Pushed a couple new OSS binary builds. Mac OSX and Fedora Core 4. These have not had as much QA as the Fedroa 3 and Red Hat builds so any feedback will help us make these better.
The release notes have been updated as well.
You can get the builds here.
To enter a mature market, start-ups need there to be dislocators or “sea changes” in technology or business model or, better yet, both.
For example, WebLogic (my last time around the block) benefited from three technology dislocators and one business model dislocator:
(1) The emergence of the Web, and the associated requirement to deliver Web-enabled applications;
(2) The emergence of Java (a.k.a. managed code);
(3) The definition of a set of standard programming models for server-side Java (a.k.a. J2EE); and
(4) The use of the free trial Internet download to allow programmers to self-select (and to bypass the historical top-down sales cycle).
(Even with those dislocators going for us, we still had to coin a new category name—”Web Application Server”, because there was no way the venture capitalists were going to invest in a Java transaction processing monitor. Further evidence for those dislocations is Microsoft upgrading from Visual Basic and DCOM to C# and .NET, which the Java and J2EE communities can and should take credit for motivating.)
As Zimbra is poised to enter another mature market against very talented, deep-pocketed incumbents like Microsoft, we had better make sure we have some significant dislocators going for us. Here’s my short list of technology sea changes:
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Don’t have time to download the latest release? You can see it now on our hosted demo
Zimbra- Hosted Demo Registration
We’ve released our 2nd milestone build. We’ve also put out the first beta of the Network Release. You can download a Network trial here.
Tons of bug fixes and some new stuff, here’s some highlights.
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In our first ever release, we relied on iptables for port forwarding so that a regular user process could have access to privileged ports (ie, ports < 1024 can be bound only by root). Eg, our IMAP server would bind to port 7143, and iptables would be setup to forward port 143 to 7143.
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One of the things we are working on for an upcoming release is REST interfaces into all our content. If you aren’t familiar with REST I’d just suggest reading Building Web Services the REST Way.
Today, within the Zimbra Collaboration Suite we have a number of different server-side URLs that our client accesses to download an attachment, export contacts as CSV, export a calendar as an ICS, file etc. We are also adding sharing (what would collaboration be without sharing, after all) of calendars, contacts, etc. Not only within a particular Zimbra community, but between Zimbra communities and the public at large.
In order to facilitate this, we are coming up with a clean, consistent URL interface to all our resources. The best way to describe this is with some examples.
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Several folks will be in Germany next week for LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Frankfurt 2005. If you’d like to set up a meeting please drop John a note at: john _AT_ zimbra.com
The Zimbra Ajax web client is just one way to access the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). I have to admit that it is the one I almost always use, because I am totally hooked on the conversations, searching, and the calendar features. I basically never throw any email away anymore since finding stuff is such a breeze. I also like the fact that I can access the ZCS from anywhere on any machine that runs a supported browser. However, all of the capability that is provided in the client is for the most part realized by the server. In addition the server supports IMAP/POP clients, as well as iCAL clients. Another cool and important fact is that all the APIs that the client uses are public SOAP APIs that are documented in the source code download (look for soap.txt & soap-calendar.txt in the docs directory).
I would really love to see other folks write clients against the ZCS server. These could be full blown collaboration clients, utility clients such as Mac OS X or Konfabulator Widgets, or integrations with existing web clients (i.e. using the ZCS as a data source).
As an example, Greg (one of the engineers at Zimbra) has developed a mobile flash client that runs on a PocketPC. It supports such features as conversations and autocomplete on compose. It also syncs calendar appointments from the ZCS calendar. Greg runs it on his PocketPC mobile phone and uses it all the time - As do several other folks at Zimbra.
In 1999 when we were architecting and implementing Onebox.com, we had to select an implementation language. Given that all the principle architects at Onebox were from JavaSoft, so one would expect Java to be the natural choice. It was not.
Before going further, I should perhaps write a little about Onebox.com. Onebox.com was a unified messaging startup back in the Dot Com “gogo” days. The idea was to provide subscribers with a phone number and a web based “inbox” from whence they could get their email, voicemails, and faxes. So when a subscriber registered, they could pick a phone number in an area code, pick a user name and they were in business. The basic service was free, and the premium services (such as phone numbers without extensions, more disk, multiple phone numbers) were add on. The service did quite well and we were servicing over five million subscribers by the time we got acquired in 2000.
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Yahoo released a new maps API beta yesterday. We already had a Google maps integration, but wanted to see if Yahoo had anything better. Yahoo’s previous map api was problematic since it required you to put their map in an iframe and didn’t give much control over the image.
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