Electronic mail was one of the first uses of Internet and it remains the most popular. It provides a quick way to send semiprivate correspondence from person to person. In some cases email is nearly  instantaneous, making it possible to have an "email conversation", but there is a price that must be paid for this type of service. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Email is NOT private. It can be read by any  system administrator of any computer along its path. However, it isn't likely that someone will randomly read your mail out of the thousands of messages that flow through routing computers. Nevertheless, don't send the combination to your safe  via email (unless it is encrypted). The best guideline I've heard tells you not to write anything in email you wouldn't want to read in tomorrow's New York Times.

On the whole, Email is NOT as dependable as the US Mail.  Surprised? Many more electronic messages get lost by computers than US mail by letter carriers.

Mail must be addressed accurately or it won't get to it's destination. Draw a picture of Alfred E. Newman on an envelope and it will probably  find its way to Mad magazine. Try that with email. Email may not be delivered for any number of other reasons, such as downed computers, broken connections, poor transmission lines or a misplaced letter. When collaborating via email it's a  good idea to exchange phone numbers early in the process.

Understanding an Email Address

An email address has two parts separated by an @ sign. My email address is currently

awolinsk@concentric.net

The awolinsk portion  is my user ID as assigned by my system administrator when the account is established. The rest of the name follows the domain naming system. The first part immediately following the @ is the name of the computer that houses my account. In this  case the computer is concentric. The rest of the name is a sub-domain name that categorizes the computer.

A question always arises about case sensitivity. Email addresses are usually not case-sensitive, but many parts of Internet  require exact matches. It is good practice to assume that everything is case sensitive. This will save a lot of frustration in the early stages of skill development. As you become more comfortable with Internet, you will learn what areas are  case sensitive and what are not.

One additional note about case sensitivity. When in doubt, always use lower case letters. Internet grew up on the UNIX operating system where most commands require lower case.

If you still want more information on E-mail you can visit The Beginners Guide to Email.

Locating Someone on Internet

There are tens of millions of Internet email  addresses. The best way to get a person's email address it to call them up and ask them. The next best way is to use the one of the many search tools available.  Most of the major search engines have a people finder link.  In 1999 Yahoo  purchased the web's first and largest people finding service, Four11.

Shortcuts

Remember when you sent a letter as a kid and wrote S.W.A.K. on the envelope? Well there are dozens of shortcuts of this nature that are used with email.

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

[ OII Home Page ]