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Employers long have viewed instant messaging with a wary eye. Because it started as a tool primarily for personal use, the technology was slow to make its way into the workplace. Much like mobile phone text-messaging of today, IM had many detractors, who insisted that the tool created just another way for employees to waste work time on personal conversations. That myth is being dismantled, thanks in part to research that shows that instant messaging can indeed increase the productivity of workers.

Google is rolling out a new feature for Gmail users called "Gmail Labs." It promises to help Google take advantage of any esoteric Gmail idea that's hidden in the minds of Google's many engineers. Gmail Labs includes new settings in Gmail that let users select, use and effectively test the new features. At the same time, this shows Google which features people care about using. Google has a program that lets any engineer spend 20 percent of his workweek on any project of their own choosing.

A large number of teens feel that language more appropriately used in e-mails, text messaging and online postings has made its way into their school work, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. About 50 percent of teenagers said they write something for school nearly every day. More than one-third reported having a written assignment several times a week. Most survey respondents, 73 percent, contend that using computers and text-based communications did not influence their formal writing.

A few weeks ago, University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer said his team's chemistry was suffering. The reason: cell phones and iPods. Meyer said his players come into the locker room with iPods, put their football gear on and go out to practice, come back in and grab their iPod or whip out their cell phone and text people, and leave. "How are we going to develop any chemistry as a team?" he wondered aloud. In one attempt to spark communication, Meyer said he took the team paint-balling.

Continuing its departure from a largely hardware-focused history, Siemens Communications on Monday announced a new software-only unified communications server. The OpenScape Unified Communications Server can operate in virtually any existing IT or telephony environment, Siemens said, and is designed to remove the barriers that have traditionally separated voice, video and unified communications systems. Instead, the server will enable a comprehensive suite of UC applications that initially will include voice, role-based UC and a new video application.

Google is joining five other companies to lay a 6,200-mile undersea cable linking the U.S. and Japan. Its partners in the so-called Unity cable project are telecommunications providers Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet and SingTel. Construction, to cost about $300 million, will begin immediately. The Unity cable will connect Los Angeles and other sites on the West Coast to Chikura, which is off the coast near Tokyo. At Chikura, it will be connected to other cable systems serving other Asian countries.

PostPath on Wednesday announced the release of PostPath Email Server 3.1, which offers small and medium-sized businesses an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Email Server 3.1 is interoperable with the Exchange ecosystem as well as BlackBerry and ActiveSync devices. PostPath's e-mail and collaboration server provides enterprises an alternative upgrade path for traditional and Linux-friendly messaging environments. "The e-mail and collaboration server runs on Linux and works with Microsoft applications."

As repair work gets under way, rumors are flying thick and fast about the cause of a series of undersea cable cuts in the Middle East in recent days. The latest is that a fifth undersea cable has been cut -- or it could be a second cut to Flag Telecom's FALCON cable near the Egyptian port of Alexandria, which was severed Jan. 23. The damaged cables were FLAG Europe-Asia, the Flag FALCON and SEA-ME-WE-4, owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies. The fourth cable cut was the Qatar-United Arab Emirates cable.

Severe Internet and phone service outages hit Egypt and India Wednesday after two submarine cable communication lines were severed. Submarine cable lines are the main connection lines for Internet service providers and telephony companies. The two lines that connect Egypt sit just off the coast of Alexandria. They were severed at approximately 6 a.m. local time. The accidents knocked out Internet connections throughout 70 percent of the country and international calls throughout 30 percent of the country, according to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Desktops crash all the time, but e-mail is forever. Or so some 14,000 customers of Charter Communications may have thought until they tried to log on recently and found their messages and photos gone and never to return. It was a software glitch during routine maintenance that caused Charter to permanently dump the 14,000 active accounts. To compensate the people affected, it is offering $50 credits. The deleted e-mails had been provided free of charge to the communication provider's triple play customers, which, in theory, should dampen their ire.