What Is E-mail?

E-mail is the shortened name of the electronic mail. It is a protocol for sending, storing and receiving the electronic messages. With the spread and development of internet, E-mail has gain tremendous popularity in computer users. In fact, E-mail is one of the most preferred methods of the professional and personal communication.

Invention of E-mail
A date is not certain about the invention of E-mail, but its credit can be given to Ray Tomlinson, because he is the father of the modern version of E-mail. Before Ray Tomlinson, E-mail application was incomplete because it was not able to sent messages to different users of different computers. But Ray Tomlinson improvised the previous version of the application and the result was modern E-mail facility.
Ray Tomlinson presented an idea to identify the specific name of a computer and the users, connected to that particular computer. So, basic formula of an E-mail address was decided to be in this format “username@usercomputer”. These days, in stead of user-computer, name of E-mail service provider is in use, but format is still the same.

Applications of E-mail system
Applications of E-mail can not be estimated exactly. As a fact, US postal service, handles around 212 billion mails every year, nearly the same amount of e-mails being sent forth and back in 1 single day. According to a survey conducted in USA, “US postal system is the largest postal system of the world and E-mail application, handles 300 times more mails, then US postal system”. In most of the cases, users send, store and receive email according to one of the two specialized standards- POP or SMTP. Abbreviation, SMTP means simple message transfer protocol and abbreviation POP means Post Office Protocol. SMTP is actually a special protocol for receiving and sending the E-mails, on the other hand POP is specific protocol used for the E-mail storage purposes.

E-mail client software
For using professional E-mail facility, a special program is required, dedicated to the specific application (E-mail) only. This specific software/application is also known as email client software, examples include- Outlook Express, Eudora, Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Pegasus Mail and Opera Mail. Most of them are available at internet, and users don’t need to pay anything for downloading the application program.

Along with E-mails (accessible through the email client software), another application named as Webmail is also in great demands. Most of the E-mail service providers, also offer this facility as an extra benefit. By using Webmail, users are able to access their particular mailbox on the internet. Some service providers are specially designed, with the help of World Wide Web, as a facility of primary interface. Examples include- Google mail, Hotmail, Yahoo! mail etc. These sites have gained great popularity, because they provide services of free e-mail accessing.

Uses of E-mail system
E-mail facility is having great applications in social life as well as in professional life. With the help of E-mail one can send important documents to his clients with in fraction of seconds. There are very less chances of account breaching, so confidential information can also travel safely by means of E-mail facility. Season’s greetings, birthday wishes, New Year’s greetings etc can be mailed to some specific receiver without any charges and without any physical effort. E-mails also provide a facility of sending MS office files and pictures as special attachments of the mail. E-mail scenario is replacing the traditional postal mechanism, because it is more convenient, more reliable, faster and free of cost.

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