Q&A: How Mozilla plans to prevent a messaging meltdown

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 4 Nov 2009 at 11:04

Q How will Raindrop integrate with Thunderbird?

A It's a very parallel project. Thunderbird is our primary focus. Raindrop is an experiment where we can find out what's going to be useful a few years from now. Ideas from one flow into the other. There are things that come up in a discussion about Raindrop where we say 'this could be really useful as a Thunderbird add-on'.

Q What made you decide to develop Raindrop now?

A Email has stagnated. People have been frustrated with email for some time, which means new communications services have erupted: Facebook, Twitter etc. Very quickly, we have too many things to check.

Q It sounds similar in philosophy to Google Wave?

A There are similarities. I think Google's doing lots of exciting things with collaboration. But Wave is a brand new stack, including a low-level protocol. Raindrop is trying to work with existing protocols. I can use Raindrop to communicate with you, even if you're not using Raindrop.

People have been frustrated with email for some time, which means new communications services have erupted

Q Will Raindrop eventually work with Wave?

A I think someone will integrate Wave [into Raindrop] at some point. It's so important these messaging systems have APIs to get their messages out.

Q Will Raindrop be confined to computers or will it work on mobile devices?

A One of the design requirements for Raindrop was that we'd be able to do experiments on mobile phones. More and more mobiles have very capable web browsers - that makes them a very interesting messaging platform. There's not been a huge amount of innovation in smartphone email.