email

Here's how much data we generate every minute

Each and every minute of the day, vast amounts of data is generated from ordinary activities: from online shopping to phone calls, bog-standard Web browsing and accessing social media outlets.

The next time you perform a Google search, you are one in about two-million users who are doing the very same thing at that same moment. Google handles this every second of the day, as does Facebook with more than four billion things shared daily and Twitter with its 340 million tweets per day -- yesterday's outage notwithstanding.

Perhaps a more daunting figure: we spend more than $1 million … Read more

Try an alternative e-mail client on iOS

Sparrow is an attempt to get away from supercomplex, feature-packed e-mail clients in favor of a simpler e-mail experience on iOS. The interface is elegant while remaining very straightforward: e-mails are listed with the newest on top, and all your actions can be completed with simple gestures. Setup only requires that you add accounts; then you can get started right away.

Though the interface is sparse you still get plenty of the common actions and options you'd expect from a basic e-mail app in Sparrow. You can save your draft e-mails; Star (or mark as favorite) specific conversations; add … Read more

Voice to text on iOS

Voice Assistant is a handy little app that accurately converts your words to text for use in e-mails, SMS messages, and social network status updates. It is not a Siri replacement for older iPhone users (you can't ask questions), but it does a surprisingly good job translating your words into text.

You start by choosing your language from 22 available, then the app brings up the sparse interface of a microphone button to record and a gear icon in the upper right for settings. From there, you simply hit the button to start recording and begin dictating. When you'… Read more

Celebrity hacker pleads guilty to Scarlett Johansson e-mail hack

Christopher Chaney entered guilty pleas to nine felony counts in federal court today, admitting that he hacked into dozens of celebrities' e-mail accounts, including those of Mila Kunis and Scarlett Johansson, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Today's guilty pleas shine a bright light on the dark underworld of computer hacking," said U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., whose office prosecuted the case, according to the Los Angeles Times. "This case demonstrates that everyone, even public figures, should take precautions to shield their personal information from the hackers that inhabit that dark underworld."

Chaney, 35 … Read more

Teens prefer texting over phone calls, e-mail

Year after year, study after study, teens are proving to be texting at an increasing rate. In a new survey by the Pew Internet Research Center, U.S. teenagers are talking on landlines and cell phone less, using more smartphones, and are averaging 60 texts a day--up from 50 in 2009.

"Teens are fervent communicators," senior research specialist at Pew Amanda Lenhart writes in the study. "Straddling childhood and adulthood, they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions.&… Read more

Ex-White House CIO: Obama's first 40 days were a tech mess

Unfortunately, we usually have to wait until after someone's ready to ring the register for a final time before they're willing to dish on what things are really like. So it was recently with James Whittaker upon leaving Google, as well as with Greg Smith, who published a tell-all about Goldman Sachs in today's New York Times.

In an interview with Computerworld he offers up a couple of revealing tidbits about the sad state of technical unpreparedness at the highest office of the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.

During Barack Obama's first 40 days … Read more

You've got bad mail: Android needs a better e-mail app

One of the most popular apps for smartphones and tablets won't show up on the "Most Popular" lists at iTunes or at Google Play. E-mail is the app, and it's built into our devices. Doing e-mail on the iPhone or the iPad is a pleasure. E-mail on Android phones and tablets is a disappointing crapshoot. That should change.

Pew Internet reported last year that e-mail was the fourth-most popular activity among smartphone owners in the U.S., done by 76 percent of them. E-mail was beat only by texting, taking pictures, … Read more

11 ways to make Gmail smarter

Gmail comes packed with plenty of smart, sleek features, and smart users are discovering (or building) new ones every day. Here are some of our favorites:

Use keyboard shortcuts. Once you start using shortcuts to access commonly used Gmail tasks, you'll find them hard to give up. Ed Rhee covers some of the most useful ones, and includes a bonus shortcut that lets you add hypertext links to your messages.

Sign in to multiple accounts simultaneously. Many users need more than one account. Maybe it's for work, maybe it's for juggling separate boy- or girlfriends, but it … Read more

Schedule e-mails to be sent later with Right Inbox

Scheduling an e-mail message to be delivered at the exact moment you want it to is possible, as Rob Lightner showed you with the freemium browser extension, Boomerang.

Right Inbox is a new extension for Chrome and Firefox, available right now, and is currently free throughout the open beta.

It allows you to schedule Gmail messages to be delivered at the time of your choosing. Installing the extension literally takes under a minute.

Visit RightInbox.com to install the extension for your browser of choice. After installing, when you compose an e-mail you should see a new Send Later button … Read more