Hide My Email

 In an email security application, Apple has included in their IPhone verision IOS 15, a method called 'Hide my Email', which constructs unique, random email addresses.     These private emails can be used to send messages, and then responses received to those messages will be forwarded to your primary email address.    In this way you are not revealing your primary email for anyone to misuse.     You can apparently create any number of these 'fake' addresses.   Keep or delete them as you desire.  Nice basic idea, about to seriously try ... '

GMail Morphs Again

Been a user of GMail since our megacompany included it as an option in the very beginning.  It has continued to morph in ways that were often disturbing and less than useful.   Now its changing again.  Hoping for more logic and usefulness to keep the email madness in check.    My observation is that its gotten worse in the pandemic, which has everyone looking for attention.  SIMPLIFY, please.

New settings for smart features and personalization in Gmail   from Google

Product Manager

People have come to expect a lot from their email. But whether you’re an inbox zero master or a never-archiver, you want your email experience to be easy and secure. Since 2004, many have grown to love Gmail for its time-saving and security features. From assistive writing capabilities to high priority notifications to blocking more than 99.9 percent of spam, phishing and malware from reaching your inbox, we built Gmail to make communication less of a chore.

In the same way, people have come to expect easier control of their data—and here too, we’ve been on a mission to take the work out of managing your privacy. That’s why our engineers at the Google Safety Engineering Center in Europe developed Privacy Checkup as an easy way to review key settings and see (and delete) the data that Google collects to provide you with helpful experiences. And it’s why we introduced auto-delete as the default this year to make control over your data even more automatic.   ,, ,"

Measuring Why Users Click on Fraudulent Emails

 What seems a useful measurement scale for understanding this.  Its still very basic behavior.

The Phish Scale: NIST-Developed Method Helps IT Staff See Why Users Click on Fraudulent Emails

NIST

Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the Phish Scale, which could help organizations better train their employees to avoid being deceived by seemingly trustworthy emails. The scale is designed to help information security officers better comprehend click-rate data, in order to gauge phishing training programs' effectiveness more accurately. NIST's Michelle Steves said, "The Phish Scale is intended to help provide a deeper understanding of whether a particular phishing email is harder or easier for a particular target audience to detect." The scale employs a rating system based on message content in a phishing email, highlighting five elements rated on a 5-point scale associated with the scenario's premise. Trainers use the overall score to analyze their data and rank the phishing exercise's difficulty level as low, medium, or high.  ... "

E-Mail Productivity

Nicely done short look at how to be more productive with too much e-mail.  Tips, tricks and more ... brief too.   In the enterprise, my most read posts were about email productivity.

The Suite Life: 4 tips for a more manageable Gmail inbox

Laura Mae Martin  in the Google Blog
Executive Productivity Advisor

The average person receives 120 emails a day, which means keeping your inbox under control can feel like an impossible task. Fortunately, G Suite gives you the tools you need to stay focused and organized. Welcome to the Gmail edition of The Suite Life, a series that brings you tips and tricks to get the most out of G Suite. In this post, we’ll provide advice to help you save time and get more done—right from your Gmail inbox.  .... "

Business Cards and Big Data

This made me think of other 'lost' sources of data

Here’s How Big Data And Business Card Marketing Go Together

Big data and business card marketing are a match made in heaven, and contrary to popular belief, business card marketing is here to stay.

Many people believe that digital media is rapidly replacing traditional forms of branding. They believe that advances in big data have made business cards, brochures and direct mail marketing obsolete.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We previously published an article on the state of direct mail marketing. We showed that marketers are actually using big data to improve the performance of their direct mail marketing campaigns. ...

We can draw a similar conclusion about the relevance of business cards in 2019. Online marketing did not make business cards go out of style. Data Floq made this point clear in a post they made in 2016. ... "

By Diana Hope

Mail Processing with Deep Learning

This should be carefully noted, sometimes the perceived sexiest technologies should be applied to the most mundane things.   first.  Note the spread of RPA as an example.   Good look here:

Mail Processing with Deep Learning: A Case Study

Businesses increasingly delegate simple, boring, and repetitive tasks to artificial intelligence. In a case study, Alexandre Hubert — lead data scientist of software company Dataiku’s U.K. operations — worked on a team of three to automate mail processing with deep learning.

At ODSC Europe 2018, Hubert detailed how his team created a fairly successful mail processing software for a young insurance company. The deep learning system successfully processed two-thirds of all mail it received at a 1,000 letter-per-hour rate. This marked an improvement over the third-party sorting service the company used before.

Hubert and his team followed a four-part development procedure, detailed here.  ... "

Using Email

Have read many of these kinds of email use hints, this one notes the need to understand the received tone, good point.  While some now believe that Email is over, its not.

Don’t send an email without doing these three things  in FastCompany By Stephanie Vozza

You probably don’t put much thought into crafting an email, which means it’s likely you are making some potentially embarrassing mistakes.   ... "

Microsoft Teams

An Overview.   Have now used Slack for a number of collaboration examples with projects, and like it.    Will MS Teams do as well?  I do note its not available for standard versions of Office, a mistake, its where people will learn to use it, and select it over options like Slack.  Also want to see assistant methods like Cortana well integrated in context.

Microsoft Teams cheat sheet
Microsoft's answer to Slack, Teams provides group messaging, voice and video calls, and useful integrations with other Office 365 apps. Here's how to get set up in Teams and find your way around.
By Jonathan Hassell in Computerworld.

Email is everywhere, and it has been around seemingly forever. But is it really the most effective way for groups of people to collaborate on work and advance business objectives? Several new products on the marketplace, most notably Slack, wager that the answer is indeed no.

Slack and similar team messaging products try to remove threaded email conversations as a common platform of communication in organizations and replace it with instant message-like short bursts organized into channels based on the context or subject of the conversation. Microsoft Teams is the Redmond behemoth’s suggested alternative to Slack. Teams, which is included with Office 365 business and enterprise subscriptions, is essentially group chat software with some interesting features thrown in around working with documents and spreadsheets, especially those stored in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. .... " 

Google Does a Slack Alternative

Been using Slack for some time on a project by project basis.  Does I think promote focus.   Email can be very fragmented among the noise.  Are the new Hangouts better?

Google's Slack alternative is available starting today

Despite the name, Hangouts Chat isn't just a retread of what it has already tried.   By Nathan Ingraham, @nateingraham in Engadget

It's been almost a year since Google first mentioned Hangouts Chat -- a totally redesigned messaging service that's more like Slack than the Hangouts most consumers know today. As of now, Hangouts Chat is out of its "early adopter" program and will be available to all G Suite users over the next week, assuming their company enables it, of course.

To be clear, Hangouts Chat is a totally separate and distinct service from Hangouts proper, which still lives in your Google mail inbox. And while we'll forgive you for rolling your eyes at yet another chat service from Google (the number of different apps the company has built is legendary at the point), Hangouts Chat does offer something potentially valuable to companies using G Suite -- assuming they're not on Slack already. .... " 

Google's Gmail will Answer Your Emails?

What is Ray Kurzweil up to at Google?  Writing your Emails.  ... in Wired ..  I respond:

Interesting background and information about an innovator and his team's neural net driven AI project.  Good as an indication of how Google works internally with innovative ideas.  Worth readng for that.  Kurzweil is very well known, innovative and very smart.

But here is a case where I have been actually 'using' the results of his team's work since it was made public on Google Mail in May.   I would say I use one of his auto answers or 'Smart Replies'  maybe one out of twenty times.  Then worry that the recipient might notice.   Have never edited an answer, but understood that I could.  Just easier to write the whole thing.

  And must say that I am not overly impressed.  This could have been done better with a lot less resources and effort.  I would not pay for this if I had to, not even close.   Is trite a good word?   Not what I expected when I heard it called  'automatic answering'.   The latter is really hard, at least to do well.   I would have to read it very closely to see if it is correct.  If its not that important, why answer at all?    More and better is coming they say, I hope so.   My singularity receptacle is waiting. But you will have to catch me.

Face to Face Better than an EMail

Not sure of the 34x difference,  quite a bit of context involved.  But some motivation as to why face to face is better.

A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Successful than an Email
Vanessa K. Bohns  in the HBR .... 

Notion AI to Improve Email and Communications

Years goal is to improve email capabilities.  Was just introduced to the Notion AI system.   In particular because it can be linked to the Echo voice system.   Also the capabilities embedded in Cortana and Siri.  Like in all these systems, email is such an integral part of what we do, it is hard to change.   And, can a voice interface improve our usage of email, or does it just make things get more complicated?   Early indications are there is still much work to do, but the direction is right.  Makes further sense to use AI to help prioritize communications and to improve responses.

Notion launches AI to solve email communications overload
Workers spend a quarter of their day dealing with email, making it the second most time consuming activity in their jobs. A new app aims to streamline our inboxes.  ,,, " 
By Eileen Brown 

(Update)  and here is their community.    Again, the direction looks good, but it is not ready to replace major email systems.    Continuing to follow.   ...

Slack Handling Your Mail

Still some time before we get to this but it would be nice. Fine tuning the details, and handling exceptions well will be key.  Current Slack is no where close.  In Inc: 

Slack Co-Founder on How Artificial Intelligence Could Eliminate the Need to Check Your Email Ever Again     ...  As Slack gets smarter, you might have to spend far less time sorting through your messages.  ..... By Kevin J. Ryan

Email Introductions

Good advice for email introductions.  I remember someone offering this advice to me.

The Wrong Way to Introduce People Over Email  by David Burkus

A History of E-Mail

An interesting detailed history of e-mail.   Remember parts of it that I played with on the Arpanet.  It remains surprising how 'recently' some of this was created.  Seems its been around much longer fouling up our communications.

Slack as Company of the Year

Can Slack replace Email?   Just recently was introduced to the growing social network, for a specific, but broadly defined topic.  Will it work to drive focus?   Unlike other social spaces, will it get things done  (Twitter?) , without a lot of deadening overhead (EMail?).  I like it so far.  But how much different is it?  Its new, so it can be focused, but for how long?  I was intrigued by Slack's statement of  " ... "teachable principles" he wants his people to internalize. They include "Don't make me think," "More clicks is OK," and "Data won't settle any interesting question."  ... ".     Will report back with a full impression after a few months.   True ... Data alone won't answer any interesting questions.   More in Inc.com which said Slack was their company of the year.

Email as Virtual Assistant

Recently I participated in a think tank regarding the future of virtual assistants.  Lots of varying opinions about what they would be able to do and when.   Will they be standalone, or linked to your current systems, and how?  CW makes the obvious call about where they should reside.   I know some people are cringing.  Perhaps a better place to start is from search?

Why email is a better virtual assistant
For Cortana, it's inside the Windows 10 search box on the task bar or conjured up with the microphone icon. You'll also find Cortana through a voice command on Android and, soon, living inside a dedicated iOS app. And if one report is accurate, Cortana will also live in your ear, accessible through a tiny hearable computing device. ... " 

The Ultimate Assistant: Intelligently Answering your Email

In Wired:  The ultimate business application of intelligent assistants.    Could save time, promote focus, record value, link to business process.  But how well will it work?   Note that the replies will be very short, at least to start with.  You choose among the suggestions.  What are the risks of letting a Cog answer your mail?

Soon, Gmail’s AI Could Reply to Your Email for You
EVER WISHED YOUR phone could automatically reply to your email messages?

Well, Google just unveiled technology that’s at least moving in that direction. Using what’s called “deep learning”—a form of artificial intelligence that’s rapidly reinventing a wide range of online services—the company is beefing up its Inbox by Gmail app so that it can analyze the contents of an email and then suggest a few (very brief) responses. The idea is that you can rapidly respond to someone while on the go—without having to manually tap a fresh message into your smartphone keyboard.

“The network will tailor both the tone and content of the responses to the email you’re reading,” says Google product management director Alex Gawley. It gives you three of these responses, and you can then choose the one that best suits what you want to say. ... "

Clara Schedules Meetings for You

Another example of AI assistance.  Via Jim Spohrer.  The improvement of Email and communications is a huge opportunity.

If You CC This Robot, It Will Schedule Meetings For You  .... Clara may be the first AI built around you and your email.  

Cortana. Siri. Google Now. Facebook M. This quartet of artificial intelligence platforms, made by Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook, respectively, can find you a place to eat dinner, look up the score of the football game, or even crack a decent joke.

But none promise the same specific functionality of Clara. Just CC Clara onto any email, and it’ll take over the conversation just like a real personal assistant would. It can juggle lunch meetings and your kids soccer practice, to go through the tedious "does 3pm on thursday work for you?" conversation to schedule an appointment. ....  " 

Rethinking EMail. Security and Communications

Correspondent Evan Schuman on rethinking EMail.   It needs it, even when inside the enterprise I dealt with many outside people, and that led to lots of problems managing threads among people I corresponded with.   Most of the solves I have seen so far are only patches at best.   He makes the broad case with an example I know well, from using early systems on the Arpanet. :

" ... Email as we know it has considerable security holes. And of course we’re all sick of the straight-from-Satan’s-lair spam. But let’s not overlook how inherently inefficient it is. Once a boon to businesses, email has developed the annoying habit of burying information. It does this by piling up messages in threads; what you need to find is somewhere among the 30, 40 or 50 threads in a single email file, but who has the time to comb through them all to find that one essential nugget of data? We all know how this happens. Let’s say eight people need to agree on a meeting time. The emails come into the thread one after another as the time is negotiated. In the end, perhaps 97% of the messages are irrelevant, but there they all are.  .. " 

He outlines how a solution called Criptext  is addressing the solution to the security aspects of this, Similar to a solution I have seen for sharing business intelligence data on multiple mobile devices. The text is not sent and stored, only a linked encrypted image.      As he suggests, other fundamental project and communications management issues remain.   Worth a read.