Communication Via E-mail

E-mail, we all use it. It's a very popular and growing form of communication for all people. Professionals, organizations and just average people all use e-mail to make their busy lives more convenient. However, misusing e-mail can be a problem and that's what we learned about today in class. These are a few things we talked about...

E-mail Accounts:
There are two types of e-mail accounts.
1) Web-mail -- Allows you to access your e-mail messages via internet (Example: Gmail www.gmail.com)
2) Pop3-- E-mail messages are downloaded to your computer and accessible from there (Example: Outlook Express)

How to send an e-mail:
After you have an e-mail account, you can start sending e-mails. In most cases you have to click the 'compose' button which will take you to a page where you may enter your message and further information. On this page you will find 4 fields at the top, these are:

1) To -- This is where you put the e-mail address of the person you wish to send the e-mail to.
2) CC (Carbon Copy) -- This is to enter addresses of the person or people you wish to send a copy of the e-mail to.
3) BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) -- This performs the same function as CC except it makes it so that the person who is initially recieving the mssage cannot see who a copy was sent to. This function should be used with caution.
4) Subject -- This is where you enter the subject or title of your e-mail. To use this efficiently, subjects should be clearly relevant to the message contained in the e-mail.

Lastly there is an empty field where you put in a message. After that you're ready to click send and off goes your e-mail! But wait...there is still more you can do, if you would like to send a file or a document to someone via e-mail it is sent as an attachment. To attach a file you simply click the 'attach' button and then find the file you want. It is very important to click attach file or a similar button, or else the file will not be attached. After you have performed this, you can send your e-mail, or attach another file.

There are a lot of e-mails that can end up in your inbox which you don't want. These e-mails are usually advertisements, viruses, chainletters or other forms of e-mail that are useless and maybe even harmful to you. These messages should be reported as spam, which is why it is very important to choose an e-mail service that has a spam filter. Once you mark an e-mail as spam, e-mails from the same address and/or subject line will be sent to a separate folder.

Of course there will still be e-mails that you do enjoy reading. If you recieve an e-mail that you find interesting or worth reading and would like to send it to a friend you can 'forward' it. Forwarding an e-mail means you're passing on the e-mail to someone else. You can do this by clicking the 'forward' command button (or something similiar) and putting in the address(es) of those who you wish to send it to. This too has a downside however, this is the reason why chainletters exist, thank goodness you know all about spam filters already! (If you don't it means you skimmed, go back and read it!)

That's all for today, I'll be back next time with more .