Spicebird

The Home page or start page of Spicebird is well laid out and allows for a quick look at date and
time in two diffrent locations. You can see at a glance one or more calendars, your inbox and any
newsfeeds you may have. The option to move information around is there but with a few bugs. One
feature you will notice on the home page is the tabbed interface. I like this alot it allows for easy
movement between contacts, email and the other features. One tab missing is a notes tab, I think
however that this is in the works.

The email portion of Spicebird is as far as I can tell ready for primetime. I think this in part due to
the fact that Spicebird used help from other open source email clients and did not have to start
from scratch. That to me is the beauty of freedom in software. IMAP (Gmail) is supported as well as
POP and local folders. I know there are list of improvements slated for the next release but I was
very pleased with the stability of Spicebird email thus far.

The contacts side of Spicebird leaves quite a lot to be desired. There are several advancements in
contacts slated for the next release which is good because Outlooks shoes are hard to fill. For now you
can only search contacts by a few fields. I know there are plans to search contacts by any field, but how
soon I am not sure. There are several request for more CRM features in Spicebird. CRM is where this
program could really out-do Outlook. To have CRM features in Outlook you have to install Outlook BCM (
business contact manager). BCM is fine but it works off of a different database that regular contacts. If
Synovel was to add CRM features such as notes and document linking and sales order tracking to the
contacts side of SpiceBird then it would win over many Outlook users.

This is not a full review of Spicebird because of the early Beta version used. Please visit the website
and show your support to Synovel for the hard work. Listed is the roadmap for Spicebird lets hope
that things go as planned.

Spicebird 0.4
Integration of email, calendaring and instant messaging into one suite
Home screen
Application related applets
Tasks as a separate application
Spicebird 0.7
Code cleanup and remove temporary code
Basic email tabs
Calendar theme cleanup
Fix card view
Restore and test lost features (import/export dialogs? calender prefs, etc.)
Blogs as Email (Thunderbird addon/Spicebird built-in)
Post to blogs just as you send mails to your friends!
See comments as replies to your mail
Event filter should detect more patterns and allow context based operations on matched within the mail.
Instant Messaging
UI improvements to make is as easy as typical IM application
Store IM conversations
Home screen applet for buddy list
Card view improvements
Formatting options instead of just keyboard shortcuts
Better chat window
Move accounts configuration to accounts wizard
Support account types using gateways
Get license issues resolved
Better message alerts
Spicebird 1.0
Integration with a CMS (Drupal)
Document management
More views for calendar and tasks
Microsoft Exchange connector
Multiple backends for tasks management
Partial project management features
A more meaningful address book
Last conversation/chat with a contact
Source of contact