Briefly explain the phenomenal growth and nature of, e-mail and video conferencing.

Email: Email was born in 1971 when a computer engineer began using the @ symbol to designate which computer a message should go to. At its core, an email is simply a text message from one user to another. Advancing technology has added extra features along the way, of course-like image and file attachments, links and embedded maps.

When you send and receive email, you use an email client which allows you to create and interact with emails from other computer users. Your email client can be web-based, meaning you check it through your web browser (examples include, Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail) or it can be an application on your computer (like Outlook, Thunderbird or Mail).

Email works:

(i) The sender composes a message using the email client on their computer.

(ii) When the user sends the message, the email text and attachments are uploaded to the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server as outgoing mail.

(iii) All outgoing messages wait in the outgoing mail queue while the SMTP server communicates with the DNS (Domain Name Server-like a phone book for domain names and server IP addresses) to find out where the recipient’s email server is located. If the SMTP server finds the recipient’s email server it will transfer the message and attachments. If the recipient’s server can’t be found, the sender will get a “Mail Failure” notification in their inbox.

(iv) The next time the recipient clicks “Send & Receive,” their email client will download all new messages from their own email server. You’ve got mail! Millions of people and businesses around the world use Mail Chimp, which has been around since 2001. The company started as a side project funded by various web-development jobs. Now they are the world’s leading marketing automation platform and they send more than a billion emails a day. Get started with a free account by clicking the link.

Video conference

A video conference is a live, visual connection between two or more people residing in separate locations for the purpose of communication. At its simplest, video conferencing provides transmission of static images and text between two locations. At its most sophisticated it provides transmission of full-motion video images and high-quality audio between multiple locations.

For businesses, the tangible benefits of video conferencing include lower travel costs especially for employee training - and shortened project times as a result of improved communications among team members.

The intangible benefits of video conferencing include more efficient meetings with the exchange of non verbal communications and a stronger senses of community among business contacts, both within and between companies, as well as with customers. On a personal level the face-to-face connection adds verbal communication to the exchange and allows participants to develop a stronger sense of familiarity with individual they may never actually meet in person.