New e-mail system from arabia.com is 'most highly featured in the Arab world'

Ramzi Zeine, Chief Executive Officer of arabia.com said, "E-mail has become a part of the fabric of everyday life for a huge number of people throughout the Arab world. We have always seen it as a key service and we have continued to invest substantially in ensuring that we offer the most functional system possible to our audience. This is the first phase in a major programme for us which will, we believe, see the integration of a variety of technologies within mail systems."

The new e-mail system provides a multifunctional online office by delivering a host of new features including: a calendar/organizer; a virtual keyboard option - allowing users to type in Arabic regardless of the operating system; mail sorting, filtering and blocking; mail finder; and personalized appearance option - allowing users to select their own colours and backgrounds, including a Palestinian flag option.

While the basic web based facility remains free, subscription based premium services called Platinum eXtras will allow users to utilise a wide range of enhanced features. These enhanced features include POP3 (Post Office Protocol) for receiving and sending mail from a mail client like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Eudora, as well as IMAP4 (Internet Message and Access Protocol) allowing access to all folders on a particular server (explained on www.imap.org).

Zeine said: "The POP3 and IMAP4 facility means that even when you are away from your office, no matter where you may be in the world, you can still access your office e-mails via your arabia.com account, providing you can log onto the web."

Additional enhanced features of the premium services allow for unlimited filtering and unrestricted email forwarding; ad free and tagline free options; 24/7 support for members; alerts and notification - so that when new e-mails arrive users can be notified via their cell phone, pager or another e-mail address; a message download option - at the click of a button, e-mails that are just too good to leave online can be downloaded onto a local computer; e-mail scheduling - e-mails can be composed today and scheduled to be sent anytime in the future; instant e-mail translation - users can write e-mails in their native language, then have them automatically translated to any other supported language when they are sent; auto text translation -translates incoming messages to the users desired language automatically.

On the free service, arabia.com users will continue to get 10MBs of free storage space, with the option of adding between 10MBs to 100MBs of extra space for additional fees.