E-mail Software Research Articles

Designing a Dynamic APIC Chapter Website: Enhancing Professional Practice and Increasing Member Participation

ISSUE: The practice of infection control and prevention requires immediate access to current pertinent information and is enhanced by consistent interaction with infection control colleagues. PROJECT: Our 200-member APIC chapter implemented a website in June 2000 with 2 goals: 1) developing a center for members to share essential, current information for effective practice of infection control and prevention and 2) facilitating participation in chapter activities. The site has since become our “central clearing house” for policies and procedures and other useful tools. Our chapter website is the source for essential information related to urgent situations such as natural disasters, legislative issues, or bioterrorism, and includes a calendar of regional education opportunities. The site allows our members access to chapter minutes, committee information, our annual conference program and other materials. Whenever pertinent information is uploaded, the members are notified by e-mail. RESULTS: Within a year, mailings to members ceased. Hits on the website rose steadily from 5000 per month in 2002 to 35,600 in September 2005, indicating impressive usage by both members and non-members. Members have commented on the time saved by sharing tools, obviating the need to “reinvent the wheel.” They particularly appreciate complete conference and meeting information including maps and directions. Improved website programming (navigation system, secure balloting, surveys, etc.) has enhanced value and member satisfaction. LESSONS LEARNED: Process of transitioning from paper/pencil to computer technology is challenging and requires commitment. Frequent encouragement by leaders to use the website is key to acceptance. A knowledgeable, dedicated, and paid professional webmaster is essential. Photos increase interest. Website satisfaction assessment is critical to improvement. E-mail software enhances communication, website utilization, and timeliness of access. Members who use the website feel more connected and involved. ISSUE: The practice of infection control and prevention requires immediate access to current pertinent information and is enhanced by consistent interaction with infection control colleagues. PROJECT: Our 200-member APIC chapter implemented a website in June 2000 with 2 goals: 1) developing a center for members to share essential, current information for effective practice of infection control and prevention and 2) facilitating participation in chapter activities. The site has since become our “central clearing house” for policies and procedures and other useful tools. Our chapter website is the source for essential information related to urgent situations such as natural disasters, legislative issues, or bioterrorism, and includes a calendar of regional education opportunities. The site allows our members access to chapter minutes, committee information, our annual conference program and other materials. Whenever pertinent information is uploaded, the members are notified by e-mail. RESULTS: Within a year, mailings to members ceased. Hits on the website rose steadily from 5000 per month in 2002 to 35,600 in September 2005, indicating impressive usage by both members and non-members. Members have commented on the time saved by sharing tools, obviating the need to “reinvent the wheel.” They particularly appreciate complete conference and meeting information including maps and directions. Improved website programming (navigation system, secure balloting, surveys, etc.) has enhanced value and member satisfaction. LESSONS LEARNED: Process of transitioning from paper/pencil to computer technology is challenging and requires commitment. Frequent encouragement by leaders to use the website is key to acceptance. A knowledgeable, dedicated, and paid professional webmaster is essential. Photos increase interest. Website satisfaction assessment is critical to improvement. E-mail software enhances communication, website utilization, and timeliness of access. Members who use the website feel more connected and involved.

Law & Psychiatry: Legal Concerns for Psychiatrists Who Maintain Web Sites

Law & Psychiatry: Legal Concerns for Psychiatrists Who Maintain Web Sites

A cellular telephone-based application for skin-grading to support cosmetic sales

We have developed a sales-support system for door-to-door sales of cosmetics based on a system called Skin-Expert, a skin-image grading service that includes analysis and diagnosis. Skin-Expert analyzes a customer's current skin quality from a picture of the skin. Several parameters are extracted by image processing, and the skin grading is done by rules generated by data mining from a baseline of grades given by human skin-care experts. Communication with the Skin-Expert is through a cellular telephone with a camera, using e-mail software and a Web browser. Salespeople photograph the customer's skin using the camera in a standard cellular telephone and then send an e-mail message that includes the picture as an attachment to our analysis system. Other parameters associated with the customer (for example, age and gender) are included in the body of the message. The picture is analyzed by our skin-grading system, and the results are made available as a page in HTML format on a customer-accessible Web site. An e-mail is sent when the results are available, usually within minutes. Salespeople check the results by using a Web browser on their cellular telephones. The output not only provides a grading result but also gives recommendations for the care and cosmetics that are most suitable for the customer. Our system integrates cellular communication, Web technology, computer analysis, data mining, and an expert system. Though salespeople use only a cellular telephone with very little computing power as the front end, they can take advantage of intelligent services such as computer grading and data mining. The salespeople do not need to think about what is running in the background, and there is no requirement that end users have any special hardware.

Protect and survive [software security

When the Morris worm surfaced in 1988 and infected many servers on the Internet, it revealed a serious flaw in several pieces of software including the sendmail email software. The curious thing is that exploits used by the worm's creator to help it burrow into the host system are still being used today against software that has too many security flaws. The result is that applications developers are now having to think like hackers to ensure that the software they write is not vulnerable to attack as companies try to combat the speed with which new exploits are being found. There are many forms of attack but, according to market analyst group Gartner, 75% of the hacker attacks today are at the application level. And 97% of more than 300 Websites audited were found vulnerable to Web application attack. Because the applications represent the weak link in the chain in terms of technical security-the vulnerabilities presented by users inadvertently installing Trojans and disclosing their passwords to fake login pages are another thing altogether-firewalls and secure sockets layer encryption do not help a great deal when dealing with a determined hacker. The vast majority of security holes in software results from design or programming errors that allow an attacker to direct a program's execution to an arbitrary memory location.

An e-mail programme for mentally impaired persons

The ALDICT project (1998-2001) from TIDE programme (Access of Persons with Learning Disabilities to Information and Communication Technologies) had as primary goal to create and develop an e-mail programme for people with mental impairment (MI) using different graphic signs communication systems. Simplified e-mail software was developed, using graphic symbols to enable MI persons to communicate with people using different graphic sign systems or the Roman alphabet without having to perform complex tasks required by regular e-mail software. Moreover, the e-mail allows MI users to communicate with people from different countries without knowing their native language (the programme allows the automatic translation of the words written with the roman alphabet that normally follows the sign graphic symbols as well as the change between the different graphic sign systems used). As a general conclusion we can say that the e-mail programme developed may be regarded as a good tool to teach MI students to communicate with graphic signs and to increase their communication skills and social networks. However, some improvements are still required.

In the news - Automated bug tracking: the promise and the pitfalls

Bug tacking systems give developers a unique and clear view into user's everyday product experiences. Adding some analysis and software teams can efficiently improve product quality. It's hard to tell precisely how well the error reporting system working, but this seems to be a bug weapon that has landed a permanent spot in microsoft's arsenal. Automated bug tracking, combined with reporting, plays a key role for developers at the Mozilla Foundations, best known for its open source Web browser and email software. The sparse, random sampling approach produces enough data for the team to do what it call statistical debugging-bug detection through analysis.

Secure e-Mail Application Software for Government in Indonesia

Exchanging information using e-mail brings a good deal of vulnerabil- ity that can be exploited by an unauthorized third party for individual or organiza- tional purposes. This is quite probable since e-mail systems are designed to provide a straightforward and fast way of information delivery without considering the se- curity of information. Prior to applying any specific security solution, an organiza- tion has to consider system characteristics and the existing problems through evaluation of security needs and faced risks. An approach that can be used to de- termine the security needs of an organization is risk management. Risk analysis can aid the organization in identifying the risks, why there can be a risk, to determine priorities and create prevention strategy to reduce the risks. In this article, the au- thors discuss the development of secure e-mail software. E-mail protection is ac- complished using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to protect the communication be- tween the web server and the local computer, encrypting e-mail messages with combination of public and symmetric key encryption, dynamic encryption key and adding a digital signature. The experimental results show that the software can be used to protect information exchange and can reduce such security threats as eaves- dropping, identity theft, false message, message modification and repudiation. Us- ing encryption expands the size of the e-mail message to 161.96% from the actual size and the time required for encryption process is increased with 3.68%.

Help Secure the Future Of Psychiatric Research

Help Secure the Future Of Psychiatric Research

Information technology in inter-organisational knowledge management: the case of law firm clients in Norway

Law firms represent corporate clients by providing specialised legal services. The inter-organisational knowledge management between a law firm and its clients increasingly finds support in information technology. This paper reports research results based on a survey of law firm clients in Norway. While information technologies such as e-mail, wordprocessing, spreadsheet, groupware and presentation software are used quite extensively, internet-based services such as law firms' online legal services on extranets are emerging.

Reducing the effect of email interruptions on employees

It is generally assumed that because it is not necessary to react to email messages when they arrive, employees will read their messages in their own time with minimum interruption to their work. This research has shown that email messages do have some disruptive effect by interrupting the user. Employees at the Danwood Group in the UK were monitored to see how they used email. It was found that most employees had their email software check for incoming messages every 5 min and responded to the arrival of a message within 6 s. A recovery time between finishing reading the email and returning to normal work also existed though it was shorter than published recovery times for a telephone interrupt. This analysis has suggested that a number of methods can be employed to reduce this interrupt effect. Employee training, changing the settings and modes of using the email software and the introduction of a one line email facility are all shown to have beneficial effects. This has led to a series of recommendations that will enable the Danwood Group to make better use of email communication and increase employee effectiveness.

An integrated approach for managing cladding construction in high-rise buildings

The cladding for high-rise office buildings, often in panel form, has gained increasing popularity in the past two decades. Due to the large number of the cladding panels and brackets and their types, the in-batch arrival of the materials in the warehouse and the delivery from the warehouse to the construction site, it is a rather complex and tedious work to manage cladding construction up to now. This study focuses on developing an integrated approach to facilitating efficient and effective management of cladding construction. According to the approach, two application programs are developed for the construction site management and the warehouse control, respectively, and integrated with e-mail software to form a system. By the system, the cladding materials are identified semi-automatically from the shop drawing files and their attributes such as position and arrival state are stored in a relational database in the construction site. The arrival information of the materials is input or imported and stored in a relational database in the warehouse and the incremental part of the information in the database is sent through e-mail to the construction site management to update the database in the construction site. A prototype system has been developed and it was verified through a large building project. The approach was proved to be more practical, efficient and effective than the current practice.

Advanced internet search tips; useful utilities and attractive add-ins

In the previous installment of this column, the basics of Internet searching were explored. The coverage included comments related to Common Browser packages and simple methods of conducting a search through initial steps in establishing and setting search criteria. The characteristics and usefulness of Web-located search portals, such as search engines, search directories, metasearchers, specialty search engines, and expert or topic-specific sites were also covered. The user was reminded that each search site is optimized for the retrieval of information based on the preferences of the site’s creator. Generally, this is a helpful concept until the user’s needs and concepts of relevancy of search hits differ from that ordered by the individual sites. In addition to this potential to retrieve less than a perfect match for each particular query, the time of the user must be invested to allow transfer of data from the Internet site to a protected site on the user’s computer that will allow the downloaded information to be examined for potentially harmful or malicious content, such as computer viruses, before the material is opened. Switching between different search sites can also consume valuable time. A final problem to the casual user of various search sites is the abundance of the information retrieved. This can make the processing and sifting of data into a form that is both manageable and useful to the end user a daunting task. Powertools are available to allow the casual user to go beyond the limitations of simple search engines. Enter the search utility programs, which are programs specifically designed to provide in addition to basic search capabilities, the ability to automate the onerous tasks of organizing the information found on the Internet, saving search results to specific custom folders, sorting references or entries, fixing broken links, or even changing the format of collected information into a form that may be manipulated or converted into other projects. Four robust and readily available search utilities are Copernic 2000 version 4.5, Atomica, Flyswat, and WebWasher. Copernic 2000 version 4.5 is available as a free download at http:// www.copernic.com/products/free/. It will allow the user to simultaneously connect to multiple search sites of the user’s choice and combine the output into 1 resultant query. The query interface is simple and allows the user to use plain text questions and search for phrases, all, or selected words. It has an extensive set of tools that rank sort and order results by relevancy, remove duplicate hits, and allow indexing of results by keywords The search reports may be exported in various file types, including HTML, Text, XML, Comma Separated, or dBASE formats. The results obtained may be saved to user-defined folders, the results e-mailed, and broken links validated and eliminated. Higher rated versions are available for a fee, which allow the user to work with greater numbers of specialized and general search engines and have more robust filtering and editing tools. Atomica (previously know as GuruNet) is also available as a free download at http://www.atomica.com/. The strength of this utility is its ability to find references, definitions, and Internet links to any word displayed on the screen of your computer. It works with browser packages, word processors, as well as e-mail packages. After you locate a word of interest, hold the Alt key and click on that word in your application. A compact window will display related links as well as other information pertinent to the item. For example, selecting a city name will return encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions, and traffic and weather information. Flyswat is another free product that is available at http:// www.flyswat.com/. Similar to Atomica, it will provide the ability to search on specific words within an application or document. As an example, if you click on an area code, the program tells you the code’s location and gives you access to maps and directions; words and names bring up encyclopedia entries and definitions. The user should be wary of hidden dangers within the free price. Similar to the annoying buzz of the insect a flyswatter was designed to eliminate, Flyswat was designed to annoy users by eliminating a portion of their privacy. The use of Flyswat automatically sends a copy of each and every webpage viewed back to the Flyswat company server. Webwasher is an interesting utility available as a free download at http://www.webwasher.com/ to educational and university users. The strength of this utility rests in its ability to literally wash away most annoying banner advertisements as well as cookies. As advertisements are usually not displayed, your browsing sessions proceed more quickly. Its use requires the use of a proxy server, but the setup is quick and easy to set up. Add-Ins are available for use with most word processors to assist the scientific writer. The most popular of these products

Eliminating E-mail Clutter

E-mail is a very important element in our workplace these days, but it can be overwhelming and an additional source of stress. A well-organized office must also address the way we communicate through the Internet and e-mail. Some useful strategies are discussed for organizing e-mail, monitoring discussion lists, avoiding duplication of office communications, documents and procedures in print and electronic formats, and deciding what to keep or delete. The strategies of knowing when not to use e-mail, setting priorities and keeping a balance between workplace and home use of e-mail are discussed as well. Other issues such as net etiquette and security and privacy issues are commented upon and some recommendations given. The focus is on general capabilities of most e-mail systems rather than specific email software and examples relevant to serials work are given.

About hobgoblins and @ signs

Philip A. Shea of Alexandria, Va., was dismayed by what he perceived as a flagrant disregard of consistency in IEEE Spectrum. Shea's indictment was leveled at the January 2001 issue. On page 68 he found three ways of writing measurements and values. "500 Gb/s, 10-Gb/s, and 128MB are in the first full paragraph on the page," noted Shea. "Scanning through the magazine, I saw that a dash, a space, and no space were used seemingly randomly. I don't want to nitpick such a fine publication, but what does your style guide say?" Acording to Spectrum's style chief all three ways of writing the measurements are valid. In the first two cases, the way the value is written (hyphen or space) depends on which part of speech the value assumes. When it comes to binary-multiples of numbers, both space and hyphen go out the window, regardless of the entity's grammatical status. The goal is to differentiate 1000 from 1024, where k and K, respectively, are used without spaces. Regarding current e-mail address structure, the use of the @ in e-mail addresses was the brainchild of Ray Tomlinson in 1972. As documented by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon in Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the Origins of the Internet (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998), Tomlinson wrote much of the basic e-mail software for Arpanet, the predecessor of today's Internet. He needed a character to separate the user's name from the rest of the address, but it had to be something that wasn't part of a person's name. Deciding to settle on one of the punctuation marks, he said, "I got there first so I got to choose any punctuation I wanted."

Presents you may want to read as well

Years ago my father bought me a train set for Christmas, which he then monopolized. It was ostensibly bought for me, but in reality for himself. I thought of this when reading the Usborne Guide to e-mail, which is a clear, well-writtenaccount of how to use Outlook Express and six other e-mail packages. My co-reviewers Chris and Juliette (both aged 11) read this with interest, Chris saying that it was good and that he had learnt “one or two new things, although most of the stuff we have done in school”. And there is the point: it contains little that most British children will not meet at school — but a lot that their less computer-literate parents will not know. Conclusion: pretend to buy this for your children — but read it yourself. (age 10+)

Using a Computer as an Environmental Facilitator to Promote Post-Head Injury Social Role Resumption

The purpose of this case study was to determine if an adult man with traumatic brain injury could use a computer as an environmental facilitator to assume adult social roles post-injury. The participant received four months of intervention in which (a) modifications to the computer's internal system, monitor, and keyboard were made, (b) the participant received instruction in adapted word processing and e-mail packages, and (c) the participant was provided with computer-related activities that were designed to enhance his participation in desired social roles. Participant observation and qualitative interview methods were used as data collection and analysis processes. As a result of his participation in the intervention, the participant was able to (a) re-establish his roles as a brother and an adult son, (b) develop and maintain an extended family of others beyond his family of origin, and (c) create a more satisfying adult work role that has brought greater meaning to his post-injury life.

Trials of wireless, secure electronic mail

The US Department of Defense (DOD) is a large user of both e-mail and security services. The introduction of commercial wireless communications and networks, and the recognition by industry of the need for security has provided the opportunity for development and trials of a wireless, secure e-mail service. The Center for Systems Engineering at the Defense Information Systems Agency has developed this capability and conducted trials with a small community of DOD users who have requirements for mobility in the workplace. These trials have introduced DOD approved security into commercial wireless data networks, and have inserted advanced technology into the hands of DOD users. The objective of these trials was to validate the system design, evaluate performance and utilization, and obtain user feedback. To realize a broad-based trial, the authors selected multiple wireless services, e-mail packages, security packages, and mobile computers, which were integrated in various combinations to meet user needs and allow a thorough trial. Both packet radio (RAM and ARDIS) and cellular digital packet data (CDPD) services were employed for the wireless connection of the mobile unit to a mail server on the user's local area network (LAN). Two commercial e-mail packages (LOTUS CC:Mail and Microsoft Mail) were integrated with the wireless service and with the security packages. Two security packages were used, one based on commercial software (SecretAgent) and the other based on a PCMCIA card (FORTEZZA) developed by the National Security Agency.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Electronic mail: case study in task-oriented restructuring of application domain

Most electronic mail (e-mail) software consists of a mail delivery system and a user interface. One problem with current e-mail systems is that the user interface represents only a very thin layer on top of the delivery system. Studies have shown a wide level of diversity in the ways people work with e-mail systems and a wide range of tasks for which it is used. This work shows the need for powerful tools to facilitate the restructuring of the e-mail domain to support users. In particular, the tools must be suitable for use by a variety of users who are not computer specialists. Perspectives on electronic mail are briefly reviewed and an empirical study described which provides a basis for derivation of the higher-level concepts invoked and tasks undertaken by a range of users. The notion of a conceptual workspace is introduced as a framework for user-driven restructuring and processing of components of an application domain. An instance of the framework is described in the form of a tool for dynamic restructuring of canonical e-mail components to form higher-level task-oriented constructs identified in the empirical study. The power and generality of this approach is illustrated by the ability of the tool to support other subsequently identified electronic communication tasks, in particular, the design, administration and analysis of online questionnaires for a large-scale usability evaluation study.

Some tools for the diffusion of biomedical information using research networks.

Research and academic computer networks provide e-mail and other services to all members of participating institutions. Their usage by biomedical researchers and clinicians is still limited because of several reasons, including limited awareness of the available network resources. An increased use of these networks within the biomedical community would allow fast, effective communications and convenient remote access to information sources. As an example and pilot study, we prepared two network tools to make some information services maintained by our institution also accessible through e-mail. Both tools were implemented using PMDF e-mail software on a DEC MicroVAX connected to the Italian academic and research network (GARR), which is linked to the U.S. Internet. A network server takes care of automatic distribution of documents (files) reporting results of an oncology research/education project. An information server provides for semiautomated support of a consulting service on use of drugs. The feasibility of implementing these tools, based on existing software, further illustrates the potential usefulness of research computer networks for the dissemination of biomedical information.