“The Internet lives where anyone can access it.â€- Dr Vinton Cerf
The preparation of communication by written documents carried by an intermediary from one individual or location to another approximately dates back nearly to the invention of writing. On the other hand, development of formal postal systems transpired considerably later. The first documented procedure of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the region of the State (2400 BC). The original remaining piece of mail is also Egyptian, dating to 255 BC.
Letter-sized mail involves the majority of the contents sent through most postal services. Typically, these are documents printed on A4 (210×297 mm), Letter-sized (8.5×11 inches), or reduced paper and positioned in envelopes.
Handwritten correspondence, although formerly a major means of communications between faraway people, is nowadays utilized less regularly due to the introduction of more immediate means of communication, such as the telephone or e-mail. However, old-fashioned letters are repeatedly deliberated to flash back to an “ordinary time” and are still used when anyone desires to be unhurried and attentive about his or her communication, depending on the courier mail service used. Bills and invoices are every so often sent through the mail, similar to consistent billing correspondence from utility companies and other service providers. These letters often hold a self-addressed envelope that permits the receiver to remit payment back to the company straightforwardly. Despite the fact that it is still very common, many populaces now opt to use online bill payment services, which eliminate the need to receive bills through the mail. Paperwork for the approval of large financial transactions is often sent through the mail. Numerous tax documents are as well.
New credit cards and their equivalent personal identification numbers are sent to their owners through the mail. The card and number are usually mailed separately several days or weeks away from each other for security reasons. Bulk mail is mail that is prepared for bulk mailing, often by presorting, and handling at reduced rates. It is frequently used in direct marketing and other marketing mail, although it has other uses as well. The senders of these messages sometimes purchase lists of addresses (which are occasionally targeted towards certain demographics) and then send letters promoting their invention or service to all receivers. Other times, commercial solicitations are sent by resident companies advertising local products, like a café delivery service advertising to their delivery area or a sales store sending their weekly advertising circular to a general area. Furthermore, bulk mail is often sent to companies’ present subscriber bases, advertising new products or services.
There are a number of other things almost without any exception sent absolutely as letters through postal services, like birthday and festivity invitations. Email has long been the most widely used Internet application. For some people, it is also their most frequent form of communication. Email is also the technology underlying mailing lists.
Email servers exchange messages over the Internet using the SMTP protocol. Client applications log into the servers to send and receive email using one of several protocols, including POP3, IMAP, and MAPI. The following are necessary that provide more information:
Who sent the first e-mail?
Ray Tomlinson was the first person to send out an e-mail in late 1971. The electronic mail was sent between two machines that were side-by-side and the only physical joining they had was through the ARPANet.
In 1978, Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai had been enrolled for programming projects at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Leslie P. Michelson, acknowledged his talents and tested him to transform the conventional paper-constructed interoffice and inter-organizational communication system (i.e. paper-based mail and documents) to an electronic communication system.
Email is quite rapid and almost instant, while traditional post takes quite some time; e-mail usually arrives within minutes or seconds, depending on the type. This can be beneficial when people need a quick response, but a phone call would be far too expensive, depending on the budget of the individual.
With use of cryptographic signing, you can prove that the email came from you; this reduces the effectiveness of ‘spoofing’ and means that no one can pretend to be you. However, implementing cryptographic signing does require some end-user training, especially in ensuring that people observe proper security protocols.
Advantages of emails are-
- Emails are simple to use as global citizens can organize their daily correspondence, send and receive electronic messages as well as save them on computers.
- Emails are rapid. They are delivered at once around the globe. No other form of written communication is as fast as an email.
- The language used in emails is simple and can be informal.
- When you reply to an email, you can attach the original message so that when you answer the recipient, he/she knows what you are chatting about. This is significant if you get dozens or hundreds of emails a day.
- It is possible to send automated emails with a certain text. In such a way, it is likely to tell the sender that you are on vacation or busy at work. These emails are called auto responders.
- Emails do not use paper. They are Environment friendly and protect many trees from being cut down. In the past fifty years, much of the rainforest in Africa and Asia has been damaged. Large areas of rainforest are being removed, often in order to eliminate just a few logs, and the rainforest is being destroyed at double the rate of all previous estimates. Regrettably, this means that there is a very high rate of extinction, as the wildlife depending on the forest dies with it.
- Emails can also have pictures from events in them. You can send birthday cards or newsletters as emails.
- Merchandises can be advertised with emails. Companies can reach numerous people and inform them in a short period.
When I interviewed Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, I asked him and he stated,
1. How would you best describe yourself from now and when you first created email?
I’m still the same boy who invented email back in 1978 at UMDNJ. In the sense, my curiosity, passion, love of creating new things, working with great people and a sense of mission to have an impact to make others lives better, has not changed one iota — if anything, I’ve become more of child as the years have passed. I still love the same things beyond innovation and science that I did then, baseball, design, music, cooking, and anything beautiful including people, homes, art, and nature.
2. In a growing age of internet technology, in your opinion should postal mail be stopped on a large scale and everyone should use their emails instead as an effective tool of communication?
When any new media, such as email emerges, people believe the thing that it is replacing will die; however, history shows, what actually happens, is that there is a kind of media natural selection process. By this I mean, that the media find their right “ecological niche.” Handwritten, printed letters have their niche, and will email, due its unique properties. There is still something for some people about the experience of send and receiving flowers, for example, with a lovely card. Just as Radio did not disappear when TV appear or live performance and theater did not disappear with the advent of film. My view is actually quite the opposite, as I share in the Epilogue of my new book The Email Revolution: the postal system should actually embrace and take over email or at the least compete with the private companies such as Google and FaceBook. Today, we read a lot about Snowden’s alarming citizens about the NSA spying on our emails; however, what we miss is that Google, Yahoo, HotMail, etc. have free reign over our email — right when we sign up for these “free” services, we give away our privacy — they can literally do anything with our email. However, over hundreds of years, the postal service, has a massive body of law, created to protect the tampering and transit of mail — this body of law could be more easily applied to email, thereby providing the postal service the opportunity for citizens to likely get a more secure and private service at a nominal cost. Would you not pay say $50 per year to know that you email was secure, private and protected by the democratic laws, that YOU can still control?
3. What motivates you?
I am motivated by an addictive desire to change the world, vanquish evil and free the oppressed. My heroes growing up were Rama, Emiliano Zapata, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, Lenin, and those that saw the world where all of where ultimately brothers and sisters, fought, and when necessary risked their lives to create such a world. They were conscious enough to see that they were insignificant as one individual, but the right actions at the right time in history, even by the insignificant could have massive impact, like the butterfly effect.
4. Are there any new technologies that you plan to introduce with email in the present or future?
Yes, on the email side, we have released a version of EchoMail (www.echomail.com) for the mass of millions of small businesses, who also want the same technology we provided for nearly twenty years to the Global 2000 companies, to get, keep and grow customers. Separate from email, which I invented in 1978, 15 years later, fortuitously, and independent of that creation, I created another system called EchoMail, to automatically read, anlayze, sort and route email. That technology developed out of my winning a White House contest to help President Clinton automatically sort his inbound email in 1993. EchoMail was advanced with many features to help businesses grow their businesses, and only accessible, until recently, to big businesses. It’s a powerful tool. My vision is that small businesses, need the same powerful capabilities as the big businesses, and the new version of EchoMail is made very affordable for any business. Beyond my work in email and in media, by other love is medicine. Most recently, we just started a new company called CytoSolve — if email was a big invention, I think CytoSolve will be bigger. CytoSolve allows the in silico modeling of human cells, so we can create new medicines without the need to torture and kill animals.
Global nations know that there are a lot of emails sent, opened and lost in the spam/junk mail every day. However, just how many emails are sent? What is the usual amount? How many of us open email on a mobile device? The numbers are astounding.
- Hotmail , Yahoo Mail and Gmail together account for well over 1 billion users.
- More than 294 billion emails are sent and received daily.
- Well over 100 trillion emails are sent per year.
- 3.5Â million Emails are sent per second.
- 90% of the trillions of email messages are spam or viruses.
- Spam costs businesses over $20 billion in decreased productivity and technology expenses.
- Retailers send an average of 16 emails per subscriber in “busy†months.
- Average email campaign volumes increased 20% in 2012 over 2011 levels.
- 77% of us want to get marketing messages via email; and there’s no close second place.
- 36% of all emails are opened on a mobile device.
- In 2011 there were over 400 million people who used smartphones or tablets to access email.
Figure 1.1 demonstrates sharing documents via email happens daily.
The existence of servers plays a fundamental role in Internet communications.
 A server is a fast, dynamic computer or bank of computers with enormous amounts of data storage. The straightforward function of a server is to store data and then serve or deliver that information to users when requested. Servers are specifically designed for their function and there are many kinds such as e-mail servers, web servers, ISP servers, and DNS servers to name a few. They work together to make up the backbone of the Internet and allow our communications with it. These servers are normally located in an ISP office or many large web site search engines will have them as well.
 Function of Email
It is imperative to understand that e-mail travels over the Internet from server to server. For case in point: If you send an e-mail to a friend or business colleague living in Japan or Canada, you would log on to your e-mail server, type the e-mail address in the “To:” box and then type the message. Once you select “Sendâ€, your server uses the address to forward the e-mail to your friend’s server. Your associate then retrieves the e-mail during his next log on to his server.
ISP Based Email
As revealed before, e-mail is accessible through either an ISP or a free service. The provider’s title is usually part of the address revealing what type it is. All ISP’s give at least one e-mail account per customer but some people decide not to utilize it. They prefer instead to use a free e-mail account. It is common to access ISP e-mail with a client software package installed on the user’s computer. Programs like Microsoft Outlook Express (included with Windows), Microsoft Outlook, QUALCOMM Eudora and Mozilla Thunderbird, in addition to many others are intended for this purpose. When a client program is unlocked, it contacts the ISP e-mail server and synchronizes to accept new e-mails or updates. The client program has all functions related to e-mail like composing and deleting. After making modifications, the user can close the client program or manually press a Send/Receive button to update the server. Once updated, the server will replicate the changes and send e-mails consequently. ISP’s generally provide web-based access on their website allowing consumers to access e-mail from any web connection. This either can be for users who do not want to use a client or are not there from their normal computers.
Free E-MAIL
Numerous search engines and websites like yahoo.com, hotmail.com, and gmail.com propose free e-mail service. These e-mail accounts are entirely web-based and widespread notwithstanding the advertisements users must endure. Such reputation also creates a breeding ground for spam. Web based e-mail is accessible through web browsers. The web site supplies a web interface for handlers to gain access. Mail is under no circumstances stored on the user’s computer unless it is purposefully saved there. This creates a security zone from malware and other uninvited items that might be hiding. Nonetheless, if an attachment is opened or a linkage selected, it will use a program on the operator’s local computer hence opening the probability for infection.
Note well when signing up for free e-mail; it involves personal information during registration. Some people use fictional names as well as other false information. Users who plan to use the e-mail address for expert correspondence should deliberate on using their real name or initials. This name will be attached to all e-mail sent and might puzzle recipients. Certain free e-mail services do allow the sent name to be altered making it different from the registered name.
Spam
 Spam is junk e-mail from advertisers, companies, or people you do not know. It is similar to junk mail sent to your household. Many times, it contains inappropriate words in the subject line as well as suggestive phrases. Most people wonder how they get Spam when they use antivirus protection software on their computer. Spam is not a virus- it is just undesirable e-mail. Moreover, it is normally stored on the server, not the user’s computer. Many e-mail providers scan for Spam but are typically overwhelmed and miss some. Setting filter parameters is also complicated when discerning between Spam and legitimate e-mail. If a user checks e-mail with a web interface, there is no concern with Spam prevention on the local computer since it stays entirely on the e-mail server. Typically, there is a technique to designate e-mail as Spam that will try to block future e-mail from the same sender.
More than two billion people use the internet. The top five countries in internet usage are China, United States, Japan, India and Brazil. It is challenging to comprehend the notion of any given moment without someone in the world being connected to it for one purpose or another. Email is a virtual communication system that has changed the way companies conduct business. Email accelerates the exchange of information, eradicates global barriers, keeps communication costs low and allows business persons the flexibility to access their messages from anywhere in the world. By its very nature, companies benefit from the many advantages that email offers.
