We've been following the beta releases of Mozilla's e-mail application Thunderbird 3 pretty closely over the last few months. It's a terrific free, cross-platform, open source alternative to the native e-mail apps that come bundled with Windows and Mac OS X. Thunderbird 3 also integrates nicely with Gmail, making it a great option for people who want to stick with their Web-based email but want the additional features of a desktop email app.

Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 Beta 4 this week, and it sports more than 200 changes over the past beta release, including new search tools, tabbed email messages, and better IMAP folder synchronization. I've been playing around with the new beta version for a couple of days now and I like what I've seen so far.

When I heard that Funambol was rolling out an open source mobile cloud sync service for mobile VoIP users, I'll be honest -- I wasn't thinking about the open code, or about how much easier it would make contacting people worldwide over a diverse array of devices. I immediately thought of my dad.

He could very well be just like your dad, or mom, or you. He likes gadgets, and if the gadgets beep, flash, or vibrate at a random enough interval to make my mom grind her teeth or clutch her ears, he likes them even more. However, he's got two things working against him -- he's not blessed in the patience department (like my mom, it would seem) and he's got arthritic hands to the point of immobility. As such, his work-issued Blackberry wasn't nearly as useful as his old Palm Pilot when it came to being an electronic memory. It was merely a phone he couldn't dial all that easily.

He was delighted when I showed him Skype, and was flattered when all these young women he didn't know kept calling. The novelty gave way to annoyance when he realized he must know some people on Skype, but finding and connecting with them took patience.

New mVoIP users start with a blank address book, and many mVoIP services can't sync existing contact information from cell phones or other address books. Funambol's mVoIP enables service providers to allow syncing from address books and social networks -- so that an address change made anywhere (say, a contact's Facebook profile or the Funambol web portal) updates all associated devices.

Even though Web-based email in enterprise is touted as the next best thing since sliced bread, it's definitely not right for all companies. There's an inherent risk in moving all your email to the cloud -- data loss and security issues rank at the top of the list -- so many businesses tend to stick with expensive commercial email software management software like Microsoft Exchange.

Unfortunately, the interface of Web-based email tends to have a certain charm that's hard to overlook. Threaded conversations, advanced search options, and all sorts of other things make services like Gmail seem very attractive.

Linux-based email management hardware appliance and software vendor AtMail released a new version of its flagship product, AtMail 6.0, that aims to blend the best features of Web mail with the security of in-house email.