Surprises from Hotmail

Image via Wikipedia//Surprise, surprise, from Hotmail

The 2011 fortune cookie for some of the Hotmail account holders - approximately 17,335 users - was the disappearance of some of their e-mails (if not all of them). The situation was reestablished today, but the causes are still under investigation. If it was a bug or not, we don't know yet.

I am not a constant user of Hotmail (accessing the account once the month, maybe) but I still keep this address by nostalgia: it was my first ever e-mail account, opened in 1996. Most part of the friends I used to talk with through msn are on Gmail, few on Yahoo and more and more on Facebook or Twitter. But still, I think that you need to have a harsh competition between various providers, which will encourage following high-stakes. Almost one year ago, Microsoft announced a rebranding of Hotmail. The offer by now was to upgrade to the services already offered by the other e-mail providers.

Related articles

• Hotmail users' missing emails returned to their inboxes (techvibes.com)
• Microsoft Speeds Up Hotmail's Demise With Pure Incompetence, May Rely on Facebook Instead (techrights.org)
• Hotmail users finding their inboxes deleted, Microsoft promises a fix (geek.com)
• How to Setup a Hotmail Account in Outlook 2010 (devicemag.com)

Medical records - on line?

Risks and opportunities. It is obvious that the on-line system cannot avoid the health-care system. But, it is not easy: you need trainings with the medical staff - from the technical aspects to purely communications ones. For example, how to be able to communicate, to use on-line portals and offer more than a simple medical service, but also a friendly environment, fit to the requirement of a new emerging generation of patients - more informed, but equally possible victims of the overinformation (think about the big number of sites where people not with a medical qualification are giving advices who are took into account, including about pharmacological self-treatment. And on-line is a place as well for miraculous healings and charlatans). The most important is privacy and data security. Ethical data management.