December 2008 Afternoon Learners SIG Meeting: A Look at Email
By Len Alder
Len Adler led a discussion of using
e-mail applications. He compared the Apple application Mail, Google’s
Gmail, and the email available with Pi membership, WAP mail. One participant,
Lew, had never used WAP mail, and during the demonstration, found his user
name and password. Soon he was accessing WAP mail. The attendees carefully
examined the program Mail and expressed some frustrations with it.
The participants discussed which application had the fastest and best tech
support, and concluded that each provider has wait times, and is less than
ideal.
Five of our many conclusions about email are:
By using a browser such as Safari and the Web address of the
email provider, it is possible to access your email account from any computer.
Apple’s Mail program requires each user to have registered
with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and rely on them to provide the
account settings. WAP mail, which Pi members have as part of their membership,
also requires this.
Attached photos or graphics will sometimes appear in the document window
of Mail, and sometimes as an attachment. We don’t know why.
Google offers a free mail account, with storage exceeding the space provided
by most ISPs. Len showed how to create a mail group, use Google documents
for large files or group review and editing, and sending files of photos
(from iPhoto via Picasso, Google’s online photography service).
Not only is it possible to have multiple email addresses, but most can
be received in one location.
Our topic for January 22 is iDVD, presented by Paul Silverman and
Don Fortnum.
