Yahoo mail already has an integrated RSS reader and instant messaging. They also recently announced unlimited storage for all mail users.

They are also releasing a few new features.

Shortcuts: Mail now has a number of intelligent shortcuts. Things like addresses, places, dates, contact information, etc. are underlined with blue dots. Click on the link and see a mashup with maps (for addresses), travel guides (for places), calendar (for dates), etc. New services are being added regularly.

SMS/Text Messaging: Yahoo wants you to use their mail application whenever you contact your friends, however you contact them. In addition to emailing or instant messaging clients, you can now send them a text message from the mail interface. Their responses also come in directly to Yahoo Mail. It currently works for U.S., India, Philippines and Canadian mobile numbers.

Is Yahoo Mail a better webmail application than GMail? In our comparisons GMail always comes out on top, although the main reason is tagging of messages and the fact that GMail gives free forwarding and POP access to the account. Yahoo still charges $20/year for forwarding or POP access. For users who still like their desktop mail clients, POP access is an important feature. Yahoo says they are considering making it a free option, but they have a lot of paying mail customers. If they make too many features free, they jeopardize that revenue stream. Offering unlimited free storage really pushed the limits, so I don’t expect them to move more features from paid to free any time soon.

The new interface is the final realization of Yahoo’s 2004 acquisition of Ajax pioneer Oddpost. The new mail product is based largely on ideas first launched by Oddpost in 2002.

Startups aren’t just sitting around as the big guys upgrade their webmail apps, though. Our favorite product in this space is Orgoo, which launches this fall and lets users pull in mail and IM accounts from any number of providers. Foldera is another promising product in this space (I was previously on their board of directors, but I do not own any stock in the company).

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We covered last year’s private beta. The 3.0 version features simple search across all your content (contacts, emails, events, tasks, and files), contextual help, and an intuitive drag and drop interface.

Once your organization is on Foldera, you can trade information and bundle your projects into discrete folders. You get your group started by each signing up for accounts and importing your email and contacts from Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo contact list on to the service. Editing and access to contacts can be managed through permissions. Foldera’s user interface looks very similar to Gmail’s AJAX interface. On the left hand side, you have a list of folders by subject containing your calendar, email, files, and tasks tied to that subject. The main pane on the right shows the content.

Folders are permission controlled workgroups, where you can send emails, assign tasks, trade files, and plan events on the calendar. All activity from that folder can be commented on by other users and is tied to that folder and the contacts it’s shared with. When you receive email replies to messages you sent from within the folder, they’re automatically filed in that folder for all members to see.

Within the folders you can also plan events, assign tasks, and share files (1GB of storage). When tasks are completed, the person who assigned them is notified by email. The calendar is a lot like Google calendar, with the ability to easily overlay events from other folders or users, but doesn’t allow exporting or importing feeds. The file system tracks versions of files as they are uploaded to the service and lets you easily attach them to emails.

Google’s addition of folders to Google Docs generated a great deal of conversation yesterday over the benefits of tags and folders. However, Foldera’s folders are a bit more flexible than traditional folders because they do allow files to linked to multiple projects (folders) in their drag and drop interface.

Foldera is Free for 5 users, but charges an extra $6 a month for each user beyond that.

Foldera is very late to launch, and some users who expressed enthusiasm over a year ago may now have moved on to other solutions. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

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The company is in private beta right now, with a full launch on the way.

Foldera’s approach to productivity is in direct conflict with the way we use applications like Outlook today (just think about how much time we all spend organizing our inbox, filing emails, etc.). Foldera has a better approach (one that seems rather obvious now that I’ve seen it) and they have a chance to seriously disrupt upcoming product launches like Office Live from Microsoft.

Most of us are used to working with email folders today, where an email message can simply be pulled into a folder for easier discovery later. The idea around Foldera starts there. They’ve created an Ajax rich web application that includes email, calendaring, instant messaging, document storage and versioning, tasks and other features into a single web application. Everything is folder-centric:

How does this work?

You create a dedicated Activity Folder for each distinct project or activity. Email, instant messaging, and all your other applications are now accessed from within this folder instead of their original disconnected and unstructured state. This organizational structure also keeps everything in context; for example, all your email conversations and instant message dialogs stay right inside that specific Activity Folder, so everything related to that project stays grouped together. Doesn’t that make more sense?

Do you work with other people?

To truly appreciate what Foldera can do, try using it with a team. Everything you create with Foldera can be shared or kept private, delegated, owned, or distributed among one, several, or all members of a team. Unlike some collaborative applications, Foldera is easy to use and requires virtually no learning curve. If you can send email, you can use Foldera.

Richard Lusk, Foldera’s CEO, met with me late last year to show me an early demo of the product. The idea is that you create a folder around any new project. Share that folder with others or keep it private. Documents can be uploaded to the service and associated with a folder. Emails started from within the folder are automatically associated with the project. Same with Calendar entries. Foldera also includes an instant messaging application (it works with MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), iChat, and Yahoo Messenger).

The notion of taking emails, IM transcripts, office documents, calendar items and more and automatically organizing each document into shared or private folders is a big deal. Having one place to see every related document will save time. And as deadlines approach, users can simply focus on the project folder and ignore distracting emails and IMs that deal with other projects.

Pricing has not yet been disclosed, but there will be a generous free option.

Foldera has raised $13 million since its launch. Last week it completed a reverse merger into an existing (shell) public company, raising an additional $8.5 million. It is now a publicly traded (OTC) company with a market capitalization of $70 million. Yeah, its crazy – they haven’t even launched yet.

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