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Zimbra’s synchronization engine runs separately from the client and can be applied to more than e-mail. Part of Zimbra’s emerging suite of business apps includes a budding document editor that lets you create “notebooks” that act as directories with different “pages” (documents) inside them. All the pages are word processing files now, although you can insert an extremely rudimentary spreadsheet into a page if you like. Zimbra has no current plans to build out its spreadsheet. No doubt the company waiting to see which way the Microsoft deal falls before trying to build an Excel competitor.

Zimbra is currently pushing hard to win education (university) clients as well as ISPs; it has Comcast as customer, for example, although the suite hasn’t yet been rolled out. The Yahoo subsidiary’s focus on building out its e-mail app and winning big customers that account for thousands of users each is smart, but going on underneath that is a ramp-up of adding other productivity tools that’s even more clever. The offline client is a key part of that strategy. With it, no matter what Zimbra builds, it can offer its users an experience that goes beyond just the Web.

The Zimbra e-mail client is extensible through “Zimlets,” which is Zimbra’s word for code that tells the Zimbra app what to do with certain types of links. It’s pre-coded to recognize URLs and pop up a preview when you hover over a link; and it offers intelligent options to pull up relevant data when it sees addresses, airline flight information, and stock market tickers. Zimbra administrators can add their own Zimlets as well, such as hooks to CRM apps like Salesforce.com, bug tracking (Bugzilla), a local wiki, and so on.

Is this the Web app or the desktop client? It's hard to tell the difference.

Last September, Yahoo acquired Zimbra, an enterprise Web email company. Zimbra is an impressive product. It does e-mail in a browser better than you’ve ever seen it. The company also makes a business-class e-mail server, and many of its services interconnect to Microsoft’s e-mail products–the Exchange server and the Outlook client. Nonetheless, it is hard, at first glance, to see how Zimbra fits into Yahoo’s business. Yahoo previously acquired OddPost, another dazzling e-mail technology company, and it was still in the process of rolling out OddPost-powered improvements to its millions of Yahoo Mail users when it acquired Zimbra.

But when I sat down with Zimbra CEO Satish Dharmaraj to get a demo of the new offline e-mail client (very impressive), the importance of Zimbra to Yahoo became clear. Zimbra is not just an e-mail play. It’s a nascent productivity suite. While aside from its well-developed e-mail offering it’s still a very young product, it looks like it could eventually become a competitor to Google Docs and Google Apps (Google’s consumer and business productivity suites, respectively) and potentially a competitor to
Microsoft Office. On the other hand, if Microsoft acquires Zimbra, then this initiative will be in serious jeopardy, since it’s doubtful Microsoft would scrap its own developing online suite products in favor of Zimbra’s.

For another look at a clever product that agnostic of the user’s platform, see Evernote: “A tool for lazy slobs.”

Zimbra pages can be shared, wiki-like, but can’t be edited in parallel as Google Docs can. That feature will be added in Q3, Dharmaraj told me.

At any rate, here’s what Zimbra has that makes it an emerging threat to other business productivity suites: first, it has a complete e-mail product set, including a mailbox service and a very strong client–online, offline, and mobile. The relatively new offline client is especially interesting: It uses the
Firefox core (called Prism), but you’d never know you were in a browser-based app. Even links in e-mails to Web sites don’t by default go to your Firefox browser; instead, they go the system default. If your PC is set to open up URLs with Internet Explorer, that’s what the Zimbra client will do.

Zimbra now has a document editor and a repository for shared files, too.

The trend is clear–the best bait for well-fed Googlers, especially ones who joined after the company’s 2004 IPO, is another hot pre-IPO company. And Facebook is that company.

The defection comes shortly after Google sales chief Sheryl Sandberg left to go to Facebook. Others who have blazed the trail include Benjamin Ling of Google Checkout, Justin Rosenstein of GDrive, and Gideon Yu, formerly chief financial officer at YouTube who left shortly after Google acquired it in 2006.

The latest Googler to jump to Facebook is Ethan Beard. Formerly director of social media at the search giant, he will become director of business development at the popular social-networking company. The news was first reported by TechCrunch.

It now has a wind and solar business and is partnering with universities to develop “next-generation biofuels” that do not use food crops and are better fuels than ethanol, Hayward said.

BP’s primary business is oil and gas exploration but the company has been on the forefront of developing an alternative-energy business, even changing its name from British Petroleum to BP and adopting the tagline “Beyond Petroleum.” It has spent $30 billion on exploration since 2001 and intends to invest another $30 billion in the next six years.

He said carbon regulations should put a price on pollution. Hayward favors a cap and trade system, where polluters can trade carbon emission allowances, over a carbon tax because it is market-based and provides more “environmental certainty.”

Altogether BP spends $1 billion a year in alternative energy; the company is rumored to be looking at a sale of that business. Hayward spoke last week at an investor conference, where company watchers interpreted his comments as a signal that it may choose to focus on its core oil and gas business.

WASHINGTON–Amid rumors that BP will sell its alternative-energy business, company Chief Executive Tony Hayward on Tuesday said that the current scale of the clean-tech industry will not be enough to address the world’s energy challenges.

(Credit:
BP)

Correction 10:20 a.m. PST: This blog misstated the day that BP CEO Tony Hayward spoke at the conference. It is Tuesday.

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward

“Nobody can doubt the financial markets are now global but they grew up in individual countries,” he said, noting that California has already begun the process of integrating with Europe’s carbon market.

“Even though clean tech is growing fast, we all need to be honest,” he said during a ministerial plenary session. “The scale that the industry is working at today is not going to have much impact.”

Specifically, he said that nations need adopt a market-based mechanism, called a “cap and trade” system, to limit greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. He also said that government “transitional” incentives are required to speed up development of clean technologies.

A global system, where carbon allowances are traded around the world, would be optimal. But individual countries or regions should implement their own systems and then seek to coordinate with other carbon-trading markets, a process that would mimic how financial markets evolved.

He also said that BP is very optimistic it can make carbon capture and storage commercially viable because of its experience in oil and gas exploration. Carbon dioxide is injected underground to help oil and gas extraction.

Hayward spoke at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) 2008 where he called for more aggressive government policies to address both climate change and energy security, which he said were interlinked.

Chess champ Bobby Fischer concentrates during a match in 1973.

According to The New York Times, Fischer died in a Reykjavik, Iceland, hospital Thursday. It is not known how he died, though he had been sick for some time.

In recent years, however, Fischer had been perhaps more famous for his run-ins with U.S. federal authorities, and he had been living outside the United States to avoid arrest on charges stemming from his having played a re-match with Spassky in 1992 in Yugoslavia, despite a federal ban on doing business in that country, which was then deep in the middle of war.

The greatest American chess player, Bobby Fischer, is dead.

But in the U.S., a country much more consumed with admiration for basketball, football, baseball, and, to a lesser extent, sports like hockey, tennis and track, chess barely appears on the national radar. That’s why Fischer’s fame–stemming from his victory over Spassky in 1972 at the height of the Cold War, a precursor to American excitement at the 1980 Olympic hockey victory over the Soviet Union–was so unusual.

It is hard to imagine a chess player today getting the kind of attention Fischer got in the 1970s. Yet because he was such a singular personality, he stayed in the national consciousness long after his days as world champion were over.

In other countries, such as Russia, where chess is revered as a game of intellectual giants, it is not unusual that the leading players are viewed with reverence and admiration. For example, Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov is such a hero in his country that he ran for president in 2007 against the incumbent, Vladimir Putin. Though Kasparov never had a chance at winning, his candidacy was viewed with respect by many in his country and abroad because of his fame and his insistence on human rights and democracy.

Fischer was long one of the great enigmas of American sports, if you can call chess a sport. Perhaps of gaming.

But there’s no doubting that the man took a game that was largely ignored, or instead, seen as the province of geeks and nerds, and made it something that Americans were proud of, even if only for a little while.

For me, Fischer was never someone I followed that closely, but I was always aware of him. Without knowing much about him, he struck me as someone who was unhappy and uncomfortable with his fame. And who felt alien in the country that had once revered him.

(Credit:
OFF/AFP/Getty Images)

He was a grandmaster who won the world championship by beating Russian Boris Spassky in 1972, rising to pinnacles of national fame and admiration that are usually reserved for pro or college sports athletes.

Fischer was such a powerful and enigmatic figure in chess that Steven Zaillian’s terrific 1993 film about chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin–based on his father’s book–was called Searching for Bobby Fischer.

P.S.: Eat it, Pats!

Doritos parent company Frito-Lay has been a proponent of the user-generated TV ad for some time now. Last year, it kicked off its “Crash the Super Bowl” advertising campaign, in which ordinary people (OK, ordinary people with nice cameras and video-editing skills) created ads for the cheesy chips and submitted them to the company, where they were promptly posted on YouTube.

For Super Bowl XLII, in which many of the game’s high-profile ads turned out to be disappointing or downright stupid (at least in my opinion–but the Budweiser ads were pretty good this year), the second annual “Crash the Super Bowl” ad from Doritos took the cake, er, tortilla chip. “Mouse Trap” was actually one of 2007’s finalists, but many viewers, myself included, hadn’t seen it yet.

Doritos also jumped into unconventional advertising when it became the “sponsor” of Stephen Colbert’s tragically short-lived presidential campaign; the comedian-turned-politician proceeded to constantly and conspicuously munch on Doritos throughout the course of his Comedy Central show.

Real or not, imagine if this type of remixing becomes a mainstream activity, with everybody posting their personal dubs to their blogs or social-networking home pages. Perhaps some enterprising artists will begin to sell track-separated versions of their work, a sort of raw material alongside their finished product.

(Credit: Overdub Tampering Committee)

Their tactics remind me of guerilla art from the likes of RTmark and Banksy, with one exception: they offer no proof of what they’ve done, leading some to suspect an elaborate hoax.

Last week, a group calling itself the Overdub Tampering Committee posted an online manifesto in which its anonymous members claim to have downloaded songs from various sources (Limewire, OiNK, The Pirate Bay, and so on), overdubbed extra parts, then re-uploaded them. The group claims that if you’re a frequent downloader of grey-market music from these types of sites, you’ve probably got one of their messed-up mashups on your hard drive.

HP MediaSmart Connect product page

The MediaSmart Connect should be able to pull digital files from any UPnP and DLNA compliant storage devices on your home network–beyond standard Windows PCs, that includes network attached storage devices such as HP’s own MediaSmart Server and Media Vault. It can also double as a Windows Media Center Extender when interfacing with Media Center-enabled versions of
Windows Vista–allowing the streaming of live or recorded TV at HD resolutions. The MediaSmart Connect doesn’t have any on-board storage, but users can use the box to pull compatible media straight from an HP Pocket Media Drive (found on the company’s PC desktops) or a standard USB flash drive.

Behind the MediaSmart Connect's fold-down front panel is a USB port and a slot for an optional removable hard drive.

We’ll be doing a detailed hands-on review of the MediaSmart Connect once we get a final production sample in July. (Also on deck: the similar Linksys DMA2200.) Until then, the floor is open: do you have any interest in the MediaSmart Connect, or in Windows Media Center Extenders in general? Is the whole idea of streaming media in the home just a niche market that will never go mainstream? Or would you prefer to go with an
Xbox 360, which handles nearly all of the same media streaming functions, and adds game playback to boot?

Hewlett-Packard’s line of MediaSmart TVs includes the built-in ability to stream digital media from your home network and the Internet straight to their screens. But for the vast majority of us who don’t own an HP TV, the company will soon have a second option: the MediaSmart Connect. The little black box connects to your home network (via its built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet) and streams a wide variety of digital audio, photo, and video files–including content from compatible Internet services (including Live365, Vongo, CinemaNow, and MovieLink).

The MediaSmart Connect will be available later this summer for $349, and is now available for preorder. (If it looks familiar, it’s because HP has been teasing us with it since January’s Consumer Electronics Show.) It’ll include a learning remote that can control up to four other devices, an HDMI cable, and a $20 CinemaNow coupon. To drum up publicity for the product’s launch, HP is offering a trade-in program where 100 people can exchange their old digital media adapter for the MediaSmart Connect. The company is also teaming with Microsoft to offer a series of four online “webinars” to demonstrate the product’s features over the next few weeks. Feel free to check them out, but don’t be surprised if you’re just getting an infomercial for the product in question.

(Credit:
HP)

Giga Omni Media founder Om Malik has penned a new chapter to life, adding the role of venture partner to the mix.

That’s otherwise known as keeping the aim true.

In a a blog post, Malik notes that he will continue to write about issues he holds dear from major technology trends to the underpinnings of the Internet. But, he notes, by signing on as a partner with True Ventures, he’ll also have a front-row seat in learning about the VC business and may one day venture out as a full-fledged venture capitalist.

In an interview with The New York Times, Malik said his part-time role will include offering up advice to the firm’s portfolio companies and sharing his opinions with the other partners at True Ventures.

Om Malik kicks off GigaOM’s Structure event in June, which centered on the massive build-out of infrastructure to power the wired planet.

Malik, who recently transferred the CEO role of his company to Paul Walborsky, has signed on as a venture partner at True Ventures, a firm that is an investor in Giga.

And while the article raises questions about potential conflicts of interest that could arise as Malik covers the VC industry and its start-ups, while also being a member of the club, Malik notes that he will not pen any articles about companies in True Venture’s portfolio. He adds that disclosures will be made of the True Ventures relationship, should any Giga writers make reference to any of the firm’s portfolio companies.

(Credit:
Dan Farber)

The group health care plan, which will come later, could be a major advantage over other recently announced blog ad networks, because maintaining health care coverage is often a major roadblock for those who hope to take their new media careers full time.

In response to the TechCrunch report, Blogger & Podcaster Publisher Larry Genkin confirmed his company’s plans for the Blogger & Podcaster Media Network, or BPN, and added a few more details about the program he said will allow participants “to earn a living from being a full-time blogger/podcaster.” The BPN is open to all bloggers and podcasters, regardless of subscriber count, unique visitors, or any other such restrictions, Denkin said. “And, we don’t require exclusivity.”

The advertising portion of the program is expected to roll out this summer and will provide members with the option of including content widgets like polls, video players, and news feeds, in which ads will be embedded. Revenues from those ads will be shared with the BPN members.

The BPN does, however, require listing in the USA Today Blogger & Podcaster Guide. Listings in the guide used to cost $49.95 per month, but under an expanded deal between USA Today and the BPN, the fee has been reduced to $5 per month, Denkin said. And bloggers will get even more for their money with the addition of 15 new media partners beyond USA Today. Those partners are expected to be announced later Monday, Denkin said.

(Credit:
Blogger & Podcaster)

It seems TechCrunch beat Blogger & Podcaster magazine to the punch Monday by announcing the trade publication’s new advertising network, which is expected to eventually include access to a group health care plan.

The cover of the current issue of Blogger & Publisher magazine.

Video surveillance firm VideoIQ is set to announce on Wednesday morning a $10 million Series B funding round.

Lehman Brothers Venture Partners is leading the round, and current investors Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture are participating.

The funding will be used to help VideoIQ expand to new markets and continue product development of its IP video surveillance and video analytics products, the company says.

Bedford, Mass.-based VideoIQ was spun out of GE Security in 2007 and is headed by Scott Schnell, a former RSA executive.