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omputerworld – CIO Tony Murabito surveys workers at his company every year, asking them about their experiences and expectations regarding the IT systems they use. The responses usually focus on technical issues, which is why last year’s comments about e-mail shocked him.

“Let’s blow up the Reply-to-All key!”

“Why can’t people get to the *&!% point!”

“I am in the field all day selling and come home to 60 to 80 e-mails.”

“There was just an overwhelming sense that there were no controls [on e-mail] in place,” Murabito says.

CIOs are in the business of delivering technology, not curtailing its use. But after seeing those comments, Murabito decided to do just that. His goal for his company, Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Lexington, Mass., is to cut the number of e-mails by 25% by training employees how to better use one of the basic tools of the modern office.

This e-mail problem isn’t unique to Cubist, says Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants Inc. in Grapevine, Texas, and author of E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication. “I hear a lot of complaining, and there’s not a lot of people doing something about it,” she says. “But I think people will have to do something, because it’s blocking productivity.”

…………

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Microsoft will bring its Office suite to Nokia smartphones, but the partnership raises as many questions as it offers solutions

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) partnership, announced yesterday, to bring Microsoft’s enterprise software suite to Nokia handsets brings together two competitors in hopes of strenghtening brands that have struggled on their own. Yet rather than be a clear formula for success, the partnership brought up questions about the viability of Microsoft and Symbian – separate and together – and if the two companies together can really take on Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), as they intend to do.

Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop and Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Devices Kai Öistämö announced the agreement yesterday, noting that Microsoft’s suite of enterprise software will be available to a broad range of smartphones, starting with the Nokia Eseries. The companies will begin with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on smartphones, followed by other Office apps and related software.

Can WinMo not survive alone?

Will Nokia abandon Symbian for Windows Mobile?

Can Microsoft and Nokia take on RIM?

Can Nokia and Microsoft ward off competition together?

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By Jessica Kostek, TMCnet Channel Editor

Recent research has shown that even though e-mail archiving was once thought of as being used only by public companies or financial services firms, proper e-mail archiving practices can benefit businesses of all sizes and industries.

More and more businesses are now using archiving for storage management, to monitor employee communications and for disaster recovery. The question now is, “Can your business afford to be without an archiving system?”

According to Burlington, Mass.-based 123Together.com (News – Alert), there are many benefits and uses for e-mail archiving, such as archiving for employee communication monitoring.

Probably not a favorite use among employees, monitoring workers’ communication is usually used in legal proceedings which request e-mail evidence in association with an employees’ violation of corporate e-mail policies and misuse of business e-mail.

With e-mail archiving, alerts can be set up to notify your corporate HR department or compliance manager each time an e-mail with a suspicious “keyword” is sent. You can flag keywords such as “easy money,” “boss,” “medication,” “patient record,” “meds,” “SSN,” “ID number,” “client file,” “job,” “career” and “resume.” These words can be located in the subject, body or attachments of e-mails enabling action to be taken immediately after a violation occurs.

Current Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that went into effect in December 2006 require businesses involved in federal court cases to identify, preserve and collect electronically stored information. Most small and medium-sized businesses do not have a dedicated legal department. As a result, the responsibility to search for and retrieve the necessary data falls on the company’s IT staff, said 123Together.com officials. Because of this, it’s important for businesses of all sizes to enhance their e-mail retention strategies to mitigate risks by putting into place an e-mail archiving system.

Of course, e-mail archiving isn’t solely used to monitor employee activity or in the legal proceedings. Whether they admit it or not, more and more employees are using their mailboxes as filing cabinets for data storage, taking up space on the e-mail server and decreasing productivity as those employees attempt to store, sort and search through larger and larger amounts of data.

Archiving eliminates the need to delete past messages, saves employees’ time and helps free up space on the e-mail server. 123Together.com can take care of any company’s e-mail storage needs, securing their data in a state-of-the-art, off-site data center which can be easily accessed by their users from any Internet-enabled computer using any Web browser.

Another reason for companies to archive their e-mail is to preserve data if their system should fail. According to 123Together.com officials, “Many small and medium businesses believe that backing up their data to an external storage device will be sufficient in returning them to normal business operations after a disaster.”

You can recover accidentally deleted or destroyed records which have been backed up; however, they do not meet the guidelines of archived data and not all data may be retrieved. For example, backed up data are not indexed and is, therefore, very time consuming and expensive to restore. In addition, the integrity of backed up data is not certain as older backup tapes may be unreadable due to data corruption or the age of the tapes. It is also important to remember that a traditional backup is a “snapshot” of the data as it is at that specific time. Data generated or deleted between backups will not be captured.

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The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is groggily hobble to my computer, press the space bar to wake it from its sleep stage, and check my email. However, I don’t see it as choosing Internet over food; I usually don’t eat breakfast. (Yeah, don’t remind me that it’s “the most important meal of the day”—I’ve heard it a million times.)

Yesterday’s New York Times piece profiles people’s struggles with technology taking up family time, in particular breakfast being sacrificed for email and other urgent Internet-required activities, such as checking Facebook or Twitter. These days more kids and parents start their mornings with phones and laptops instead of eggs and toast.

Since I don’t live with family members I don’t have an obligation to eat a communal meal with other people in the morning, but even if I did, I’d still be tied to my computer as soon as my brain exits dream mode. How about you: Do you eat or email first?

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HELSINKI (Reuters) – The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Tuesday more than 1 million of its Ovi email accounts had been opened since the service started in December last year.

Nokia, which controls close to 40 percent of the global cellphone market, is targeting first-time email users, mostly in emerging markets, with its Ovi email service.

It said the top five countries for subscribers were India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and South Africa.

Blackberry-maker Research in Motion created the market for mobile email, and its dominance has thwarted Nokia’s attempts to crack the market in recent years.

Research in Motion said it had 28.5 million subscribers at end May.

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Handing a victory to email marketers, a federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by an anti-spam campaigner against the online marketing company Virtumundo.

In its sweeping ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals touted the “beneficial aspects” of email marketing. “The purpose of the CAN-SPAM Act was not to stamp spam out of existence,” the court wrote. “There are beneficial aspects to commercial e-mail, even bulk messaging, that Congress wanted to preserve, if not promote.”

The case was brought by Washington state resident and “professional plaintiff” James Gordon, who made a practice of litigating against alleged spammers. In 2003, he opted in to between 100 and 150 email lists, then sued or threatened to sue companies for sending him messages that allegedly violated federal or state spam laws. In some situations, he sued or threatened the companies for allegedly not honoring his request to stop sending him messages. With Virtumundo, he also argued that the messages violated Washington state law, in part because the header information allegedly obscured the sender’s identity.

But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Gordon could not sue Virtumundo under either the federal CAN-SPAM law or Washington state’s anti-spam law.

The appellate court wrote that federal CAN-SPAM law doesn’t allow individual recipients such as Gordon to bring lawsuits. Instead, the only private parties who can sue under federal law are Internet service providers.

The Ninth Circuit also ruled that Gordon could not proceed with his case under Washington state law on the grounds that his claims regarding allegedly unlawful headers were preempted by the federal CAN-SPAM law. That law supersedes all state spam laws except those dealing with fraud.

The opinion’s broad language dismissing the Washington state law claim could make it more difficult for other individuals to sue email marketers for allegedly violating local laws, says Seattle-based cyberlawyer Venkat Balasubramani. “State laws are in murkier water after this decision,” he says. “It’s a very email-friendly opinion.”

In this instance, the appellate court also appeared to be troubled by Gordon’s pattern of bringing lawsuits. “Gordon has created a cottage industry where he and his ‘clients’ set themselves up to profit from litigation. The CAN-SPAM Act was enacted to protect individuals and legitimate businesses — not to support a litigation mill for entrepreneurs like Gordon,” the court wrote.

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Less snail mail, more red ink at post office

WASHINGTON — Buffeted by the recession and the popularity of e-mail and electronic bill payment, the Postal Service lost $2.4 billion from April through June, officials said Wednesday.

That brings the year’s losses so far to $4.7 billion. And the Postal Service expects to be $7 billion in the red when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

“What has occurred in the economy is unprecedented and it has created a much greater challenge than we can respond to quickly,” Postmaster General John Potter said in a briefing. “We’re trying to navigate our way through a challenging period of time.”

Total mail volume has declined sharply as businesses cut back on advertising during the recession. At the same time, people and businesses have been moving to e-mail to handle personal messages and send and pay bills.

In an effort to cope with the declining volume, the post office reduced work hours by 88 million in the first nine months of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

Carrier routes have been combined as volume declines, hours of many offices were reduced and the post office has asked Congress for permission to cut deliveries from six days per week to five.

Mail managers are also looking at the possibility of closing several hundred offices or selling postal buildings in cities and relocating to leased space.

With salaries accounting for 80 percent of postal costs, office closings would only produce a modest benefit, Potter said.

A hiring freeze is also in place, early retirements have been offered and management salaries have been frozen.

A major burden, Potter added, is a requirement for the post office to make advance payments of between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion annually to a retiree health-benefit fund. Without those payments — not required of other government agencies — the post office would have been in the black last year and would be looking at a loss of $1.9 billion this year, rather than the projected $7.3 billion.

Bills have been introduced in Congress to ease this requirement on a temporary basis.

Potter urged passage of those measures, but also noted that a fundamental look at how the post office does business in a changing society is needed.

Last year, mail volume fell by 9.5 billion pieces to a total of 203 billion pieces. It is expected to fall by 28 billion pieces this year to a total of 175 billion pieces.

At the same time population growth and new business mean the post office has to serve 1.2 million new addresses every year.

There are 155,032 city delivery routes today bringing an average of 4.1 mail pieces to each stop. In 2000 there were 167,470 routes averaging 5.9 items per stop.

While Congress votes money for free mail delivery for the blind and to offer reduced rates to charities, the post office does not receive taxpayer funds for its operations.

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MySpace is now rolling out its beta mail client, an offering that will provide users with an e-mail address based on their vanity URLs.

MySpace Mail will provide users with an e-mail address that uses their selected usernames. If my MySpace vanity URL is myspace.com/chloe, for example, my e-mail address would be chloe@myspace.com. If you don’t like your current vanity URL, you can change it when signing up for an account.

MySpace will provide unlimited storage for all mailboxes, and will be able to send and receive file attachments like music and videos. Users can send messages from inside or outside the MySpace network.

For search purposes, MySpace will be using Google Gears.

MySpace Mail will still have a social networking component; a mail center will provide a snapshot of all your activity, such as messages, requests, and notifications. A mail activity module will also keep you abreast of friends’ activities.

The product started to roll out globally on Thursday, and should reach all of the social networking site’s 130 million users in the next few weeks, MySpace said.

MySpace said mail activity accounts for about 20 percent of all its traffic.

Facebook started using vanity URLs in June, with about 5.75 million users snapping up names of the course of a weekend. MySpace was quick to point out in its release that it has had vanity URLs “since its inception” and that 70 percent of users now have them.

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Using Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Docs could put you in legal hot water if you’re unable to comply with a subpoena to produce documents during a trial.

That’s one of the implications of cloud computing discussed during the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section’s Cyberspace Law Committee on Sunday.

According to Roland L. Trope, an attorney with New York City’s Trope and Schramm, users of Google Docs could easily find themselves frozen out of their own documents if Google closed their account for some reason, or simply deleted the files by accident.

Trope noted that Google’s terms of service for Google Docs gives Google the right to disable a user’s account without providing copies of the data the user has stored on its computers. Google could also lose the data without suffering any prejudice, according to those same terms of service.

Section 14.1 of the Google Docs terms of service note specifically that:

YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.”

In other words, don’t come crying to us if we’ve somehow gotten between you and your precious documents.

This could be a pretty serious issue during the discovery phase of litigation, when parties are obliged to hand over documents that are relevant to the case at trial.

Another potential legal pitfall of cloud computing is that Google (and other SaaS vendors) maintain data centers in foreign countries. That could create problems if relevant U.S. law contradicts laws that local magistrates hold dear.

Ralph Losey, a prominent lawyer involved in e-discovery, noted during a symposium on document management hosted by EMC (NYSE: EMC), that European and U.S. courts have already locked jurisdictional horns over issues like privacy.

Losey warned that customers could end up paying hefty fines to U.S. courts for failing to comply with subpoenas that foreign courts ignore.

Losey has some pretty interesting examples of how litigants try (and usually fail) to get around e-discovery requirements with “the dog at my hard drive” type excuses. “The Internet ate my homework” isn’t likely to fare any better.

This doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t use Web-based services like Google Docs, but it does mean understanding the risks and putting governance policies and applications in place to ensure that they’re not running unnecessary legal risks.

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Social media platform Wetpaint and digital consulting firm Altimeter Group last week released a report supporting the theory that there’s a direct link between a brand’s social media efforts and revenue growth.

The world’s 100 most valuable brands were evaluated by how well they engage with their consumers using social media and how their engagement correlates with revenue. The report stated that companies with the highest level of social media activity increased revenue by 18 percent in the last 12 months, while companies that were the least active saw a 6 percent drop in sales.

The following were the highest-ranking brands:

Starbucks
Dell
EBay
Google
Microsoft
Thomson Reuters
Nike
Amazon
SAP
Intel / Yahoo (tie)
These 11 brands were classified as social media “mavens,” the most aggressive brands in social media.

Others were classified as: “butterflies,” defined as companies spread too thin across social properties; “selectives,” or companies that excel by focusing on just a few channels; and “wallflowers,” which are brands sitting on the sidelines.

Of the top brands that are apparently mavens, my data show that only two out of the 11 promote social media in their e-mail marketing campaigns on a regular basis (Nike and Intel). That suggests there’s still much room for these companies to grow by including social media within their e-mail campaigns.

The Gap, Pepsi, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard are the only brands that included links in their e-mail marketing messages over the last 30 days to their Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace pages.

Other brands not on the list of 100 most valuable brands have a high percentage of e-mails promoting social media. They are: Home Depot, Lane Bryant, Circuit City, Saks Fifth Avenue, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lands’ End, and J.C. Penney.

In the data I’ve been tracking, the number of e-mail marketing campaigns containing links to the brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages has dramatically increased. Twitter and Facebook have become the two most prominent links in all of e-mail marketing this year, and the growth is huge.

In 2007, I first tracked a link to a company’s Twitter account within the body of an e-mail marketing message. In total, we tracked 215 campaigns with a Twitter link and 729 campaigns with a Facebook link that year. In 2008, that number had grown by 1,081 percent to 2,540 campaigns for Twitter and 1,635 percent to 12,650 campaigns for Facebook.

This year, the number is even more staggering. As of June, the number of campaigns that include a link to a company’s Twitter account has grown to 41,399 and 41,052 for Facebook.

Looking at 2009 month by month, Twitter started to outpace Facebook in April as the top social networking site for e-mail marketers:

E-Mail Marketing Campaigns With Links to Brand’s Social Network Page by Social Network, January 2009-July 2009
Facebook Twitter
January 2,491 1,181
February 3,176 1,933
March 4,292 4,408
April 6,180 6,726
May 7,214 7,368
June 8,636 9,506
July (first 27 days) 9,063 10,277
Clearly there’s dramatic growth across the board for links to social networking sites being embedded in e-mail marketing messages. Time will tell if Twitter will continue to outpace Facebook as marketers’ social network of choice.

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