Linux distributions have relied on the venerable Sendmail package since the early days of Slackware. But Sendmail’s rich mail server features aren’t an ideal solution for the typical desktop user whose primary mail support is delivered through a remote ISP. That’s the perfect place for a simpler solution: sSMTP.

Many years ago, before the Internet standardized on Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), applications known as mail transfer agents (MTA) were designed to help process email and determine the best route for message delivery. One of the earliest MTAs, Sendmail, became extremely popular for dealing with the delivery of email across multiple networks. It was the only viable open source mechanism for delivering email at the time Linux was introduced to the world, so it became the default MTA provided on many Linux distributions.

There has always been a division of labor for email processing. MTAs handle delivery of email and mail user agents (MUA) such as GNOME’s Evolution, KDE’s KMail, and Mozilla Thunderbird let users create and manage messages. MUAs have only a very basic concept of how to deliver mail. They don’t need to know how to send a message to its intended recipient; they know only about delivering mail to a specific generally server-based MTA, which is then responsible for routing email to the ultimate recipient.

If you run cron jobs or some automated system that sends you alerts via email, the default method the system uses for sending the message is Sendmail, because it is the default MTA for the built-in Linux mail command (typically /bin/mail). This means you not only have to configure your mail reader to send email to your ISP, but you also need to configure Sendmail to do the same thing.

Unfortunately, Sendmail configuration is a mass of twisty passages that even the most experienced user avoids if at all possible. That means it is not the best tool for the typical desktop user.

Two popular Sendmail MTA alternatives, QMail and Postfix, started off simple, but have become complex systems on their own, with capabilities far beyond the needs of a typical desktop user who seeks to simply route email from his machine to his ISP. Alternatively, you could choose a tool other than /bin/mail to send email through direct use of SMTP, such as elm or pine, but these are full MUA clients that provide lots of options that are overkill for addressing the primary problem of mail delivery to an ISP.

The simplified solution: sSMTP

Instead of finding a complicated replacement for mail, you can replace the complicated Sendmail with a simple alternative: sSMTP. sSMTP simplifies configuring your SMTP options with a small configuration file that allows you to specify items like the name of the remote SMTP server, your authorization (username and password), and the domain for your outbound email in much the way you configure your mail reader.

You can install sSMTP through your distribution’s package manager, or build and install it from source. In the latter case, unpack the source, change into the source directory, and run the command ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ssmtp --enable-ssl --enable-md5auth. Enabling SSL and MD5Auth allows you to communicate with an ISP that requires SMTP login. You can also enable IPv6 support if you need it; see --help for details.

After the configuration is complete, build and install the package using the normal make and sudo make install commands. When you run the install command you will be prompted for a few items. Follow the displayed instructions. Once installation completes you should find a directory called /usr/local/ssmtp with the sSMTP binary under the sbin subdirectory, and the configuration file under the etc/ssmtp subdirectory.

Now you can stop Sendmail and replace it with sSMTP. To stop Sendmail under Linux distributions that use the System V init scripts (and most distributions these days do) you can try the service command:

sudo service sendmail stop

sudo chkconfig –levels 2345 sendmail off

The first command stops the currently running instance of Sendmail, and the second prevents it from starting again on reboots. If your version of Linux does not use the SysVInit package you may need to kill the sendmail process manually with a command like sudo killall sendmail.

To replace Sendmail you can simply copy it to another file, then create a symbolic link from sSMTP to sendmail:

sudo mv /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.orig

sudo ln -s /usr/local/ssmtp/sbin/ssmtp /usr/sbin/sendmail

The first command moves the original sendmail out of the way, while the second makes sSMTP the program that gets run when any system command calls sendmail. With this approach, if you run into problems using sSMTP, just remove the symbolic link and move the sendmail copy back to its original name.

Configuration

The configuration file for sSMTP, based on the --prefix option we used with the configure command while building from the source code, is /usr/local/ssmtp/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf. This file has only four common options, plus some hidden options for authentication.

After a sample build, sSMTP created the following configuration file for me (lines starting with a # symbol are comments):

# /etc/ssmtp.conf — a config file for sSMTP sendmail. #

# The person who gets all mail for userids < 1000

# Make this empty to disable rewriting.

root=postmaster

# The place where the mail goes. The actual machine name is required

# no MX records are consulted. Commonly mailhosts are named mail.domain.com

# The example will fit if you are in domain.com and you mailhub is so named.

mailhub=mail

# Where will the mail seem to come from?

rewriteDomain=graphics-muse.org

# The full hostname

hostname=kepler.graphics-muse.org

Change the root= value to an email address that will receive all system-generated email, such as output from cron jobs that encounter errors or log file analysis. I changed this line to my personal email address.

mailhub= defines the SMTP server to which email should be sent. Set this line to the host you specify in your mail reader for the SMTP server.

hostname= is the name of the mail host that you’d like recipients of your email to see it. Since I want responses to my email to be sent to back to my ISP domain so I can use my mail reader to retrieve it, I set this line to the ISP domain. This is the domain part of all outbound messages; all users on your system will appear to be coming from this domain.

You can use rewriteDomain= to spoof who you say you are. Since I’m already spoofing the server address with the hostname line, I leave this line commented out.

The initial configuration does not include information on how to log in to SMTP servers that require authentication. This information is the same information you must provide in your mail reader in order for it to send email through your ISP. To specify this information, you can add the following lines:

  AuthUser=your username
  AuthPass=your password
  AuthMethod=CRAM-MD5

With this configuration, every time my system sends mail using /bin/mail, sendmail gets called, which is actually sSMTP. sSMTP uses the authentication I provided in the configuration file to log in to my ISP’s SMTP server and deliver my outgoing email.

Example Setup for Gmail

Using SSMTP, it doesn’t matter where you are, mail can be sent out over encrypted SMTP to Google’s gmail servers. After handing it off, Google’s servers do all the routing for you.

Setting everything up is quick and easy. Open up /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf in your favorite editor, and add or update the following lines:

#The following line redirects mail to root to your gmail account

root=myemail@gmail.com

mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587

UseSTARTTLS=yes

UseTLS=yes

AuthUser=myemail@gmail.com

AuthPass=mypassword

That’s it! Now, let’s try testing it:

echo "This is a test message." | mailx -s ‘Test Message’ myemail@gmail.com

You should now be all setup and ready to go!

Caveats

Replacing Sendmail with sSMTP works well for desktop PCs that have only a single user configured. If you have multiple users, you may not want to use sSMTP, since by default all email sent via the mail command will look like it comes from a single user. An additional configuration file, revaliases, allows you to map a local user to a specific From: address on outbound mail and to route that mail through a specific mailhub. Still, there is no way to configure different logins on different mailhubs that use different different authentication credentials. With sSMTP, your outbound mail can only have one remote MTA to which it can connect.

Also, in order for any user on your system to use sSMTP, they will need to have read permissions on the ssmtp.conf file. Placing your ISP login information in a configuration file that is world-readable allows anyone who uses your system to see your email authentication information. This is another reason why use of sSMTP is appropriate only for home users who are the sole users of that system. You can fix this problem through normal user and group permissions and by running sSMTP as a setuid program, but not if you want to make things as simple as possible, as we set out to do.

While sSMTP is a replacement for Sendmail, it is not a complete replacement. One important distinction is that it is not intended to receive mail, as Sendmail does. You need to use a mail reader to retrieve and read email from your ISP.

sSMTP also does not manage mail queues, so it sends outbound email immediately. Although the man page for sSMTP shows support for all the same command-line options that Sendmail supports, sSMTP ignores most of those options.

Finally, the sSMTP implementation enforces a limit on the size of outbound message headers. Try not to write long subject lines or include long lists of recipients. If you need to send something to a large list of recipients, set up an alias instead of manually listing all the recipients on the command line.

sSMTP is exactly as advertised: simple. It requires only minimal effort to set up and little to no long-term maintenance. But it isn’t appropriate for all users. Its greatest value is to the non-technical home user with only one user configured on a machine. To those users, sSMTP can be an easy way to improve messaging management.

I like to develop and enable good websites.  I do it simply, cost effective, but with a sense of solid quality, using the tools and capabilities that are making the web so exciting, but sensibly so….

I urge you to think about what constitutes a good website and use those thoughts to help you in your purchasing decision or next steps.

What makes a good website?

It is easy to find:

• a good, obvious, memorable domain name, not confused with competitors or unrelated sites
• the content uses the terms and keywords that you would be expecting to search on, and the content is presented in a search engine friendly way so one can find it via searching appropriately. For example: location dependent services should ensure that the location is described in pages with the service descriptions for meaningful appearance in search engines.

It is there!

• it is up! – a reliable host is necessary, and one that assists in providing tools and statistics to understand your visitors behavior.

It is easy to read

• the website is viewable in the user’s browser. The website must be tested on a range of browser and ideally consider users who may be using aural browser.
• the style is easy on the eye and pleasant to read. It should not distract you from the content.
  the navigation is obvious, what the user expects and it is easy to find your way around.
• there is a site map and/or search facilities for large sites

One can find what one is looking for, it has meaningful, helpful content:

• provide as much information as possible to your users. This will also reduce time required to respond to phone calls and may also retain a potential client, as they may feel more comfortable about your product or service.
• the content should enhance the appearance of the organisation. It should appear professional and should present a human, approachable front.

It is easy to maintain and update

• It is a simple effective editing system.
• It is flexible – bulletproof . The style used should cope well with any content changes you may make and with specifications or limitations of the user’s browser (eg: large text, no images, dial up connection etc). Therefore unless absolutely necessary I avoid embellishments like flash, javascript – there is much that one can do with good HTML markup and CSS.

A good book to help with this approach is Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

If you want to know more, or you’d like to buy your own domain names, read further:

Subdomains

It is possible sometimes to piggyback off another domain name, where yours would be a subdomain from the main name. You would be using the main domain’s hosting services and would have limited functionality and control. For example for a personal blog, you could use the services of blogspot and end up with a domain name such as http://www.danalwebb.blogspot.com/ .

Choosing your own domain name

If you want to buy your own domain name, one of the first difficult steps is choosing the name.   So much so I have written a whole separate page on it.  See information on choosing your own domain here.

Choosing the suffixes

You also need to decide what suffixes (ie top level domains and /or country code domains you wish to use). Then before you spend too much time on any one name, always check if it is available – use the appropriate who is servers to check if your chosen name has been taken (see below).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) worldwide. Click on their name to access a list of frequently asked questions. They also have some interesting (to me anyway!) maps.

Register the name as soon as possible

http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html provides a list of accredited registrars who are officially allowed to register a top level domain name for you. If a company is not on the list, then they may be selling domain names purchased through an accredited registrar. ICANN recommends dealing directly. You can take a peek at which domain name servers are most active for US domain names at http://dailychanges.com/

To check a domain name registration internationally, you could use the not that pretty looking, but useful www.completewhois.com

A good registrar will usually provide tools to determine what domain names are available and possibly suggest others, as well as other information about who is entitled to regsiter a domain name.

Please note that domain name sales can be misleading… look at the renewal price to get a more realistic idea about the cost of owning a domain. Prices can vary greatly between suppliers, a low price may not always be the best if they are going to charge you to transfer, or higher prices for renewals etc.

US or global domains names

If purchasing a .com domain name, either do it with your hosting (or I’ll do it for you)

• icdsoft.com
• goddaddy.com

There are many websites with articles giving different aspects of advice about how to choose a domain name. This is a very important step and should be done early in your business development cycle. It will give you portability of your site should you need to change hosts; avoiding the loss of links and search engine placement.

So how to decide on a domain name ……

dot what?

• If you have an aspirations at all to operate across more than one country, then you must consider acquiring the “.com” of your domain. Be serious: avoid .bz, .ws – type names if possible – they sound tacky.
• If you are going to be a local business, then you should have either the country code domain (eg: .com.au) or local hosting. Either will be enough to ensure that you appear on local versions of search engines. Without it you will be struggling to maximise your appearance on search engines. However don’t include a location in the domain itself, it may limit you later. Alternatively, buy the variations as well as the location dependent name.

keyword or brand?

• Do you go for mobilephone.com or virgin.com? The short answer generally is if you have a limited budget to build a brand, go for the keyword. Some experts say avoid the keywords – the domain name often ends up too long. Think of google, flickr etc. Personally I like the brand idea – more discussion

make it memorable

• keep it short and don’t misspell if it is a real word – eg: if you want a yoga website, and all the yoga names are taken, don’t go for yoger!

Many minds make for a good domain name

• Use your friends – ask around, bounce ideas off them, listen to their ideas – many a good idea has been offered in jest.

don’t spend too much

• Don’t pay big bucks on a name. Rather spend the money building your brand.
• Don’t get carried away buying too many names – you have to pay for them every year and if you let them expire they could get snapped up opportunistically by others who hope to profit.

It is gone but I really want it

• www.deleteddomains.com could help if you insist on having a domain that was already registered.
• A second hand domain could have the benefit that it may already have good linkages and search engine placement. Use www.alltheweb.com to see who is linking to that site. A long time ago, my first domain name was for an area that several years later I no longer wanted to work in. There was valuable content on it and it was one of the first covering that sort of knowledge so it had a good search engine placement and history. Someone wanted to buy it. I was happy to not be responsible for it anymore as the content was becoming out dated. However it was bought purely for it’s existing status – it is now covered in advertising and still has no major content update, let alone a style update! And I feel like it was my reputation out there!

Plurals, Prefixes – my, the etc

• If you cannot get the name that you want and buy the plural or a prefixed name, then that must become your brand name – always advertise it as such. If you are “thedogparlour”, then your advertising must always say “thedogparlour”.

Check trademarks and similar names or usage

• You don’t want to find that a porno star has a similar name. Google the suggested names, similar versions, the related keywords and see what comes up.
• Check trademarks in at the very least, your country and the US.
• USA – http://www.uspto.gov/
• UK -http://www.ipo.gov.uk/

OVERVIEW

* Cannot "upgrade" from Windows XP– only from Vista. XP users will have to do a full-package clean install
* To upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 with XP-compatibility will cost users $299
* Significant incompatibility with Windows XP
* Only the pricier versions offer an XP-compatible mode
* Twelve confusing releases to choose from, with hidden "gotchas" in eight of them
* Doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, nor give users a reason for upgrading from Windows XP– especially at a $299 price tag

Questions of the day:
* Is Micro$oft trying to force loyal XP users to upgrade to a package they neither want nor need– and charging them through the gills to do so?
* What makes Micro$oft think that an operating system is worth the price of a new computer?

WINDOWS 7
The top topic in the computer world this week is Windows 7.

The following information is gained from tech reports and manuals. As far as I am aware, the following information is reliably accurate.

TYPICAL MICRO$OFT CONFUSION
As with past releases, instead of releasing one version that applies to everyone, Micro$oft has once again seen fit to put out SIX releases (12 if you count the OEM release. More about these later).

Of course, this causes considerable headache for the customer trying to figure out which version to buy– and for the salesman who have to repeat the same information over and over. Thus this article.

The six primary versions:

Home Premium: Upgrade and full
Professional: Upgrade and full
Ultimate: Upgrade and full

The OEM version is available only in FULL… but comes in separate 32 bit and 64 bit versions (the retail packages contain both).

So that’s right… twelve confusing versions. Enjoy!

TYPICAL MICRO$OFT PRICING
The price of Windows 7 ranges from $119.99 for the "Home Premium Upgrade" version to $319.99 for the Ultimate Full Version. This is about DOUBLE what Apple charges for a similarly-configured OS X Snow Leopard package. It’s pretty obvious that the company continues to fail to recognize the financial status of the typical Windows user… or the needs of the public in general.

BEWARE THE PR
Despite Micro$oft’s much promoted "can run XP programs!" propaganda… no, you really can’t. Well, you can, but…

Only the Professional and Ultimate versions have the ability to run XP. The Home versions do not.

In order to get the P/U versions to run XP items, you have to download an XP virtual system which ties in to the W7 version. The operating speed of this virtual system as well as disadvantages haven’t been reported yet (beta testers are largely sworn to silence)… but one can only imagine.

W7 is an entirely new concept, reportedly highly XP-incompatible. This is unfortunate, especially considering that for most people… XP works just fine (well, as fine as Windows has ever worked, anyway).

An OS that isn’t XP-friendly right out of the box might be considered by some as an excellent opportunity to consider migrating to Linux, especially with the recently-announced IBM-adoption of Ubuntu and the professional support this predicts. Others are migrating to Apple, which sales have reportedly increased dramatically.

BEWARE THE VERSIONS
Right out of the box, Windows 7 is an upgrader’s nightmare.

1. You cannot upgrade from Windows XP. Only Vista installations will upgrade.
2. The FULL version costs almost twice as much as the upgrade.
3. Installing a FULL version requires wiping your entire Windows system (as well as existing utilities and program settings) and installing W7 from scratch.

This is not exactly endearing to Micro$oft customers. A Micro$oft OS that can’t upgrade their most popular OS in history? Major blundering mistake. Predicted results:

1. People will just stick with XP
2. People will migrate to Linux– which is FREE (simple download)

In truth, the only real reason these days to not upgrade to Linux is gaming. When it comes to business, just about anything one could want is available in Linux– online– FOR FREE.

(Yes, I know I’m mentioning Linux quite a bit here. Interesting, isn’t it… that Micro$oft’s latest wonder toy is becoming Linux’ strongest argument.)

BEWARE THE OEM VERSIONS
Highly touted are the OEM versions, which can cost considerably less than the "retail" versions. While attractive up-front, what most people don’t know is:

1. The retail versions are licensed for up to 3 computers (which does reduce the cost-per-computer a bit and is a smart marketing move)
2. The OEM versions work on only one computer. Once that serial number is registered, it cannot be used on another computer.

And yes, this means that if you change your motherboard or purchase another computer that doesn’t include an OS, you are up a creek without a paddle. Your OEM W7 will not work. Yes, if you blow out or replace a motherboard, you can pick up the phone and contact Micro$oft and they will issue you a new key. But if you have a desktop and a laptop and you need to use Windows 7 on both… you can’t do so. You’ll need to purchase the retail version anyway.

So in short, the OEM version is a really, really bad deal. In the long run, you probably won’t save money going with the OEM version. And good luck EVER finding the retail version on sale… at all.

NOT ALL THAT IMPRESSIVE
To learn more about W7, I purchased a book that shows all the ins and outs of Windows 7 and has a nifty chapter on all the "new features". As I read through the list of supposed goodies– despite the fact that most would call me a serious "power user"– all I got was "don’t need that… don’t need that… for SURE don’t need that… no value… not enough… too little too late…" etc etc etc. In truth, there wasn’t a single new "feature" in Windows 7 that impressed me all that much. Most importantly, there wasn’t a single feature that will change the way I use my comptuer. My guess: most XP users will feel the same way. In the end, I think the major impression will be the same that has existed with Vista, namely: "Why should I spend $300 to upgrade when XP works just fine?"

The next question of course will be, "If my XP stuff is going to be incompatible YET AGAIN with Micro$oft’s own OS… why not switch to a new OS entirely and put an end to this run-around?"

BOTTOM LINE
The bottom line is that if you update to Windows 7 from Windows XP, you are going to wind up spending $300+ for the privilege. I don’t know what marketing genius ever came up with the idea that an OPERATING SYSTEM is worth $300… but that may be one of the reasons so much software piracy goes on these days, and why many people take the opportunity to just upgrade to a new computer that comes with the OS already installed (thus bypassing Micro$oft entirely).

Some day, in a Utopian world where people actually have common sense, Micro$oft is going to realize that an operating system is worth $49.95 for a 3-user version (uh… like Apple)… that they only need sell ONE version that meets all needs (uh… like Apple)… with their OS being backward-compatible for prior software (uh… like Apple). If they ever do so, they may be amazed to discover that their sales significantly increase (uh… like Apple. Hmmm, are we seeing a pattern? WAKE UP MICRO$OFT!!!).

Until that day, Micro$oft seems doomed to keep making the same ME / Vista blunder, trying to sell overpriced, badly-behaved, incompatible OS updates that few people actually want or need. As long as M$ continues to make these OS blunders, they will continue to get bad reviews, people will resist upgrading– and more and more people will convert to Linux or Apple just because they’re tired of the incompatibility and runaround of a product line that hasn’t really expanded our computing horizons in the last five years.

SUMMATION
Considering the historically bad M$ OS releases (ME and Vista) as well as serious backward-incompatibility, Windows 7 probably should not be considered a good investment at this time. In truth, it is probably time for businesses and even hobbyists to strongly consider whether they can switch to Linux for less cost and considerably less headache. Linux has remained stable, virtually virus-free and backward-compatible since its inception. Maybe Micro$oft needs to learn a thing or two from the Linux / Apple playbook. I doubt that will happen… so it will be interesting to see what the market does over the next five years, when people finally start realizing that they’re tired of being bent over the Windows barrel.

To Micro$oft: you’re stuck in a rut, you’re charging too much for your product, and we’re tired of having our software outdated with each release. The company needs to start thinking about actually improving the product (not just adding needless bells and whistles), working smarter, and striving toward a product that actually increases our computing ability while retaining compatibility with past products.

So with Neatx, users can log in to a remote Linux desktop. Moreover, the session can be suspended and resumed later from another computer, resembling the functionality that GNU screen offers for console sessions. But, unlike screen, a Neatx user has access to the GUI of the remote machine, just as if they were sitting in front of it.

The NX protocol, using SSH as a transport and for authentication, was developed by the Italian company NoMachine, which released the source code of the core NX technology in 2003 under the GPL. NoMachine offers free (as in beer) client and server software for various operating systems, including Linux. It wasn’t very long before free-as-in-speech NX clients emerged, then, in 2004, Fabian Franz implemented FreeNX, a GPL implementation of an NX server.

more…

Each time you right-click on one or several selected files in nautilus, nautilus-actions will look at its configuration to see if a program has been setup for this selection. If so, it will add an item in the menu that allow you to execute the program on the selected files.

The aim of Nautilus-actions is to be very flexible and to adapt to the most common situation.

Nautilus-actions doesn’t provide any config by default except an item to configure your actions. Thus, it offers the capability for other software that manage files to add their configs into the Nautilus-actions GConf entry. This automagically integrates smoothly to Nautilus without any additional code. It is also possible to import a foreign config, downloaded over the Net for example, into Nautilus-actions through NACT, its configuration tool.

INSTALLATION

If we have a Fedora Core machine the installation is easy as usual:

yum install nautilus-actions

and then:

yum install nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-image-converter nautilus-sendto

others *.schemas files are available on the official site of the project.

USAGE

Now we can list some of the most common (and so useful) actions available:

Open in gEdit as root: let’s you open and modify a file in Gedit. This function comes really handy when we have to deal with config’s file around the filesystem. For a correct working we have to make a little change in the visudo file, like:: “username ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/gedit” and modify the action so that it will be lauched using sudo.

Set picture as wallpaper: to change the desktop appearance on the fly.

Nautilus open terminal : opens a terminal session (as the current user) in the working directory (like Konqueror does, i can add).

Convert Audio: Converts audio files from one format to another. This actions needs to have a previously installed version of audio-convert to work at its best.

Nautilus image resizer: lets you resize and image on the fly. It does also give a new name to the file it generates.

Compress selected files using gzip: compress a file and deletes the original one.

Tag media files with Easytag: enable us to modify the tags of a music file using easytag (that we must have installed on our box, yum install easytag).

Mount ISO et Umount ISO: mount and unmounts ISO files. Pleas notice that we have to put the “miso” file into ~/bin directory and give a chmod 755 ~/bin/miso to enable it.

Run ISO image in QEMU: lauches ISO files as cd using Qemu (which, as before, needs to be already installed on your box, as usual a simple yum install qemu is sufficent).

Install rpms: installs an RPM package.

Install Deb Files: installs a DEB package, for Debian and Ubuntu users.

RESOURCES

website : http://www.grumz.net/
Nautilus Actions : External Resources

Linux comes with various GUI based email client to stay in touch with your friends and family, and share information in newsgroups with other users. The following software is similar to Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail and is used by both home and office user.

Webmail interfaces allow users to access their mail with any standard web browser, from any computer, rather than relying on an e-mail client.

However, e-mail client remains extremely popular in a large corporate environment, small business, home and power users. An e-mail client (also mail user agent (MUA)) is a frontend computer program used to manage e-mail. Mail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox.

The following are top five amazing piece of cross-platform software from various projects to make your life easy with wide variety of plug-ins / add-ons.

#1: Mozilla Thunderbird

It is an e-mail and news cross-platform client software package by Mozilla Foundation. Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail, newsgroup and RSS accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders , advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. Just like Firefox, the tons of extensions and themes for this client makes it very secure and flexible to to enhance your productivity.

Fig.01: Mozilla Thunderbird

=> Download Mozilla Thunderbird

#2: Claws Mail

Claws Mail is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Like Firefox , the wide variety of plug-ins for this email client makes it very flexible and secure. Claws Mail runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, and Solaris.

Fig.02: Claws Mail in Action

=> Download Claws Mail

#3: Spicebird

Spicebird is a collaboration client that provides integrated access to email, contacts, calendaring and instant messaging in a single application. It provides easy access to various web services while retaining all the advantages of a desktop application. It is developed by an Indian company called Synovel. It is a free, open source and cross-platform software.

Fig.03: Spicebird in Action (image credit Spicebird project)

=> Download Spicebird

#4: Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

Zimbra is a client and server platform for messaging and collaboration. The web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring in a rich browser-based interface. This is more like MS-Exchange and Outlook combo. In other words it is compatible with proprietary clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, both through proprietary connectors, as well as the open-source Novell Evolution, so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. Zimbra also provides native two-way sync to many mobile devices such as Nokia Eseries, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone with 2.0 software.

Fig.04: Zimbra (credit offical Zimbra website)

=> Download Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

#5: Sylpheed

Sylpheed is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Sylpheed runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, and BSD.

Fig.05: Sylpheed in Action

=> Download sylpheed

Other Email Clients For UNIX Like Operating Systems

1. SeaMonkey – Mozilla SeaMonkey is an all-in-one Internet application suite that includes an Internet browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat, and web development tools. It includes a pop-up blocker, junk mail controls, and a tabbed interface.
2. Pine (Alpine) – Alpine is a rewrite of the Pine Message System that adds support for Unicode and other features. Alpine is meant to be suitable for both inexperienced email users and the most demanding of power users.
3. Evolution or Novell Evolution – Evolution provides integrated mail, addressbook and calendaring functionality to users of the GNOME desktop.

Recommendations:

1. Claws Mail – Highly recommended for netbook user due to lightweight usage.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird – The wide variety of add-on for this email client makes it very flexible, secure and easy to use. Highly recommended for desktop and power users.
3. Zimbra Collaboration Suite ~ Open Source Edition or Businesses Editon – Highly recommended for business and corporate users due to its support for a broad range of email clients and mobile devices via "over the air" sync.

(From Mashable)

Twitter has become an integral part of our social media lives, marketing strategies, and business objectives. We have multiple accounts, hundreds of followers to watch, Twitter trends to track, hashtags to follow, and a frequent need for continuously updating search results.

As such, getting by on the limited feature set available via Twitter.com is difficult at best. Enter the desktop application, a third-party piece of software that you can install on your computer to interface with Twitter and get more out of your microblogging activities.

Now that Twitter is older than a toddler, you have a variety to choose from. From apps for groups, Mac and PC specific clients, and apps that let you do a whole lot more than tweet, you can use this guide to help you find the desktop client that’s right for you.

*Note: all ratings are based on 5 stars

Power Users Only

Destroy Twitter: Certainly not your most sophisticated Twitter client, but definitely above average and packing a few hidden nuggets. Destroy Twitter is a single account, single column app (but does allow for multiple columns in the expanded view), that’s clearly not for power users who have multiple presences to manage. It does, however, have a simple yet powerful groups feature that supports groups of users or groups of multiple keywords. The only problem is that accessing those groups can be a challenge.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: user-created themes that you can download to skin the app
Common concern: better features are hidden

TweetDeck: Our current head-to-head winner in the desktop space, TweetDeck’s most recent updates improve upon the column experience to include a report spam button, recommended people to follow, better video playback, auto-suggest for usernames, yFrog integration, and unlimited columns. Oh and it also happens to have a complementary iPhone app that syncs with your desktop columns. Nice.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: sync with the iPhone app
Common concern: groups need a little fine tuning

*Disclosure: TweetDeck partnered with Mashable to create MashDeck, a branded version of the software.

Seesmic Desktop: This really is the everything Twitter app. It features support for unlimited Twitter accounts and columns, a smattering of URL and photo options, hands down the best Facebook integration we’ve seen, and unlimited saved searches. We’re really in love with Seesmic Desktop, and it seems to be evolving at record pace.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: fantastic Facebook integration for comments and likes
Common concern: system resource hog

PeopleBrowsr: The desktop version is just as complicated and feature-rich as the web app (you’ll need to log in to the website to find the download link in lower right-hand corner). With PeopleBrowsr you get a full-featured Twitter app that is bloated with features like export, sort by Twitter name or number of followers, map or gallery views, stats on stacks (which are like columns), an aggregate view of tweets across stacks, simultaneous posting to other services, quick access to a number of different filters, and so much more. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the integrations with every popular social site on the planet. Even though the light mode is a little easier, this app is better left to extreme power users. Plus all those features seem to really slow it down.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: export
Common concern: information overload

Mac Apps

Mac Lounge: This app is incredibly appealing for its dead simple, single column interface and respectable feature set. We, of course, love the multiple account support, but also appreciate saved searches, quick access to view followers and following, and tweet options to link to tweet, copy tweet, or copy tweet URL. There’s also an accompanying iPhone app [iTunes link], which syncs with the desktop version and greatly improves the app’s relevance.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop categories to reorder (on left-hand panel)
Common concern: lack of support for groups or image posting

Nambu: This really sophisticated Mac app should be more than enough for any and all of your Twitter needs. You’ve got access to your followers and friends, custom groups, search (integrated with FriendFeed and One Riot), trends, tr.im and pic.im integration, multiple accounts, Ping.fm integration, filters, and three view options for a one or many column view of tweets.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: Twitter search with FriendFeed, OneRiot, and Yahoo results
Common concern: needs more variety for photo and URL shortening

Tweetie for Mac: Beautiful, sleek, and simple, Tweetie for Mac is everything you’d expect from the developers of the top mobile application for Twitter. You can get a beautiful view of conversations, toggle through and manage multiple accounts, save searches, and even post videos to yFrog. It’s the cleanest single column app with multiple account management that we’ve ever seen.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: killer conversation threads
Common concern: groups are strangely absent

TwitterPod: This app isn’t known for its sophistication or advanced Twitter functionality. TwitterPod is a basic single column Twitter app with an inline browser and the ability to filter for just tweets with links. Its heyday has long since passed, but original fan boys and girls may still be using this for their twittering.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: inline browser
Common concern: not reliable

EventBox: This just-for-Mac app is a favorite of many because it supports Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr integration, and also supports feed reading with Google Reader, and internet trend watching with Reddit and Digg. Keyboard shortcuts, hotkeys, instapaper integration, and photo uploads to Flickr and Facebook make EventBox pretty nifty. It’s also got a very slick interface with a navigation menu on the left-hand side.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: feed reading alongside tweet watching
Common concern: single Twitter account support only

Windows Apps

Digsby: The beloved IM, email notification, and social networking application also does Twitter, but it’s only available for PCs at the moment. On the social networking side, Digsby pulls in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn so you can get a more complete view of what’s happening across your entire social presence.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: IM and email integration
Common concern: not robust enough for power users

DigiTweet: This open source desktop Twitter client for Windows is built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and allows for a lot of customization in the layout and view of your Twitter stream with an interactive dockable pane. DigiTweet has also evolved to include multiple search tabs, color coding users you follow by categories (kind of love this), alerts for specific users, follow/unfollow, and link preview.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: toast alerts for specific tweeters
Common concern: tricky user interface

A Few More Options

Twhirl: This oldie but goodie, though no longer actively being updated (Seesmic Desktop took its place), is still working just fine and many a Twitter early adopter are happy to have a single column Twitter experience, with additional windows available for additional Twitter accounts, plus FriendFeed, Seesmic, and Identica integration for viewing and posting content to those sites. Since you can still save Twitter searches, TwhirlTwhirl is actually a really great desktop client if you’re not beholden to groups.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: FriendFeed support for viewing threads and adding comments
Common concern: window overload

Skimmer: It’s hard not to love this app. Not only is it beautiful to look at it, but it also tracks your favorite social sites. Skimmer’s certainly not an application for the social media beginner, but power users of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, blogger, and Twitter, will appreciate the aggregation of content, filtering options, view types, and enhanced content viewing experience.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: gorgeous Flickr and YouTube video viewing
Common concern: sacrificing a few advanced twitter app features for beauty

Sideline: Sideline is just a search and trending topic app from Yahoo, but it does a darn good job at satisfying those specific needs. You can view current Twitter trends, select to see the three latest tweets or pop out as its own saved search, and create custom search groups as tabs.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: search groups that support multiple keywords
Common concern: can’t tweet from the app

Less to Tweet Home About

Tweetr: A lesser known simple app, Tweetr is beautiful adobe AIR based app that doesn’t support multiple accounts, and isn’t right for power users, but might be just perfect for lightweight Twitterers. You’re not going to get columns, groups, search, or filters, but you can share files and take photos with your web cam.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: file sharing and webcam photos
Common concern: URL shortening limited to hurl.ws

Twibble Desktop: Twibble is a bit of a riddle. It’s not a bad app when it comes to feature set, but it’s also not the most intuitive. You can manage multiple accounts, but all tweets are merged together in one stream. You can reply, DM, fav, RT, and copy tweets, but you’ll have to hover over the tweet to even know those behaviors are possible. You can also use keyboard shortcuts, filter your tweets for keywords, or conduct searches that open up in new windows, but Twibble just doesn’t seem to flow as easily as we’d like it to.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop photo upload
Common concern: very tricky user interface

Twitterrific: Once the preferred app of the Mac Twitterati, Twitterrific has seen brighter days on your desktop (meanwhile the iPhone app is certainly an impressive option). As it stands, Twitterrific is hardly an improvement on the Twitter.com web experience.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: super lightweight
Common concern: hard to filter tweets for mentions and direct messages

Spaz: With a name like Spaz, you’d expect this AIR based client to be perfect for the Twitter spaz. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. So even though it’s not a terrible app for lightweight Twitterers, power users won’t get by on the limited feature set.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: in-line short URL decoding
Common concern: no photo uploading options

Snitter: Another one of those apps that was all the rage back in the day, but is now in dire need of an update. This one is definitely a pass for the time being.

Mashable rating: 1.5 stars
Hit feature: filter by time period
Common concern: too many to count