e-mail - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• The never-ending quest to dethrone email

  Build a better mousetrap, as the cliché has it, and the world will beat a path to your door. That line of thinking has even been applied to the most rudimentary corners of the technology world: standards and protocols that have stuck around for decades, yet viewed as creaky and badly in need of replacement. But few old-guard standards have seen as many pretenders to the throne as the SMTP/POP3/IMAP email triumvirate has. If only someone could come up with an alternative that did everything email did but better, more securely, and with less hassle, wouldn't it be worth it?

• Google Apps, once a leader, faces growing Cloud app rivals

  When Google Apps arrived in 2006, it stood on the cutting edge of Web-hosted email and collaboration suites for businesses, a bold pioneer clearing a path in the new, wild frontier of enterprise Cloud computing.

• Email addiction: Why the enterprise can't break free

  Atos CEO Thierry Breton caught a lot of flak last year when he announced he wanted his employees to give up email, but he may have been on to something.

• With thick skin, Google CIO finds job rewarding

  When Ben Fried left his post as IT managing director at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google's CIO in May 2008, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars, like co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and Vice President Vint Cerf. In a recent interview with IDG News Service, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs, including the urgent need for tablet device strategies. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

• Did e-mail and the Internet kill the 9-5 workday?

  Have you checked your work e-mailtoday? If you're like most employees in the United States and United Kingdom, the answer is yes despite the fact that it is not only the weekend, but an extended holiday weekend for most workers in the US. A day off is becoming an increasingly foreign concept as workers stay connected virtually 24/7.

• Meet the father of Google Apps (who used to work at Microsoft)

  Three weeks into his tenure at Google, Rajen Sheth -- former Microsoft and VMware employee -- met with Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt to propose a way of turning Gmail into a business-class e-mail system. And he was soundly rejected. 

• Famous tech myths that just won't die

  Have you heard this story?

• Unifying unified communications

  Integrating enterprise communication tools -- from telephony to e-mail, conferencing and instant messaging -- is the key to delivering a richer collaboration environment that increases productivity. But deployment and management of unified communications systems can be daunting.