Today, Facebook announced a new system of messaging between people at once where the control of the conversation is in the users hands. In the next few months a few new changes will be added Facebook to help make instant communication more centralized. In the video Facebook’s Joel Seligstein created, he categorizes the new system into 5 major new chapters.

Chapter 1: A Person And A Message

In the online world there are 3 main forms of communication, E-Mail, SMS, and Social Network Messages (IM & PM’s). Facebook’s thoughts are to make this simple so the user doesn’t need to use different services to just send a message.

Chapter 2: A Conversation

Facebook wants users to be able to choose how they would like to connect. So Facebook will be releasing an option for users to get an @facebook.com E-Mail address. It will allow users of E-Mail to connect with you via Facebook. The New E-Mail system is based on the idea of chat, specifically the simplicity of it. The E-Mail system for these Facebook Emails will feel like a Chat session you and a friend would have using Facebook Chat.

Chapter 3: The Social Inbox

Facebook wants users to have their users to have only their friends to send them emails, not so they are together with spam and a bill. The Social Inbox will only show messages from your friends and their friends, not your bank.

Chapter 4: This Is NOT E-Mail

E-Mail addresses are to easy to get into the wrong hands and once they do, one must go about living with it or changing the email address all together. Facebook wants to make it so you can select who you want to receive Facebook E-Mail from. So if someone tries to annoy you, you can click Block. Also for people who don’t use Facebook, their emails can be added to your Social Inbox so you can see them.

Chapter 5: Social Context

Conversations should be centered around the person and not the subject, so Facebook decided to make a simple setup that just shows the senders name and their message. Facebook is also making it easy for people to respond via their method of choice.

The main goal around all of this is so integrate Seamless Messaging into the lives of every Facebook user.

See the informational video on this:

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Reviews of it’s replacement, Outlook for the Mac, and the rest of the Office:Mac 2011 coming soon!

When you first setup your e-mail client, you have to choose what type of incoming server (the server that receives your mail) will be. You can choose between POP3 and IMAP. Now granted, some providers do not provide IMAP support, so you might be forced to use POP3.

With these two different types of technologies, comes a variety of different options. Below, I am going to run down the basic things you can do with both of them.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)

Advantages:

• I don’t know if it’s just me, but it does seem to be faster than its competitor, POP3.
• You’re able to have your e-mails and folders exactly the same thing no matter what you are getting your e-mail on.
• Besides making you delete every e-mail on every device/computer like POP3 does, your trash bin will be universal. Meaning if you delete anything once, the changes will be applied anywhere.
• The ability to have folders synced up! Personally for me, this is an ideal thing for me. I use a variety of folders to organize all of the e-mails I receive. Have this the exactly the same thing on my Outlook, webmail, and iPod touch really does make using my e-mail a lot easier.
• Takes less bandwidth because it really doesn’t download everything until you open the e-mail.

Disadvantages:

• It’s not specific to that one machine; it’s specific to every machine. Meaning all changes will be taken affect on every device/computer that’s using your webmail via IMAP. This is a good thing in most cases, but it can be a bad thing if you want to have one thing changed on computer and not on the other.
• It will not download your e-mails when you first get them. How IMAP works is when you go press that “send/receive button”, what your e-mail client is really doing is seeing if there’s any new messages, and if so, it’ll only download the data from where the e-mail came from and who is was sent to. It will not download all of the content at once like POP3 does. So say if you want to check your e-mail when your on a cell phone, it will not download all of the data, saving you money on your bandwidth charges if you do not have an unlimited data plan.
• It’s not supported by everyone just yet.
• Sadly, you cannot sync up your contacts with IMAP…

POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3)

Advantages:

• It’ll be specific to that one computer; locally on that computer. Whatever changes you may make, it’ll only be done on the local/user side and not the server-side.
• Once you download all of your e-mails, it’ll not connect to the server again to download more content unlike IMAP. This is good for the user if they don’t have a constant internet connection like on a phone, and they need to download all of their e-mail at one time and one time only.
• It’s supported by every mail client and e-mail company.

Disadvantages:

• It will be a slower download time because it’ll download everything at once.
• You will not be able to have your folders synced up like in IMAP globally.
• It will use more bandwidth at one time – you should be concerned if you’re using POP3 on a cell phone).

Some of the advantages and disadvantages can be taken as vice-versa. An advantage can be taken as a disadvantages; a disadvantage can be taken as an advantage. But it really boils down to what you use your email for. Next, I’ll have a table for you to see which one you would like to use.

In the end of it, I would recommend that everyone should use IMAP. Most e-mail clients support it, but there are some (mainly the old ones) that do not. If you need to have your data archeived on the computer, use POP3. But in a sense of security, technically speaking, IMAP would be safer because it doesn’t download it all at once. If your using your e-mail with a data plan on your phone, I would look into to see if you can switch over to IMAP. It will cost you less if you have to pay for your bandwidth, and you’ll even notice a speed increase because it’s not downloading everything.

Just as if we can just get IMAP to sync up my contacts, it would be perfect! I hope this runs down for you the differences between IMAP and POP3. If you have any suggestions to add into this blog post or even a comment, please leave it down below.

In the many years of making, Thunderbird 3 is heading our way. Just last week, Mozilla Messaging has released their first release candidate of Thunderbird 3. They hope to make Thunderbird 3 easier to use because of the easier reading, writing, and searching systems built into their new version of Thunderbird.

For all of the Thunderbird users, we have been waiting for an update for quite some time now.

With a simple run down (from their website), Thunderbird 3 will have new search tools, tabbed email menus, messaging archiving,  a brand new e-mail setup wizard, a brand new plugin system, and lots more!

If you want to get more information on the new Thunderbird 3, look here:

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/3.0rc1/