We are often asked about why our email message size limits are based on the “encoded message size” and not the “raw message size”.   To answer this question, let’s first understand what the difference is between these two concepts.

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! This article has been superseded by:  Maximum WebMail Message Size Now 70MB

LuxSci has increased the maximum size of a message that can be sent from WebMail from 29 megabytes to 50 megabytes.  This refers to the raw size of the message content plus all attachments.  The size increase follows on the heels of our increase in the limit of the maximum encoded message size sendable through SMTP from an email program from 50 megabytes to 100 megabytes last week.

WebMail does not have any limit on the number of attachments, just on the overall size of attachments.  WebMail supports receipt and viewing of messages that are up to 200MB in total (encoded) size.

In the near future, LuxSci will be releasing some tools that make it easy for users to upload and download many files at once in bulk to and from WebMail and WebAides.  Stay tuned!

The iPhone from Apple is an amazing Smart Phone, if not a mini personal computer in itself.  We at LuxSci have been using iPhones since they were first available in 2007 and we have optimized our Xpress WebMail portal with a mobile-centric interface inspired by the iPhone and come out with MobileSync push email and contact/calendar sync services that work beautifully with iPhone and other mobile devices.  Many of our clients use an iPhone or other Internet-enabled mobile device with our email services. The time seems right to share some of our knowledge and experience with iPhones.

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Updated 12/7/2011 with AES security data for the newest browsers and mobile devices.

SSL and TLS are the workhorses that provide the majority of security in the transmission of data over the Internet today. However, most people do not know that the degree of security and privacy inherent in a “secure” connection of this sort can vary from “almost none” to “really really good … good enough for US government TOP SECRET data”.  The piece which varies and thus provides the variable level of security is the “cipher” or “encryption technique”.  There are a large number of different ciphers — some are very fast and very insecure.  Some are slower and very secure.  Some weak ones (export-grade ciphers) are around from the days when the USA did not permit the export of decent security to other countries.

AES, the Advanced Encryption Standard, is a relatively new encryption technique/cipher that is the successor of DES.  AES was standardized in 2001 after a 5 year review, and is currently one of the most popular algorithms used in symmetric key cryptography (which, for example, is used for the actual data transmission in SSL and TLS).  It is also the “gold standard” encryption technique; many security-conscious organizations actually require that their employees use AES-256 (256-bit AES) for all communications.

This article discusses AES, its role in SSL, which web browsers and email programs support it, how you can make sure that you only use 256-bit AES encryption of all secure communications, and more.

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Our sales staff has been asked this question countless times.  It is a natural assumption that because SSL and TLS encryption of email (and web sites) requires use of an "SSL certificate", that one must buy an SSL certificate in order to use such a service.  Fortunately, the answer is always

You do not need to buy your own SSL certificate to use secure email.

We’ll explain why.

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LuxSci has doubled the maximum size of messages that can be sent or received via SMTP from 50 megabytes to 100 megabytes (encoded size).

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LuxSci has completed updates to its "Xpress" WebMail portal that enable it to look and perform well on mobile devices, like the iPhone, Blackberry and other PDAs and smart phones.  With this release, all of the the most used features of the Xpress interface are mobile accessible; the remaining pages (like personal preferences) will be revised in the coming months.

Login to our Xpress mobile portal directly by going to: http://luxsci.mobi

Mobile users can generally also use POP or IMAP for checking their LuxSci email and SMTP for sending email.  The Xpress portal provides a additional mobile-compatible web-based interface.

The significant updates to the Xpress mobile WebMail portal include:

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Notice: the services discussed in this posting have been replaced by our new SecureForm Service

Situation:

You collect private information on your website. Whether it’s health information that needs to be HIPAA-compliant, credit card numbers, or other confidential data, you need an easy and transparent way to protect the privacy of your visitors, from start to finish.

Solution:

LuxSci provides a secure web form for your website. Information is encrypted and emailed to you directly, so that you can access everything in your own email, but know that the data was secure from input to delivery.

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LuxSci has just released a new custom email filtering feature which allows users to convert email messages that match any arbitrary criteria into "plain text" versions of the original messages.  This is similar to our existing feature that allows you to "remove attachments" from inbound email messages; however, it goes a step further by condensing the resulting message into a single simple textual body.

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Tagging items has become one of the hallmarks of modern web applications.  Delicious and FireFox allow you to tag your bookmarks, Facebook lets you tag people in photos. Flickr supports tagged pictures. Blogs permit you to tag your posts. The list goes on and on.

Tags are incredibly useful because they enable categorization of items in a dynamic and natural way.  Items can have multiple tags and you can make them up yourself as you go, so that they are meaningful to you and in the context in which you are working.

The odd thing is that tags are not yet very prevalent in most mainstream email programs (except perhaps Gmail) and collaboration tools like contacts, calendars, etc. This is where LuxSci jumps in.  LuxSci has had full tag support since June, 2007; in recent months, tagging has become easier and more powerful due to updates to our GUI (graphical user interface).

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