Define Email

The word 'email' is short for 'electronic mail,' the transmission of messages over communications networks. The messages can be notes entered from the keyboard or electronic files stored on disk. Most mainframes, minicomputers, and computer networks have an e-mail system. Some electronic-mail systems are confined to a single computer system or network, but others have gateways to other computer systems, enabling users to send electronic mail anywhere in the world. Companies that are fully computerized make extensive use of e-mail because it is fast, flexible, and reliable.

Explain the features of 2 services

G mail priority inbox find the important messages you recieve and sorts them for you.

At the top of the email it will bring the important emails to the top of the list, and the rest will go near the bottom of the list.

It has a star feature with this you can put emails you want in this folder this will allow you to come back to them in the future easily.

Gmail is a better service for organising emails where as hotmail will have all the emails together and give you problems when trying to find emails.

Gmail has filters which can automatically put a star on emails from spersific people this will allow you to access this emails straigh away.

Gmail has a great spam filter which can sort emails which will be good for you, this will be a excellent feature for people that use there mail frequently. This will allow the person to acces there important emails that will be at the top of he inbox and the less improtant emails will be at the bottom of inbox's. This will develop when frequently using your email.

It records which emails are important are for you it will then sort it out into a prioroity listing, it also records the emails that you reply to the most this will go down as more important and emails and be higher in the inbox and the emails that arent as important will be at the bottom of the inbox.

You can also manually input emails to the top/bottom of list.

For a system like g mail to work efficently you will have to give it a period of time depending on how often you use the mail features as at first it wont be aware of which emials are important and which are spam.

The end result will be better as you will be able to access the emails you need quicker.

Gmail have also added a very effective feature such as chat. Thsi will allow people to talk via chat when they are both online, this will save time and be quicker than emialing majority of the time. You can also call people directly from g mail this feature will cost people to use, to use it you buy credits fro your account which you use up when calling someone. This is effective as it can be used when out and about gmail phone. This is another feature that the server provides this allows people to view the mail from any phone that has an internet service, this will help mainly business workers as they can access there mail on there commute to work. Another popular feature of g mail is 'buzz' this feature allows you to locate where people are that are sending emails. This feature also allows you to send updates, videos and share status's where you can also have conversations with friends/ contacts on your g mail account. Although the buzz location feature will be good to locate friends, there are disadvantages to this as people from anywhere in your local area can locate where abouts you live and the road name, this is prime for burglary to occur, but this features isn't activated until you turn the feature on.

Yahoo mail

Yahoo mail has a variety of different features one feature allows you download a variety of different applications as shown in the screenshot on the right. The applications that you download are free of charge this will be good for many people as when accessing their mail they can easily access away from the page by using these application. Another good feature yahoo mail provide is 'Auto check for messages' this will provide you with emails as they come in the page will automatically show the email without you needing to refresh the page. This will save time as some people may easily forget to refresh the page this will show them their emails as they come through.

One very good feature is the 'spam and security', this automatically puts spam emails into a separate folder this helps to keep your original inbox organised and so that you can see your important emails from contacts first. A good thing they provide is an anti-virus software for all emails and attachments, this reduces the risk of gaining a virus from emails incoming.

Benefits and problems about email

Benefits:

Email is easy to use and free of charge to whichever country you are emailing to or receiving from.
The person you are emailing will receive it very quickly.
Easy to prioritize: Since the mails have subject lines, it is easy to prioritize them and ignore unwanted mails.
Reliable and secure: Constant efforts are being taken to improve the security in emails.
Environment friendly: Postal mails use paper as a medium to send letters. Electronic mail this, saves a lot of trees from being axed. It also saves fuel needed in transportation.
Informal and conversational: The language used in e-mails is generally simple and this makes the communication informal. Sending and receiving e-mails takes less time, so it can be used as a tool for interaction.
Advertising tool: Many individuals and companies are using e-mails to advertise their products, services, etc.

Problems:

Viruses: These are computer programs having the potential to harm a computer system. These programs copy themselves and further infect the computer. The recipient needs to scan the mails, as viruses are transmitted through them and have the potential to harm computer systems.
Spam: E-mails when used to send unsolicited messages and unwanted advertisements create nuisance and is termed as Spam. Checking and deleting these unwanted mails can unnecessarily consume a lot of time, and it has become necessary to block or filter the unwanted e-mails by means of spam filters.
Hacking: The act of breaking into computer security is termed as hacking. After the e-mail is sent and before it is received by the desired recipient, it "bounces" between servers located in different parts of the world. Hence, the e-mail can be hacked by a professional hacker.
Misinterpretation: One has to be careful while posting any kind of content through an e-mail. If typed in a hurry, the matter could be misinterpreted.
Lengthy mails: If the mail is too long and not properly presented the reader may lose interest in reading it.
Not suitable for business: Since the content posted via e-mails is considered informal, there is a chance of business documents going unnoticed. Thus, urgent transactions and especially those requiring signatures are not managed through e-mails.
rowded inbox: Over a period of time, the e-mail inbox may get crowded with mails. It becomes difficult for the user to manage such a huge chunk of mails.

Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail, the latest email client from Microsoft Corporation has many added features and utilities absent from its predecessors - Outlook Express and Windows Mail (on Vista). These include Photo email, enhanced security for scanning incoming messages, RSS right in your inbox, Quick views, custom layout of the interface to tune the software to your requirements and, yes, multiple email account configuration including Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!Mail. (For Yahoo!Mail, you need to hold a premium account at Yahoo!).

Photo email

The Photo email feature of Windows Live Mail is a neat way of sending high resolution photographs to friends and family over email. So why is this so cool? Well, ordinarily, you would attach the large file size high resolution photograph to the email. Sending several such photos would result in oversized email messages which your recipients or might not like to download and store in the inbox. Large sized emails may also be returned to you (bounced back) if the recipient's email account is running short on space or if there is a size limit on the attachments. Photo email sends just the thumbnails (smaller versions) of your photos. The recipients can choose to view the larger version by clicking on the thumbnail - the larger versions are displayed from a private web location. Additionally, you control the layout of the thumbnails in the email message. Photo email also allows for basic photo editing including adding borders.
Read send photos over email for a detailed article on Windows Live Mail Photo email feature.

Enhanced security

The popular Outlook Express email client was notoriously insecure and vulnerable to viruses and worms. The security issue was addressed first on Windows Mail by the introduction of an automated junk email filter. The same has also been included on Windows Live Mail.
The filter scans all incoming emails and suspected spam and phishing messages are moved to the "Junk e-mail" folder automatically. You also have control over the level of security you want and you can configure several options such as Safe Senders List etc.
The automated filtering for spam and phishing emails in Windows Live Mail is far from perfect. I had some legitimate messages thrown into the Junk e-mail folder with the default settings, but, I guess, like any other automated tool, this too requires some amount of tweaking and will "learn" over time.
On the whole, I appreciate Microsoft's inclusion of this feature in their new email client.

Multiple email accounts

Just like the earlier email clients, you can have multiple email accounts in Windows Live Mail including Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail. Sometime back Microsoft had stopped supporting Hotmail on Outlook Express, however, it's now available on the new program. And, obviously, you can configure the POP3 email accounts of your web sites on Windows Live Mail.
Access to Yahoo!Mail from Windows Live Mail requires you to have a premium account at Yahoo!
For step by step instructions with screenshots, please refer Windows Live Mail setup for email accounts, Gmail account on Windows Live Mail and add Hotmail in Windows Live Mail.

Custom layouts and Quick views

Though Windows Live Mail has a simple interface, you can change it to suit your needs. You can change colors, move columns and modify the layout to get only what you want to see and thus save time.
Quick views show you specific categories from your email and news accounts.

RSS in your inbox

No need for a separate feeds reader. With Windows Live Mail, you can subscribe to RSS feeds from different web sites and blogs and have them delivered to you inbox.

Blogging directly from Windows Live Mail

This program is definitely much more than an email and news client. A non-descript icon found at the very end of the row opens a cool blogging tool for Windows Live Spaces. In order to blog from Windows Live Mail, you need to create an account at Windows Live Spaces which takes a couple of minutes.

News stories on emailing

"Online auction house eBay has confirmed reports that some of its users have been hit by spam e-mails that may be able to gain their account details."

eBay said the problem was industry-wide, and that its sites were as secure as possible.

The scam targets eBay users with infected spam or mail-shot e-mails.

If the e-mails are opened, they can record what keys the user types and send the details back to the criminals behind the spam mail shots.

How the scam works

The method, known as 'key logging', allows the fraudsters to find the eBay user's exact password, the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) has confirmed.

Internet fraud is an industry-wide issue and we would encourage everyone to regularly update their virus detection software

eBay spokeswoman

A spokeswoman for the NHTCU said the agency would not be making any further comment.

Once they have gained access to users' accounts, the criminals can steal from them in a number of ways.

Firstly, they can pretend to be a seller and inform the eBay users that one of their specific recent failed bids has, after all, been successful, and ask for payment.

The goods in question obviously never appear.

Fraudsters can also use an eBay user's account to buy an item put up for sale by one of their criminal associates.

The way for users to avoid getting trapped by key logging is to ensure their computer's virus protection software is up to date.

In addition to infectious spam e-mails including the 'key logging' software, more simple e-mail scams have also been targeting eBay customers.

These generally work by the using fake e-mails purporting to be from eBay which ask for users to reconfirm their log-in details.

Popularity brings problems

"Internet fraud is an industry-wide issue and we would encourage everyone to regularly update their virus detection software," said an eBay spokeswoman.

"As part of eBay's on-going commitment to trust and safety, we work extensively with official online fraud experts such as the NHTCU to fight internet fraud."

The spokeswoman added that eBay has an entire section of its site dedicated to informing users about best safety practice.

A number of banks and credit card customers have already been targeted by both fake emails and key-logging infections, but criminals are believed to have moved on to target eBay because of the auction house's giant popularity. It lists two million auctions every day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4181897.stm