email

The New York Times is reporting that iGoogle and Yahoo Mail could be at the core of social-networking plans for the two search companies.

"Web-based e-mail systems already contain much of what Facebook calls the social graph--the connections between people," Saul Hansell writes in his blog posting. "Yahoo and Google realize that they have this information and can use it to build their own services that connect people to their contacts."

Hansell says he's heard from several Google executives that that's their plan. "We believe there are opportunities with iGoogle to make it … Read more

You might have noticed if, for some reason, you have followed my work over the last couple of years, that I have a thing for 747s.

I can't really explain why that is. I suppose it's just that the jumbo jets are sort of a physical manifestation of adventure for me: When I see them flying overhead, I know they're off to some faraway place where I'd probably like to be going.

So when I heard about 3D Mailbox, an e-mail client that uses visual images as representations for e-mail messages, and the fact that the … Read more

My clients often ask my opinion on whether an e-mail message is legitimate or not. The message below, asking for credit card information and claiming to come from Register.com, was a doozy, and a lot can be learned from analyzing it.

First, it addressed my client, who is a Register.com customer, by name and was sent to an e-mail address associated with a domain registered there. Both my clients' name and e-mail address are publicly available. The message did not contain anything private such as an account number at Register.com.

I left out the Register.com logo … Read more

Zimbra graciously asked me to moderate a panel/webinar with a few of its university customers. Entitled "Campus IT Leaders Share Their Experiences Selecting and Deploying Next-Generation Messaging," we'll be walking through the anatomy of an open-source IT decision and figuring out the costs and benefits of moving from Exchange (and other proprietary systems, as well as from open-source messaging systems) to Zimbra.

Here's the teaser:

Wed November 7 @ 1:00 pm EST (10 am PST)

Often the best data points about which messaging and collaboration system to choose for a campus upgrade comes after the initial deployment. Thus, finding peers who can provide real world feedback is critical to the decision making process.… Read more

The Mozilla Calendar Project has upgraded Lightning, the calendar plug-in for Thunderbird to 0.7, and is aiming for a 1.0 sometime in 2008.

As we've noted before, Lightning makes Thunderbird soar above Outlook for home use, and places them on nearly equal ground in the office. The latest update includes an overhauled interface with easier-to-use buttons for jumping from your mail to your calendar, LDAP directory support for event invites, and Sun Java Calendar Server support.

… Read more

My last posting, Defending against a phishing e-mail message, described a JavaScript trick bad guys use to make a link appear to go one place when it really goes somewhere else.

So you can test if your e-mail program (or Webmail system) falls for this type of forgery, I created a test e-mail message.

To receive my test e-mail message, send an e-mail to:

It does not matter what, if anything, is in the subject or the body of your message.

The test e-mail message contains a link that appears to go to CNET, but really goes to my personal … Read more

I previously made the case that Windows users should use Thunderbird for email. When I got a fraudulent e-mail message on Saturday claiming to come from PayPal, Thunderbird offered two lines of defense.

The first was the big warning that the message might be a scam. Indeed it was.

The body of the message was a pretty standard phishing scam, with the usual typos and the true destination of the link hidden.

Thunderbird's second line of defense was not falling prey to the common practice of using hidden JavaScript code to hide the real destination of a link embedded … Read more

Editor's note: Click here for Friday's update on the Senate's Internet access tax vote.

When the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill last week extending a ban on Internet access taxes, it may have opened up the possibility of previously forbidden taxes on paid e-mail and other Web services.

That's what a Congressional Research Service attorney concluded in a two-page memorandum (click here for a PDF) released on Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the author of the original tax ban in 1998. The CRS is a federally funded sort of "think … Read more

Gmail is getting support for IMAP clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, and the iPhone. This means Gmail users will no longer be limited to the Gmail.com user interface or to the weak integration they might get from clients using the much more rudimentary POP e-mail protocol.

There's no word on the official rollout schedule for IMAP support. Some users have it, some don't. I do. Don't ask me why. To see if you have support, click the "Settings" link to see if you have a "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.

Update: IMAP rollout … Read more