I recently found a message from my ISP in my Junk Mail folder, with the subject “Spam – How It’s Growing and What We’re Doing About It.”
Oh, the irony. 
What I Found in My Junk Mail
FeedBurner Email: It’s Excellent
If you have a FeedBurner feed, you’ve got to check this out: FeedBurner has released a feed-to-email subscription service.
For bloggers and podcasters, a feed-to-email subscription service means you can expand your “push-delivery audience” to readers and listeners who aren’t familiar with RSS feeds.
For readers and listeners, an email subscription service such as FeedBurner Email means that you can sign up to receive emails every day that let you know about new blog posts or podcast episodes. (Of course, if there’s nothing new for a given day, you won’t get an email.) For many people, email subscription services remove the need to remember to visit a blog or podcast site for updates.
My take on FeedBurner Email? In short: it’s awesome.
Microsoft Invents “Dance-Dance Email”
Okay, I thought this would be something really dumb when I first saw “Microsoft” and “dance-dance email” in the same headline, but it’s actually kind of cool. Users of this email program developed by Microsoft Research can “dance-dance” to quickly sort their email. Sounds like it could even make sorting through a full inbox fun for once.
From an Arstechnia.com article:
The Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) pad on the floor [...] turned out to be the centerpiece of the event. Dr. AJ Brush, PhD, jumped on the pad and showed us how the team had used the off-the-shelf gaming interface to demonstrate a new method of human-computer interaction.
Firing up a custom-built e-mail application, she used her feet on the up and down arrows to scroll through messages, and hit another pad to open and close them for viewing. E-mails could be flagged using the left and right arrows. Deleting was the most fun, as it involved jumping and hitting a specific combo (right arrow and the diagonal between up and left) together. Dr. Brush said that test subjects had gotten quite excited about deleting e-mails and became a bit too carried away in cleaning out their Inbox.
Dr. Stephen Drucker then demonstrated a second possible application for the pad, a smooth-scrolling photo management application in the vein of iPhoto or “Microsoft Codename Max.” The user could quickly run through photos and sort them into different folders using the DDR pad, although Dr. Brush did admit that in testing it was found that one’s right leg could get tired while constantly scrolling to the next photo.
The floor was then opened up to questions. First off the bat was the obvious one: it looks like fun, but when the fun wears off, how practical is such a system? Schofield admitted that there have to be specific, measurable increases in productivity for a new system like this to take off, but that there were some cases where people might welcome a change of pace in the way they interact with their computer. The opportunity to stand up, stretch, and get a small bit of exercise while simultaneously sorting through your Inbox might appeal to busy workers who are hunched over their keyboards all day long. Besides, he concluded, “there is no law that says work can’t be fun.”
Say Goodbye to Outlook Express
And say hello to “Windows Mail,” to be included in Windows Vista.
Finally! Microsoft will be renaming the basic email program included with Windows and Internet Explorer. The name “Outlook Express” has caused much confusion because of its similarity to “Microsoft Outlook,” Microsoft’s personal information manager, which also includes email capabilities.
The truth is that “Outlook” and “Outlook Express” are two completely different programs, even though they both email. Outlook Express even has a cool feature not found in the hundred-dollar Outlook 2003 or the open-source Mozilla Thunderbird program – OE can edit the HTML source of an email message.
Windows Mail will also be using the standard “eml” format instead of the proprietary “dbx” format.
Mars Spectacular?
I recently received a forwarded email from a relative that read:
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter’s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That’s pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.
I was getting all excited until I read this article and realized the email was a hoax. 
The circulating emails are simply exaggerations. Yes, Mars will be rather close to Earth, but it’s going to happen in October, not August; it’s not going to be as big as the full moon; and it will not be 60,000 years before it happens again.
Sigh… I’ll need to be more careful about what emails I believe. I’m not used to this kind of email hoax; I’m only used to hoax emails that announce, “THIS [important system] FILE IS A VIRUS! REMOVE IT NOW OR YOUR COMPUTER WILL FACE UTTER DESTRUCTION!”