Funambol, the open source SyncML based push email, contacts and calendars software provider has released a new personalized portal called MyFunambol. MyFunambol provides free mobile push email for webmail services such as Live Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, GMail and any POP3/IMAP4 email account. Two types of push email are offered: SMS based notifications and HTTP-TCP/IP based push notifications (limited to certain devices).

You can choose to backup and synchronize contacts and calendar from Outlook, Apple iPod, Evolution, Thunderbird & other clients via plug-ins to FunAmbol and/or your mobile device over the air using SyncML protocol.

There’s also a Funambol Java ME Email Client that has the following features:

-Compose and send emails
-Receive new email on your mobile phone
-Read, delete, reply, forward, or flag emails
-Address messages to your contacts that are on myFUNAMBOL without having to type their email addresses (all of your myFUNAMBOL contacts are kept in-sync with the email client)
-Detect URLs in your emails and go to them directly on your mobile phone
-Work offline

Once you signup on the website, you can choose to receive an SMS with SyncML settings automatically configured for your type of mobile device. Funambol supports many handset models from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Apple and others.

The iPhone version of the service currently supports only contacts and can be accessed at my.funambol.com/iphone from the built-in Safari browser. Once logged in, a page displays a sorted list of myFUNAMBOL contacts with their phone numbers, email addresses and location. The phone number can be tapped to call the person, the email address can be tapped to start an email with their email address and the location can be tapped to view it on Google Maps. The page looks and operates virtually identical to the native address book on the iPhone i.e. users can tap their finger on the touch screen to scroll the list and select an entry.