Someone - presumably an Army fan - hacked into the Naval Academy's email service and sent a message to all users on the system. Posing as a fellow Navy student, the prank email opened with "In preparation for the humiliating defeat Army will be dealing to us in the near future, I have some guidance to pass down," and then listed a trolling catalog of suggestions in advance of the rivalry game between Army and Navy this weekend. Prank skills notwithstanding, Army has lost 10 straight games to Navy and come into this weekend's match with a 2-9 record to …

The email newsletter may lack some of social media's sex appeal, but with 91% of consumers checking their inbox on a daily basis, the channel can be highly profitable for publishers. Thrillist, Daily Worth and Red Tricycle are a few of the more recent entrants into the newsletter market, following on the heals of Daily Candy, HARO and others.

Google has integrated three new features into Gmail, that were previously developed and tested through Gmail labs. "Quote selected text," "default reply all" and "send and archive" are all features designed to shave a few seconds off frequently repeated tasks. 

ReTargeter has launched with a retargeting offering that allows brands to serve display ads targeted to users based on email addresses in the advertisers' database. Similar in function to Facebook's recently launched Custom Audiences, ReTargeter reaches audiences on many different sites across the web, currently with a 30% - 40% match rate. A study found that consumers reached through ReTargeter converted four times more often as a control group that was not retargeted.

While not specific to email subject line creation, an article on Copyblogger offers its research-based conclusions on the five most persuasive words in the English language: You, Free, Because, Instantly, and New. The article warns that the words are not a get out of jail free card, however, and must be used within the right context to be effective.  Read the full article at copyblogger.

A new study by Knotice shows that the percentage of Cyber Week messages opened on a mobile device rose to 45% in 2012, a 50% increase over the same period in 2011. Tablet use grew at an even faster clip, doubling since last year. 

A survey by analysis firm BizRate Insights reveals that 44% of shoppers purchased Cyber Monday deals after learning about them through email. 39% report that email drove them to purchase online from Thanksgiving through the weekend before Cyber Monday as well, making email perhaps the most effective way of engaging shoppers in the holiday season. 

Following the suspected murder of Lebanon’s intelligence chief Wissam al-Hassan in October, the Information Branch of the country’s Internal Security Forces heading up the investigation has taken the controversial step of requesting all Lebanese citizens' passwords for their personal email and social media sites. The department has also demanded that the Telecom Minister turn over the content of 3.7 million citizens' text messages. The country's judicial authority rejected both requests.

Message Bus' principal objective is to improve email delivery. In addition to building relationships with ISPs and educating its clients about deliverability, Message Bus is built around a cloud-based infrastructure that it believes is a unique advantage for deliverability. Instead of relying on a single cloud service provider, its Global Delivery Network deploys on a number of different cloud services (currently Joyent, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace), allowing the company to move workloads across different infrastructures as needed.

A new study from a former top researcher at Microsoft has found that 80% of people have some form of email apnea, and hold their breath while reading email. Apnea can cause stress-related illnesses as interrupting normal breathing as it throws off the body's normal balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide. More relevant to email marketers, holding one's breath while checking email puts consumers in "fight or flight mode," which accelerates the heart rate and can compromise rational decision-making.