When I was still in high school, I used to write my articles manually. Then, when I turned 20, my beloved mother bought me a second-hand typewriter. After college, I bought my own handy typewriter, which I used to type my articles.
Once I finished writing my articles, I mailed them through the post office. The mailing cost was not that much but when there were pictures or more documents, I had to pay more. Another minus factor: I had to include a self-stamped envelop if I wanted my article returned.
That was then. Today, it is a different story; thanks to electronic mail (often abbreviated as email or e-mail), a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, shares this information: “E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure, typically an e-mail server, with a network-enabled device (that is, a personal computer) for the duration of message submission or retrieval.
Rarely is e-mail transmitted directly from one user’s device to another’s.”
With email, I don’t have to go to the post office anymore to mail my articles. All I need to do is type them in my personal computer, copy each article and send it via internet email service. In addition, I don’t have to use my old camera where I still need to have a print copy of the pictures I take.
With digital camera these days, all I have to do is download those pictures and send them to my editor and interested friends.
Today, most business workers spend from one to two hours of their working day on email: reading, ordering, sorting, “re-contextualizing” fragmented information, and writing email.
“The use of e-mail is increasing due to increasing levels of globalization—labor division and outsourcing amongst other things,” Wikipedia states.
However, emails can lead to some well-known problems. One of these is information overload. Email is a push technology where the sender controls who receives the information.
Convenient availability of mailing lists and use of “copy all” can lead to people receiving unwanted or irrelevant information of no use to them.
Recently, I received a forwarded email which said that 50 percent of those who send emails know the proper procedure of forwarding emails. The remaining 50 percent have no idea at all. For those people who don’t know how, here are some pointers:
How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:
(1) When you forward an e-mail, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message.
Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second you must click the “Forward” button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.
(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do not use the “To:” or “Cc:” fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the “Bcc:” (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own email address.
(3) Remove any “Fw:” in the subject line. You can rename the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.
(4) Always hit your “Forward” button from the actual email you are reading. Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it?
By forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.
(5) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.
Here’s a fact: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of money to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.
If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition.
(6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say that something like this: “Send this email to 10 people and you’ll see something great run across your screen.” Or, sometimes they’ll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen it really won’t happen! I don’t let the bad luck ones scare me either; they get trashed.
7) Before you forward a “Virus Alert,” or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for years! Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com.
From now on, let us work together to stop sending those junk mails. As the person who forwarded me the email said:
“Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses and names.
As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor person to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his or her computer.”
For comments, write me at henrytacio@gmail.com
