Many feel that their hands are tied behind their back when they want to login to their e-mail accounts, but they don't have access to the Internet. Things are about to change, thanks to a Yahoo! technology that was announced today. Zimbra, for now available in Beta version, allows users access to Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail without being connected to the Internet. Two Internet protocols, Post Office Protocol and Internet Message Access Protocol, are used to enable people to have access to up to three e-mail accounts from different providers at the same time.

"Zimbra is focused on creating communication and collaboration solutions that ease the pain points of traditional e-mail, and switching between multiple e-mail accounts is one of the communication headaches that users encounter on a daily basis," says Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and Yahoo! vice president. "With Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, we have taken our world-class collaboration suite and made it available for everyone for use anywhere, anytime, with any email account." he adds.

The possibility of offline access to what represented, until now, Internet applications is doubled by a couple of new features that Zimbra brings. Search tools, calendaring and desktop schedule based on content that was only available on the Internet are some of them.

Zimbra Documents, which gives users the possibility of integrating photos and other content in documents and spreadsheets, is another feature announced by Yahoo! It is accompanied by Zimbra Briefcase, a tool that enables the organization, upload and storage of various documents that have been kept, until now, in the attachments of the e-mails. Also, the desktop Briefcase can be accessed both online and offline.

Zimbra Tasks, the last of the set of features, is a tool that allows monitoring data, such as to-do-lists, deadlines, priorities, the percentage in which a task is fulfilled, and more.