askSam for Email Archiving

by Jim Carroll

In a nutshell -- I've been online since 1982. I've kept email since 1984....several hundred thousand messages. (I figure there is a book in there somewhere!)

All of this email is indexed and referenced with askSam -- and this has become my most important productivity tool bar none. askSam works with the hundreds of thousands of email messages in my archive in a flash -- with the result that my database of messages has become, in a way, a unique customer support tool. I often have situations where I might be dealing with a person, and I can refresh my experience in a flash, which makes me very effective; or I might be asked to keynote a particular industry conference, and I can instantly dig out a list of previous similar events and comments from those events...

How big is the archive? I can tell you that just from the period 1998 to today, there are 58,717 messages. (I maintain a "most recent" message file, as well as a larger file of all). It takes maybe a 10th of a second for askSam to return me a list of any messages meeting my search criteria.

I think that *any* organization out there thinking about the issue of email archiving and access should look at askSam as perhaps *the best* tool for this purpose -- regardless of whether this is for legal reasons or personal productivity.

This recommendation comes from personal experience, and from the fact that my views and opinions are often sought out by those making technology decisions. My background is that I am an author, columnist, and frequent speaker around the world with fees into the upper four figures (you'll find me listed with about a dozen speakers bureaus around the US). I've authored 34 books (most in Canada, but also sold in the US, Germany and India) with sales in excess of 750,000 copies. I've authored 600 columns for a wide variety of publications. Much of this has focussed on issues of technology and digital business strategy.

I've written about askSam in numerous articles over the years; a few of them can be found as follows:

http://www.jimcarroll.com/articles/08jan01.htm

http://www.jimcarroll.com/articles/ebiz41.htm

http://www.jimcarroll.com/articles/camag4.htm

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 Jim Carroll, FCA.            Author, columnist, nice guy

    jcarroll@jimcarroll.com     www.jimcarroll.com

     Voice  905.855.2950 / Fax 905.855.0269  

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              What's Jim up to this week?

        Find out over at www.JimCarroll.Info