Yet another reminder for me of how dependent I (we) have become on IM for daily business tasks. Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail and possibly other services were largely unavailable yesterday due to a widespread problem with their Live ID logon service.

“According to the Redmond company, the problem involves Windows Live IDs, which are used to log users into its services.“

I use a number of public IM services, including the one provided by Microsoft, to communicate with business associates and friends. Yesterday’s outage, while not more than a nuisance to me, proved once again that it is wise not to rely on a single service or provider for business communications.

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As the readers of this blog already know, email has become business critical for most companies. That means even the slightest disruption or delay in email delivery or problems with employees’ access to their mailboxes have significant impact on worker productivity and a company’s bottom line.

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Things have been rather busy for me over the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of posts. Kenneth Gartner is helping out with this post about one of the latest corporate email faux pas. Thanks Ken!

Here is another headline story about email mislabeling that resulted in significant embarrassment and business impact, colorfully reported by the NYT as “A Nightmare on Email Street”. A lawyer for Eli Lilly mistakenly emailed an extremely sensitive, unflatteringly frank missive about the company’s negotiations with the federal government over a case of “marketing improprieties” for one of their popular pharmaceuticals. Instead of mailing it to another lawyer involved in the case, the TO field auto-completion helpfully found a similarly named person who happened to be a NYT reporter!

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In a move that may bring more business credibility to the iPhone, IBM is expected to announce formally next week at Lotusphere the availability of a mobile version of Notes specifically tailored for the cool Apple gadget.

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Commtouch released yesterday its annual report on email threats and trends the company collected in 2007.

Not that we needed reminding, but spam now represents over 80% of all global email traffic, reaching a peak of over 95% in Q4 of last year.

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JetBlue announced last week that it would start offering free Wifi Internet access on selected routes as early as this week. This is welcome news to all email addicts, including me. As part of the Beta, the airline equipped one of its Airbus 320 airplanes so that passengers will be able to connect to the plane’s wireless access points just as they would on the ground.

“The New York-based airline will offer free limited service Tuesday on Flight 641 from JFK International Airport to San Francisco International. The return flight, Flight 644, leaves San Francisco at 12:25 p.m. A spokesman for JetBlue said it had not determined on which route the plane, a 150-passenger Airbus A320, will fly after Tuesday.”

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