Most of us take email for granted. We just type in an address, pound out a message and hit send. We trust our email will get there in a prompt fashion and that, if needed, we’ll hear back from the recipient shortly.

The problem is that email doesn’t go directly from point A to point B. Your email, as with nearly all communication on the Internet, is first passed through a series of intermediaries that receive it and send it on its way again.

Since this happens within the blink of an eye it’s easy for us to miss it or not think about it. However, this system has drastic impacts for the relative privacy of email both in terms of how secure our information is and what others can do with it.

The truth is simple. Email, at least by itself, is not a private method of communication and should never be treated as such. Your email is not safe from snooping by the government, by your employers, by your ISP nor even disclosure by your recipient.

The impact this has on you depends on how you want to use email, but the basics of the situation are pretty much the same for everyone, never put anything in an email you don’t want disclosed publicly later. read more

Is email becoming a thing of the past? Yes, if you are to ask 12 to 17 year olds in the US.

comScore’s report on 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review revealed that usage among teens went down by 59% last year. Even young adults used email lesser last year by 18% Overall usage of email dropped by a less alarming rate of 8%

Alarming? Maybe. So what’s becoming the choice for teens when it comes to form of communicaton? Text messaging, Facebook and Twitter. It’s all about informal and short form of writing for them. Email is just too much for this age group.

All is not lost for email as older people (55 to 64 year olds) in the U.S. still use email. In fact, they used it more in 2010 than the previous year.

What we would want to see now is the promised Facebook integrated messaging system. That is supposed to make email, as we know it today, a thing of the past. Well, as hinted by Mark Zuckerberg. Where is it, by the way?

In the meantime, keep email alive. You can try sending me one at minicrivera@gmail.com. I’ll reply.

Email is something that we now take for granted and many of us use it as our primary communication method. Email is something that most people do not know how it works or when or where it originated from and most would be surprised at exactly how old it really is! We decided to take a look at the process of how your emails are sent and received and also the history of how it has evolved over a period of almost 5 decades. Finally, we look at dreaded spam, its origins and unstoppable growth since the turn of the century.

Enjoy this great Infographic from our friends at Infographiclabs

It’s often been said that what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet…forever. Whether it’s a blog post that has been “deleted” or an e-mail that has been sent, the originating content creator has little power to make things disappear. Until now. read more

In the United States, today is Memorial Day, a holiday in honor the veterans who fought for our country over the course of our history. It is a holiday for most and a chance to spend at least some of the day reflecting.

As such, many will not be blogging today, but that does not mean it is always a full day off. Most, myself included, will be spending at least some time working on our sites, just not necessarily writing new content for it.

If that describes you, here are five things that you can do, other than actual blogging, to help your site and keep it going strong. Best of all, these are all, for the most part, short-term tasks you can pick up and drop off between other activities on a holiday.

Here’s 5 suggestions on how to spend your blogging holiday if you plan to spend at least a little bit of in front of your computer. read more

Happy Monday, folks! This week it’s all Movable Type plugins. We have two new ones, plus updates to an old favorite.

First up is MT-Notifier. Chad Everett has released two updates to this blog notification plugin — 3.5.2 and 4.2.1. In 3.5.2, changes include:

Updated comment notification to address send after approval.

For 4.2.1, the following changes were made:

• Added check for blog_id to search_api table.
• Fixed problem with base_url correctly reading.
• Removed extraneous permissions from list actions.
• Standardized history write routine in history module.
• Updated write_history_records routine.

read more

When I first read this on One Man And His Blog I just had to blog it, even though I couldn’t really claim it to be news. However, that was before I read the ensuing comments left on the post. It may still not be “news” but it’s pretty interesting reading.

What am I talking about? Well, Adam Tinworth wrote a blog post, presumably with the intent of being humorous, entitled NUJ: “effing blogs”. In it, he shows that he’s been linked to from an internal email from the UK’s National Union of Journalists entitled “effing blogs”. read more

For most bloggers, email is one of their most important tools. Whether it is a means of receiving feedback beyond the regular comment form, a method of obtaining new clients/advertisers or just a way of getting tips for future posts, most bloggers enjoy being available via email.

The question though is how to do it? Anyone with an email address is acutely aware of the high levels of email spam still being spent out, well after Bill Gates promised the problem would be solved, and don’t seek to invite any more of it or have legitimate mail lost in existing spam filters.

Bloggers that want to invite email communication have a serious challenge trying to open the doors to their readers without inviting a deluge of pharmaceutical and scam emails as well. There are techniques that can reduce the problem, but no perfect solutions. Instead, one has to find the answer that works best for them read more

Happy Monday, folks! I’m sure by now you’ve heard the big news: Six Apart bought Pownce. The Pownce team will join 6A, and the Pownce service will shut down. It’s a shame they’re closing the site — it had some really nice features. Hopefully, we’ll see some of those social networking and microblogging features show up in a future version of Movable Type.

Speaking of MT versions, MT 4.23 — the security fix that I told you was coming over a month ago — has finally been released. This is just a security fix, so it should be an easy upgrade. If you’re using the community templates, though, you will need to update those. read more

Aweber, a mailing list service that costs money, has added Twitter support. This means that you can send a tweet automatically, when a new email is being delivered to the mailing list. Darren Rowse, an Aweber users, has screenshots.