Sunday, April 23, 2006

V3 beta 3 is out: a WAP Mail Server is in

Good news from our product team this week: they released the third beta of Funambol v3.

It includes some updated modules: DS Server, Windows Mobile Client Plug-in, Client API for C++, Admin Tool for Windows/Linux.

It also includes a brand new module: a WAP Mail Server. It comes from my quest to distribute great Italian software to the world. It has been contributed by Comvalid, the US counterpart of Inrete.

Our WAP Mail server allows anybody with a WAP broser (that's almost 100% of cell phones out there) to access its email (POP or IMAP). There is no push, for that you have to use the other modules of our product.

The WAP Server is of a very high quality and it is capable of doing things that Gmail Mobile is just dreaming of. For example, the way we manage attachments is really cool. Powerpoint slides are converted in jpgs, that you can browse with a click (page by page), with the ability of zooming into the slide. Granted, you are going to need a powerpoint on your cell only once a quarter. But when you need it, you'll see how important it is to have it.

I am very glad we got this release out. It is a great step. The next one should come around the end of May. With that, we'll release the first version of the Enterprise package. It is going to be interesting.