A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — A u g u s t 2 0 0 3

The Internet Connection

By Michael Sauers

Did They Read those E-mail Messages?
Let's face it, e-mail is the communication medium used most often today to communicate with anyone who's not in the same building as you. It's fast and easy, but sometimes you click and send and then wonder: Did they get those e-mail messages? Have they read them? Are they ignoring you?

Most e-mail programs today have a return-receipt option, but even those who are familiar with this option don't use it. Why not? An annoying pop-up message appears when the recipient opens your e-mail. And it's the recipient's choice whether to send the receipt back. In fact, I've instructed my e-mail client to just ignore the return receipts. If you send me an e-mail with a return receipt, you won't get one back.

This is where a new program, MSGTAG (www.msgtag.com), comes into play. MSGTAG allows you to tag a message so that when it is opened, you'll automatically receive an e-mail notification that the recipient has seen your message.

For example, I sent a test message from my BCR e-mail account to my home account. When I viewed the message in my home account, I saw the following at the bottom of the e-mail message:

Back in my BCR e-mail account, I received the following e-mail message:

  A mail message that you have sent has been opened by its recipient.
  Message to: <msauers@webpan.com> "Michael Sauers" <msauers@webpan.com>
  Subject: MSGTag Test
  Sent: 2003-07-01 15:18:38 UTC
  Received: 2003-07-01 15:19:00 UTC
  Elapsed time: 22 seconds

All of this happened automatically without the intervention of the recipient. No annoying pop-up messages, no being ignored.

As the sender of the message, you have the ability to tag or not tag your individual e-mail messages, as you wish. This is controlled through a small icon that sits in your system tray, giving you the ability to turn MSGTAG on or off as needed.

MSGTAG comes in both a free version and a $59 version. The free version works exactly as described above. The pay-for version provides several additional features:

The ability to turn off the notification of tagging that the recipient sees.
The ability to personalize the message that appears in the recipient's e-mail.
A "status dashboard" that displays the tracking information received via e-mail in the free version.
The ability to automatically tag or not tag messages based on individuals in your contact list.
Unlimited technical support.

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