IMAP for e-mail
IS&T now recommends Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) for accessing e-mail. All of MIT's supported e-mail clients, including Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, Apple Mail and Evolution, support IMAP.
IMAP resolves a number of problems common to Post Office Protocol (POP), including duplicate messages. It also offers access to e-mail from any web browser and from multiple machines; easier spam-screening; and optimized handling of large volumes of e-mail over slow connections.
If you're a Windows Eudora user, plan to upgrade to Eudora 6.2.1 or switch to another e-mail client, such as Outlook, by May 2, 2005. At that time, details of a security vulnerability in Eudora 6.2 and earlier, including 5.2.1, will be made public. (You can upgrade or switch even if you aren't ready to use IMAP.)
To facilitate the migration from POP to IMAP, IS&T's Software Release Team has launched release efforts for Eudora 6.2.1 and Apple Mail. The Eudora installer, due for release in April, will migrate current Eudora POP users to IMAP unless they opt out during the installation.
For more about IMAP at MIT, do a web search on "imap" from the MIT home page. If you have questions about the migration to IMAP, send mail to swrt@mit.edu.
Search the Libraries
The MIT Libraries have collaborated with Google to give MIT students and faculty greater access to materials retrieved through Google Scholar searches. Google Scholar helps locate scholarly literature-such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books and preprints-on the Web. Generally, users can't access the full text of these publications without a subscription.
Through a test project with Google, the Libraries can provide the MIT community with access to most of the 20,000-plus journals and other serials to which the MIT Libraries subscribe. Google Scholar now automatically recognizes connections originating from the MIT campus and shows an "MIT Access" link to the full-text articles found in these publications.
In addition, by going to http://scholar.google.com/scholar_preferences, MIT users can choose MIT as their preference (certificates required). This allows Google Scholar to identify the computer as part of the MIT community, even from off campus. For more information about using Google Scholar at MIT, see http://libraries.mit.edu/help/google-scholar/.
InterCall now available
MIT now offers InterCall, a commercial conference-call service. For details on set-up and pricing, search on "intercall" from the MIT home page. You can contact the MIT InterCall representative, Matt Ganster, at 781-329-5873 or mganster@intercall.com.
Digitalk is compiled by Information Services and Technology.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 16, 2005 (download PDF).
