ILEAD communicates with its members by postal mail, electronic mail, and its website dartmouth.edu/~ilead. The benefits of electronic communication include speed of delivery and accessibility from multiple places. Some study leaders use the internet for posting class materials, projects, or research.
ILEAD members may benefit from upgrading to high speed internet access and from using email that presents uncluttered magazine-like pages of formatted text and graphics, looking much like good-looking webpages such as dartmouth.edu. Read on to learn how.
An example is the ILEAD newsletter, which is sent both in printed form by postal mail and also in email. The email version can look as nice as the print version if you have the right email capability.
Email systems differ; here are some general hints to help out.
The Subject line is very important. It determines whether your recipient will bother to read your email. It's also the description used in lists of emails that might be saved and searched through.
Your email will be sent to everyone in the To field, the CC field, and the BCC field, but the names in the BCC field do not appear in the recipients' version.
If you want to send an email to a list of people, but not divulge their addresses to all recipients, put their names in the BCC field.
If you intend to include an Attachment or Enclosure, add it first so you don't forget it before you Send the email. Limit the total size to 10 MB because most email systems discard bigger messages. (You can set your email program or photo editor to resize your digital photos to use less storage.)
Some email system do not display graphics unless you turn on the display graphics setting.
To respond to the sender, select Reply. To respond to the sender and all names in the To and CC fields, select Reply All. You can delete some names before clicking Send. The original attachments are not resent.
You can select Forward to send the original message with attachments to names you put on the To field.
It is possible that the From field in an email you receive is faked. Don't email credit card numbers or other confidential information. Don't respond to emails appearing to come from Microsoft or other vendors inviting you to upgrade your software by clicking on a link.
If you receive an email that appears to come from a bank or other institution asking for personal information, don't respond and don't click on any link in the email. Instead type your institution's web address into Internet Explorer, Safari, or other web browser; don't click on a link. Call your institiution first if you have any concerns. If a web site asks for confidential information, confirm that the web address starts with https:// so you are assured the transmission is encrypted.
Internet service providers (ISPs) connect your home or office computers to the internet. ISPs often provide auxilliary services, such as email or web site hosting, which are also available elsewhere. Here in the rural Upper Valley getting a fast connection to the internet can be a challenge, so you may want to investigate several options: cable, DSL, satellite, radio, and cellular.
Fairpoint provides traditional telephone service with wires entering your home or office. Your PC modem can place telephone calls over Fairpoint lines to modems belonging to ISPs such as Sovernet, which succeeded ValleyNet. You can use your existing telephone line or rent an additional one from Fairpoint. You also need to pay for an account with Sovernet, NetZero, EarthLink, or other ISP that maintains modems that accept the phone calls and link to the internet. Dialup is the slowest option, operating at up to 56 kbps (56,000 bits per second). Equipment needs are just a telephone cord from the wall jack to your PC.
Fairpoint also provides faster DSL service, at up to 768 kbps, over your existing telephone wires, provided they aren't longer than about 3 miles from a DSLAM -- a piece of telephone equipment on a pole that connects many wire lines to an optical fiber going to the telephone exchange. Call Fairpoint to see if DSL is available for your home. The price is competitive with dial-up on a second line. Equipment is usually a Fairpoint-installed DSL modem and wireless router to connect to your household PCs with WiFi capability. Thumb-size filters installed on your phones keep the DSL signal from interfering with phone calls.
Comcast provides cable TV and also internet and telephone service. The internet service costs more than DSL, but operates faster, at speeds up to 1,500 kbps or more. Equipment is usually a Comcast-installed cable modem and wireless router to connect to your household PCs with WiFi capability.
Sometimes your PC discovers a wireless WiFi signal from your neighbor's household. If no password security is required, you can connect to the internet for free. Because of the chance of evesdropping, it's generally recommended that password security be enforced, so you might have to ask your neighbor for a password. Sharing the connection may slow down access for all.
Vermont is proposing an optical fiber network to link 22 Upper Valley Vermont towns to the internet. EC-Fiber is not yet funded. It may become operational in 2011.
WildBlue and HughesNet provide satellite-linked internet service, attractive if you can't get less expensive DSL or cable service. The speed can be as fast as DSL for downloading files, but interactive sessions are slowed by the long distances the signals travel and the link protocols (get it? got it! good), inducing hesitations much like CNN interviews with reporters in Iraq. The equipment includes a small, TV-like satellite dish with a clear view of the southern sky, a modem in your house, and probably a wireless router to connect to household PC by WiFi. Your neighborhood association may not allow dish antennas. The company will assess whether an installation will be successful.
Finowen and WaveComm each provide radio linked internet service from regional broadcast towers to outdoor antennas on homes in the line of sight to a tower. The antennas may be smaller than a TV dish or be a larger, directional, herringbone-looking Yagi antennas at long distances from the regional tower. Inquire about service availability in Canaan, Charlestown, Clarement, Cornish, Enfield, Etna, Hanover, Lyme, Newport, Plainfield, Unity, West Lebanon, Brownsville, Hartford, Norwich, Quechee, Reading, Strafford, Thetford, Tunbridge, Wethersfield, and Windsor. The equipment includes an external antenna and cabled to equipment in your house, and probably a WiFi router. The company will assess whether an installation will be successful.
Sprint, Verizon, and ATT provide cellular telephone service that may be suitable for internet connections at speeds that range from about 100 kbps to 3,000 kbps. Sprint publishes street-level coverage maps on its website. The Sprint U760 is a thumb-sized cellular modem that plugs into the PC USB port, but the PC must be located where there is good cellular service. Alternatively you can locate a cellular modem where there is good service and use WiFi to connect it to your PC elsewhere in your home. Sprint and Verizon both sell the MiFi combination cellular modem and short-range wireless router. For low signal areas, you can add a cellular repeater consisting of a high, outdoor cellular antenna cabled to an amplifier with a small indoor stub antenna that broadcasts a cellular signal to your home's cellphones and cellular modems. In a very weak signal area, the outdoor antenna can be a directional Yagi.
Email service providers operate electronic post offices interconnected by the internet. You connect to your email server to dispatch or receive emails.
Your ISP offers an email service you may choose to use. ISPs provide email addresses that end in @comcast.net, @vzw.net, @sover.net, or @valley.net, for example.
You can also get email service from Google (@gmail.com), Yahoo, Microsoft Hotmail, and Dartmouth (@alum.dartmouth.org) for example. These are useful if you expect you will move or change ISPs because you won't have to change your email address.
There are two ways to access your email -- going to the post office email server to read and write email on line, or bringing it to your PC and reading and writing it there.
To access email on-line, you must be connected to the internet. Use your browser (eg Internet Explorer or Safari) to go to the mail server web site, such as comcast.net or gmail.com, and log on. You read and write messages on the email server, and your PC just displays what's being happening there. The advantage to you is that you can use email from any PC anywhere there is an internet connection. The advantage to the email service provider is the advertising messages displayed with email. The disadvantage to you is that the emails are not stored on your PC for reference, reading, and offline preparation of replies and new emails.
An email client is a PC program (eg Outlook, Applemail, or Thunderbird) that connects via internet to a mail server and exchanges batches of email, making your PC into a branch post office. Your emails are stored on your PC where it's relatively quick and easy to edit, organize, search, clip, prepare, format, and delete emails and enclosures, even when off-line. Email clients talk to email servers with standard protocols such as POP, IMAP, and SMTP.
Most email servers provide both web access and email client access, so you can use your PC email client program and also check your email from a web browser when you are away from your own PC.
Blitzmail is an obsolescent mail system developed at Dartmouth. Blitzmail services were also provided to the local community by ValleyNet, which was succeeded by Sovernet, which operates a Blitzmail server for @valley.net addresses. The Blitzmail client on your PC or Mac must be connected via internet to a Blitzmail server at Dartmouth or Sovernet in order to compose or process email. Also, Blitzmail handles text messages, not emails with standard html formatting and graphics. For use by other mail clients, Blitzmail servers at Dartmouth and Sovernet now provide standard POP, IMAP, and SMTP protocols that enable access by most other email clients.
Get high speed internet access if you can.
If you have only been accssing your email via a browser, also activate an email client such as came with your PC. This could be Outlook, Microsoft Mail, AppleMail, Thunderbird, or Eudora. It will let you process emails when you are not connected to the internet. You won't see so many ads, either.
If your email inserts ">" in lines, it's probably obsolete. Upgrade your email system away from text-only to standard html formatting and graphics.
Convert from obsolescent Blitzmail to industry standard email clients such as Outlook, AppleMail, or Thunderbird. Dartmouth recommends Thunderbird, available free from mozilla.org. You can still keep your @valley.net or @dartmouth.edu email address.
Configure your email client with information from your email service provider web site, FAQs, help files, or help desk telephone. That's where you will get information to answer the following questions your email client program will ask you.
Service type: POP or IMAP. Select newer IMAP if you can because it keeps your emails organized in folders synchronized on both on the browser-accessed email server and your PC or PCs, no matter where you process email. You can keep your iPhone email in synch this way, for example.
Name: A name that will show up in the From field for emails you send.
Email address: Your full email address, such as myname@emailservice.net, assigned to you by your email service provider.
User name or account: The name of the email account with your email service provides you. It's often just the myname part of the email address.
Password: The password for your email account. Your email client logs onto the email service giving the account and password. You can set it up to remember the password between email sessions.
Incomng mail server: The web address for mail you read, given to you by the email service provider. It could be something like pop.emailservice.net, or mail.emailservice.com.
Outgoing mail server: The web address for mail you send -- something like smtp.emailservice.net, or mail.emailservice.com.
Outgoing server authentication: You will probably be asked to check a box that means your email client must provide an account name and password to the outgoing mail server, just as for the incoming server.
Incoming server port number: 995, 110, or whatever number the email service supplier specifies. You may be instructed to check a box to enable SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption. This prevents spying on your incoming emails, even over an open WiFi connection.
Outgoing server port number: 465, 25, or whatever number the email service supplier specifies. You may be instructed to enable SSL encryption.
