E-mail

Definition

Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages across the Internet or other computer networks. Originally, email was transmitted directly from one user to another computer. This required both computers to be online at the same time. It is cheaper than sending a letter or making a phone call and the same message can be sent to many people quickly although email can put your computer at risk of being contaminated with virus'. Sending an email is extremely fast. It takes a matter of seconds for an email to travel to the other side of the planet.


Unfortunately email is extremely impersonal and for example if your mum and dad didn't have a computer you wouldn't be able to connect them via email.

Problems with email

Not secure: Its contents are open to anyone who handles it.




Open to abuse: Scams, mass junk mailings, and deceptive advertising can be delivered to a computer just as easily as to a brick-and-mortar mailbox.



Potentially harmful: E-mail is probably the easiest method of delivering malicious material to individuals and organizations.



Often impersonal: I know e-mail is a great way to avoid others, but some conversations need to take place face to face.



Open to misinterpretation: When talking to someone in person or on the telephone, the tone and inflection of the speaker's voice convey as much, if not more, meaning than their words. E-mail lacks this ability, even with the use of emoticons

g-mail

Priority inbox finds the important messages you are most likely to read and sorts them for you.
Moves important e-mail to the top of your list.

Star feature: you put a star next to e-mails you may want to read again. It puts all these messages into a star folder.

G-mail is clearly much better for organisation.

Tools like this help you to avoid information overload as they allow you to sort information better.

Filters: messages automatically get put into the star file when received. This is very good when you know there is someone very important who often sends you messages you may need to read again for example your boss. It predicts which information is important.

It recognises who you often read messages from first and moves them to the top of your inbox.

You have to use g-mail regularly though for it to identify important messages you receive. It will not identify important things straight away, you will need to be using g-mail for about 2 weeks for it to be more effective.




More personal, you can add a picture or add other personal information you may like to share such as other ways people can connect you like on Facebook, or via another email address.

There are labels which are like folders which you can personalize to suit you. For example you can store work emails in one label and call it work and have a separate label for emails from family and friends.

Like most emails there is a filter which gets rid of your spam email which is often emails from companies asking you to sign up to receive information from them. These can be very risky as sometimes they can have virus' attached which will infect your computer if opened. But unlike another service provider such as hotmail as well as blocking emails you can also have future emails sent to another account.

Messages can be forwarded like most other providers but g-mail will also leave copies on the accounts. Forwarding is when you can send a message received onto someone else without typing out the whole message again.

Buzz is like a social network on gmail which sends you updates of posts much like twitter.
Like twitter you can send and receive messages from your phone but unfortunately also like twitter you can see where someone is located on the planet which can cause many issues such as stalking and burglary.
g-mail has clips which you receieve everyday when you open your email account. You can customise it to send you stories you are interested in by entering your interests.
Lastly you can personalize g-mail by selecting a theme to suit you. A theme basically changes the colour of the background on your account.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIRqx5tQ8tI

Hotmail

hotmail is similar to g-mail in a few ways.
you can add themes to your account from the regular settings for example my hotmail account was changed to a purple pattern.
Also from the screen capture below you can see that you can also add a picture like g-mail.


Although from the inbox you can see that it is very difficult to manage which is why this email account has over 1500 messages in the inbox. You do have the filter system although it isn't as clear as the g-mail star filter system. Also spam mail is harder to get rid of as hotmail security settings aren't as up to date as g-mail.

Also from hotmail you get a list of updates from people saying what they are doing which is something gmail has called Buzz.

Hotmail still has all the regular features such as forwarding, draft box where you can save unfinished emails and send them when you are ready. Both service providers have calenders where you can store all your dates an events on your account which is very useful if you are a regular user of email.                      

In conclusion g-amil is a lot better as it has exactly the same features as hotmail but even more such as labels and other things which help keep your account better organised. The buzz service does a lot more than hotmail's updates from all your email contacts for example you can send certain updates to certain people as well as sharing posts with the world. Although buzz does have the privacy issues.

News Stories

'Spam is the cholesterol of the Internet, it is just clogging up everything'-Steve Raber, Ciphertrust
One of the main issues with using email is spam. Spam are unwanted emails which sometimes contain viruses which are extremely harmful to your PC as they can delete files or move things around or even take files and send them all over the web which is especially harmful if these files contain private information.

Below is an argument about spam


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3492354.stm




It is easy to send an email to the wrong person


'Karla Comer, an account executive at an ad agency in Greensboro, North Carolina, knows just how embarrassing that can be. In 2004, Comer met a guy at a concert and went out with him a few times, but ultimately realized she wasn't interested. "He was just awkward and clumsy. And sometimes I'd catch him staring at me, which really creeped me out," she says.

She tried to end the relationship by simply not returning his phone calls. But then he e-mailed and casually said that he had not heard from me in a while and he hoped everything was fine but just assumed I was busy. Before I returned his e-mail, I sent the message to a close girlfriend with a blurb about what an idiot I thought he was and that dating him was a bad idea because he had no understanding of social cues." She thought she sent the "he's an idiot" e-mail only to her girlfriend. To her horror, Comer says, the guy replied a few minutes later, calling her some not-so-sweet names and suggesting that she "share THIS e-mail with your friends."