In Chapter 4 we discuss personal information management and communication using Microsoft's Windows Live Essentials programs and features. Email and messaging are no longer bundled into Windows 7. Windows Live Mail (a drive-based email processor) and Windows Live Messenger are the two tools most used in this chapter. Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows 7 and interacts with WL Mail and WL Messenger to get the job done.
There are guidelines and cautions to using electronic communication. You need to determine what information you need and who has that information in a reliable form. You need to know whom you can trust. File attachments that you are not expecting to receive are very likely the basis of an invasion of your computer by either spyware or malware. Your form of communication should reflect the formality or informality of the situation; don't use chatspeak when emailing your boss, and consider whether text or email might be "overheard" and therefore not the best method of communication. Acquire email addresses and IM addresses (cell phone numbers etc.) for people with whom you expect to communicate electronically, and keep this information safe. Remember that a spam attack on your device could lead to them being spam-attacked.
Email is handled by drive-based programs like Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, and by Web-based email services like WL Hotmail, GMail, and Yahoo! Mail. Free Web-based email services sometimes have advertising in the email or on the page while paid services generally do not (except possibly for the ISP providing the paid service). Drive-based programs as a rule work only on one hard drive and cannot be accessed on another computer; web-based services can be accessed by a variety of computers. In some older cases, a blended system exists where the unread emails are stored on the Web but downloaded to the drive as they are read; when you access such a system from another computer it may not show the emails you already read on the first computer since they are now resident on the first computer's drive. (Very annoying if you use many computers in many places!)
The chapter runs us through installing WL Essentials, starting WL Mail, and an overview of the WL Mail window. It resembles MS Outlook in that there is a menu bar at the top, a navigation bar on the left side, a list of messages in the middle (or on the bottom), and a preview of the current message on the right (or above the list of messages).
Depending on settings, previewing the message may or may not mark it read (IIRC default is that the message is only marked read when it is opened). Double-clicking on a message opens it in a new window and marks the message as read (if it isn't already). Selecting a message and clicking the Print button will print the message, whether it has been read or not. Closing the window with the open message can be done by clicking the Close button on the title bar, by typing ALT, clicking File-Close or by clicking ALT-F4.
Click on the Reply button on the toolbar to reply to the current email. As usual, clicking Reply only sends back to the author of the email, clicking Reply All replies to everybody who received the email. Unless you tell WL Mail otherwise, a copy of the original message will be included below the reply. Type in the text of your reply in the message box and click Send. At one time it was possible to recall messages on some email systems, but this functionality either never existed or has been disabled in WL Mail; just as well, since you could only recall unread messages, and many people read their messages as soon as they are received.
Emails can be deleted by dragging the message to the Deleted Items folder, by right-clicking the message and clicking Delete on the shortcut menu, by pressing ALT and clicking Edit-Delete, by clicking CTRL-D, or by clicking ALT-E (Edit) and pressing D.
Clicking on the attachment icon will open an attachment to the email. It may open in a different program if it was composed in a different program. If you do not have the program the attachment was composed in, Windows may have a default set to open the attachment in a similar program, or it may prompt you to choose a program to open the attachment because it has no idea what to use. The attachment may be saved in the usual manner.
Emails can be composed on a plain window or on a Stationery form. If your recipient doesn't have the same Stationery strange things may happen to the formatting. You can also format your email after you type in in a plain window. Click the Attach button to find and attach an attachment to your email. Click Send to send your email.
WL Calendar serves similar purposes to a paper calendar or a personal data assistant in tracking appointments and schedules. The subject line allows input of the text to show on the calendar for the event. Start times, end times, locations, reminders and notes regarding the appointments can also be created. The Calendar can display by day, by week, or by month. Events can also be edited and deleted from the Calendar.
WL Contacts is an address list in WL Mail. You can call up a form to add information regarding a new contact. In past versions, emails you receive could create new contacts, I don't know if that functionality still exists; when it did you had only the person's email address and possibly their name if they were also using Windows Live/Outlook. Contacts can be edited and deleted.
Microsoft NewsServer controls internet newsgroup use for Windows Live Mail. Since there are other newsgroup clients, WL Mail will ask if MS NewsServer should be set as the default client. A list of newsgroups will be displayed; one can be selected to Subscribe to. Clicking Go To then closes the Subscriptions dialog box and opens a window displaying the articles in the selected newsgroup. Articles can be read, printed and posted. It is also possible to unsubscribe from a newsgroup. Chapter 4 then discusses how to close Windows Live Mail.
Internet Explorer permits you to subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and Web Slices. RSS feeds give a quick way to see what is new on a particular website (in a headline format) without having to go to that website. A Web Slice is a portion of a webpage that can be viewed from the Favorites bar in IE. Chapter 4 runs through the details of how to subscribe to RSS, how to view RSS feeds in the Favorites center, how to modify feed properties, how to subscribe to a web slice, and how to view and delete a webslice.
Blogs are constantly updated commentaries on a web page, ranging from diary-like personal blogs to informational databases such as Wikipedia and iMDB. These databases are edited by their readers, with no certification of the objectivity of the information, though both iMDB and Wikipedia have flags for articles that are not sufficiently documented and that show too much of one side of a discussion. This Blogger series of posts, for that matter, is a blog, and my Blogger blog shows my personal side, just as the other blogs generated for this class show each student's personal side. (It would be interesting to see an instructor's blog as well, though that might make it way too easy to cheat!)
Chat rooms are areas (like mIRC) where people can send short messages to each other in real time. Unlike SMS text messaging, the contents of the chat room consist of conversation lines scrolling down the page, with all threads going on at the same time. It's a bit like a text transcript of Twitter, or Facebook without Group separation. (I remember getting headaches the first little while trying to figure out who was talking to whom!)
Mailing lists allow an individual to send the same email to multiple recipients at the same time. For example, if Rob used regular email, he could create a mailing list of the CDM130 Fall 2014 students and send out the Chapter announcements to all of us. (Fortunately, Compass does the same thing with more security.) Many times, if you find out somebody is giving something away on Facebook or on the Internet, you'll find that by putting your email address in to get the giveaway you've just joined somebody's mailing list. Bloggers also will have mailing lists to broadcast news of their latest posts.
The book defines social networks as single websites from which you can access blogs, wikis and other communication tools; I'm not sure I'd agree that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest quite fit that definition, but they certainly each use various aspects of the above to create interesting sites.
WL Messenger allows two people online at the same time to exchange real-time messages, very similar to SMS text messaging (which instant messaging predates). Chapter 4 shows how to start WL Messenger, how to sign in, how to add a contact to the contacts list, how to send an instant message, how to close the IM window, and how to delete a contact on the contacts list. (Contacts can also be edited.) Finally, Chapter 4 shows how to close WL Messenger and sign out.
And, in case you forgot, they tell you how to log off the computer and turn it off.
No comments:
Post a Comment