Zenbe, the AJAX email client that promises to “enlighten your email”, comes out with a series of new features today including twitter integration and a new sidebar
I have looked at Zenbe a couple of weeks back but was not very compelled to switch from Gmail to Zenbe. The biggest reason for me not switching from Gmail to Zenbe is the sheer number of emails I received everyday and my personal habits. Everyday I will wake up and reply to urgent email first. I will starred other email that are under “read them later and reply if free” category. If I switch to Zenbe immediately, I lose these starred email immediate. On top of that, other than Facebook integration, I do not see much difference between Zenbe and Gmail.
Yesterday, Zenbe release a couple of useful features, that makes me go back for a quick look and I must say I am pretty impressed by what they have added over the last couple of weeks. I will cover some features I love in Zenbe , some might not be the latest one but still are something that is cool.
Nowadays, when we talk about email attachment, we will inevitablely think of Xobni and Xoopit. Xoopit is a Gmail extension that index your media in gmail. Personally I do not like the way Xoopit presents the media, as it is still not very easy for me to find a particular attachment I am looking for. Zenbe now does the same thing with your attachment in a List fashion
The image is blurred but you get the idea. As I rollover the filename, a small popup will appear indicating the file and a preview. I personally prefer this view over Xoopit’s view
Another feature I love is the sidebar, which has Twitter, Facebook and GTalk integration. While I cannot use the Gtalk integration as I am on MUC most of the time (Zenbe,hint..hint..) , the Facebook integration is pretty useful to take a quick peek at what your friends are talking about each morning while checking email
Sidebar with Facebook friends’ messages. And yes, FriendFeed is taking over Twitter
In the sidebar itself, you can also view all your contacts in one view, search for a particular one and then comes my favorite: The ability to view all the email exchanged with a particular contact. Sure I can do that in gmail too but it is not as straight forward. Whats more, some contacts even have photos for easy recognition.
Clicking on a contact shows you the emails exchanged
Clicking on a contact shows you his / her images
Overall, this release makes Zenbe more stable and more much appealling. With the email war that is brewing between MessageDance, Xobni and Xoopit, one has to be creative and bold enough to take email to the next level. Will Zenbe be the answer to our email overload? Or will a new application appear during Techcrunch 50 ?
But before that, I better go answer my emails before my phone starts ringing 
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