How to Write Email with Military Precision

In the military, a poorly formatted email may be the difference between mission accomplished and mission failure. During my active duty service, I learned how to structure emails to maximize a mission’s chances for success. Since returning from duty, I have applied these lessons to emails that I write for my corporate job, and my missives have consequently become crisper and cleaner, eliciting quicker and higher-quality responses from colleagues and clients. Here are three of the main tips I learned on how to format your emails with military precision:

1. Subjects with keywords.

2. Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF).

3. Be economical.

By adopting military email etiquette, you will introduce a kernel of clarity to your correspondence and that of your colleagues and clients.

Full Post

5 of the Best Secure Email Services for Better Privacy

When it comes to emails, complete privacy is a big concern for a lot of people, and all the popular email providers such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo simply do not offer a completely secure environment to send and receive emails.

However, there are quite a few secure email services that offer email privacy and encryption. We have reviewed and selected five of the best email services that should keep your data safe from hackers and the authorities.

Full Post

10 tips for spotting a phishing email

Every day countless phishing emails are sent to unsuspecting victims all over the world. While some of these messages are so outlandish that they are obvious frauds, others can be a bit more convincing. So how do you tell the difference between a phishing message and a legitimate message? Unfortunately, there is no one single technique that works in every situation, but there are a number of things that you can look for. This article lists 10 of them.

1: The message contains a mismatched URL
2: URLs contain a misleading domain name
3: The message contains poor spelling and grammar
4: The message asks for personal information
5: The offer seems too good to be true
6: You didn't initiate the action
7: You're asked to send money to cover expenses
8: The message makes unrealistic threats
9: The message appears to be from a government agency
10: Something just doesn't look right

Read the full post

Why the People You E-mailed Aren’t E-mailing You Back, by Week

Jan. 4-10: They’re still recovering from the craziness of the holidays!

Jan. 11-17: Their New Year’s resolution was to spend less time online.

Jan. 18-24: Out of the office for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.

Jan. 25-31: They thought that they wouldn’t have such bad seasonal depression this year, but it’s just so dark outside, you know? Maybe they should have bought one of those sunlight-mimicking U.V. lamps—do those actually work?

Feb. 1-7: They were going to write you back today, but then they got caught up reading the Wikipedia entry on Punxsutawney Phil.

Feb. 8-14: They can just feel themselves getting sick.

Feb. 15-21: Out of the office for Presidents’ Day.

Feb. 22-28: Out of the office for much-needed post-Presidents’-Day-bacchanal spa weekend.

Feb. 29-Mar. 6: Confusion re: the leap year! You understand.

Read the very interesting article

Undo! How Gmail Let’s You Unsend Emails:

Uh oh. You hit send. Was that really the way you spelled the boss’ name? And you CC’d how many people in the company on that email?

To rescue you from that nightmare scenario, Gmail has a great feature to make sure those emails never get opened. It’s called the Undo Send feature. When you set up your Gmail account to give you the option, you are given up to thirty seconds to hit “Undo” and make sure no one ever sees your email mistakes.

Here is how to set up your Gmail account to offer you the Undo Send option.

1. You’ll need to set up your account. Click the Settings icon (it’s the one with the gear on it) in the top right-hand corner. Select “Settings” from the menu.

2. Select the “Labs” tab from the menu. Google calls the Lab features “Some crazy experimental stuff.”

3. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Labs options to find the options for “Undo Send.” Now click the button next to “Enable.” After you do that, go to the bottom of the page and hit “Save Changes.”

4. This next step is optional, but highly recommended. If you want to give yourself as much time as possible to unsend an email go back to the gear icon and click settings again. On that first page, the “General” settings, scroll down to “Undo Send.” Select “30” seconds from the dropdown menu. Now scroll to the bottom and save your changes.

5. Now every time you send an email, the dialog box that appears at the top of your Gmail screen that says your email has been sent will also offer you the option “Undo.” All you have to do is press it when you have an email you regret sending. Don’t hesitate! You only have the option to Undo for 30 seconds at most. After that your email is set in stone.

See the full post with illstrations

Interesting Articles -- 24-05-2013

Buying gold? Look for these 5 marks first

Writing Business Emails

Top 10 Crowdfunding Sites For Fundraising

Google Apps for idea management

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving

Enterprise information archiving is contributing to organizational needs for e-discovery and compliance requirements, and reducing primary storage costs. Gartner evaluates vendors offering products and services that provide archiving for email, files and other content types.

See the full report

36 Funny Email Signatures

An email is very similar to a letter - you write a greeting, a message, and you sign it with your name. If you work for a large corporation, your emails are likely stamped with other details such different ways to get a hold of you: cell phone, fax, alternate email addresses, and perhaps the company website. These extra details make up what is called an email signature.

Email signatures are no longer just for work! Show off your comedic side by adding a funny email signature to each outgoing message! There are seriously tons of funny sayings that work great as email signatures! Finding a funny email signature that defines "you" is easy as pie. All you have to do is find something that makes you laugh your pants off! Those who get your humor will laugh every time they get an email from you!

Read the full post

Secure your Google Account with two-step authentication

You’re already familiar with what security professionals call one-factor authentication. You provide “something you know” to access your Google account: your username and password. That’s one-factor authentication.

You’re also likely familiar with two-factor authentication. You access your bank’s ATM with your ATM card and four-digit PIN. That’s two-factor authentication: “something you know” (the PIN) combined with “something you have” (the ATM card).

Two-factor authentication increases security, but decreases convenience. You can’t simply get cash out of the ATM by remembering your PIN; you also need to have your ATM card.

Google’s two-step authentication is similar. Once enabled, you’ll enter your username and password (something you know). That’s one factor. Then, Google will send a 6-digit code to your mobile phone (something you have). You enter this 6-digit code to gain access to the account. That’s two factor, or two-step, authentication.

Read this very useful post by Andy Wolber.

Ten Easy Steps for Email and Web Best Practices

Whether your organization is a mid-sized company, a small family business, or a publicly traded corporation, any time you allow employees to access the Web and email, you put your organization's assets, future, and reputation at risk. Accidental misuse and intentional abuse - of email and the Internet can create potentially costly and time-consuming legal, regulatory, security, and productivity headaches for any size employer. The ePolicy Institute and MessageLabs have created this business guide to provide best-practices guidelines for developing and implementing effective Email and Web Acceptable Usage Policies for the U.S. workplace. Access the guidelines

Info-graphics: History of Email

So Electronic MAIL, literally meant the Electronic version of MAIL. What was MAIL in 1978? MAIL meant inter-office communications. Such a communication was called a "letter" or "memorandum" or "inter- intra-office mail". A typical MAIL had the title of MEMORANDUM, with "To:", "From:", "Date:", "Subject:", "Cc:", "Bcc:", "Attachment", elements. This was the meaning of MAIL. "Electronic MAIL" system - one that would convert the paper transmittal of MEMOS with an electronic equivalent for UMDNJ.

See this info-graphics. Click on the info-graphics to enlarge.

Gmail Advanced Search – Ultimate Guide

One of the main reason why most of us love Gmail is because of its generous offering in terms of storage space. With more than 7Gb (and counting) free mail storage space, there’s really no need to delete your emails and still maintaining a far distance from blowing it up.

Not deleting emails leads us to next potential problem – messy and unsorted inbox. Good news is, Gmail has a easy workaround. In short, not only you get to keep all emails, they can also be organized, sorted and retrieved easily – all with the use of Labels.

This post talks about searching and retrieving mails. The simple "Search Mail" function right beside Gmail logo actually does more than we imagined. In this post, we’ll introduce you the useful Gmail search operators as well as examples on how you can search for almost any type of mails easily via the search text field.

See the full list