The Hindu Business Line : Bhatia launches tool bar for e-mail browsing

Mr Sabeer Bhatia - who co-founded Hotmail and later sold it to Microsoft - today announced a new venture Blogeverywhere.com that enhances the speed and functionality of e-mail browsing and allows users to post their comments on any Web site in the world via a toolbar.

"In the last 10 years, there has been no significant development of technology in Hotmail. For the last one year we have been thinking of how to increase its speed. The tool we have come up with addresses that problem," Mr Bhatia said at a conference here.

The tool bar enhances Hotmail experience by way of faster e-mail browsing, and enables preview of messages. "It allows the e-mail messages to be downloaded to the users' PC when their Internet connection is idle. This makes messages instantly available for reading.

"Moreover, users will have the ability to preview messages in their inbox providing them with a quick way to determine the content of multiple messages without actually opening them," he said. Through a single-click interface, users can add their comments to any page while surfing the net. The Blogeverywhere toolbar has two buttons - write and read. The write button opens a small window within the browser where users can add their comments related to the Web page they visited. The read button allows other visitors to the site to read that message. However, Mr Bhatia clarified that the site Webmasters have the option to disallow blogging on their site.

Blog is short for weblog. A Weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. "The idea for the toolbar was conceived in US and developed by Pune-based KPIT Infosystems. Instead of setting up a team in India from scratch, we decided to partner KPIT. The company has a dedicated team of 50 people working on the toolbar for the last two years," he said.

He said revenues for the venture would come at a later stage from advertisements. In the first phase, the focus is on garnering a user base.

Plans tie-ups

The company is also planning tie-ups with Internet sites on a revenue-share basis to make the toolbar available for download from their sites.

Mr Bhatia said that he would also announce a new venture on digital rights management and protection of document in the next three months.

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Bhatia launches tool bar for e-mail browsing