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Net Gains (Jan 02, 96)
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A Divali greeting from the U.S. too took no longer than a few seconds to reach me. When I chose to read that particular mail, my computer screen had an image of a person on bended knee, lighting a string of crackers. No sooner had he retreated to safety than the whole screen lit up as the crackers started bursting, complete with sound effects. This was followed with the "Happy Divali" greeting.
All this is possible, thanks to a facility called electronic mail that's just one of the services offered on the Internet. So what exactly is e-mail, and how does it differ from ordinary mail (also known as 'snail mail') ??
E-mail is just like ordinary mail, except that there are no papers, no envelopes, no stamps, and no postal system involved. All you have to do is type out your message and ask your software to send it for you. And you can rest assured that the mail will reach its destination in a matter of minutes at the maximum, under normal circumstances. You also don't have to worry about 4 - 5 lines of the postal address, and the pin - code. The address here would typically be a few words long, and on the lines of "someone@somewhere", where "@" means "at". For instance, for e-mail service provided by VSNL (Bombay), the address would be : [email protected], where xyz would typically be your name. The computer takes one look at the address, and decides who it has to be sent to. The last part of the above address- "in" -the zone- specifies that the mail is for a computer network in India. In the same manner, the "giasbm01.vsnl.net" specifies which computer network the mail has to be directed to. The "xyz" is similar to a post - bag number, indicating which user the mail is addressed to. And plonk ! the mail is kept there, waiting to be read by the subscriber. That's e-mail for you.
When the subscriber turns on his computer, and types the command "mail" to see his mail his computer displays the list of e-mails awaiting his attention. For instance an e-mail lying for you from the World Chart Show might look like :
1 [email protected] Sat Nov 11 04:18 35/1337 "Hi from The World Chart Show" .
The day, date, and time are indicated, followed by the length of the mail (35 in this case). The other number is an ID. At the end, in quotes, is the subject of the message - "Hi from the World Chart Show" - in this case.
Does e-mail seem very impersonal & cold ? Boring & without any visual interaction ?? Far from it - not if you follow Netiquette - etiquette over the Net. You can make up for lack of aural emotion and visual interaction by sticking to a few standard norms. In case you wanna shout at someone, scream in block letters - HEY BUSTER !! WATCH OUT !! A smile can be denoted by :-) , a flirtatious remark by a ;-) , shock/ surprise by :-0 , a hearty laugh by :-D . You could describe yourself too using these smileys - if you're bespectacled use 8-) , if you have a moustache go in for a :-{ , if you're a smoker :-Q aptly describes you, and if you wear a turban @:-) . Now how about that !!
And like normal mail, hate mail and junk mail
is nothing new on the net. One hate greeting displays a guy
walking towards the centre of the screen, where he stops,
and advances towards you. He then stretches out his middle
finger towards you in a greeting. There's not much you can do.
Don't :-( , it won't do you any good. :-) instead - it increases
your face value !!