Keeping in touch with other people is actually more problematic than you realise. Only a few years ago we were limited to using the phone and, perhaps, email conversations. IRC and later ICQ became interesting, as they enabled group chat and conversations, irrespective of location. Now we have different forms instant messaging, social networks, peer-to-peer networks and various business-based portals. Unless you’re a member of multiple networks, it’s hard to bring your contacts, information, meetings and ‘to do’ tasks together.

Ideally we need a solution that’s going to bring the various social networking groups together and integrate the instant messaging solutions. It’s already started to happen, so the next step is a collaboration tool that enables to control your correspondence, calendar, meetings, contacts and other information, from one user-interface.

Spicebird aims to be a central collaboration tool that brings together elements of Mozilla Thunderbird and the standalone calendar Mozilla Sunbird, with other functionality, such as the facility to track your instant messaging contacts and a store for your contacts. It has a long way to go and this is still an early version.