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Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: POP or IMAP
POP. IMAP. Huh?
If you use an email app (such as Outlook), you’ve probably seen these acronyms before. And if you’re like most people, they can make your head spin.
But once you understand the difference between POP and IMAP, it can actually revolutionize the way you use email—and it can help turn your Inbox into an effective productivity tool.
Let’s break it down . . .
When someone sends you an email, it’s stored on a mail server. You can access this new email one of two ways:
POP – Using your email app (Outlook, etc.), you can download your email to your computer, and then delete it from the server.
Advantages
+ You don’t need to worry about running out of online storage space. Since you’re downloading your emails to your computer, you can keep as many emails as your computer can store.
+ You will need an Internet connection to download email, but you can manage your downloaded email offline (i.e., without an Internet connection).
Disadvantages
- Since your email is stored on your computer, you must be at that computer to manage your email. This prevents you from managing email on-the-road or from your mobile device.
- You will need to implement an effective backup system for your computer, in case you need to retrieve lost or deleted emails.
Is POP the best productivity choice for you?
If you always access your email from one computer, and you have limited online storage capacity or use a dial-up connection, POP is probably best for you. It will save you the hassle of worrying about online storage limits or poor connection speeds. Just be sure you back up your computer regularly.
* By default, POP will download and then delete all email in your mail server’s Inbox; however, most email apps will give you the option of keeping email on the mail server, if you prefer.
IMAP – Using your email app (Outlook, etc.), you can manage your email directly on the mail server, rather than downloading it to your computer.
Advantages
+ Since the emails are stored on the mail server, you can access and manage your email and email folders from multiple computers or mobile devices.
+ Email is automatically backed up; so, if you accidentally delete an email, your email administrator can retrieve it.
Disadvantages
- If you have limited online storage space, you may need to delete some emails periodically to avoid exceeding your storage capacity.
- If your Internet connection becomes unavailable, you cannot access your email offline.
Is IMAP the best productivity choice for you?
If you need to access your email and email folders from multiple computers and/or a mobile device, IMAP is best for you. Your email will be centrally located on the mail server, so you can access it directly from any Internet connection.
* By default, email apps store your sent, draft, and trash email on your computer, rather than storing it on the email server (as it should with an IMAP connection); however, most apps give you the option of using your online Sent, Drafts, and Trash folders instead.
Regardless of whether you choose POP or IMAP, you can continue to use your favorite email app—such as Outlook, Thunderbird, etc. And you can always access your email directly from the email server via your email provider’s webmail app. (I love our Rackspace Webmail app so much, I don’t even bother using Outlook anymore! I get all the benefits of IMAP, from any computer or device, without the hassle of software setup. It’s a win-win.)
Rackspace Email customers: Check out our Email & Outlook Setup site for step-by-step directions for setting up a POP or IMAP connection. Or go to http://apps.rackspace.com/ to log into the mail server directly via Webmail.
Rackspace Hosted Exchange customers: You don’t even need to bother with POP and IMAP. Check out our Email & Outlook Setup page to set up Outlook, Entourage, Mac Mail, or your mobile device to access the Exchange server directly. Or go to https://outlook.rackspace.com/ to log into the Exchange server directly via Outlook Web Access.
Get Into the Cloud and Avoid Data Fees
For businesses that are ready to ditch the hassles of maintaining a file server in-house, we offer Rackspace Cloud Drive. It’s basically a centralized, online hard drive, where your employees can back up, store, and share files securely via their desktop, web browser, or smart phone.
When you first set up Cloud Drive, you get to choose which cloud storage service to use (i.e., where your files will be stored). We provide two options: Rackspace Cloud Files and Amazon S3.
The services are essentially the same—but, as you can see, we waive the Data Transfer and Data Request fees when you choose Rackspace Cloud Files (you know, since we're Rackspace and all). It’s a simple way for your business to get into the cloud, and save some extra money!
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Classic Productivity Posts
Even before we started our Productivity Rx series, we were on your side when it comes to productivity. As a reminder of some of our favorites, here are a few classic posts containing tips and tricks to save time and increase efficiency.
Getting Organized with Microsoft Outlook Rules
This is our most read and linked-to post to date, full of rules you can set in Outlook to automatically keep you organized without even thinking about it.
Remembering to Attach the Attachment
No more forgotten attachments! With these two posts, learn how to avoid the dreaded “there’s no attachment” email.
Save Time by Sending Blind
Sending an email to many recipients? Use “blind carbon copy” to prevent recipients from wasting others’ time with needless replies.
Using Flags to Organize Your Inbox
Learn how to prioritize your Rackspace Email inbox using flags.
Opening The Rackspace Cloud
Imagine a world where code used by the biggest clouds is freely available to any developer, anywhere. A world where that code was a standard used to build private clouds as well as a variety of new service offers. In this world, workloads could be moved around these clouds easily - you could fire your cloud provider for bad service or lack of features, but not have to rewrite the software to do it. Imagine an open source cloud operating system that lifts IT to the next level of innovation, just as Linux drove the web to new heights.
Today, we at Rackspace launched an ambitious project called OpenStack that aims to make this new world a reality.
I want to lay out the thinking that got us here and why we think this moment will change computing forever.
"The cloud" at its most fundamental level is all about a massive supply increase in computing power. The PC era was all about putting a computer on every desk. The cloud era goes a step further, putting the power of supercomputing at the literal fingertips of every individual at anytime. Whether it's enabling a youth soccer coach to schedule practice across the online calendars of 18 families, or helping a scientist fold proteins to design new cancer drugs, or encouraging a frontline employee to instantly and cheaply test a new marketing campaign, the exponential growth in computing power and applications is changing every corner of our economy and society. And, this era is truly just beginning. We have seen only a tiny fraction of the potential gains that arise from cheap, ubiquitous computing power.
As this landscape has evolved, some have dismissed cloud computing as just a return to the mainframe era. This view is fundamentally wrong. Mainframes were available to only the smartest employees at the richest companies. The cloud is accessible to all, and usable by anyone, at low cost. Its ubiquity is the source of its power.
However, there is one area where mainframe concepts are intruding into the cloud - the vertically integrated technology stack. As hardware and software merge into services, the danger of locked down proprietary software stacks are emerging in the cloud space. The cloud world changes everything, and that is not good to many entrenched interests of the old guard. Core technologies from operating systems to hypervisors to databases are being used to tie cloud customers into an integrated view of the world.
If the web has taught us anything, it is that open systems, portability, and choice drive innovation. The open Linux system brought us a mountain of software and tools to help accomplish almost any task. And, each component, whether a database or a widget could be moved in and out freely based on the job getting done.
We at Rackspace have long talked about an "open" cloud. And as a service provider built on our Fanatical Support difference, we have never had an interest in creating technical walls around our service. But, given that no standards tools have emerged to build massively scalable clouds, we too have had to build custom software that creates some level of wall around our cloud offerings. For months we have debated how to drive greater standards and increase the velocity of cloud technologies in general. We finally converged on the obvious answer: open source our cloud technology.
Today, we announced a new open source project that includes those core technologies: OpenStack. And, we are not alone. As we looked at all the projects that already existed to drive standards we saw that other efforts were underway that complemented what we have done. We saw a ton of promise in the Nebula computing project built by NASA and are making it a core part of the project. Taking the contributions of Rackspace and NASA as a starting point, OpenStack forms a powerful foundation of technologies including, a scalable compute provisioning engine - OpenStack Compute - and a fully distributed storage engine - OpenStack Object Storage.
The community, which we plan to actively support and drive, is live today at openstack.org with code available for download.
Last week we assembled a strong group of cloud community leaders and developers to meet and review the architecture, engage on technology direction and contribute code. The effort attracted more than 100 participants from 25 companies including hosting companies, telecom providers, hardware manufacturers, cloud ecosystem companies and beyond. This enthusiasm and collaboration around OpenStack has laid the foundation for a vibrant and innovative approach to building the core software to power the future cloud world.
What do we expect OpenStack to mean for the cloud community? Some pretty major things. One, anyone will be able to run this cloud and do it anywhere. Enterprises and governments will be able to build private clouds. Service providers will have the same technology used by Rackspace and NASA to build new offers. Choice and portability are inevitable in this world. Two, the whole tech ecosystem can build around this foundation. With wide adoption, there will be a market for new services all around this core engine. From storage systems to monitoring tools to management systems, there is no end to what can be attached to the core project. Three, the cloud will advance faster than ever. Between just NASA and Rackspace, an army of developers are committed to the continued advancement of OpenStack. With our emerging supporters in the project, we expect to dramatically expand that army. Finally, a core set of standards will be freely available and totally open. New technologies can be attached. Better solutions will be driven into the product. And, the use of this powerful technology will not tie you to the use of any other technologies.
For our customers, we think there are many benefits that flow from these community gains. Not only will this help our offers develop faster and more transparently, but our customers can run private editions of our core systems in house or in our managed hosting operation.
We could not be more excited about the launch of this project and the enthusiasm around it. As a company that has invested a great deal in the development of cloud technologies, we did not take the decision to open source lightly. We think this decision will serve our interests and those of our customers. While we at Rackspace hire top developers and engineers to make sure our technology is second to none, seeking a technology advantage has never been our approach. We have our own vision about how to deploy this technology and serve customers - by giving them seamless access to scalable computing with the trusting partnership that comes through Fanatical Support. But, there will be many approaches and winning formulas. We think by welcoming those approaches and driving standards and more rapid innovation we will all win.
We hope you join us in this cause.
We know there are many parties who might want to join us in the effort, please reach out to us. We look forward to updating you as we make progress.
Looking for Enterprise Customers and Resellers for CAB 4.0
If you’re an Email & Apps Enterprise customer (250+ mailboxes) or Reseller, and you’d like to help shape the direction of our products and services, please consider applying to join our next Customer Advisory Board (CAB).
Starting in August, and continuing for six months, we’ll gather feedback from our CAB 4.0 participants—via surveys, interviews, and internal beta testing—and then use that feedback to help improve our products and services.
The past session was a huge success. Thanks to CAB feedback, we completely redirected a major initiative. (Many thanks to our CAB 3.0 participants!)
Are you an Enterprise customer or Reseller interested in joining us for CAB 4.0? My name is Tom DuScheid and you can email me at Tom.Duscheid [at] rackspace.com to join this upcoming six-month CAB session.
Can’t join CAB, but still want to make an impact? Send us your ideas, suggestions, and comments any time via our feedback form.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Escape to Productivity
Another email alert has popped up on your screen; you just left a meeting and have another one in an hour. And your mind shifts with the tide of conversation filling the cube farm. Are you going to have to come in on the weekend again to get things done?
At Rackspace, we know how hard it can be to get your work done with a constant bombardment of distractions. Here are some methods our teams use to maximize output:
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Email Time—Managing email can easily consume 40% of your day, and the constant notifications of new messages and social media updates makes the effect on productivity much worse. Set aside specific times for managing email and social media. Perhaps only review messages first thing each morning or three times per day, and close related applications except during those sessions. |
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Meeting Scheduling—Developers and creative talent require a high level of focus. It can take as much as 20 minutes to recover from a lengthy distraction and regain that focus level. Meetings spread throughout the day, every day, are a productivity killer. Schedule meetings only during one part of the day or only on a couple specific days of the week and stay consistent. |
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Flee the Farm—There may be times when you have to escape from the cube farm to get stuff done. Our developers will often migrate to empty conference rooms, guest offices, or work from home to get the peace they need to be productive. We also use an offsite “stealth” office for teams that need absolute focus for big projects. Escape from the farm when you need to focus in and get it done. |
All of these tips may not be viable for your specific role or organization, but we hope that they help you get more done without costing you your weekend.
Quiz: How Mission Critical Is Email for Your Business?
Most businesses rely on email—even if just a little. How mission critical is email in your business? Take our quiz and find out . . .
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Do customers/clients communicate with you via email?
Yes = 1 point No = 0 points
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Do you receive requests for services/goods via email?
Yes = 1 point No = 0 points
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Do your employees use email to communicate and collaborate in-house?
Yes = 1 point No = 0 points
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Do you receive important information from other businesses or organizations via email?
Yes = 1 point No = 0 points
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Is your email address posted on your website or a trade website?
Yes = 1 point No = 0 points
Score:
0 – 1 points = Absolutely Mission Critical
2 – 3 points = Absolutely Mission Critical
4 – 5 points = Absolutely Mission Critical
As you can see, even if you use email just a little bit, it’s still potentially mission critical for your business. You can’t afford to miss an important email because of unreliable email service. An undelivered email can lead to business—and possibly money—lost.
That’s why we’ve designed our systems for utmost reliability, so that your email will be delivered the way it should, every time.
Redundant Design is the Key
We have a redundant environment set up for our MX records (the servers that receive the mail)—otherwise known as MX1 and MX2. We provide customers with two MX records so that, if one system for some reason becomes unavailable, mail will be delivered to the second system. In addition to that protection, each MX record points to a geographically balanced set of servers across multiple data centers. These servers successfully process tens of millions of messages every day. If one of these servers were to become unavailable, it is immediately taken out of rotation and the other servers continue to process mail. These adjustments happen automatically in a matter of seconds, so that the flow of email can continue smoothly through the system.
Our Commitment to Reliability
Email reliability is mission critical for us, because it’s mission critical for you. We know that each email must arrive in your mailbox successfully—so that your business doesn’t miss a beat. This commitment to reliability has helped us become one of the largest providers of business email hosting in the world.
Want to learn more about our hosted email services? Check out our email hosting options.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Microsoft’s Powerhouse Productivity App
Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint—they’re household names. But there’s one Microsoft app that many businesses are just now beginning to discover. An app that increases productivity by fostering team communication and by helping users organize, share, and track documents across their organization:
SharePoint: Microsoft’s powerhouse productivity app.
You can use SharePoint for a wide range of collaborative projects. Whether you want to work together on a word processing document, spreadsheet, presentation, or any other type of doc, SharePoint is a great place to do it. With SharePoint you can:
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Store docs that you want to share. You can create a “library” of documents, and then share them with specific users or across your entire organization. |
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Manage permissions. You decide who can view your projects, and who can make changes to them. |
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Track changes. You can enable versioning, so you can store and track versions of your docs whenever changes are made. |
And SharePoint doesn’t stop there. You can use it to manage almost anything: lists, contacts, web pages, calendar events—whatever your business needs to track and share.
If you’re a Rackspace hosted email customer, SharePoint is already included with your account. Otherwise, you can sign up for SharePoint (with or without email service) through our website.
To learn more, check out our SharePoint webinars, including our SharePoint demo.
Rackspace Business Productivity Rx: Increase Productivity with Free Training
No matter the promises of improved efficiency, communication, and productivity, an application is only worth what you can actually do with it. But not everyone has time to read through pages and pages of documentation, and different people learn in different ways. Did you know that Rackspace provides opportunities every week to expand your knowledge base, with live experts available to answer your questions? These interactive webinars are completely free of charge. We offer a variety of times to fit your schedule, and there is also a library of recordings so that you can view them at your convenience or share them with others.
For new customers, we offer “Getting Started” sessions every Tuesday. For Resellers, we offer several different sessions covering how to sell specific products and sales techniques. And for everyone, we have sessions covering an array of topics that are presented daily. Current webinars include “Using Workflows in SharePoint” and “Maximizing your Webmail usage.” We update our topics frequently and welcome your feedback so that we can be sure to present the information that interests you the most.
Webinar calendars:
Recorded video libraries:
Things that are NOT A GOOD IDEA
Things that are not a good idea:
(1) Using the same password for everything
(2) Playing golf in a thunderstorm
(3) Getting involved in a land war in Asia
and
(4) TYPING EMAILS IN ALL CAPS
But why? There are all kinds of reasons out there, things such as, it is not good 'netiquette' or it comes across as aggressive and is considered SHOUTING! Although some may consider one way 'right' and another way 'wrong,' I am not willing to take this route. As a little history lesson, it is interesting to note that:
Manual typesetters kept them [capital letters] in the upper drawers of a desk or in the upper type case, while keeping the more frequently used minuscule letters in the lower type case. This practice might date back to Johannes Gutenberg.
“Capital and small letters are differentiated in the Roman, Greek, Glagolitic, Cyrillic and Armenian alphabets. Most writing systems (such as those used in Georgian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Devanagari) make no distinction between capital and lowercase letters (and, of course, logographic writing systems such as Chinese have no "letters" at all). Indeed, even European languages did not make this distinction before about 1300; both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but a given text would use either one or the other.”
So, as you can see the caps issue was a neutral one. I think the best reason that typing in ALL CAPS is a bad idea is simply an issue of effective communication. Peter Bilak says it best with this quote:
"Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication."
So while folks have…
(1) Used the same password for everything
(2) Played golf in a thunderstorm
(3) Gotten themselves involved in a land war in Asia
and even
(4) TYPED IN ALL CAPS
…they may not be the best ideas and should be avoided.
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