Messaging

AJAX Integration Progresses at Webmail.us

Using the latest in Web 2.0 technologies enables the webmail provider to offer more.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 14, 2005]

Blacksburg, Va.-based Webmail.us announced the latest feature updates to its users on the company blog post titled "Calendar, Task Manager, and Faster Webmail."

It's all part of the company's project which aims to use AJAX to make webmail better.

"AJAX is a web development framework that eliminates page refreshes within applications," says Patrick Matthews, Webmail.us CEO and founder.

He's particularly concerned about the experience of users on dialup or slow mobile connections. "A page refresh can take time, especially on a slow connection."

The ultimate goal of any webmail application is to make the webmail experience as close to the desktop experience as possible.

"With our webmail application, you can expand and collapse folders, check e-mail, and do other operations without a page refresh."

Adding groupware to webmail
In addition, the company is adding a calendar and a task manager application. Calendars we understand, but we have to ask what a task manager is.

"It helps you keep track of tasks," says Matthews. "A calendar event is usually time sensitive, but if sometime in the next week, you need to write three more company blogs, that you can note that in the task manager."

He has the target user clearly in mind. "It caters to businesses and service providers. It's like a to do list that you can sort. You can sort it many ways, including alphabetically or complete or incomplete tasks."

The initial applications are streamlined. "We aim for simplicity," says Matthews. "It's all pretty basic right now. We want to build an application that works and that is simple and easy to use."

A long term project
The company has been rebuilding its platform from the ground up for some time. The goal is to have an open platform that welcomes new services. "This is our first time launching a calendar and task list manager," explains Matthews.

The company believes that mail is the core of the Internet experience. "As people spend more and more time in their inbox, they want their applications there. People also want to have one login. It's all integrated. We don't offer a standalone calendar. We do get asked for standalone products, such as a standalone spam filter. We see a standalone calendar industry growing just like the anti-spam industry has grown."

Every provided application is integrated, but the company wants to allow customers to integrate its webmail with other applications, and the key to that is APIs.

"Resellers can do anything from changing colors to tweaking the anti-spam settings. They can integrate these features into an existing web interface, and can integrate our control panel into theirs. We want the entire platform to be accessible. We're in the platform business, integrate our application into other applications. Even our address book has an API, which allows our service provider partners to integrate that API with any of tons of third party address books."

With open APIs, new things are possible. For example, Matthews says that any e-mail hosting company, if it offers a standards-based product, can configure it to work with mobile devices.

Pricing and availability
The new release is free to existing companies. There are no upgrade fees.

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