Ive been finding it hard to keep up with the forum and all those posts - I can honestly say there are some people with nothing better to do than post ! Keep it real people, no need for the 'ok thanks' and 'here's my story' or 'arent I smart' - I'm a very direct person, keep it relevant to all and get the point fast; if there's no point, dont waste my time ! I suppose thats why I do sales - Ive been trained to hunt relevence and facts. Sorry, I'll frame that even more - I'm not going to spend as much time getting in to every discussion, I'll skim more and spend less time on it unless I need to research a topic more.
Anyhow, email is something I just cant live without - now I think of it, I run 9 email addresses constantly !
2 work email addresses
1 motocross news group email address
2 yahoo emails - 1 for IT news and 1 for technology news
1 hotmail - for absolute rubbish and competitions
1 gmail for my Curtin studies
1 home email and bills
1 home email for my kids
Is that excessive - in my opinion - NO.
I can keep them all seperated and it helps me keep them organised and relevant to the topic at hand! It works for me.
I use an application called Poptray http://www.poptray.org/ I let the discussion board know about it as it might save them some time too !
Email Tasks
1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?
Many things !
In basic format we can identify :
The Sender (or username) that sent the message
The format in which the sender structures the username (ie first initial dot surname) - this could also help you identify the usernames actual name
The Generic Top Level domain type ie .biz, .com ... interesting reading here http://www.iana.org/gtld/gtld.htm
The time that the user sent the message
The Subject
The message
The username contact details, phone number
The username company privacy policy (if included)
By viewing the headers via View 'Headers' on the message toolbar., you can also find out alot more interesting details - referring picture below.
This message identifies
The local IP address of the machine the username used to send the message
The smtp server address and ip address
The return path
The mx record (mail exchange http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/support/hostreg/faq.html#MX)
The content type, the character set used, the mail server software used (Exchange 6.5) and much more if you like !
Quiz :Which of the following elements must be included in an email address? choose oneUsername (or account name)DomainBoth of the above
Correct answer: [NOTE: Score is not recorded]E-mail addresses always include the username (or account) as well as the domain name of the computer(s) that provide mail services.
2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?
Several cases :
cc - (carbon copy) when you want to send a copy of your message to someone else.
bcc - (blind carbon copy) - 2 forms of use - when w message is sent without other people knowing about it or secondly when a large audience is being sent a message it helps protect the privacy of the userma,es.
Reply all - would be used when you are sending a reply to all of the people that the message was originally sent to.
3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?
Firstly, communicate about your computer system and seek information from them to assist in the opening of the attachment.
You must understand that a message attachment is encoded and that not all recipients can take delivery of the encoded attachment. Also to be understood is that the format of the attachment itself may cause problems and that some applications cannot read the files saved in that later version. You should try and use 'rich text' or as a last resort, you could use a text file with the information copied in to it.
4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?
One of the primary purposes of sorting emails with filters and rules is to aid in the retrieval of the information. My doing this, it makes it more effective to categorise the information and know where and how it can be retrieved.
In my poptray application I have the messages in each email address in a different colour. This helps me quickly relate which email and what type of email the email is. For instance my motocross emails always come in to the poptray inbox as red. The IT news stories are in blue. My personal emails are in brown.
I block spam senders in hotmail using their spam filter and on my wifes PC - I have her using spam assasin whcih identifies blocked senders and deletes their messages before any chance to open them.
I also use an autoreply rule when I am out of the office for the day - this informs my customers, both internal and external of my whereabouts and how to contact me.
5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?
Example - my most complex email account - my work.
At work, I have every email that I have sent and received for the last 7 years !
I have it categorised in the following way :
Each year I have a sent items folder as in 'sent 2007' - everything sent, goes in this folder as soon as my exchange box total reaches 45MB.
Replies from customers go in to 'customers 2007' folder.
Important internal communications are either deleted or filed under the sender or topic name in a personal folder. Sometimes similar topics are grouped. For instance - all messages relating to a certain version of software go in to a folder under its version number. There is much more to this but this works for me and is the general drift of it all.
