CIPCUG SIG meeting on EMAIL April 8, 2002
Next month.....
Scanning photos PART 2
June 3rd, 2002
EMAIL HINTS
- Never use all capital letters in an e-mail- it is considered
SHOUTING, which is rude.
- NEVER OPEN ATTACHMENTS
Whether it is from your best friend or a complete stranger - attachments are the number 1 source of computer virus today.
Remember that most attachments are jokes or cute little somethings that you probably won't miss by not reading. (bad poetry, singing and dancing Christmas cards / powerpoint presentations, BABY PICTURES - {and don't they all look like Winston Churchill?}
But if you absolutely must open attachments - copy them to a separate folder and VIRUS SCAN that folder (a folder named DOWNLOAD is always good)
Also make sure that the person REALLY meant to send it to you. In the body of the email they use YOUR NAME, they sign THEIR NAME and the explain EXACTLY what the file is. (You can reply to the person that this is your policy for computer hygiene.)
Email viruses work by using victim's address book and sending out itself to everyone in it with an attachment and a message like
"Thought you'd like this - it's funny."
- If you are sending to lots of people, please use bcc: (called blind
carbon copy) for the list and send the To: to yourself. That way not
everyone gets everyone else’s e-mail address. Be considerate. An example
is : To: inventor00@pobox.com bcc: all the people on my humor list to
get a daily joke.
- If sending on items like jokes which have been send by many others
with many other names in the message, please mark the area you want
others to see, and copy into a new e-mail message. Most people hate
going though 4 pages of names to get to the joke/message.
- Please include a meaningful title on the subject line. Most people
hate getting one saying "no subject" and having to open the message
(maybe days later) to find out it was really important.
- Always include your name, as not all e-mail addresses are
meaningful. Mine is cipcugsig@yahoo.com, so I try to always include
"Michael Shalkey, cipcugsig@yahoo.com" at the bottom of the message.
- Be careful when YOU send attachments
If you want it to be opened, then like stated above, be sure to use person's name, your name, EXACTLY what the attachment is and what it will do.
Also be aware of size. - You may have a brand new - fast machine, DSL or cable connection, but the person you are sending to has an old machine with a 33.6 dial-up modem. (I know from experience what it is like to wait 35 minutes to download a Christmas Photo from people I met 7 years ago.
- Always send the message as text instead of html (if possible) since
many people cannot read it if it is in html format unless they cut and
paste into another document then pull it up in their browser (and most
people will not do this). AOL with 14 million people can only convert
some parts of html e-mail messages.
- Unless you know that a person is retired with nothing to do except
read e-mail, please be considerate with the volume of mail you pass on.
With my joke list, I have daily readers and weekly readers (weekly being
people who have too much e-mail and only want one to two a week).
Sometimes people are shy about telling you to reduce the volume (they
are not like shy , retiring me…not). Also to some people, reading e-mail
is not a priority. Some many read it once a month. So be aware of your
audience.
- A fun site we found during the sig Night time earth view Here is the JPG file of the earth from space
and other images at night more
Email part 2 (sort of)
Emoticons: Richard Hanson has this as a definition: An emoticon
(also known as a "smiley") is a symbol composed of a few text characters,
and used as a kind of emotional shorthand to add meaning to a message. For
example, an emoticon may be used at the end of a comment to indicate that
the comment was not intended to be taken seriously. Most emoticons are
designed to be interpreted with the viewer's head tilted over to the left.
(From: http://www.utopiasw.demon.co.uk/emoticon.htm
-this site also has a list of the more common ones.)
E-mail acronyms can also be found at : (such as BTW, which is By the
way, LOL which is Laughing Out Loud, etc.)
http://www.utopiasw.demon.co.uk/acronyms.htm
Click here for the easy thumbnail webpage creator
This is from the SIG held on Monday June 3rd.
Channel Island PC Users Group
Ventura County Computers
Michael Shalkey's Home page
