by Barbara Renick ©Copyright 2002
It may seem like an oxymoron to say there are benefits and blessings to using e-mail, but many methods exist to improve your e-mail experience. This lecture shows you how to harness the power of e-mail to do more with less effort.
POP3 E-MAIL ACCOUNTS
POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) is the most common type of e-mail service. This is the type of e-mail account available from most Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
How It Works:
POP3 Advantages:
You need to stay connected to the Internet only for the time it
takes to download your messages or upload your replies. This may not be crucial
when you are at home, but when traveling (and having to pay for your Internet
connection by the minute or hour) this can be important. You read your messages
and compose your replies offline.
With POP3 accounts, you have your choice of e-mail programs.
Commercial e-mail programs add a great many sophisticated management features to
your e-mail experience.
Your e-mail messages reside on your computer’s hard drive, so you
can easily sort and file them according to your needs. Unless you run out of
hard disk drive space, your e-mail inbox will never overflow and bounce messages
back to senders as undeliverable.
E-mail programs allow you to archive and store your messages and
the folders in which they reside (once you sort them). Yes, this means you can
backup your e-mail.
Most of the popular e-mail programs allow you to import and export
messages for use in a different e-mail program or on a different computer (like
your notebook computer or a new desktop computer).
Your ISP may offer both POP3 and Web-based e-mail services. They
allow you to switch your POP3 account to their Web-based mail center before you
travel, then switch it back when you return home.
POP3 Disadvantages:
You must have an e-mail program installed and configured on the
computer you use to access your POP3 account (a very messy process with some
e-mail programs) OR find access to the Internet somewhere and use a free
Web site (like Mail2Web.com) running a program online that allows you to
access most (but not all) POP3 e-mail servers.
It may be difficult (many hotel switchboards make it nearly
impossible to dial out using a standard telephone access number for your ISP) or
expensive (hotels often have charges for local phone calls—and your ISP may not
have a local telephone access number from that location) to use a telephone
connection to dial into one of your ISP’s servers.
You must access your POP3 mail account regularly to prevent your
mailbox on that server from overflowing. While POP3 accounts typically offer
more message storage space than HTTP accounts, just a few messages with large
files attached can exceed the capacity of your account.
If you close your account with that ISP (or it goes out of
business), you will lose that POP3 e-mail address. For genealogists, this is a
major disaster since we tend to post our e-mail addresses at a plethora of
online query sites, message boards, mail lists, and newsgroups. Web hosting
services often offer permanent e-mail addresses (like Barb@ZRoots.com)
that forward any messages received to another designated e-mail account (like
barbararenick5982@earthlink.net). If you change ISPs, simply change the
forwarding address for your Barb@ZRoots.com account.
A Genealogist’s E-mail Program Should:
Support the four basic types of e-mail accounts (POP3, HTTP,
IMAP4, and SMTP)
Consolidate POP3 and HTTP accounts
so all messages are downloaded to your main computer.
Handle HTML and plain text messages plus file attachments and file
coding (mime, etc.)
Provide an address book to store and organize contact information
with custom designed fields for surnames searched, localities researched,
special research interests, etc.
Allow you to organize and store your messages into folders
(manually or via filtering).
Provide sophisticated filtering.
Provide spelling and grammar checkers.
Provide advanced search capabilities of stored messages.
Work with your calendar and task list programs.
Allow you to click on a URL in a message and have your browser
open to that site.
Allow use of multiple custom signature files.
Provide for message forwarding to other accounts (POP3 or HTTP)
when you travel.
Allow you to group e-mail addresses for mass mailings.
Allow you to manage threaded Usenet newsgroups.
Allow you to adjust security settings easily and warn you if you
are about to do something dangerous (like open a file attachment before scanning
it for viruses).
HTTP (WEB-BASED) E-MAIL ACCOUNTS
HTTP (or Web-based) e-mail accounts have been growing in popularity. Part of their attraction is that most of them are free. Most Web-based e-mail services offer more mail handling features and/or storage capacity online if you upgrade to their paid plans.
How It Works:
HTTP Advantages:
Use any computer (anywhere in the world) with an Internet
connection to access your messages, so long as it has a relatively current
version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator (versions 4.x and higher).
HTTP accounts are typically easier to setup (someone else has
already set up that computer to connect to the Internet).
You don’t have to configure, learn to use, or maintain a complex
e-mail program (since you are using a browser already working on that computer).
Most Web-based e-mail providers include up-to-date virus checking
of your incoming and outgoing messages and file attachments. If your personal
computer has anti-virus software set to automatically update daily, then it is
problematical as to which (POP3 or HTTP) provides greater safety.
Some HTTP accounts allow you to access your e-mail via toll-free
telephone numbers, wireless accounts (WAP), or PDAs (handheld personal digital
assistants).
Every genealogist should have at least one free HTTP e-mail
account to use as their public e-mail address. This is the e-mail address you
use when registering anything anywhere (online or offline—yes even for that
toaster oven you purchased last week). Save your POP3 e-mail address for trusted
sources that aren’t likely to sell it to advertisers. Be cautious about
including your private e-mail address in messages you post to genealogy query
sites, message boards, and mail lists. There are programs that mine e-mail
addresses from such sources. Be wise and disguise your address in such postings.
Example: yyybarb@zrootsyyy.com (remove the y’s for
an address that works).
HTTP Disadvantages:
At this time, none of the Web-based e-mail services offer the
sophisticated features available from even the free e-mail software programs
(like Outlook Express and Eudora Lite). Commercial e-mail programs (like Outlook
and Eudora Pro) can be set up to help genealogists save time and eyestrain by
filtering messages, especially those from mail lists (e-mail discussion groups),
for specified keywords. This means genealogists can choose to read only
those messages that contain their surnames, place names, occupations, etc.
Filtering can also be used to diminish the amount of junk e-mail that gets into
your inbox. Address book features in HTTP accounts also tend to be primitive.
HTTP accounts tend to have lower storage limits than POP3
accounts, unless you pay to upgrade your account. They, too, send an e-mail
message if your mailbox gets full, but for this to do any good you have to check
for new messages regularly.
HTTP accounts tend to have lower limits on maximum e-mail message
size than POP3 accounts. Again, if you pay to upgrade your account, this limit
is usually raised.
Advertisers sending bulk mailings (spammers) often use free
Web-based e-mail to send their solicitations. Many e-mail services, therefore,
block all messages sent using HTTP services that permit such practices.
Traffic conditions vary radically on the Internet and on the
servers for your HTTP account. Therefore, accessing HTTP e-mail may be a much
slower process than downloading POP3 mail. Each time you open an HTTP e-mail
message, a new Web page has to be downloaded to your Web browser. This can be
v….e…..r……y irritating.
HTTP accounts may be free, but they pay for themselves by exposing
you to advertising and/or by selling your e-mail address to bulk mailers. Be
sure to read the privacy statements of any account you register to use. Most
Web-based services also require that you visit their site every 30 days or your
e-mail account will be terminated. If all you use it for is to collect spam,
that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just open another free account. Most HTTP
e-mail services are glad to give you several free accounts.
For a long time, POP3 accounts were used for handling large volumes of genealogical correspondence, while HTTP accounts were used to collect spam (junk e-mail) and for easy access to e-mail while traveling. POP3 accounts couldn’t download messages from your Web-based accounts and Web-based services couldn’t collect messages from your POP3 account(s). This has changed. Today, even the free versions of e-mail programs can be set up to collect messages from both types of services and most free HTTP accounts can be set up to collect messages from most (but not all) POP3 accounts.
Recently, Web sites have been developed to run programs giving you even more flexibility for accessing most (but not all) POP3 mail accounts. By using a site such as Mail2Web.com you need only go to that Web site and enter your POP3 e-mail address and password to be able to read any new POP3 mail you have received since you last went on with your regular e-mail program and downloaded (thus deleting) your messages from that POP3 server. Mail2Web.com does NOT erase your messages from your POP3 server. Your messages will still be on your POP3 server waiting for you to download them when you get home—unless you very specifically tell Mail2Web.com to delete a particular message. You can use Mail2Web.com anonymously. It does not register anything about your use of their site. They have a very strict privacy policy. Go to their Web site (http://www.mail2web.com/) to read more about their policies and the additional features they offer. AOL, MSN, and ATT are a few of the large e-mail providers who do not permit Web programs such as the one at Mail2Web.com to pull mail from their servers.