Email Demystified

Why is email so difficult to understand? Not the concept but the way we use it today. Did you know that the first ever electronic mail was sent on May 24th 1844? The content? "What hath God wrought?" I assure you this was the first email and it predates all of us. After receiving a $30,000 grant from the then US Congress Mr. Samuel Morse was able to lay 40 miles of cable between Baltimore and Washington DC and was able to send this first historic message. Within 10 years more than 23,000 miles of telegraph cable would be laid around the world changing the way we communicate forever. Telegraph, telegram, telex, fax and now email, instant messaging and phone text messaging have all followed. There was a time in between where we actually used a device called a telephone to use the spoken word to communicate but that is fast becoming far too intrusive in our very busy lives. Who has time to chat on the phone when all you need to tell someone is that you just bought a new computer and found a great guy to install it.:-)

The first electronic telegraph as transcribed by Samuel Morse. Click to enlarge.

I digress, but you see the point, email is not so new, it's been around for 164 years so why is it so difficult? Well like all things computer there are just too many options. The concept is just as simple as that first message sent by Samuel Morse 164 years ago but the human interface used to send and receive those messages is varied and sometimes confusing.

So to start let's talk about the concept or how email works. Just like that first telegraph message from Baltimore to DC email is sent from one location to another. In those days it was referred to a "terminus" and today it is referred to as a "domain" or “point of presence”. Examples are verizon.net, optonline.net, gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com etc. The main difference between then and now is that in order for that message to get to and from the terminus in 1844 a boy would be dispatched by foot or on horseback. Today in order to get the message to and from the "point of presence” we simply need a computer and a connection to the Internet from our home or place of work.

The other major difference between then and now is that the “terminus” was in a physical location, i.e. Baltimore and Washington, DC, whereas an email server or point of presence can be in any (or many) physical locations anywhere in the world so long as it is firmly connected to the Internet.

Many of these domains or points of presence allow you to create one or more email addresses, the only proviso being that the address you choose is unique to that domain name. Therefore johnsmith@hotmail.com and johnsmith@yahoo.com may coexist on the Internet and be two totally different people. Consequently when you do apply for an email address using your real name or a common word you should not be surprised when the server comes back to you saying the “address is not available” with suggestions that you pick another like johnsmith1 or johnsmith2 etc.

So having established your email address and protected it with a password so no one else can retrieve your email you have probably been guided to one of two methods of sending, receiving and maintaining the names and addresses of your favorite recipients.

WEB MAIL

If you are on AOL, Google Gmail or Yahoo mail you are probably viewing your mail through an Internet browser like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or the AOL Interface. This method is particularly useful if you move between various computers and or locations. This method leaves the sent and received emails (as well as your address book) on the domain’s server so that you can view it from any location by simply signing in with your email address and password. The disadvantage? There is always a limit to the amount of email these domains will allow you to store on their servers; exceed this limit and future emails will be rejected. Some will simply delete older emails even if you wanted to keep them. Finally the email experience or performance associated with opening emails will be totally controlled by the speed of your Internet connection and how busy the domain’s email server is at that time.

EMAIL APPLICATIONS

The alternate way to send and receive email is to use an application such as Outlook Express, Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird specifically designed to go to the terminus, sorry I mean “Point Of Presence” (POP) server and from time to time and “download” your email to this application on you personal computer. The advantage being that the server will never get overloaded with your email and the experience of sending and receiving will be totally independent of the Internet or Server performance after the download is complete.

Conversely once the email is downloaded from the email server it can no longer be read from another computer or location. There are special conditions and systems that combine both the above options but require a more advanced setup and are not employed by the majority of home and small business user.

So to summarize, email is a simple concept made complicated by computers. On a recent trip to visit my son in Florida the local Marriott Courtyard had a business PC set up in the lobby with a vastly simplified user interface to read email and browse the Internet. I hope eventually this type of approach will become a de facto standard for everyone

Until then

Ctrl-Alt-Del

Steve Holder