E-Mail

The most reliable way to obtain a person's e-mail address is to ask him or her for it. If that is not possible, you may check some websites that have built up databases of e-mail addresses that you can search by name. However, most people are unlisted because they get their access through networks, and most networks do not reveal their users' names.

If you have either of the two major internet browsers, Netscape or Internet Explorer, there is an E-mail program built in. When you first set up your account with an internet service provider, you'll be asked several questions which will set you up to receive E-mail and read newsgroups. Your E-mail address will be your user name, followed by the 'at' symbol, which is shift-2 on the keyboard, and then the domain name of your internet service.

Using E-mail has been compared with sending all your letters out on postcards and letting anybody sign their names to it. If you're just sending notes to friends and family, this usually isn't a problem. With tens of billions of E-mail messages going out every day, nobody is going to be able to read them all.

When we talk to people in person, we communicate with more than just words. Body language and facial expressions let people know if we're kidding, angry, or sad. When you send E-mail messages, it's nice to be able to convey emotions, and not just words. Emoticons were created to try and let the other person know how you feel by using simple keyboard symbols.

Mailing lists distribute requested information to interested subscribers in mass volume. There are currently more than seven thousand mailing lists, each devoted to its own specific topic. You must subscribe to a mailing list in order to participate in its discussions. Once you have sent information to the list, the message will be broadcast to all subscribers at once. In return, responses to the message result in a running conversation.

E-mail, or Electronic Mail, is the most popular Internet service currently available. You can send e-mails to a single person or a group, save them as computer files, or print the messages and forward them another person. With e-mail, you are able to exchange communications with millions of people all over the world.

Lynx is a text-based world wide web browser that is popular on most Unix shell accounts.

Mosaic, the original Web browser from the University of Illinois, is browser software that can be installed on your computer to allow you access to the contents of World Wide Web servers. To use Mosaic, you need direct access to other Internet hosts. This means that you need either a PPP or SLIP account, which gives you the necessary connection.

PINE is a UNIX-based e-mail program based on Elm. PINE literally stands for 'Pine Is Not Elm.' At the time PINE was written, Elm was the standard. PINE, however, is more powerful and includes features such as word-wrap and spell-checker. It allows you to print messages, save messages to files, and attach binary or text files to outgoing messages.