Email marketing is expected to pick up in India, according to a new report from the Indian digital marketing company Octane.in. According to the survey, which includes feedback from 500 marketers from 412 companies, email marketing takes second place in when it comes to what channels Indian marketers will be investing in this year. (Social media took first place). In addition, 99 percent of the respondents said that their email marketing programs were effective in meeting their goals last year.

If email were invented today, it might operate in a fundamentally different ways, says Nathaniel Borenstein, chief scientist at the email company Mimecast. He explains to ZDNet that email communications are based on open standards that can be sent from one system to another, say Gmail to Yahoo Mail. He said that if the same type of program were invented today it might be a closed system, the way that social networks operate. For instance, if you are communicating on Facebook you can't directly message someone on Google+.

The media blog Gawker published George W. Bush's email address and encouraged its readers to send the former president a message on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War. Gawker obtained the email address from a Bush family email correspondence that a hacker group published online last month.

GitHub Enterprise, an online code-sharing platform for developers, has leaked more than 3,000 emails of customers that use its service. Those emails were then posted online. The email told recipients that their licenses were running out and called them to link to a GitHub page to renew their deals. The company has not yet explained the mishap.

At 1am this morning, MIT students and faculty members received an email purporting to be from the university's president L. Rafael Reif. In the email it appeared that Reif had cancelled all classes today. The email was was a hoax and was not sent by Reif, but was sent by someone pretending to be him. The Institute has said that classes are scheduled as usual today.

The Justice Department said Tuesday it supports rewriting the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the 1986 legislation that gives law enforcement the ability to read a citizen's emails without a warrant, if the email is older than six months old or is already opened. Elana Tyrangiel, acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, testified to the House Judiciary subcommittee today, saying, "There is no principled basis to treat email less than 180 days old differently than email more than 180 days old."

Marketers whose list includes staffers of the Manhattan Beach, CA city may want to hold off on sending messaging today. The organization reported that its email is down because of an inoperative circuit. The city reported on its website that any email that goes to an @citymb.info domain is not getting through. The city's Internet Service Provider is working to resolve the problem.

As bloggers bemoan the death of Google Reader, WebProNews argues that email may be the answer to the loss of RSS. Unlike the different social media channels where not everyone has a profile, WebProNews reporter Chris Crum asserts, almost all Internet users use email. He thinks that email alerts and email newsletters may be the alternative for Internet users looking for news feeds.

Google's legal director Richard Salgado will testify at a House of Representatives hearing on reforming email privacy laws which is taking place today. During the hearing, lawmakjers will examine the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and determine if the rules need to be updated. Salgado shared his position on the Google blog, where he argued that times have changed and the law fails to protect "privacy expectations of Americans today."

The travel industry recorded the largest increase in email volume during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to Experian Marketing Services' 2012 Q4 email benchmark report. Two-thirds of travel brands increased mailings, which made email volume rise 21.4 percent year-over-year. The volume of emails sent by publishers was up 14.3 percent and consumer products and services brands saw volume go up 10.4 percent during the quarter. Overall, email volume was up 5.4 percent during the quarter.