Monthly Archives: July 2011

The History of Email

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So Ray Tomlinson created the email and now the world can’t live without it. But what about the in-between bits? How did we become so reliant on a communication method that has relegated the humble postage stamp to ‘endangered’ status?

Email is celebrating its 40th birthday this year and I thought my gift would be to look back at the life of this invaluable invention.

Computer engineer Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971. Using his limited geeky creativeness, he sent his colleagues the message ‘QUERTYUIOP’. Maybe he should have invented the electronic thesaurus first! It was an instant hit and within two years of creating the messaging programme, 75% of traffic on ARPANET (the original version of the modern Internet) was email.

Mr Tomlinson was a little slow in naming his baby and the name ‘email’ didn’t enter modern vocabulary until 11 years after the first email was sent. The early 1980s was also the same time that personal computers first began to hit the market, making email available to the general public. It may have been the decade of excess but there was no free wi-fi in the 80s and offline readers were the norm, allowing a user to draft their email before ‘dialling’ up to the Internet to send it.

Every good story must have a hero and a villain and in this story the villain is spam. There is nothing amusing about nuisance electronic advertisements even though it got its moniker in the 1980s from a Monty Python sketch. The first spam was sent in 1978 to hundreds of users from the ARPANET directory advertising new computers, but it was so unpopular that it wasn’t tried again for more than a decade. Spammers never learn!

Free email services began to emerge in the mid 1990s, revolutionising the way people accessed their email. For the first time, users could now access their email from anywhere in the world. Google jumped on the free email bandwagon with the launch of Gmail in 2007.

So that’s it, the history of email in a nutshell. For those of us old enough to remember life without email, how has it changed the way you communicate? I would love to share your trip down memory lane.

Sources:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jZjsMxCqrr8/Tgd2lKZbPFI/AAAAAAAAXS8/5NonBUFkqvU/s1600/HistoryofEmailInfo-thumb-615×1012-55302.jpg
http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/timeline.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/mar/13/internetnews
http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1933796,00.html
http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/first_spam.htm

‘QWERTYUIOP’, of course

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I am eternally grateful to Ray Tomlinson and I’m sure you are too. I know, I know, your metaphorical light bulb isn’t lighting up over the name ‘Ray Tomlinson.’ Here’s a clue- technology. Telephone? Alexander Bell. Electricity? Thomas Edison. Computer? Konrad Zuse. Internet? Tim Berners-Lee. Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg. And email? Ray Tomlinson.

Tomlinson invented email in 1971, making the @ symbol famous. At the time, email was limited to leaving messages on the computer you were operating via the SNDMSG programme Tomlinson had written. It appears users were actually quite happy with the limited messaging system but Tomlinson created email anyway, because he thought it seemed like a ‘neat idea’. And what did the world’s first email say? ‘QWERTYUIOP’, of course.

Needless to say, email has taken off and there is no looking back. The number of email accounts registered globally as of 2010 was nearly 3 billion, according to a report released last year by technology market research firm The Radicati Group, Inc. The report estimates there will be almost 4 billion email accounts by 2014.

It seems we email users are busy bees, sending nearly 200 billion emails per day! Although it’s impossible to know how much information is floating around in cyberspace, it’s estimated there is two zettabytes of ESI (Electronically Stored Information) in the world. Never heard of a zettabyte? One zettabyte is equal to 1,000,000 terabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. That’s too many zeros for anyone to comprehend! To give you some perspective, there is now the equivalent data as stars in the universe.

Could you live without email? How has it changed your life and the way you do business? For that matter, does anyone even remember a life without email? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Sources:
http://www.radicati.com/?p=5290
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202497205314&From_the_Experts_Bankruptcy_and_EDiscovery&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Our Team is Growing

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We have two fantastic new editions to the SilverDane All Talk and Colouring In departments in our Edmonton Office, that have joined us over the last month, in continuing with our theme of hiring foreigners, Adrian is originally from the UK and Henrik is from Sweden!

ADRIAN LE COYTE
VP of BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING
“Eh hello chaps…”
The very witty and talented Adrian Le Coyte has joined us full of energy and ideas to transform our business development and marketing into something out of this world. He leads our small but effective team. Look out for the fruits of his labour over the coming months

HENRIK ALMSTRÖM
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE
“Hej allihopa…..”
Henrik joins us after deciding that the life of a professional tennis player wasn’t going to be as fun as working for SilverDane, (and frankly I would have to agree).
As our multi lingual BDE Henrik is excited to sync his teeth into new and existing customers in both North American and Europe, and has already managed to make most of us feel redundant in the European conference calls.

We had a chat with both of them to get to know them a little better.

Adrian:

1) What is your earliest IT memory?
Being presented with a mainframe computer at age 13, i was told that it could do anything, so i asked it, ‘where is merlin buried ?’…. my journey with technology ever since has been about managing expectations. (they had computers when you were 13?)

1) What do you do to relax?
Reconcile my bank statements

1) What is your least favourite chore?
Reconciling my bank statements

1) What five things do you make sure you have when travelling for work?
Trouser-fly in upright and locked position, a return date, as little luggage as possible, slip-on shoes, poker face.

1) Favourite sport?
Watching England lose (everything)

1) Do you have pets?
Children: emma-6 and William-3
Hates: slow drivers, repetition, bad grammer.

1) Any tips for beginners?
Everyone is beginning something, everywhere

1) Who do you admire?
High rise window cleaners

1) Looking back, what advice would you give yourself now if you were starting out?
Work less, play more.  Every person has their own needs, frailties and sensitivities – and they are not going to be the same as yours.  To get the best out of others, you have to take them into account.

1) Favourite meal?
Indian curry and EVERYTHING my wife cooks (irrespective of the taste).

1) Favourite film?
Life as a house

1) Favourite Book?
A happy death – albert camus

2) Favourite TV Show of all time
The Shield

1) What are you hoping to achieve in the next 3 months?
Relocate my family to Alberta AND avoid divorce
Gain intimate knowledge of the product
Understand how the good ship ‘SilverDane’ works best; those who stoke the boiler, those who hold the tiller and those who man the pumps. ( at first glance though, I do note that there are more people than life-jackets).
Establish a clear marketing road map
Earn the trust and respect of my colleagues  ( preferably)
Generate interest and enthusiasm from those out there who we know need our product and the care of our services.
Sign customers.

And Henrik:

1) What is your earliest IT memory?
The screeching sound of a dial-up modem

1) What do you do to relax?
Watch sports, play the electric guitar, hiking and camping in nature 

1) What is your least favourite chore?
Cleaning bathrooms

1) What five things do you make sure you have when travelling for work?
Credit card, iPhone, business clothing, business shoes, bathroom kit

1) Favourite sport?
Tennis

1) Do you have pets?
Sadly no

1) Any tips for beginners?
The will to succeed must be greater than the fear of failing

1) Who do you admire?
My wife and Ikea

1) Looking back, what advice would you give yourself now if you were starting out?
Just do it

1) Favourite meal?
Smörgåstårta

1) Favourite film?
Saving Private Ryan

1) Favourite Book?
Lord of the Ring

1) Favourite tv show of all time
Family Guy

1) What are you hoping to achieve in the next 3 months?
To learn the ropes of my role at SilverDane inside-out and acquire a new customer to our organization

Look out we are about to unleash these two guys on you!

New Digs for Canada!

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Our Edmonton office have finally found their roots and after a trying week of moving furniture equipment and IP addresses have begun to settle in to our new premises in Edmonton.

The historic one hundred year old building, LeMarchand Mansion is our new home and offers us a great place to get creative, and inspired as we come up with new ways to help you discover the answers!