• About 4.5 million Catholic school students to get Office 365

  About 4.5 million Catholic school students will get access to Microsoft's Office 365 cloud e-mail and collaboration suite as part of a 3-year deal the software vendor struck with the Catholic International Education Office (OIEC).

• Open-source messaging at (nearly) the speed of light

  Felix Ehm, a member of CERN's beams control group, has always had a curious and scientific bent.

• About 600,000 L.A. Community College students to get Microsoft Live@EDU

  The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) will provide email and collaboration applications to about 600,000 students via Microsoft's Live@EDU cloud suite, a project for which it also considered Google Apps for Education.

• At Interior Department, Google Apps will co-exist with Outlook, Office -- for now

  Although the U.S. Interior Department plans to replace its on-premise email servers with Google Apps' cloud-based Gmail, the agency will retain Microsoft Outlook and Office as its standard e-mail client and desktop office productivity software for end users.

• After legal tussle, Google beats Microsoft for large US contract

  The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google's services over Microsoft's Office 365.

• Stop Facebook from cluttering your inbox

  There's a fine line between awesome and annoying. Take Facebook: Most of the time, it's great, but a few things about the service drive me crazy.

• Fix Outlook 'general failure' error for e-mail links

  So out of the blue today, I click a link embedded in an e-mail, and Outlook gives me this error:

• Using e-mail message flags in BlackBerry OS 5.0

  BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) recently started shipping its brand new mobile operating system (OS), BlackBerry handheld OS 5.0. The new software packs a variety of cool new features and enhancements, including improved mail-folder management options; auto-correct and word-completion typing software; and a number of personal information management (PIM) feature-enhancements. (Note: Some of the new features require BlackBerry Enterprise Server BES 5.0.)

• With thick skin, Google CIO finds job rewarding

  When Ben Fried left his post as IT managing director at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google's CIO in May 2008, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars, like co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and Vice President Vint Cerf. In a recent interview with IDG News Service, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs, including the urgent need for tablet device strategies. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

• Did e-mail and the Internet kill the 9-5 workday?

  Have you checked your work e-mailtoday? If you're like most employees in the United States and United Kingdom, the answer is yes despite the fact that it is not only the weekend, but an extended holiday weekend for most workers in the US. A day off is becoming an increasingly foreign concept as workers stay connected virtually 24/7.

• Meet the father of Google Apps (who used to work at Microsoft)

  Three weeks into his tenure at Google, Rajen Sheth -- former Microsoft and VMware employee -- met with Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt to propose a way of turning Gmail into a business-class e-mail system. And he was soundly rejected. 

• Famous tech myths that just won't die

  Have you heard this story?

• Unifying unified communications

  Integrating enterprise communication tools -- from telephony to e-mail, conferencing and instant messaging -- is the key to delivering a richer collaboration environment that increases productivity. But deployment and management of unified communications systems can be daunting.

Whitepapers about e-mail

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  Email Compliance: Email use and misuse within the workplace

  The commercial risks and legal issues surrounding email use by employees can create significant problems for employers. This paper considers the law and best practice concerning employee use, retention and storage of emails. Read on.