Hosted E-Mail Service Leaves Windows for Linux
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Company outsources e-mail for small to medium businesses.
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The Linux systems and applications monitoring service is now online, with a free trial version.
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Will the company be able to keep the name of its new email service?
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft on Wednesday launched a beta of the new e-mail client designed to give the boot to Vista's four-month-old built-in Windows Mail. Windows Live Mail Beta 2.0,Â touted by MicrosoftÂ three weeks ago as blending features from multiple Microsoft mailers, sports a Vista Aero look and claims faster performance than its predecessor, the now-defunct Windows Live Mail desktop. The program handles POP, IMAP, and Windows Live Hotmail accounts, theoretically letting users combine multiple interfaces -- a browser for Hotmail, say, plus the venerable Outlook Express (OE) for POP mail -- with a single window. It runs on both Vista and Windows XP; in the latter, it ousts OE. "[Windows Live Mail] sports a brand new [user interface] that's more aligned with what's being adopted across Windows Live," said Nick White, a Vista program manager, on that group'sÂ blog,Â giving one reason for the replacement. "Windows Live Mail will allow syncing with Windows Live Hotmail, serving as a client-to-service bridge." Microsoft also pitched Windows Live Mail's (WL Mail) integration with other Live online services -- especially the company's instant messaging client (Windows Live Messenger), blog host (Spaces) and address book (Windows Live Contacts) -- as grounds for swapping out existing software. Left unsaid was why Microsoft wants to dump Vista's Windows Mail, a redo of XP's OE, just a few months after the new operating system reached consumers Jan. 30. Microsoft, which has said it wanted to move more toward advertising-support applications, will not display ads in this beta, but White left the door open. "There will not be any graphical advertisements in Windows Live Mail at this time," he said. Users should anticipate problems with the any beta, this one included, warned Microsoft's WL Mail team. By the messages posted to the new user-to-user newsgroup, setup may be a stumbling block; some who downloaded the beta reported that the install crashed or required several reboots. OE and Windows Mail are left on the hard drive when WL Mail installs on XP and Vista, respectively, although the older programs' desktop shortcuts are replaced by the new application. If WL Mail is uninstalled, OE's and Windows Mail's shortcuts are restored. The 15MB WL Mail Beta can be downloaded from Microsoft's Live site In related news, Microsoft also debuted Thursday betas of the Live Messenger 8.5 instant messenger and Windows Live Writer blog-crafting tool.
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ISP's customers have a new option for obtaining their e-mail on the go.
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Mozilla appears to have another winner on its hands. Its free Thunderbird e-mail client reads e-mail from Web and POP accounts, accesses RSS feeds, and offers significant flexibility.
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Microsoft has improved its support for Windows NT 4.0 Server and has outlined how it will end support for e-mail system Exchange Server 5.5.
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Mozilla has released Thunderbird 1.0, an open-source e-mail client that complements its Firefox Web browser. Mozilla says the e-mail program will help users avoid spam and viruses, and
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has replaced its controversial anti-Linux&#160;&quot;Get the Facts&quot; Web site&#160;with a kinder, gentler site explaining how its Windows Server operating system compares to open-source Linux as well as other competitive OSes.
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Sci/Tech News, America Online, the largest Internet service provider, said it would stop using Microsoft&#39;s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Sender ID technology to filter unwanted e-mail being sent to its millions of members, and instead embrace an open-source friendly
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Google has begun to roll out "e-mail portability" to its Gmail accounts, which enables users to download and send messages over POP3 using any external e-mail client. The added feature is the latest move by Google to ramp up its free service and better compete with giants Yahoo! and Microsoft. Gmail's initial offer of massive storage space was soon matched by its e-mail rivals, but Yahoo! currently charges for POP3 access and MSN recently abandoned the feature due to abuse. E-mail portability is expected to be available to all Gmail users within two weeks.
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Microsoft is testing a new subscription hotmail service that includes 2Gbytes of e-mail storage and a copy of Outlook 2003 to access the service from the desktop.
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Microsoft Corp. on Monday will start charging for a Hotmail feature that allows users of the Web-based e-mail service to access their e-mail using the Outlook e-mail client.ADVERTISEMENTSBC Case Study: Crate & BarrelWhat sold them on improving their network? A system that could cut management costs from the get-go. Find out more.
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Plus: Most email over holidays will be spam. [News.com Extra]
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By James Coates  Q. I am having real trouble with sending e-mail using Outlook Express. This error message comes up on my Windows XP Home Edition every time I try to send a .txt or picture file to another e-mail address:  "The host 'smtp' could not be found.
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Everyone has an e-mail address (at least one), but e-mail itself has been declared "broken" by all manner of experts - not just technologists and computer users, but productivity geeks and office managers.   Too many people waste too much time trying to cope with their e- mail inbox.