Zenbe.com will be down for maintenance from 12:01 am to 4:00 am EDT Sunday, October 26. IMAP service will also be unavailable during this time. Zenbe Lists will be unaffected.

During the downtime, we’ll make some changes behind the scenes to ensure email and files are backed up quickly and efficiently.

These days, business is often conducted on the go.  With the constant traveling that business entails, people don’t always have the option to work from their office computer.  Zenbe gives you the freedom to have your email at your fingertips anytime you need it, wherever the road may take you.

Add your professional email address to Zenbe and you have access to your email, as well as any attachments, from any web brower!  Of course, you get all of Zenbe’s functionality: calendars, task lists, file sharing, but the feature that really helps me on the go is being able to view MS Office attachments from any web browser, from any computer, without MS Office.

Like most people who run a business through email, I get a LOT of attachments.  Viewing them directly from Zenbe is faster than launching a desktop app, and, when i am away from my own computer, much safer.

When you log on to Zenbe from your mobile device or even a borrowed computer, you can manage your professional email account messages at your own convenience, without a glitch. It’s all right there, safe and secure, hosted on the Web.

To add an account, simply enter your email address and Zenbe does the rest. Now you’re free to work anywhere! No need to be chained to the office.  Or the office computer.

There are a lot of email providers on the web–so why should you use Zenbe? While there are many reasons (like great features), here are a few of the most important ones:

• Zenbe Innovates In relation to other technologies on the web, email is old. And, unfortunately for users, email providers are generally satisfied with the status quo. Zenbe, though, was born to innovate. The folks behind Zenbe started it because they were dissatisfied with the lack of change, and now we are dedicated to taking email into the future with new features and fresh ideas. If change excites you, you should use Zenbe.
• Zenbe Is In Beta Many internet companies have made the word beta a worn-out cliche. Some have used it for years on the same product, and with their lack of innovation, made it seem stale and boring. Others have made it synonymous with buggy or broken. But beta should be a good word–a word that means improvement. That’s what it means for Zenbe. The fact that Zenbe is in beta means that it’s only going to get better. Perhaps the most exciting part, though, is you get to be a part of Zenbe’s future through your suggestions and bright ideas.
• Zenbe Evolves Quickly Most email providers are satisfied to go months or years without significant changes to their product. When updates do come, they are usually minor. Not Zenbe. New features and bug fixes are added often, and the development team works long hours to ensure that you have the best email client now–not in a few years.
• Zenbe Cares About You Let’s face it, every company needs a way to make money. But many email companies make income their first priority, and the users suffer as a result. Ugly flash ads and often irrelevant text ads distract from what you want to do most: use your email. As long as the product makes money, most companies have little desire to improve it. Zenbe, though, puts users first, and our first priority is to craft the best email client on the web.
• We’re Listening I can’t think of any email company that listens to its users like Zenbe does. Unless you are willing to pay premium prices, it is near impossible to get help or offer a suggestion at any of Zenbe’s competitors. Trust me, I’ve tried. While we aren’t perfect, and we can’t answer every question or implement every idea you have, we really do care about your problems and opinions. Keep the feedback coming!

These are just a few things that make Zenbe unique. If you are debating about whether or not to switch, give us a try. I think you’ll see that Zenbe is different.

The first real challenger to the iPhone is coming in about a week.  There are a bunch of reviews out already.  Apple’s App Store and SDK has already done so much to open up mobile application development compared to the old on-deck model.  But I hope the openness of the Android SDK platform will spur Apple to give us even more access to native iPhone functionality.  Because while it is understandable Apple wants to protect users from 3rd party apps that might abuse those features, it is also limiting the development of innovative apps that have a legitimate reason to access those features.  Plus Apple already has a built in safety net from their App store approval process, which Android store doesn’t seem to have.

• Camera – it is so awkward to force 3rd party apps to switch out to the camera app, take a picture, then switch back and pick a photo from the photo roll in order to get a picture.
• Calendar – We would love to have access to the calendar event creation so when our iPhone list application creates a task with a due date we can add it to iPhone’s native calendar.  Without this access a due date in our lists app is pretty meaningless, because we can’t even generate a notification or alarm because we can’t run in the background.
• Real background app – See above.  Without true background processes, it is not possible to write a simple alarm clock.  Apple’s proposed push architecture is good enough for some apps but it won’t work if the phone is out of coverage.  So it is not possible to write a reliable real time alert, such as the due date example.  I know the stability of the iPhone is important, maybe we can get access to the alarm clock so we can set app specific alerts and notifications.
• SMS – SMS is the most direct way for users to send information to another phon e in real time.  It would open up a host of possibilities if social apps can use SMS to message another phone.
• Music library, phone, etc.

Apple’s own applications can do things that can’t be done by 3rd party.  I hope they will gradually remove those artificial limitations to level the playing field.

FYI -

This morning we experienced delays delivering email to your zenbe.com address. We had a problem with one of our incoming mail servers and some mail to your zenbe.com address may have been queued while the server was unavailable. No email was lost, but you may see email that arrived an hour or two later than it was sent.

Additionally, our POP server was down for a little while.

These problems have been corrected. Please double-check your Inbox as some new messages that were delayed may show up a little bit further down in the message listing.

Online communications have become a way of life for conducting business, and for personal interaction. But that doesn’t mean your computer should take over your life! The constant flow from email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook can be overwhelming. It’s not hard to imagine having to spend hours a day sorting through and organizing all your messages, consuming your time at work and home.

With Zenbe, you can do everything you need to in 10 minutes a day.  Zenbe is easy to use and streamlined, letting you  catch up on multiple accounts in just a glance. Doubtful? On October 7th, SocialPo.st compared Zenbe to Outlook, the heavyweight email service. (You can read the full story here.) In the end, Zenbe walked away victorious, out-scoring Outlook in organizing email and other ways.

Still need convincing? Set up a free Zenbe email account today. Or do a Google blog search and you’ll see what everyone else is saying about us.

Last month, David Pogue at the New York Times proposed that, in the consumer technology world, there are two kinds of people: feature-listers and elegance-appreciators.  Feature-listers only care about how much a product can do, even if it doesn’t do any of those things particularly well.  Elegance-appreciators, on the other hand, look for products that have limited functionality, but they do them exceptionally.

We think there is a third group right in the middle – the elegance-listers.  The elegance-listers want something that does it all, but does it all well.  This is the kind of person we had in mind when developing Zenbe.

In terms of functionality, Zenbe brings multiple communication channels into one user interface.  Users can access all of their various email accounts, Twitter, Facebook, Google Chat in one Web browser, and, in addition, they can share and collaborate on projects with ZenPages.

When it comes to elegance, Zenbe is clean, simple to use and free of ads.  Each of the features listed above is innovative, intuitive, and together they provide one of the best email experiences on the Internet today.

So whether you are a feature-lister,  an elegance-appreciator or right in the middle, Zenbe is right for you!

This morning we added the ability for you to view documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF files and more directly in your web browser without having to download them to you computer and open them with a desktop application.

Anywhere you see a document in Zenbe, whether it’s attached to an email or uploaded to your Files tab, you can hover over it and see something like this:

Simply click the ‘view’ link in Zenbe and we’ll handle creating an online version of the document you can view without any external programs.

This feature was made possible via integration with a very cool company called Scribd. The first time you view a document in your browser we send it over to Scribd and they convert it to their iPaper format that opens directly in your web browser. The conversion may take a few moments, but when it’s done you’ll see a very nice looking online version of your document in a window like this:

You can print the document or download a PDF version of it right from within your browser. We’ll even show you a thumbnail of the document the next time you hover your mouse over it, or if you view it in the Files tab with thumbnail mode turned on.

When you subsequently open the document you don’t have to wait at all for the conversion – we’ll load it right away.

This is perfect for all those times you’re at a computer but may not have the right version of Microsoft Word or Excel installed, or maybe you don’t have it installed at all.

Your converted documents are safe and secure – and only accessible by you via Zenbe.com. They are not published on the Scribd web site.

Currently the following types of documents can be viewed online:

• Adobe PDF (.pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
• OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• All OpenDocument formats
• Plain text (.txt)
• Rich text format (.rtf)

Note that password protected documents, or some PDFs with restrictive permissions may not be able to be converted.

We’ve created a forum topic about viewing attachments and documents in Scribd. Feel free to let us know about any questions or issues you have in that forum.

More about Scribd:

Sam Guzmán blogged about Zenbe versus Microsoft Outlook over on his SocialPo.st blog. Outlook users might be interested to to check it out and learn more about Zenbe’s approach to productivity management.

Thanks Sam!

With this past release we’ve made significant progress in allowing users to access Zenbe over https.

If you navigate to https://www.zenbe.com and login, you’ll continue to maintain your SSL-encrypted https session when you are viewing your Zenbe email. Viewing your calendar and files is also fully encrypted.

We are having an issue with GChat over https, so if you access the GChat Quickview tab you may get a browser warning or broken lock icon in your browser.

Additionally, if you are using IE7, you will get a security warning when you click on emails with images in in them, for example a newsletter from Amazon.com. The warning will look like this:

The cause of this is that when someone sends you an HTML email with images in it, they rarely include secure links to those images. IE7 complains about this, whereas other browser don’t.  The problem occurs in other free webmail providers like Zenbe, such as Gmail. Note that you will not get the warning when using the Firefox or Safari web browser.

Please note that https support is still a work in progress. There may be issues with https when accessing Zenbe via a corporate proxy or firewall, or through a complex network configuration. Please help u troubleshoot any issues by reporting https problems on this forum topic.