presentations on the fly. Just wrap your existing pages in CFPRESENTATION and you are on your way.
6. Full PDF integration. Create, combine, update, and interact with PDF files using CFPDF and CFPDFFORM tags.
7. Native image manipulation functions. Blur, sharpen, draw, rotate, stream to browser, and much much more. This finally brings ColdFusion's image support in line with PHP and other frameworks while keeping it so simple that even I could use it.
8. Across the board enhancements. Improvements in security, speed, Flash Forms, Report Builder, and more.
9. Administration API. Now you can access, audit, and snapshot all the information the server knows about itself. No longer is ColdFusion a black box. Audit long running processes, most frequently run queries, and bottle necks. SnapShot the server before making your change or doing a reset so that you can analyze potential problems later.
   

Admittedly I am a ColdFusion fan boy, but I know that it isn't for everyone. Still, ColdFusion is easily the BMW (both in price and in raw engineered quality) of the web application languages out there. With ColdFusion 8 it now becomes possible to build and integrate a vast amount of functionality with only a few lines of code. Imagine letting users quickly create their own presentation by uploading photos and editing slides using a WYSIWYG editor. Then, when they are all done, they can view and share it on the web via Flash or push it to a PDF file. ColdFusion 8 lets you wrap up all this up into a tight package using heavily documented yet extremely simple tags. No scripting required!

ColdFusion 8 Scorpio should land sometime in mid-2007. You know I'll be there.

Evolution is a Personal Information Management program that has been popular in the Linux world for a few years. It looks startlingly like Microsoft Outlook, and in fact is intended as a replacement for Outlook. Evolution's claim to fame is the ability to connect to an Exchange server with most of the same functionality afforded to Outlook clients. And while I'm not sure how I feel about the blatant rip-off of the user interface, I was okay with it when I figured that it gives Linux users the ability to connect to an Exchange server, create and accept meeting requests, and basically be first-class citizens on their corporate network.

Well, now Evolution has been ported to Windows. Why do I feel differently about it now? I'm not sure. I guess since Microsoft Outlook already exists for Windows, it's hard to justify using a third-party application that replicates Outlook so completely.

The justification given on the Evolution site was that their company needed to be able to schedule meetings with external clients who used Microsoft Outlook as their email client. And rather than purchase Outlook for their staff, they opted to port Evolution to Windows to avoid paying for the software.

Although many publications have called Evolution an "Outlook Replacement", I'm not sure I would be comfortable building a company on what is almost certainly illegal software. Evolution's user interface is so similar to Outlook's that it's either infringing on Microsoft's copyright, or at least some form of intellectual property. I'm no lawyer, but I know in my gut when something feels wrong, and this feels wrong. But it's not for me to pass judgement, and who knows - maybe Microsoft is tacitly allowing Evolution to exist. Anyhow, as a technical achievement, it's remarkable. Even if it is fugly compared to recent versions of Outlook. Hmm, maybe that's why Microsoft doesn't mind?

BetaNews is running a profile and interview of Ron Markezich, a man sometimes referred to as Microsoft's "Ultimate Beta Tester." He beta-tests in The Octagon. Okay, not exactly. Markezich is Microsoft's CIO and head of the IT department, supporting Microsoft's 63,000 employees, but what makes him the ultimate beta tester is that he and his team start using Microsoft's products long before they're ready for release, which is known in the industry as eating one's own dog food.or (apparently) "dog-fooding." Markezich relates the tale of Exchange Server 2000, which was shipped to customers even though it was "not running optimally inside Microsoft," resulting in a support nightmare. "From that day forward," says Markezich, "we said we will not ship a product that we sell to the enterprise until we run our business on it." Unlike your average beta-tester, Markezich has the authority to delay a release if he thinks it doesn't meet internal expectations, so I guess he's the guy to blame if Windows Vista doesn't feel like a finished product when you buy it.