Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 announced

Thunderbird already can handle RSS feeds and newsgroups, but ultimately, Mozilla Messaging’s software will work with instant messaging, mobile phone text messaging, and Web sites such as Facebook or Flickr that have their own e-mail systems, said David Ascher, chief executive of the newly named Mozilla Messaging subsidiary.

 

Although many of those sites don’t open up their internal e-mail systems, at least at present, tightly integrating over the Web could sidestep that barrier. “Because we’re built on the same platform as Firefox, we can use Web sites quite easily,” said Ascher.

 

Another fruitful avenue for experimentation is spam filtering and antiphishing security. Firefox has a blacklist security feature that attempts to protect people from phishing e-mails that try to trick recipients into entering passwords or other sensitive information into bogus Web sites. “It’s possible to leverage technology in Firefox 3 to detect phishing and incorporate it into Thunderbird,” Ascher said.

 

In terms of search, the new software will provide with more integrated search experience - search that spans e-mail, calendar, address books and most probably IM conversations.

 

“I’m deferring the revenue model issues for a while,” Ascher said. The first priority will be to produce good software. “The model used for Firefox was not to generate something that would generate revenue, it was to create the best browser possible. I’m following that recipe again.”