Corporate email

Yahoo Mail has rolled out SMS and IM options, allowing users to send messages to their friends’ phones or instant messaging accounts from within the Yahoo Mail interface. The features were already available in the new version of Yahoo Mail, but with millions of users still on the “Classic” version, today’s rollout brings them to a whole new audience.

Zenbe, a social e-mail aggregator, is now out of beta and available to everyone. With Zenbe, users can import existing e-mail accounts (including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL Mail) into a single web-based inbox, and view messages by conversation or by person, or by favorite people, in views similar to how social networks present communication streams. The service is a bit slow and seems to contain a few minor bugs, but all in all it’s impressive, not in the least because of its looks.

OtherInbox wants to help you keep spam out of your regular email inbox. The company gives you a virtually unlimited amount of disposable email addresses to use whenever you think somebody might start sending you spam or sell your address to spammers. Unlike other disposable email services, OtherInbox doesn't just give you a random email address, but a personal sub-domain to which you can add an unlimited amount of addresses. OtherInbox is currently in private beta, but we were able to get a few invites for our readers.

I recently moved to a new office and found that I couldn't send mail via Microsoft Outlook. I've had this same problem in different locations. I've been told that it depends on the ISP settings and it is easy to fix by contacting the ISP. That seemed like a pain, so this week I just started using Gmail as my default. I've not looked back. This is anecdotal and maybe I am a market of one, but it is a big deal for me. I have “lived in Outlook” for years. It was the one part of Office that I thought I would never replace. I suspect I am not alone.

A leading British construction company switched 1,800 users over to Google Apps on May 2nd, becoming the largest live deployment in the UK so far for Google’s enterprise applications suite. In a phone interview this morning, Rob Ramsay, director of IT at Taylor Woodrow, firmly refuted the allegations reported here yesterday that Google applications aren’t fit for enterprise use.

E-mail startup Xobni may or may not be in acquisition talks with Microsoft (they say no), but they do have a nifty project up their sleeves that Microsoft would be interested in, especially if its proposed Yahoo deal ever goes through. Xobni makes a plug-in that super-charges Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail software by organizing conversations and people in ways that are much easier to find them. It also shows users their social network based on who they email the most.