Welcome to the internet...
No philosophising or apologies for it, just some suggestions and ideas on how to survive.
Email
Sending emails
Email messages are just copies of files which are sent electronically from one computer to another. When you write your email your computer saves it as a file, and when the opportunity is right, it sends a copy of the file (with your message in it) off across the internet , hopefully to eventually arrive at it's intended destination. So the first thing to realise is that when you write your email message and click 'SEND', it hasn't necessarily been sent (yet), it may just be sitting in your OUTBOX waiting to go, so there's no point in sitting back and waiting for a reply, it may never come! You need to make sure it's been sent, you can check your OUTBOX and see if it's sitting there, if it is your computer may need help in two ways.
- You need to be connected to the internet, that is you need to dial up to your service provider (ISP) if that's the way you are connected.
- You need to tell your email to send all messages (click SEND/RECEIVE). Often this is done automatically, but not always, so it pays to check.
This also allows two options you may not have been aware of:
- You can write emails without being connected to the internet. This saves tying up the phone line while you work. Your email program just saves all your emails up until it gets the chance to send them.
- You can change your mind about sending emails. If you don't send emails automatically you then have the opportunity to change your mind even after you've clicked SEND, just go to the OUTBOX and move or delete the email waiting to go before you dial up.
Writing emails
Here's some other tips about writing and sending emails. Email lacks the intimacy of a phone call or hand written letter, so it can read like an invoice if you aren't careful. To get around this here's some ettiquette that has developed around emails:
- Do write a clear and explanatory Subject to your email. When the person you send you email to see's a subject like "Minutes from BWW meeting 12/03/2003" they are less likely to delete it (and more likely to read it) than one that reads "here's the stuff" or worse still, no subject at all.
- Don't write all in capital letters, it's SHOUTING. It's commonly regarded as ill mannered to write all in caps.
- Do remember, the subtleties can be lost in emails, so dry humour can be come across as ill mannered comment. 'Smilies' or 'Emoticons' are used to add context, and to view them you have to tilt your head to the left and look for a little face in the text. For example :^) is a 'happy' face, ;^) is 'wink wink' and :^( is sad.
- Don't forward or reply to an email with the whole email attached, edit out anything that isn't relevent to your reply to keep it readable and short, otherwise email 'chain letters' can get very long, hard to read and expensive to print!
- Do check the size of any images or files you send or forward. Some people have slow connections and ISPs who don't allow files greater than a certain size, so the email may not get delivered or the recipient may get very frustrated waiting for the email to be delivered (you may get frustrated waiting for it to finish sending). If you want to send a bit file, ask first.
- Don't send a copy of that cute animated Christmas email card to all your friends or work mates - it probably falls into the too large category and it may bring your work email system to a halt if it's copied to everyone (a not uncommon occurrence). In fact the only time you should email everyone on your address book is to tell them you have a new email address (possibly).
Receiving Emails
Email messages are passed across the internet from computer to computer until they arrive at your mail server. This is the computer that your ISP (the company you connect to the internet through (possibly by dialing up). The email message sits there until you next connect. When you do next connect your email program downloads any waiting messages onto your computer. This may happen automatically if your program is set to do this, or you may need to click SEND/RECEIVE to make it happen.
- You have the opportunity to check your emails before you load them onto your computer
- This means you don't have to be connected to the internet to read your email. You can dial up, get all your emails and then hang up immediately so you don't tie up your phone line. You can then read your emails at your leisure, reply etc. and these will be saved until the next time you connect.
Many ISP companies provide a web based email system which allows you to read your emails using a web browser so you can check your email away from home. This is a useful service for other reasons. If you set your email program to not download your emails automatically, when you first dial in to your ISP you can use the web based service to check your emails first.
- You can then see quickly (usually with even reading the email, just by the subject line) which emails are junk emails, and delete them (or check them first if you are not sure).
- You can see which programs have attachments (other files attached to them). These files may be legitimate (photos or documents from friends), viruses or just plain unwanted information. Since you haven't downloaded the actual attachment yet you can delete it or save it to a folder for later download if you choose.
This means that when you do finally click your SEND/RECEIVE button you can be reasonably confident that all the emails you are downloading to your computer are safe, wanted, and not so large you end up waiting an hour for a file you don't even know if you want.
There are several other things you can do to make life easier and keep safe, but we'll cover those in the next article.
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