E – Mail History of E-MailsWhat is an E-Mail?What happens when we sent an E-Mail?E-Mail messages E-Mail FoldersE-Mail AddressAttachments Types of E-MailsE-Mail Requirements Advantages and Disadvantages

History of E-mailsE-Mail is one of Internet’s

communication methods

According to Darwin Magazine, the first e-mail was sent in 1971

Ray Tomlinson created the ability to send e-mails to anyone connected to the Internet by using the now common e-mail address with the “@‟ symbol.

What is an E-Mail E-Mail stands for Electronic Mail

This is a program used to send and receive text messages

The messages are sent over the Internet and received within a fraction of a second

What happens?When we send an email message

the message does not simple go right to the recipient

The message has a path way to go through

E-mail Message An e-mail message is basically a text file

Thanks to technology we can now attach files and folders to our e-mails

e-mails save a lot of money spent on stamps and postage costs

e-mails also help the environment as less paper is used

Email FoldersInbox – this holds all the received

messages from known contactsOutbox – this holds all the messages

that have been sent from your email Spam – this holds all the messages

that have been sent by unknown contacts

Trash – this holds all the messages that we have deleted

Flagged – this holds all the messages that have been marked as important

E – Mail Addresses Each e-mail address must be unique

An e-mail is made up of the;1. The Username this is chosen by the

user2. The Domain part which is found

after the ‘@’ symbol. This is the name of the host of the email service

bertaborg@hotmail.com

Attachments An attachment is a function of

adding a picture or other document to our emails

We could also send a number of files attached to one email

We attach multiple files by compressing them

Types of E-Mails There are two main types of e-

Mail:

1. E-Mail services which are accessed by a standalone applications such as Outlook

2. Free e-Mail services which are accessed through a web-site. Such as Yahoo!, Google, and Hotmail.

E-Mail Requirement In order to send an e-mail an e-

mail server is required

This e-mail server needs to have two services:

1. SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) which is used to send e-mails.

2. POP3 (post office protocol 3) is used to receive e-mails.

Advantages of E-mails 1. Speed2. Asynchronous: communication does

not occur at the same time. One can reply/read emails at his/her convenience unlike real-time chatting

3. Cheap: many companies such as Yahoo!, GMail, Hotmail offer free e-mail services.

4. The same message can be sent to a large group of recipients.

5. Environmental Friendly

Disadvantages of E-mails 1. Not everyone has an e-mail address

whereas by using normal post, everyone can be reached

2. Privacy: threat to privacy and security, if the password is known there will be total access to the e-mails and account data

3. SPAM: this is very common and very difficult to get rid of

4. Only Virtual Messages: no tangible products can be sent.