We’re interested in email clients, the tools you use to access and process your email—not so much the actual email provider. In some cases the line between client and provider is very distinct: Outlook is strictly a client that you must access an email server to use. In other cases the line is less distinct. Gmail, for example, is both an email service provided by Google and a web-based email client that you could use to manage other web and server-based email accounts (so it would still count). When placing your vote for your favorite tool please keep that in mind: we want to hear about your favorite client, not service.

I’m curious to see if webmail interfaces will win over rich-clients.

Click here to vote in the comments section of LifeHacker using this format: VOTE: [your_favorite_email_client]

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Permessa Control! v6 is the Most Comprehensive Monitoring, Reporting and Compliance Solution for IBM Lotus Domino and Lotus Sametime available today.

LOTUSPHERE, ORLANDO, FL. (PR WEB) January 18, 2010 – New versions of the award-winning Permessa Control! products were announced today by Permessa Corporation at Lotusphere in Orlando, Florida. These products enable enterprises to both lower costs and improve compliance with their mission-critical messaging systems. Permessa Email Control! won the 2009 Lotus Award for Best Tool or Utility and was a finalist for the prestigious 2009 IBM Beacon Award. Permessa IM Control! was a finalist for the 2009 Lotus Award for Best Collaboration product.

See the full announcement here.

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I’m sure there was a collective sigh amongst Domino admins, getting their iPhone touting execs back onto corporate email. But the catch-up game continues, as the cool new Droid arrives on the scene. Traveler doesn’t yet officially support Android devices, although both Traveler and Android have ActiveSync support. Ed Brill mentioned on his blog that Android support is coming, but what to do in the meantime? There are a number of 3rd party apps that can bridge the gap – Touchdown by NitroDesk is one of them.

The droidStory blog has a post on how to get it working and the trade-offs and compromises of the solution.

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Cisco’s foray into email called Webex Email is a result of the integration of Postpath, a company Cisco acquired recently. The product supports the MAPI protocol, providing interoperability with Microsoft Outlook. This is a smart move by Cisco, allowing customers to swap out Exchange servers on the back-end, yet avoiding expensive client upgrades by keeping Outlook on the front-end. Webex Email is available immediately to customers in the U.S. and Canada with support for mailboxes of up to 25GB. No information on pricing yet.

On the social software front, Cisco’s new offering goes head-to-head with IBM’s Lotus Connections, which combines user profiles, social bookmarking, wiki’s and blogs in an attempt to bring web 2.0 technology into the enterprise. Further evidence that Cisco is following the web 2.0 playbook is Show and Share, a video sharing service, and Pulse a social media content search tool.

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This scenario was an invitation from Linkedin, posing as an invitation from Bill Gates to join his network. Linkedin was selected due to availability, and the fact that it is a social network recognized by most executives. This selection of Linkedin was also based on the fact that linked-in email should be already identified by most existing email system(s), and this may have helped delivery through into the mailbox.

While this particular research-project was mainly intended to document the (in)effectiveness of anti-spam filters in protecting against this kind of attack, it goes on to illustrate other vulnerabilities.  Just visiting the phishing site may provide enough information, obtained from the browser’s User Agent headers, to launch a targeted attack.

Specifically, we are interested in the IP address, the OS, Browser, and any plug-ins installed on the client. This information could be used in a multi-layered attack. We have scripts that read this USERAGENT information, and direct the targeted user to specific application pages.

An example of this could be if we had setup and tested a specific client exploit for Win XP and IE 6. Based on this exploit, we could direct only users with Windows XP AND IE6 to a specific page. If they don’t have this specific OS/Browser combo they will be sent to another page. This is invaluable in increasing the chance of exploit success. It works by setting up the exploit (Browser, OS) then, redirecting a targeted user to this page.

This case reiterates that continued user education is a key part of a comprehensive security policy. You may even consider running your own internal phishing campaign to assess current exposure and help raise awareness within your organization.

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Droid will sell for $199, presumably with a new 2 year contract, no information yet about deals for existing subscribers.  The features are impressive, especially considering the very competitive price tag when compared to the price of much lesser devices.

Cool Features:

• Android 2.0
• Support for HTML5 & FLASH
• 3.7-inch WVGA touch display (480 x 854 pixels)
• Slide out full QWERTY keyboard
• 5 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, autofocus, image stabilization
• DVD-quality (720 x 480 pixels) video capture at 24 FPS
• 16GB microSD card
• EVDO Rev. A, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and WiFi
• Exchange support
• Multiple GMail accounts

For corporate IT, the good news is that droid (android) supports active-sync, which makes it push-email compatible with the leading messaging platforms. The bad news: Droid will most likely accelerate the adoption rate of the android platform in the enterprise. Blackberry, iPhone, Palm-Pre, anDroid, Windows Mobile, oh my…

Update: I’m so intrigued by Android and Droid that I have started a new blog that is tracking all developments around this exciting platform.

Check it out at at: www.droidstory.com.

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This is long awaited relief for corporate iPhone users, since the previously announced Domino “integration” was a rather underwhelming light web client, missing crucial offline capabilities.

Lotus Traveler now provides full push-email, calendar and contact synchronization that enables the user to work offline. In addition, new enterprise features like remote wipe, to erase data on lost or stolen phones, are critical to gain corporate acceptance.

It is good to see that IBM Lotus is finally closing this critical gap in mobile integration.  Support for these new mobile devices and the already existing, strong integration with the Blackberry enables Lotus Notes Domino for the vast majority of all smartphones currently available.

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Like it our not, our email inboxes have become the virtual filing cabinets of our lives. Most of our personal and business communication eventually travels through email, and lots of critical data ends up being stored in our mail boxes. Surprisingly, not many of us ever contemplate what would happen if that information were instantly and irretrievably lost.

BusinessWeek just published an article: “Web-Based E-Mail: Businesses Beware.” The subtitle: “Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and lots of others offer these free or low-cost services, but if there’s a snafu or e-mails with essential information are lost, you’re likely to be out of luck.”

The old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true for email as well. Many of the popular free or low-cost email services have had their fair share of data snafus. One ISP even lost the emails of 14,000 customers.

So if you enjoy the convenience and the “price” of any of these free email accounts, plan for contingencies and please make a backup. This could be as simple as syncing a local copy with a free desktop email client such as Thunderbird via POP.

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Here are some of the things Posey said:

“I was fairly impressed by the types of information that Permessa ECX is able to extract from the Exchange logs.”

“Permessa ECX’s message tracking capabilities are probably its best feature. … The software makes it really quick and easy to track messages.”

“The software makes it simple to set up a health check.  …  You are not putting too much of an additional load on the servers that are being monitored.  …  Another thing that I really like is that the health check even draws a topology diagram of your Exchange organization and shows you where any problems are.”

You can see the complete review here.

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“Exchange 2010 is Code Complete and on its way to General Availability”.

The next version of MS-Exchange is expected to be released at the Tech-Ed Europe event on November 9.

David Sengupta sums it up on the Ferris Blog:

Exchange 2010 takes on several existing markets. Email archiving vendors will feel the impact of native archiving capabilities. SAN vendors will feel the hit from native support for low-cost storage. And geoclustering vendors will be impacted by mailbox replication technologies now in the box.

The most significant change is that Exchange 2010 facilitates cloud services. Web-based self service capabilities, high availability, and deeper web services support all enable Exchange in the cloud.

The big question is whether Exchange 2010 will see a spike in adoption. Exchange 2007 deployments have been less than stellar.

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