As it has become ubiquitous, e-mail has also suffered something of a backlash. Most of us spend our working day crawling out from under a mountain of spam or attempting to sort the wheat from the chaff of corporate missives.

Apparently too, younger net users aren't that pushed about it at all, preferring to use instant messaging and social networking sites to keep in touch with their important contacts.

Denise Cox, author of the ...email matters is one person who believes e-mail is still a hugely powerful tool for business and marketers in particular.

Don't confuse Cox with a spammer though - she has blogged about the implications of data protection legislation for how businesses use e-mail communications.

Newsweaver, the west Cork firm she works for, is a pioneer of using e-mail marketing tools but it concentrates on how to make e-mail effective rather than just selling on lists of recipients.

Her blog is a relatively new departure for her - she only started one year ago - but just last week she scooped the Irish Internet Association's (IIA) best blogger award. (Cox won the IIA's overall Net Visionary award back in 2002).

The bulk of her posts related to how e-mail newsletters can be made more effective and highlighting research that it is still a hugely influential tool, particularly as part of a wider marketing mix.

Anyone involved in the communications or marketing function of their business would benefited from subscribing to this blog which eschews daily posts in favour of quality, well-researched content on a weekly basis.

Cox is also not afraid to impart a little personal information either - most notably in a post about her previous life as a record company publicist when one of her tasks was to introduce a young Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana to the press.

It may seem a long way from there to blogging about e-mail marketing, but Cox seems to have retained a passion for her work along the way.