Communicating On The Internet
What is "e-mail"?
E-mail is an electronic mail system. It's a way of corresponding with people from your computer. You can send text, you can send video, you can send photos; in some programs you can even send a voice message through your e-mail system. Any person with a computer can have access to e-mail, and can send and receive it. It's a way to stay in touch with people at long distances without long-distance phone charges.
How does e-mail work?
It's kind of like the post office except you don't need a stamp. You address your message with a valid internet address, with a valid e-mail address, and when that e-mail is sent, it's first processed by a server, that then sits there and sorts it into the proper domain that it's going to and finds the proper recipient. It eventually deposits the email into that recipient's e-mail box. All of this is done magically and electronically behind the scenes.
Can I have more than one e-mail address?
Absolutely it's possible to have more than one e-mail address. It's even a good idea because if you've done any shopping online, you know that you're going to start to collect a lot of e-mail that possibly you don't want. You don't necessarily want to receive every single offer from every single vendor. And you don't necessarily want your e-mail address that you happen to have purchased something with to be posted on a huge billboard for every multinational corporation in the world or small commercial operation in the world to get ahold of. I actually recommend that you get an e-mail address that you use for friends and family and maybe another e-mail address that you use only for shopping and that you keep them separate.
Can I talk on the telephone over the Internet?
You can now, through the magic of voice-over-internet protocol. What's been happening magically is of course since we have the connection to virtually anybody throughout the world via the worldwide web, since data transmission speeds have gotten fast enough to be able to convert your voice into information in real-time, it is now possible to use the Internet as your phone line, as the backbone of your voice communications to talk to anybody all over the world. Check out Skype, check out Vonage. There's actually lots of little services out there you haven't even heard of that will let you do this.
What is "Voice Over IP" (VOIP)?
This is the protocol, this is the standard that has emerged that allows your voice to be turned into data and transmitted over the Internet: Voice Over Internet Protocol. It's really revolutionizing voice communications all over the world. In developing countries, what we're going to find is that the kinds of communications infrastructure that we have in this country that's developed over the last century in the way of hard telephone lines being wired all over the place, that's really not going to be what's emerging in these developing countries. What's going to emerge in these developing countries are cellular networks, data networks, broadband networks, wireless broadband networks, and all the kinds of new communications possibilities that come along with that. Voice communications that may, in some casees, may exist exclusively on digital cellular networks or on Voice Over IP data networks.
