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One of the cornerstones in Web 2.0 are the folksonomy, a user generated taxonomy, popularly referred to as tags. Google made tags popular (they call them labels) when they launched Gmail (taxonomy) and the online bookmark service del.icio.us gave us tags + social network = folksonomy.

Today Mozilla launched their e-mail client ‘Mozilla Thunderbird 2’ just 12 days after the launch of release candidate 1! One the the main new features is tags, a feature I’ve been waiting and hoping for for many years now. I’ve never understood why none of the major e-mail client developers Microsoft or Mozilla got this into their clients before. For me it just seems so obvious. But here it is.

Thunderbird 2 allows you to “tag” messages with descriptors such as “To Do” or “Done” or even create your own tags that are specific to your needs. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.

Mac users

I recently made the switch from PC to Mac, and with that switch I also moved from Thunderbird to the default OS X e-mail client ‘Mail’ (sometime referred to as Mail.app). I made this switch for two reasons:

1. Thunderbird is a great e-mail client, but software wise it has a few bugs and glitches
2. As other Apple software, I expected Mail.app to be very well integrated into OS X

I’m very satisfied with the switch. Mail.app is very intuitive as you would expect from any Apple software. But they don’t have tags as I’ve come to love from Gmail. But on the other hand, neither has Microsoft Outlook and until today Mozilla Thunderbird.

As of this day, Mozilla Thunderbird is an even more serious player with some very powerful aces on its hand!

Do I switch to Thunderbird 2?

If I was still using a PC, the answer would be simple: Yes.

Now that I’m using OS X and Mail.app, I don’t know. I think that I will definitely try it out. This is easy since I’m using IMAP and not POP3. So I can easily switch between the two. Maybe I’ll report back later comparing the two.

If you are still not sure, I suggest you check out their ‘features‘ page to get inspired :)

Other reading

My co-blogger Jesper previously wrote an article called ‘Tags or Folders‘.

Technorati Tags: Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, e-mail, email, mail, folksonomy, taxonomy, tags, Gmail, del.icio.us, Google Mail, mac, OS X, Apple, Mail.app, usability, user interface, e-mail client, thunderbird2, web 2.0

This entry was posted by Thomas Watson Steen on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 12:13 (GMT-1) and is filed under E-mails, Taxonomy, Usability, User Interface. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.