MetaFilter posts tagged with email

Google Asks: "What Would Email Look Like, If It Were Invented Today?"

zarq — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:45:13 -0800

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) Features include real-time collaboration, (including concurrent editing and control of each "wave" thread,) natural language tools and a variety of APIs which users can use to embed content in other sites. Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 (80min video -- an abridged 10 minute version is here. Wave login page is here. Google Wave Federation Protocol is an open source project for developers. The WSJ reports that invites are now for sale on EBay. Something similar happened when Google launched GMail in 2004.

all caps email results in firing

tamarack — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:01:07 -0800

email etiquette: ALL CAPS CAN GET YOU FIRED. Vicki Walker of Auckland is raking in the law suit moneys after being fired for creating "disharmony in the workplace by using block capitals, bold typeface and red text in her emails". via slashdot and cbc techbytes

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Where is the paddle? We need the paddle!

WPW — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:25:05 -0800

Email patterns can predict impending doom. "Email logs can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point. That's the tantalising suggestion to emerge from the pattern of messages exchanged by Enron employees. "After US energy giant Enron collapsed in December 2001, federal investigators obtained records of emails sent by around 150 senior staff during the company's final 18 months. The logs, which record 517,000 emails sent to around 15,000 employees, provide a rare insight into how communication within an organisation changes during stressful times." From the New Scientist.

Pinwale

homunculus — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:33:51 -0800

NSA E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress. "Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation." [Via]

Google Wave - the next big thing, or a wash?

CunningLinguist — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:57:37 -0800

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication? Introducing Google Wave. "In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved."

PLEASE UNSUBSCRIBE ME FROM THIS LIST!!!!!!!!

desjardins — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:16:52 -0800

This week, American diplomats took down the State Department's email system by using reply-to-all. They're not the only ones to make this gaffe. Spirit Airlines' CEO hit reply-to-all in response to a customer complaint. A corporate attorney sent a note intended for a client to a NY Times reporter. A Minnesota judicial candidate replies to an email claiming Barack Obama is a Muslim. Maybe they should read this guide to knowing when not to reply-to-all. Or their admins should prevent them from using reply-to-all or forward in Outlook. Also, don't put everyone's addresses in the TO: field - Seagate Software, AT&T, and Nissan found this out the hard way.

Causing false public alarm

tkolar — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:53:11 -0800

As those of you on the wrong email lists can probably guess, Snopes is overflowing with gang initiation rumors. What you may not know is that the New Jersey police recently arrested someone spreading those stories for "causing false public alarm." On one hand, I'm having a hard time equating this directly with yelling fire in a crowded theater. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would miss Aunt Betsy if she was deprived of her email privileges.

FWD: fwd: Fwd: RE: nuclear launch codez

Rhaomi — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:08:55 -0800

U.S. Presidents have had an uneven relationship with technology. The Clinton Presidential Library has more than 40 million White House emails on record (but only two are from the man himself). The Bush Administration, on the other hand, junked the Clinton archival process and replaced it with a comically inept alternative that has lost more than five million messages, many concerning official government business. (President Bush, for his part, gave up his longtime address -- G94b@aol.com -- just before his inauguration). Even the Reagan White House had its share of problems with the digital age. Now, as tech-savvy Barack Obama prepares to implement his technology plans, does he have a shot at dragging the Oval Office into the 21st century? Or will he have to surrender his laptop, his email account, and his beloved Blackberry?

Phishing in Plain English

dbarefoot — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:13:51 -0800

The latest paper-based video from the folks at Common Craft. This video explains the ins and outs of phishing scams. Show it to your less web-savvy brethren.

What attire can I wear to the polls on election day?

cashman — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:26:46 -0800

A dress code at the polls? Many states have 'electioneering' laws in place that can be broadly interpreted to mean that clothing with political messages is not allowed. Snopes put a page up advising voters to check with their board of elections. Some election officials have released statements attempting to clarify [pdf] the enforcement of their state's electioneering laws, though those statements aren't legally binding. Other election officials are suing to keep the broad definition of electioneering in place. If rules are interpreted to include campaign shirts and buttons, you will likely need to cover the item up, remove it, or otherwise conceal it. With so many new voters, folks who have relocated, differences between the primaries and the general election and rules in flux in many states, I removed the state-by-state listing I originally began constructing in favor of having this post be a place where people can add the most recent state-specific updates as they become available. Reference - 2006 document [pdf] linked from Snopes page with state-by-state information.

Strongbad's 200th Email

justkevin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:45:13 -0800

Happy Bicentenemail. Strongbad answers his 200th email in this installment of the long-running Homestarrunner.com web site. Featuring a musical intro by They Might Be Giants.

palin's yahoo mail hacked ... oh anonymous, what will you do next

yeoz — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:05:22 -0800

Sarah Palin's email gets hacked by Anonymous (right, that Anonymous). And given the legal contro versy surrounding her email, one wonders if the fact that her yahoo email accounts are now deleted constitutes destruction of evidence or violations of public-records laws. Its hit Wikileaks too, but, I'm not sure they have more then what's already released (rapidshare).

stop fowarding

signal — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:51:17 -0800

Please do not forward chain letters, urban myths presented as truth, potentially offensive jokes, videos or photos without being asked or first receiving permission.

Do Zebras get more Spam than Aardvarks?

Knappster — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:45:35 -0800

"Analysis of traffic logs (PDF) of email received by a large UK ISP shows considerable disparity between the proportions of spam received by addresses with different first characters." A quick overview by the author, with a follow-up.

Lost in the Forster

not_the_water — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:40:49 -0800

"Room With A Screw: My 45-day quest to convince a craigslist scammer to write me a poem-- and how she lost her mind and tried to become my friend"

She is your Virgil on the descent into L.A.

Scram — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:07:32 -0800

Kristin's List. There are plenty of events guides in Los Angeles, but none has as personal a voice, as finely honed an aesthetic (the Neutra font is an inspired touch) or as discerning an eye as Kristin's. Her weekly emails and web listings are one woman's recommended sampling of the most interesting music, film, architecture, food, fashion, literary and unquantifiable events across the megalopolis. And so far, it's completely ad-free.

Time in a bottleneck

Kronos_to_Earth — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:37:01 -0800

Snail mail isn't that slow, unless you use real snails.... As part of a "slow art" project, Vicki Isley and Paul Smith of Bournemouth University have attached radio frequency identification chips (RFID's) to three gastropods, Austin, Cecil and Muriel. The RFID's will pick up your mail as the carriers amble past an electronic reader and deliver it when (in just a few days! ...or weeks ...or months....) they slip past a second reader.... RealSnailMail! The system is up and running (When I tried it.). There's even a snailcam, which will be available August 11th - 15th, 2008. Also, from the website: DISCLAIMER: RealSnailMail is still under development. For testing purposes some messages may be forwarded sooner than expected. Sorry we can not guarantee unreliability of service at this time. We hope to have RealSnailMail working less predictably as soon as possible.

VF: How the Web Was Won

spiderwire — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:02:34 -0800

Vanity Fair has a typically excellent article out -- "How the Web Was Won," an oral history of the Web. Even if you're familiar with ARPANet, Metcalfe's Law, Pearl Harbor Day, the VC rush, whatever -- the story told by the often-animated people at the center of the whirlwind is an enlightening and entertaining experience. And for those of you don't know the history of the Internet, learn it! This is part of your heritage now. I just like this quote because it sums up my experience with all hackers-as-CEOs:

Jeff Bezos: When we started out, we were packing on our hands and knees on these cement floors. One of the software engineers that I was packing next to was saying, You know, this is really killing my knees and my back. And I said to this person, I just had a great idea. We should get kneepads. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, Jeff, we should get packing tables. We got packing tables the next day, and it doubled our productivity.

The Bush White House "upgrades" the e-mail system.

butterstick — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:35:24 -0800

Ars Technica has a fascinating account of the IT "planning" which lead to the loss of 5 million+ emails. Via /.

what did we tell you

Armitage Shanks — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:46:38 -0800

The owners of the domain donotreply.com get a lot of mail. [via]

G-Archiver discloses username/password

krautland — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:29:05 -0800

G-Archiver is a windows shareware app that backs up your gmail account to your local harddrive. it also does something far more sinister: it emails your username and password to the creator of the program. (via)

All your berries in one basket?

jbickers — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:55:34 -0800

"It's amazing how we rely on them." BlackBerry email service went down this afternoon in "The Americas Network." That's bad. But is over-reliance on a network the worst of it? Or is it the thumb-ache? or the back-ache? or the work-life imbalance? or the shakes?

Fuzzy Mail

cashman — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:07:18 -0800

Fuzzmail records your email as you type it and provides the actual composition for the person, or people on the receiving end. [via]

The Courier's Tragedy

Smedleyman — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:52:52 -0800

Worried about government eavesdropping on your e-mails? Hushmail allows you to communicate securely with other Hush users. Unless the government is involved. The guy who created PGP said the company only undoes encryption when given a court order and is not turning over customer records wholesale to government agencies. But who needs a court order?

Visualizing your email as microbes.

Rumple — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:44:10 -0800

It's not a bug, it's a feature: Carolin Horn has designed Anymails, which represents your email messages and folders as micro-organisms. The morphology of the individual organisms and their behaviour within colonies imparts information about the state of your email. You can view QT movies of the application in action (1, 2), download her thesis, and download the Anymails code itself. See some of her other work here (predominantly in German). via Madame Martin, the "French Metafilter".