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Facebook's announcement yesterday of a new Groups feature caught a lot of people by surprise.

Even more surprising, though, was the discovery that you could be signed up for a Group without knowing about it - and that your inbox would promptly start filling up with notifications every time someone posted, well, pretty much anything.

You're at a business event, meet someone, talk, and exchange business cards. A few days later, you discover they've subscribed you to their email newsletter. Is that legit... or is it spam?

Chris Brogan recently posted about his online business card... and about one of the reasons he's giving up on the paper kind: "Every time I give someone a business card, I have about a 70% chance of receiving someone else’s dumb email newsletter that I didn’t opt into receiving."

I was picking my daughter up from her first day of school, and I was so excited to hear how it went that got there a few minutes early. I could go in and spend a few extra minutes observing her class....or I could sneak one last peek at the day's e-mail. Sure enough, I pulled out my iPhone, only to experience that little ping of disappointment when the hoped-for e-mail from a prospective client had yet to arrive. I headed into my daughter's classroom, my excitement about the first day of school now dulled, ever so slightly, by the disappointment of that missing e-mail.

Tired of drowning in e-mail? After many efforts and declarations of e-mail bankruptcy, I've finally found a system that lets me get my inbox to zero every single business day. It accommodates my desire to send and respond to e-mail throughout the day -- I've never been able to stick to a "only hit receive if you have time to process" rule -- and keeps my total incoming messages to about 20-30 (down from 200+). Most crucially, it allows me to respond to all key client and prospect inquiries within 24 hours.