Monthly Archives: April 2006

We attended Infosec (the Infosecurity Europe 2006 conference) in London this week. We estimate there were up to 750 paid attendees, but countless more unpaid, exhibits-only visitors. Among the 300 or so exhibiting vendors, we saw these messaging- and collaboration-related firms: Aliroo, AVG, Barracuda, BitDefender, BlackSpider, Blue Coat, Chronicle Solutions, CipherTrust, Clearswift, CP Secure, Critical... read more »

Here’s another insight from an "unsophisticated" email user. We think this is interesting feedback for vendors of email clients. It might appear trivial to email cognoscenti like us, but it’s an important human factors observation. It’s an area where we as an industry can do a better job. In a panicked phone call, "my" user... read more »

I was talking to some "unsophisticated" email users recently. I asked them what their experience was of email in the workplace. I expected to hear complaints about poor performance, overuse of the CC feature, and misaddressed love notes. Instead, their main gripe was their correspondents’ unreasonable expectations. There’s a culture grown up in some organizations... read more »

We recently heard from BBN Technologies about its research project to protect users from phishing. Known as PhishBouncer, it employs a cocktail of interesting techniques to protect users from phishy Web sites. (Internet old-timers may remember BBN as Bolt Beranek and Newman, where ARPANET packet switching was invented.) PhishBouncer acts as a Web proxy, working... read more »

Wikis will have an important role in teamspaces. They’re a very easy way to share thoughts and plans, especially when people want to cooperatively edit them. Today, many teamspaces use hierarchic public folders for this, and wikis aren’t popular. However, for most types of communications, wikis are more natural than bulletin boards, and should replace... read more »

Email is the most popular collaboration tool. A recent blog post from CentralDesktop explains why, in a clear and entertaining manner. The summary points are that email is: Easy to understand — Once you’ve learned to use it initially, it’s easy. Universal — Everyone has it. Accessible from anywhere — At least that’s what we... read more »

Something very, very special is about to occur. On Thursday, May 4, just after 1 a.m., the clock will show 01:02:03 04.05.06. America, of course, is ahead of the game. This already happened–on Wednesday, April 5, also just after 1 a.m. … David Ferris, with thanks to Stewart Wild... read more »

Some messaging vendors offer guarantees. These sound good, superficially. But they’re not worth much. For example, spam control vendors sometimes guarantee a certain level of spam suppression, or a certain level of false positives. Or an Exchange appliance vendor guarantees five 9′s availability. If vendors don’t perform, they typically give you some or all of... read more »

Before email, instant messaging, and other modern Internet-based communications, most of us worked in ways that allowed us to focus on tasks. When we wanted to get someone involved in a task, we thought twice before simply barging in and disrupting them by asking them to shift gears. That was done, fundamentally, because efficiency suffers... read more »

We recently learned about Jajah. This interesting service lets ordinary phones make cheap VoIP calls. The way it works is: You go to the Jajah Web site. You enter your (conventional) phone number and the phone number of the person you’re calling. Jajah calls your (conventional) phone. When you pick up, Jajah calls the person... read more »