We’ve just release the initial version of our MapIt plugin for Atmail. This handy little plugin provides mapping to both the email and contacts portions of Atmail. First up all email bodies are scanned looking for anything that resembles a street address, when found the plugin can utilizes Google or Yahoo maps to create a map for the address then makes the address text interactive by popping up the map when the address is hovered over. If you click the address “link” then the map becomes sticky and stays visible till you click again, cool huh? The plugin underlines the address to give the user the idea that it can be hovered and/or clicked:

For contacts the plugin searches for any Home Address or Work Address information, if found it again uses Google or Yahoo maps to place a static map of that address on the page below the relevant address information:

Once installed via Atmail’s Webadmin you can edit the configuration file found at /path/to/atmail/webmail/config/plugins/mail.atmail.mapit.ini to alter behavior. Below is a sample configuration file:

[main]

# Mapping service to use ‘google’ or ‘yahoo’
map.service = google

# Map size, only relevant for map displayed on viewing a contact
map.size = 300×300

# Show a map upon viewing a contact if there are sufficient address details
option.process_contact = On

# Process email body contents and look for addresses to fetch a map for
option.process_email_body = On

You can download MapIt from here. We hope you find this little plugin useful!

As per the Atmail development roadmap, we are proud to announce two major enhancements for Atmail. CardDAV client support, allowing Atmail to view users address-books within the unified Webmail interface. The second feature is Webmail theme support in CSS. This demonstrates how easily Atmail is to customize for the frontend interface and provide users multiple Webmail themes.

With this release of CardDAV support, Atmail’s address book can now connect to a CardDAV server via open-standards as the source for all contact information, which is a major bonus for those wanting portable contact information, anywhere, anytime.

Atmail is one of the first Webmail clients to fully support CardDAV. With a growing number of desktop-clients and mobiles such as the iPhone and Android slated to support CardDAV, we are preparing to provide the complete open-protocol messaging solution. Say goodbye to proprietary formats for contact data.

New Features:

• Added CardDAV client support - Connect to an external CardDAV server within Atmail for contact data
• Theme support for the webmail user interface - New Granite theme available to those who prefer the corporate color palette
• Installer support for Ubuntu 10.X - Server edition and Webmail client
• New Windows Websync utility for Outlook - Improved performance, stability issues fixed and improved UTF-8 support
• MD5 and CRYPT-MD5 support now available in the server edition - Choose the default password encryption type via the Webadmin for users and migrate from legacy platforms easier.

Improvements:

• Improved thread processing performance, disk-level caching implemented
• Optimized caching, IMAP performance and client-level cache support via JS
• Calendar - Can now zoom to date view from month view
• Calendar - Edit event now uses convenient datepickers
• Improved mail search facility to support search keys
• Improved link detection and conversion of plain text URLs into links
• Improved handling of bad characters in To/Cc/Bcc fields
• Improved mime parsing for invalid or poorly formatted messages
• Better handling of wmv attachments for streaming in Windows Media Player
• Improved thread handling, user-experience and performance
• Improved Bedework calendar server support via CalDAV
• Added Subadmin support to the REST API - Add, delete, modify
• Improved Alias support via the REST API

Issues Fixed:

• Users can again edit a contact’s photo from the view contact page
• When uploading a photo for a contact the extension check is now case-insensitive
• Fixed Unicode memory leak/corruption in WebSync
• Fixed incorrect permission settings for Spamassassin directories upon installation
• Fixed dependency issues with Ubuntu 10.4
• Various Calendar bug fixes and improvements
• Fixed some API issues including hardening permissions checks
• Message bodies now showing in non-multipart text/plain messages
• Add Attachment button now works in Safari without multiple clicks
• Drag and Drop between sub-folders fixed
• Subadmin permission checks hardened
• Added paging for domains list in Webadmin
• Various other small fixes for Webadmin and Subadmin

We recommend all existing customers to upgrade to the new Atmail 6.1.8 - Follow these steps to update your install in under 5 minutes.

Want to test drive the latest right away? See our online demo at http://a6demo.atmail.com/ and demo the latest version online.

If you worry about server redundancy for your emails, we’ve got the solution for you.

We’ve recently made a HowTo page detailing how to setup GlusterFS with your Atmail server. GlusterFS is distributed file system for scalable file storage, allowing for the usage of files across servers. This allows you to have multiple copies of your system running at the same time!

Failovers, striping, replication, and load balancing for your Atmail servers? A breeze, with the GlusterFS system.

With the GlusterFS howto guide, you can setup two mirrored instances of Atmail. In the case the primary server goes down, the secondary server can kick in and handle all requests seamlessly. When the primary server is turned back on, the files added to the secondary server are automatically synchronised. Easy.

Atmail + GlusterFS HowTo
Gluster Community Website