Here is another take on “making email boring”- how corporate America is trying to deal with email overload. Some of you may have seen this story on ABC last Saturday.

U.S. Cellular CEO Jay Ellison is banning email on Fridays. Ironically, Ellison announced the measure in an email to all 5,500 employees:

“Get out to meet your teams face-to-face. Pick up the phone and give someone a call. … I look forward to not hearing from any of you, but stop by as often as you like.”

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Email and IM addicts can breathe easier as they will soon be able to stay connected at 35,000 feet. AirCell a Colorado based company is hoping to continue where giant Boeing failed miserably. Connexion by Boeing which was introduced with much fanfare just a couple of years ago quietly shut down its service (Google cache only) late last year, after reportedly writing off more than 1 billion dollars in losses.

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I was just referred to a great article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal by Jason Fry, titled “Stop the Email Madness!” (hopefully this link remains accessible for none-subscribers). Jason further elaborates on the sins of occupational SPAM that I had discussed in last weeks “Making email boring” post:

“Forget Spam — It’s Unnecessary Email
That Makes Our Inboxes Runneth Over”

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There is already quite an arsenal of collaborative enterprise solutions one can choose from to offload the ubiquitous use of email. A recent article in eWeek is now touting RSS as another possible cure to “email malaise”.

I do agree that RSS feeds are a great way to remove the clutter such as mailing list subscriptions and other mass mailings from your inbox and the inclusion of RSS support in the latest Outlook and Notes clients will certainly ease enterprise adoption. However, there are some caveats to consider before blindly endorsing RSS.

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