email

According to a new survey by Harris Interactive Americans still prefer voice phone communication and email over social networking, texting and other messaging modes for reaching out to family, friends and co-workers. The survey polled 2,361 U.S. adults age 18 and over.

61% of the polled said they use other technology when not communicating in person. Of these 85% used voice/phone, 58% used texting, and 56% used email.

Since March when Microsoft in association with the U.S. Federal Marshal service and security firm FireEye shut down the Rustock botnet the number of email messages with malicious links increased significantly. While the shutdown resulted in a sharp decline of spam messages it provoked great lack of zombie machines thus prompting perpetrators to send more malicious messages.

People are not very happy about the marketing on the social media, according to a new research from ExactTarget and CoTweet. 91% of consumers have discarded at least one brand on Facebook, email or Twitter because they found it boring or irrelevant.

“Consumers remain willing to engage with marketers via the inbox, Facebook and Twitter,” said Jeff Rohrs, principal of ExactTarget’s Marketing Research and Education Group.

Hotmail service adds more features that will allow users to have disposable email addresses. Microsoft is now making it even easier for users to redirect their mail to existing primary address. While Hotmail users can already avail of add a +sign and a word to the first part of their email address to create a sub-address, under new rules people will be able to add up to five new email addresses per year. Messages will be sent to a folder within your primary email.

Latest speculations in the media industry say that Taiwanese phone maker HTC will unveil two smartphones bearing Facebook's brand and colors at an event in Barcelona next month.

Iway Mobile in association with Cellcom, Israel’s largest mobile phone operator, have launched a communications, Internet and entertainment system for cars.

While the system will be initially sold only in Israel it is also planned to be shipped in other countries over the following six months.

Iway founder and Chief Executive Danny Knafou said the first countries would likely be France, Russia and China.

"We are in talks with SFR, China Mobile and MTS," Knafou told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference.

On the basis of a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets a Rochester Hills man faces up to 5 years in prison. The charge incriminated to him is reading his wife's e-mail.

Leon Walker, 33, was charged with a felony after he logged onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife, Clara Walker. Using her password, he accessed her Gmail account and learned she was having an affair. He now is facing a Feb. 7 trial. She filed for divorce, which was finalized earlier this month.

A new poll conducted by Zogby International revealed that high-speed Internet is the technology that greatly impacted the society over past decade. The study that surveyed 1,950 U.S. adults says that 24% of the respondents believe high-speed Internet had the greatest impact on their lives, followed closely by Facebook at 22 percent and Google with 10 percent.

Besides, the high-speed Internet also came first at 28% as the technology people cannot live without with email following at the second place at 18%.

Federal court ruled this week that police should obtain a warrant before accessing emails stored by internet service providers. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected prosecutors' arguments that there was no reasonable expectation that email is private when it's stored for more than 180 days. Such reasoning is antiquated today, when email conveys people's most guarded personal and business secrets and often lives on servers for years. As such, email should enjoy protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, the judges said.

Hackers accessed a database of McDonald’s Corp that contained the email addresses and birth dates of people who voluntarily signed up for its websites and promotions.

The company immediately tried to calm media by saying the security breach did not include any Social Security numbers, credit card accounts or sensitive financial information.

The new stats from Xobni and Harris Interactive reveals that 79% of working Americans receive job-related emails during holidays and 59% check them. Harris Interactive conducted an online survey on behalf of Xonbi and polled 2,179 adults aged 18 and older on their holiday email usage. The survey, thus, found that 41% of those who receive work emails over the holidays were not terribly thrilled with it. Twelve percent of respondents said they "dreaded" seeing work emails, and 10 percent said they felt pity for those bosses who actually send work emails out over the holidays.

According to the forecast made by the research company Gartner 20% of workers will be using social networks as their primary option for business communications by 2014. Gartner says that greater availability of social networking services, along with changing demographics and work styles, are responsible for the business move toward social networking services. And as more workers with social networking skills enter businesses the conventional business tool – email – will be greatly impacted by social media.

Google is warning its users who want to import Gmail contacts into Facebook to reconsider such a foolish move.

Over the past days the two companies were expressing their negative emotions to each other over who has the best data mine on the interwebs. On Tuesday a Facebook engineer dissed Google for snipping Mark Zuckerberg’s access to the Gmail Contacts API by accusing the Schmidt-led Chocolate Factory of data-hoarding hypocrisy.

Now Google decided to crack a wicked window to each user who wants to import Gmail contacts to Facebook:

Google received a preliminary approval of its $8.5 million settlement of a class action brought against Google Buzz. The preliminary approval was granted by federal district court Judge James Ware on October 7, and Google revealed the news with a press release on Tuesday. Google also took the unusual step of contacting all Gmail users via email.