A French website [Google Translate link] is reporting that 130,000 Tax Authority computer systems are soon to make a major switch to open source software. Email and calendar duties are being handed over to Thunderbird and the Lightning plugin. The move also includes a transition to OBM's open source groupware/collaboration/messaging platform.

When the General Directorate of Public Finance was formed, two tax agencies were combined. Their users were split, with 80,000 using Lotus Notes and 50,000 running Microsoft Outlook. In the end, the new agency's decision had a lot to do with a desire not to re-license Lotus Notes and Outlook and to simplify operations by supporting a single client.

Thunderbird had already made inroads with the French Department of Defense as well as the Misitry of Culture. The new migration brings the total number of installs to more than 200,000.

Always nice to see Mozilla adoption in the enterprise!

[via OSOR.eu]

The upcoming version of Mozilla's desktop email client, Thunderbird 3, just entered its 4th beta. This new beta adds significant features, including better Gmail integration, smart folders, and better search filters. If you've been looking for an excuse to stop using webmail - especially if you're a Gmail user - it looks like Thunderbird now has most of the features you would have missed.

Gmail integration now includes syncing for your sent mail and trash folders, and uses All Mail as the archive folder. Smart Folders allow you to combine special folders (like your inboxes, and the aforementioned sent and trash folders) from multiple accounts. Advanced Filtering lets you search by a specific category, including by sender, tags, and attachments. Sure, there might still be something you can do in Gmail on the web that you can't do in Thunderbird, but that list seems to be shrinking with every new beta.

[via Lifehacker]

Postbox is an email client based on Mozilla Thunderbird. But it has a number of features you won't find in Thunderbird, including Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed integration. That makes Postbox more than a simple email client. It's a communications hub. It also has a task list, and thanks to support for add-ons, including the Lightning calendar extension, you can customize the application to add even more functions.

Today the Postbox team released beta 14 of the email client, and also announced support for another plugin that lets you sync your contact data with Google and Zimbra. There's also a new theme for Windows Vista and 7, and a handful of other updates. That's the good news.

The other announcement Postbox made today is that the company will begin charging for Postbox when it leaves beta. A single license will set you back $29.95, plus $9.95 per license for up to 5 members of your household. You can also purchase lifetime upgrades for an extra $19.95. Those are the prices for customers that pre-order. The prices will go up a bit after August 31st.

Overall, the pricing sounds pretty reasonable, but only if you think Postbox offers enough features that you need which aren't already available in the free Thunderbird email client.

[via gHacks]

The latest version of Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird 3, is now in beta and available to preview. Thunderbird 3 packs a ton of new features, including tabbed browsing and improved Gmail integration. It also includes some fixes specifically for extension developers.

You can now open a message in a new tab by double-clicking it or hitting enter, and Thunderbird saves your open tabs when you quit. For Gmail users, Thunderbird 3 has a lot to offer. It properly recognizes Gmail's special folders, including Sent and Trash, and uses All Mail as your archived message folder. Setting up and configuring accounts is now easier, too, and it works almost automatically with Gmail. Other new features include Smart Folders that allow you to combine multiple mailboxes, and per-mailbox column customization.

At work, I usually either use a drive imaging program to load the operating system and applications onto a machine. If I'm reformatting a customer's machine, I use WPI (Windows Post Installer) to silently install programs. At home, however, I'm a little less cautious when I reformat and often forget to back up my program installers.

That's when something like the Smart Installer Pack might come in handy. It's a pre-packed set of popular applications that you'd likely want to install on your own system (or a friend's) after a fresh format.

It includes a host of apps like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, Winamp, Skype, Daemon Tools, Picasa, Winamp, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader and Flash, WinRar, Rocket Dock, CCleaner, and more. Everything downloads in a single file, so you won't be cluttering up your drive with a bunch of separate installers.

SIP has two drawbacks. First, the installers are interactive, not silent, so you'll have to click through manually. Second, there are a few apps I'd normally install instead - like 7zip and Sumatra PDF. Shortcomings aside, this is still a handy way to get a system up and running quickly with a solid group of commonly-used programs.

Postbox is an email client and address book application for OS X and Windows built on Mozilla Thunderbird code. But Postbox has a ton of features that you won't find in Thunderbird, including a number of social features and connections to web services like twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook.

You can easily import your contact list from Outlook or Thunderbird into Postbox. And when you login to Facebook, those contacts will be added as well. Postbox indexes your messages, contacts, images, links, and attachments, making it simple to search for items stored in your emails.

There's a to do list, but no calendar. And there's no support for plugins, which means you can't use the Lightning Thunderbird extension. But Postbox is still in beta, so perhaps we'll see a built in calendar or add-on support down the road.

[via CNet]

More than half a year since the folks at Mozilla Messaging released the first alpha version of Thunderbird, the team has released Thunderbird 3 Beta 1. The latest release features a bunch of bug fixes and some new features, including:

• A tabbed interface for mail
• Integration with Windows Vista Search
• Integration with the Mac OS X Address Book
• IMAP improvements for faster message viewing

You can also use the Add-ons Manager to search for, download, and install plugins and themes much the same way you can with the Firefox 3 Add-ons manager. You can find more improvements in the release notes.

Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

DownloadSquad reader Leni Mayo sent us a hot little tip. He has written a script called Zindus for Thunderbird which syncs Google contacts with the address book. It works on version 3.0a as well he says.

Here's a list of the fields that you'll be able to move from Google to Thunderbird:

• Full Name
• Primary Email address and Second Email address
• Phone Numbers: Home, Work, Work Fax, Pager, Mobile
• Instant Messaging (AIM)
• Company and Title
• Notes

There's a few caveats because Google handles contacts differently, so go check out Zindus homepage for a full explanation. It's worth it if you're a die-hard Thunderbirder.

Last time we checked in on Firefox backup utility MozBackup, the developer had just added support for Firefox 3 beta. Apparently it's been a busy half year over at MozBackup HQ, because this week MozBackup 1.4.8 was released, with the following new features:

• Create automatic backups via command line
• New Installer
• Supports backup of unknown files from user profiles
• Backup profiles and settings for: Firefox 2/3, Flock, SeaMonkey, Netscape Navigator 9.0, Netscape Messenger 9.0, Thunderbird, Spicebird, Firefox Portable, and Thunderbird Portable

If you're just looking or a quick way to backup your Firefox extensions, bookmarks, and other settings, you can always check out the FEBE and CLEO Firefox add-ons. But MozBackup looks like a nice all-in-on tool if you have several Mozilla-based programs that you want to backup.

MozBackup is available for Windows 98 through Vista.

[via CyberNet]

Been so buys buying smaller media companies that you haven't had time to keep up on the week's news? Here's what you've been missing, CBS, Condé Nast, and Comcast:

• Thunderbird 3 alpha 1 available now
  Firefox may get all the attention, but Mozilla's Outlook-clone/killer also shows that open source software can hold its own in the instant messaging space. This week saw the release of Thunderbird 3 alpha 1, which uses the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine, adds support for tabs, and a ton of other tweaks.
• OpenSolaris 2008.05, and other places the sun don't shine
  Sun released the open source version of its Solaris operating system this week. It's pretty, features the Gnome Desktop environment that should be familiar to Linux users, and is incredibly difficult to get working on common software. Join us for a romp through the world of OpenSolaris. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll thank us for trying it out so you don't have to.
• Torrent2exe turns any torrent file into a single-source BitTorrent client
  Ever try to explain to a friend how BitTorrent works and then suggest they download uTorrent just so they can download some large file from the web? Turns out there's a way to avoid that confused look on their face. Just grab the torrent file, upload it to Torrent2exe, and you'll get a single executable file that you can give your friend. When they click, the file will download just as easily as if they'd clicked a download link in their browser. You know, as long as someone's seeding it.
• Microsoft launches WorldWide Telescope public beta
  Why spend time gazing at the stars in your backyard when you could sit in front of your computer instead? Microsoft's WorldWide telescope lets you navigate they sky just as easily as Google Earth lets you navigate the earth. The software also features guided tours from astronomers and tools for controlling a telescope plugged into your PC.
• Monitor your hard drive usage with DriveSpacio
  Right click on a drive or folder in Windows and you can find out how much space it's taking up. But Windows doesn't do a great job of showing you which of all your folders are using the most space. DriveSpacio is. Enough said.
• Splashtop Linux interface coming soon to every Asus motherboard
  Imagine being able to surf the web or make a Skype call within seconds of hitting the power button on your PC. Pretty soon, you may be able to. No, Microsoft Windows 7 won't feature instant-on capabilities. But motherboard maker Asus plans to add an instant-on Linux-based OS to a million motherboards a month starting pretty soon. While you're waiting for Windows to boot in the background, you'll already be able to use your PC.

The first alpha release of Thunderbird 3, the open source mail client built on the Gecko rendering engine (what Firefox and all other Mozilla products use), is now available as a developer preview. The Mozilla Messaging team has named this release "Shredder a1" to signify that this release is early, buggy and should NOT be used in a production environment. Mozilla is aiming this release at testers and developers and we don't recommend non-adventurous users taking the program out for a spin.

As the release notes point out, Shredder Alpha 1 is built on Gecko 1.9, the engine running Firefox 3.

Some other highlights:

• New add-on manager that allows direct installation of Thunderbird add-ons and customizations
• Mac OS X version is a native Cocoa application
• Improved message searching

Again, be aware that this is a developer preview and is certainly not ready for prime time. We had issues getting IMAP or POP support working with any of our Google Apps accounts on the OS X version of Shredder Alpha 1 and the app was kind of crashy. Still, we were impressed with what we could see and look forward to future developments.

If you feel ready to give the newest alpha a try, you can download it for your platform of choice here.

[via Mozilla Links]

Looking for another alternative to Microsoft Outlook? While Mozilla Thunderbird offers many of the same features as Microsoft's email client, you need to install plugins to add calendar and task management features. eM Client, on the other hand, comes equipped with a full featured email client and contact, task, and calendar managers.

eM Client is a Windows only application that has been in development since 2006. Version 1.1 beta of eM Client already offers a pretty robust Outlook clone, with support for IMAP and POP email and CalDAV calendars. While it's not exactly an Outlook killer yet, eM Client's developers are working on a few killer features:

• Google Calendar and Contacts Sync
• ActiveSync support
• Universal translation tool
• Facebook integration
• IM integration
• Anti-virus integration

eM Client also has a highly customizable interface, which is always nice.

A few months back, Mozilla announced plans to create a new organization responsible for development of the Thunderbird e-mail client. While Mozilla's Firefox web browser has been getting a lot of attention in recent years from both developers and the general public, Thunderbird has sort of been living in the shadow of its big, more popular sibling.

Today David Ascher announced that the new Thunderbird project has a new name: Mozilla Messaging. He also outlined a bit of what we can expect to see in Thunderbird 3:

• An integrated calendar (right now you have to install the Lightning add-on to get calendar functions in Thunderbird)
• Improved search
• Easier configuration

In the long term, Ascher says the team will also have to think more generally about internet communication. Many people use instant messaging, IRC, blogs, and VoIP to communicate and not just e-mail. It's unlikely that we'll see all of those services built into Thunderbird anytime soon. But perhaps one or two of them will creep in, or maybe we'll see development of chat add-ons in the future.

[via Mozilla Links]

This post's subtitle could be "Why Gmail rocks". If you're already a Gmail user, you probably already understand Gmail's unique way of grouping messages from the same conversation together and presenting them in one unified view. If that's the case, this article is probably not of much interest to you. But if you've never tried Gmail, and have never understood why your friends keep saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, hopefully we can help you out (and provide some alternatives if Gmail is not an option for you).

Grouping threads

Virtually all email clients have a view that presents a list of messages. The traditional way to handle this (and the way virtually all email clients and webmail interfaces do it) is to treat each individual message separately. The onus is on the user to keep various conversations (threads, in email parlance) straight in their head. This works fine when you receive only 20 or 30 emails in a day, but when you get up above 60 or 70, this model starts to fall apart. It completely fails when you get up into hundreds of messages per day or more.

The unique feature that Gmail brings to the table is the ability to intelligently group messages from a common email thread together, so that in your list of messages you will only see one entry per thread. Right off the bat this will take an inbox with 70 actual messages in it, and make it appear as if there are only 20 or 30, since you're only seeing one row per thread.

While more and more people (including most of the staff at DLS) are starting to keep all of their e-mail online, using services like GMail, Windows Live Mail or an Exchange hosted account, there are still plenty of people who prefer using an offline mail client.

While the advantage of storing mail locally is that you can access messages at any time -- whether you are connected to the Internet or not -- that also means that, well, all your mail is on your hard drive. Depending on how much e-mail you get, that can add up to quite a bit of space.

Boing Boing posted a great reminder/tip for all Thunderbird users, make sure you run File --> Compact Folders from time to time. You might not save 20 GB like Cory Doctorow, but you can still claim some space.

Outlook 2007 users can save space/clean up their e-mail boxes by selecting Tools --> Mailbox Cleanup. From there you can choose to archive old messages, empty deleted items folders, find messages of a certain age/size and delete duplicate or alternative versions of messages.

When was the last time you cleaned-up your mail program? If you can't remember, now might be a good time to archive old messages and clear out those deleted items.