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Everyday Software: Email Tools
By Michael C. Gilbert, July 2004
In this and subsequent articles, I want to paint a picture of the software environment in which I live and conduct my work. Like so many others, my life understanding of the world is mediated through the software that I use. This is not meant to be a comparative survey of all the available software options in any category. No doubt many of you will have plenty of great alternatives.
In presenting a mindful discussion of the software I use, I hope to do two things: I want to demonstrate some ways of examining the tools we use, in order to help us be more aware of how they shape our world. And, because I am by far and away not a typical computer user, I want to take advantage of that fact to introduce you to some tools with which you may not be familiar. I suspect this will be a series of articles.
Because I have made a reputation for myself on the subject of email, I will start with that. And because email is a server centric function, most of this piece will be devoted to software that runs on a server.
Relationship Management System (RMS)
My communication routines are dominated by email. In a typical week, tens of thousands of email messages will have been sent out from our office. In the mornings, my colleague Christine checks to see if large mailings that we queued up the night before have completed. She also forwards me any email responses that require my direct attention. All our large scale outbound and inbound email communication is conducted in RMS (http://www.socialecology.com/products/dl/), the platform developed by our (now closed) company, Social Ecology.
The key advantages of RMS (and the reasons we haven't switched to a high end alternative) are: (1) We have a license and access to the source code, which allows us to make fixes and improvements as we need them. (2) It's a platform that allows staff with no web development experience to develop new online forms, automatic events, and complete online workflows. (3) It integrates the web and email in rich, interesting, and very useful ways.
RMS is a cross platform (Windows and Mac OS X), server based platform. It uses Userland Frontier as middleware and Postgres as its back end SQL database. It integrates with the Apache web server, supports robust XML interfaces, and embedded scripting.
Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS)
Unlike fancy relationship management tools like RMS, regular email servers play a daily role in everyone's online life. We have the usual assortment of open source servers, primarily Postfix, which serve as the backbone of our email delivery. But there is one server in particular that I want to bring to your attention: the Eudora Internet Mail Server (http://www.eudora.co.nz).
As readers will know, I'm a strong advocate of open source software. But where there is a proprietry solution that is clearly superior, especially in terms of labor costs saved, then I am willing to use it, so long as it is highly standards compliant. As someone who has worked with a lot of email servers, I can confidently say that EIMS is one of the very best.
Eudora Internet Mail Server's advantages include: (1) It runs on Mac OS X. For reason of support costs and interoperability, we only use Unix based operating systems for our servers. Right now that's a mix of Mac OS X and Linux systems. (2) It has a simple and powerful GUI, that works both locally and remotely. (3) It handles multiple domains with ease.
Eudora
I have had a personal email account of one kind or another since the early eighties. Like many others, I used Unix server side applications to read and compose my email, eventually settling on the University of Washington's excellent Program for Internet News & Email, commonly known as PINE (http://www.washington.edu/pine/). But as soon as I needed to manage my email offline, I switched to Eudora (http://www.eudora.com).
Eudora is not produced by the same company that produces the server of the same name, although once upon a time they were. Eudora is a side project of Qualcomm, which has continued to upgrade the product year after year. It's a full featured email client, with a slightly out of fashion interface, that's designed for people who get a lot of mail.
Although from time to time I have seriously considered other clients, I have stuck with Eudora for several important reasons: (1) It really does handle large volumes of email very well, including searching quickly through archival mailboxes with tens of thousands of messages. (2) Running on Mac OS, at least, it gives me enormous protection against email based worms. I have never once had my laptop infected. (3) It's feature complete and I'm a power user. Everytime I've tried to switch to another client, there has always been some feature missing that I actually use.
I should probably mention other email related applications that I toy with from time to time, along with ones I use regularly, but not daily. Zoe is an interesting java based email archiving system. I use Postfix on my laptop occasionally in order to send email from the road when security measures prevent me from connecting with my usual servers. I use an assortment of publicly available eCard servives for many special occasions, although I would love to integrate them more closely with my other tools.
Finally, I run a complex knowledge management system that screens tens of thousands of pieces of email a week for leads on news and resources, but that toolset deserves a column of its own some day.
Despite the rise in spam, email is the relationship building bloodstream of the Internet. I found it useful to reflect on the tools I use to manage my own email and I hope that you do to.
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