Bart Verwilst a.k.a Bort :: Blog » zimbra

Apple lock-in

Bart Verwilst — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:40:14 +0000

Dear Apple,

I’m using your highly priced ( but for the most part awesome ) iPhone. When people cash out that much money for a phone, the least you can do is open up your API to allow other 3rd party applications to interface with it. Because of your closed iPhone calendar API for example, I’m unable to sync my OSS Zimbra with my iPhone. Lucky you, Apple, for not being as closely watched on lock-in practices as Microsoft is. Don’t worry, keep up this kind of unethical practices and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

Greetings.

Syncing your Zimbra contacts to your iPhone with Funambol

Bart Verwilst — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:01:37 +0000

On a brighter note, now that I have an iPhone ( and I seem to love it! ) I finally found the time/motivation to setup Funambol to interface with my Zimbra server, keeping the Zimbra contacts in sync with my iPhone! A howto will follow shortly!

Zimbra web: Language = English, Time format = 24 hour

Bart Verwilst — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:47:57 +0000

This might be a no-brainer, but I thought it would be nice to mention it here anyways..

By default, when using English as your Zimbra webclient language, all time notations ( in your calendar or mails for example ) are in AM/PM notation. This can be quit annoying since us Europeans don’t use this system.

The simple fix is to go to Preferences -> General -> Login Options -> Language, and select English ( United Kingdom ).

A simple reload later, and you’re still using your English webclient, but now with time in 24 hour format!

Removing Yahoo search bar from Zimbra webclient

Bart Verwilst — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:06:32 +0000

By default, at the top of your Zimbra 5.x webclient, there is a Yahoo search bar present. I never use Yahoo to search, so i don’t want it. I also don’t want my webgui cluttered with Yahoo nonsense. Since 5.0.2 however, you can remove it by executing the following commands on your zimbra server console:

# su – zimbra

# zmprov mc default zimbraFeatureWebSearchEnabled FALSE

When you reload the webinterface, the Yahoo search bar is gone

On track for Zimbra 6.0

Bart Verwilst — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:28:21 +0000

After a loong silence in the Zimbra camp ( apart from the occasional 5.0 point release ), we have more information about the next major Zimbra release! While it versioned as 5.5 in the past, it has now been changed straight to 6.0.
Current milestones are:

Beta 1 12/17/08
Beta 2 01/19/09
RC 1 02/23/09
GA 03/23/09

Since it’s a pretty long road until the GA version, those days will probably slide a bit.

Features include Ubuntu 8.04 LTS support ( BETA in 5.0 ), “Disaster recovery via server-to-server sync” ( which sounds really nice, not sure what exactly it will do yet ), and others found here.

Zimbra desktop, hit or miss?

Bart Verwilst — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:11:29 +0000

First of all, let me say I’m a big Zimbra fan. Open-Xchange is shaping up to be a nice collaboration suite, but still not up to par with Zimbra. But then there is the Zimbra desktop… In my opinion, resources that should have been spent on other things.

In short, Zimbra desktop is a Jetty server running the ZCS on your desktop machine, which regularly syncing with your main server. Which means you’re running a bloaty Java beast on your PC, sucking up all those nice RAM and cpu cycles. And in the end, you are still using the webclient..

In the meantime, Thunderbird, Zindus and Sunbird are a match made in heaven for Zimbra users, providing free and open source calendaring, mail, tasks and contacts on every Thunderbird-supported platform. Putting half the manpower on that threesome and helping with bug fixing and implementing new features there would do a lot more good then trying to throw together a half-baked Java daemon and announcing it like it’s the holy grail of collaborative messaging.

For the record, Sunbird is about to release version 0.8

Yahoo vs Microsoft.. doesn’t look too good..

Bart Verwilst — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:17:37 +0000

Apparently nobody was able to counter-offer on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, so things are starting to look pretty sad..

There are rumors that some Yahoo executives would do everything in their power to stop the Microsoft deal, giving Google a small chance, but it’s all over for Yahoo anyways.. I can imagine that the best employees already looked for a job with more certainty, and that if Google takes over, a lot of people will become redundant since Google has its own skilled people.. And if Microsoft takes over.. bleh, don’t even want to consider that..

I will have to dig into the Zimbra license again to make sure that the project is forkable, but i pretty much think a fork would be the only thing to save it. Hell, I would even start it up myself Where is anti-trust when you need it?

Embrace and extinguish anyone?

Microsoft – Yahoo: a little hope left!

Bart Verwilst — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:39:31 +0000

It’s still not entirely sure that Microsoft will buy Yahoo. A group of venture capitalists are also preparing to do a counter-offer. Let’s hope that, if Yahoo is bought, it’s not by Microsoft.. Yahoo has a few nice things ( Zimbra being one of them ), which most likely wouldn’t do well with the Microsoft lovin’ we’re all used to.

Zimbra Server for Ubuntu x86_64 soon on a server near you!

Bart Verwilst — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:59:07 +0000

Finally the last commit is done in the Zimbra repository to enable 64bit Ubuntu builds, something that was sorely missing for quite a while, as seen in bugs like this one. Up until now, I had to use a CentOS 5.1 x86_64 server to host my zimbra, which always felt pretty icky to me… The new build isnt out yet, but at least i know it will arrive Real Soon Now ™! And there was much rejoicing!