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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Only a couple of weeks left until Lotusphere is upon us again.

Permessa will be exhibiting at Booth# 326, featuring live demonstrations of the newest enhancements to our award-winning Email and IM product line.

This year, we have teamed up with Mayflower Software and Sherpa Software to host a “Tailgate Party” on Sunday, right before the Welcome Reception.

Please register here to join us.

Update: Here’s a map to the party. Given the current cold-snap in Florida, we may relocate to an indoor location. Stay tuned.

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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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Yet, with all that media noise it gets harder to objectively decide what features and functionality really matter the most before committing to a new smart-phone and the obligatory carrier contract. No question, the new Android phones and the Moto Droid are fantastic and give you just a glimpse of things to come, but the Blackberry Storm is in many ways an equal contender on a more mature platform. The launch of the original Storm last year was a bit of a flop – mainly because the software was just not ready for prime time and subsequent patches were slow to market. Here are 5 reasons why you should still look at the Storm when shopping for your next smart-phone.

RIM OS 5.0: What took RIM so long? The latest version of the Blackberry OS, just released in October, finally provides all the features it should have had when the Storm originally launched last fall, not to mention the many bugs that were fixed. The new OS puts the Storm back in the running and head-to-head against the other devices. Here are some of the feature highlights:

• Touch screen keyboard with 3 modes to choose from
• 3.2 MP camera with AF, LED flash and video recording
• Blackberry App-World (thousands of apps exist for the BB)
• Word completion and auto correct
• Notifications on message folders (email, sms, facebook, etc.)
• Multiple email account and address book sync
• Great SMS texting interface
• Media player (pictures, music, video)
• Volume control overlay on top of all apps
• Image resizing when sharing (email sms)
• Copy & paste

The Network: The coolest smart-phone is really only as good as the network, meaning – Most of the apps are no fun to use if you don’t have fast and reliable data coverage. AT&T’s 3G coverage or the lack thereof turns out to be one of the biggest source of user complaint with the iPhone. Verizon has a great 3G network and aggressively markets that difference in the “there is a map for that” commercials. Of course all Verizon smart-phones, especially the Droid, enjoy Verizon’s domestic 3G network, but you are out of luck if you travel overseas. Verizon uses CDMA while most of the world is running on GSM. The Blackberry Storm and the older Blackberry 8830 World Edition phones feature two built-in radios to support both CDMA and GSM. This is big, if you frequently travel abroad. The Storm seamlessly switches to a local GSM network as soon as you get off the plane and gets you access to your email and apps. International data usage costs extra (~$15/month), but you can enable/disable the feature as needed. Just call Verizon before your trip and allow a little extra time ahead of your first trip to get the necessary SIM card mailed to you.

Tethering: If you can’t live with your smart-phone alone but also need broadband speed connectivity for your laptop, tethering is a must. I love working online while taking the Acela train from Boston to NY. I just connect the Storm via USB cable to the laptop, which gives me broadband speed most of the ride and also charges the phone. One thing to remember though is that you’ll lose data connectivity when making calls. Of course you can accomplish the same with a 3G USB modem or MiFi device, but I like to keep the number of devices I need to bring along to a minimum.

Enterprise Integration: RIM basically invented mobile push email with seamless and secure enterprise integration. Most IT departments prefer the RIM BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) platform over other solutions because of its robustness and massively granular security control. If your company needs secure mobile email with tight remote administration, RIM is still pretty much the only game in town. BES natively supports MS-Exchange and Lotus Notes. Traditional POP, IMAP and Web email are also supported through RIM’s hosted email connector. You can setup up-to 10 accounts and configure individual mail filters.

Usability: I remember the first time I used a Blackberry, having used other WinMo, Symbian and Palm smart-phones before, the BB felt immediately right. Things just worked as one would intuitively expect, the same way you get into any car and know where to find the turn signal. In all fairness though, I was late to the Blackberry craze, which I’m sure had its teething problems too. With all their features and functionality, Blackberry’s are still intuitive and easy to use even for the technically challenged. The iPhones success is built on the same premise, amongst many other things, but this is not about the iPhone… The Droid is on the other side of the spectrum with maximum flexibility and geeky charm that can be overwhelming at times.

At the end there are many individual and subjective reasons for picking one smart-phone over another. Your corporate IT department may have strong opinions on this as well, if you plan on using your phone for work and/or your company pays your monthly cellphone bill. All the latest smart-phones are amazing feats of technology and personal preference maybe the deciding factor in choosing your next phone. But choose wisely, buyers remorse and an early switch can be costly…

UPDATE: There is one reason not to get the Storm – poor web experience. The Blackberry web browser is trailing  far behind compared to Droid or iPhone. The browsing experience is slow and rendering of non-mobile optimized pages is very inconsistent. Unfortunately, 3rd party browsers like Opera still don’t support the Storm.

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Cage Fighter – Bruce
(flickr)

IBM Lotus Vice President of Unified Communications and Collaboration, Bruce Morse called out Microsoft at the Enterprise 2.0 (E2) conference in San Francisco earlier this week. The Demo Gods weren’t with IBM that day.  After suffering through a very glitchy demo presumably caused by an overloaded conference network (hey, we’ve all been there), he declared:

“Trust me, this stuff works. We use it every day in business and we have a lot of customers who’ve deployed it,” he said. “But obviously we’re having a bit of difficulty I presume with the network today.”

“I’m here today to tell you I’m not afraid to get in the cage with Microsoft – in their closed cage,” said Morse. “And so, I’d like to issue a challenge today for Microsoft at VoiceCon in the spring, to put up or shut up. I’ll be willing to match up our capabilities against Microsoft and let the audience judge.”

In order to differentiate itself from Microsoft, IBM Lotus is enabling its customers to leverage their existing communication infrastructure by integrating with Lotus Notes and Sametime. It is great to see IBM taking the offensive and I can’t wait for VoiceCon 2010 to witness the public solution shootout – cage or no cage.

Microsoft, are you biting…?

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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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The lure of  “free” made me check out Google Voice and its built-in transcription.

For comparison, I used a recent PA message from my daughter’s school that seems pretty typical in terms of voice quality. sample_voice_mail

Here are both transcriptions.

Google

Good afternoon, this is Doctor, Diane thing was just giving you an update on the Russell Street School Construction Project. Yes, I will be. You know further with water service interruption to the Russell Street School regular water service is going. All construction on the installation of fight. I’m calling to with has been put on hold and stop until we can hook up of certified water tanker to the existing water pipes for the school hydrant protection is currently available and the Board of Health, the fire department and the L. A. T. N, O, W D had approved this plan. Once again, there was about an hour and a half of interrupted water service today at the Russell Street School. We will be home for the interruption of service give his plan put in place today to provide continue water throughout the construction price your project. I apologize for any inconvenience and I thank you for your patience. Thank you. Goodbye.

PhoneTag

Good afternoon. This is (Dr. Diane Dimos?) giving you an update on the (Russel?) Streets School Construction Project. There will be no further water service interruption to the (Russel?) Streets School that (??) water service is on. All construction on the installation of pipes in condos has been put on hold and stop until we can hook up a certified water tanker to the existing water pipes for the school. Hydrant protection is currently available and the Board of Health, the Fire Departments and the LELWD have approved this plan. Once again, there was about an hour and a half of interrupting water service today at the (Russel?) Streets School. There will be no further interruption of service due to the plan put in place today to provide continued water throughout the construction project.

While neither one is perfect, the Google transcript reads like the stuff you get from their translation service. You get the gist of it, but it’s so horribly mangled in some places that the context gets lost. There is definitely much room for improvement and I’ll happily pay for PhoneTag to get the better transcription. Unfortunately, as with many things these days Google will improve their service over time and most likely displace the smaller vendor.

Update: Here’s a gallery of funny voice mail transcriptions.

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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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