Mozilla Foundation has launched a new subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging. Read the company name guess that this is a new venture that expected to develop a series of messaging related products. And you’re right, as mentioned by Mozilla’s CEO David Ascher, this is a new Mozilla subsidiary that focused on the area of email and Internet communications, with aiming to develop a new cutting-edge Thunderbird 3. The outlined features included integrated calendaring (building on the great work done by the Mozilla Calendar team and their Lightning add-on to Thunderbird), better search facilities, easier configuration, and many more.

I like the fact that Mozilla is putting its effort on developing another good Web product beside Firefox. While the Thunderbird version 3 has not been materialized, the expectation was high because now this upcoming online communication client is being backed by a new startup, with a bunch of talents working day and night on it. But I don’t think this product will generate a lot of buzz as it is not a new tool for open source lovers. If you’re an open source lover, you should heard of an open source organizer mash-up that combine email, calendar, scheduling features, instant messaging (IM) and others into one that called Spicebird.

via [Linux Magazine]

Mozilla has prepared to launch the second public preview release of its forthcoming Thunderbird 2. Thunderbird is a popular email client and it has some useful features and one of them is helping the users to stop the junk mails. The Thunderbird 2 beta 1 was released in December last year. However, This Thunderbird 2 beta 2 is still being in the testing status by the Mozilla community. As stated on its home page, nothing has finalized yet. Additionally, new features include phishing and SPAM mail detection, spell check improvement, and much more have been added to this release.

Mozilla has just organized a test day for the Thunderbird 2 beta 2 a few days ago. While you can still download the beta 2 candidate by clicking here. Please noted the Thunderbird 2 beta 2 is intended for the testing community.

Based on the history of software development cycle at Mozilla, they’re capable in release the new version in every two or three months. Thus, I believed the Thunderbird 2 final version will be available for public in March or April.