A new version of the Zimbra collaboration suite has been released, which will make Leopard users smile with its support for Safari 3.0, integration of Leopard’s CalDAV features and an optimised iPhone interface.

The update was announced on the same day as Steve’s MWSF keynote, so it seems to have sunk without a trace. That’s a shame, as Zimbra is not only the closet thing that I have ever used to a Microsoft Exchange killer, but also works seamlessly with mail.app. It even plays nicely with MailTags.

I use it at work and it is rock solid. With its iCal-syncing Preference Pane, it also provides the platform-independent email and calendaring interface between me and my PC-using PA.

According to the press release , the Zimbra Team are cock-a-hoop about Leopard. CEO and co-founder of Zimbra, Satish Dharmaraj, says that, “The amazing speed of Safari 3 has blown the Zimbra team away and we are excited to be the first major collaboration platform to support the calendaring standard CalDAV.”

I will admit that I began to drool (a little) at the mention of the iPhone interface:

Additionally, ZCS is now available to iPhone users via the Zimbra Mobile HTML client. The iPhone’s Safari browser enables fast access to the full-featured AJAX interface, and the Zimbra Connector for Apple iSync allows users to sync not only their email but also their address books and calendars to their iPhones.

Unfortunately, the IT Department where I work is currently enjoying some personnel restructuring and doesn’t have the resources to commit to upgrading our installation to the new version anytime soon. Perhaps you will have more luck.

Although it is now owned by Yahoo!, Zimbra retains its open-source roots. An Open Source Edition is available for free. Other, more expensive options including product support are also available. All of them can be explored at the Zimbra web site .

The company is also hiring .zimbra, mail.app, apple mail, leopard, caldav, iphone, safari, opensource, collaboration, microsoft exchange, productivity

Apple has updated its technote on dealing with winmail.dat files.

After pointing out that winmail.dat files the result of emails containing rich text information sent “from a Microsoft email application (such as Outlook and the Microsoft Exchange Client)”, the technote advises:

To avoid seeing these attachments in the future, you ask the sender to deselect the email’s “Send to this recipient in Microsoft rich text format” checkbox or preference setting in mail client before they send the message.

Fortunately more immediate help is at hand.

OMiC is a plugin that can extract the files from a winmal.dat attachment on the fly. Since I last posted about it, it has got smarter.

It no longer uses the Save dialog, but decodes and presents the included files in Mail’s Attachment View:

It also now supports Panther (10.3), winmail.dat files with the wrong MIME type and Outlook’s iCalendar format.

It’s the kind of functionality that should be built-in to Mail.app but isn’t.

OMiC is shareware (5 euros = USD 6.30) and is available from the developer’s web site . If you live in a Windows world, the money will be well worth it.mail.app, apple mail. winmail.dat, outlook, attachments, microsoft exchange, tips, plugins

AddressX makes all the contacts in an Exchange Global Address List available in your Address Book, provided you have Exchange server 2000 or 2003 with WebDAV enabled.

The contact information which the app pipes into Address Book can be filtered, set to auto-update and synced to an iPod or palm device with iSync.

It does this “transparently”, which means the developer says,

that your Exchange GAL contacts will look and act just like the other contacts already in your Address Book. Search them, export them as vCards, sync them to your cell phone and take them with you. Take full advantage of the new system-wide address book instantly. Use your Exchange contacts seamlessly from applications like Mail, iCal, and many others.

Contacts are placed an Exchange contacts group in Address Book making them easy to identify and manage:

An updated version (1.50) released yesterday adds support for OS X’s “faster user switching” so AddressX can now be used by multiple users on a given system. It also fixes problems with non-secure/non-SSL connections and incorrect permissions.

I don’t have access to an Exchange account and haven’t tested this.

Address X is shareware (single licenses from USD 19.95) and is available from Snerdware’s web site .address book, microsoft exchange, fast user switching, contacts, syncing