The Last Podcast

This might be the first positive thing I can say about Comcast. According to TechCrunch, Comcast just made a deal with Zimbra, the web email and collaboration suite that recently became one of the first Ajax suites that offer on and offline access to its customers.

In addition to this, Zimbra is going to team up with Plaxo.

Read/Write/Web summarizes the feature set:

• Listen to voice mail online and forward messages via e-mail - including the ability to listen to your voicemail within an email, without launching a new program
• View, save, and print call history
• Merge contacts via an address book that syncs with multiple devices
• Send video or traditional instant messages to friends or contacts
• Add customization, including RSS and the ability to layer in video clips
• Apply safety and security controls utilizing Bizanga’s email anti-abuse system, Cloudmark’s email anti-spam and anti-phishing tools and Trend Micro’s anti-virus software

This is good news for everybody who uses Comcast. The old email system they provided was beyond bad. I would hope that more ISPs would hop on this bandwagon.

This should also show a larger audience what the power of these new technologies are. 12 million users is probably more than any other online office suite has right now. While the majority of Comcast users is not going to use all of the capabilities, it is going to introduce a whole different set of customers to the wonders of Web 2.0.

It is going to be interesting to see if Comcast is going to integrate some of its other offerings to this in the long run. What about a TV schedule? Movies-on-Demand? This really helps to explain than the emergence of the “triple-play” (Internet, TV, VOIP) and why it is being pushed so hard these days.

If Comcast could actually get people to use its email system, it would also have an easy way of reaching its users quickly for advertising campaigns.

For more discussion of this, also see VentureBeat, GigaOM, Between the Lines and broadbandreports.com.

Technorati tags: zimbra, web 2.0