Saturday, December 13, 2008

Module 2 Tasks

1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

Header metadata is data contained in the header of an email message.

E.g. who the message is addressed to, who sent it, and the subject amongst other things. This is consider to be the surface data or the information that can be visibly seen as part of the message.

Finish this question later !

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?
Consideration should be given to the use of the email when considering using cc and bcc, and reply all functions.

While these functions can be very useful to include many people in a communication. E.g. if a third person is referenced or quoted in am email it its courteous to cc them on the message. Bcc should always be approached with extreme caution as bcc'ing a person automatically implies 'secrecy' to a message in that the send does not intend the entire audience to know the identity of all recipients. Reply all is a great function when arranging meetings for example but again should be approached with caution.

To often email senders use the cc and bcc functions unnecessarily - thus causing 'information overload'. Consider how many times you have received emails that are not necessary to your information requirements and subsequently take up your time in reading, filing and deleting that message.

Increasingly it is becoming necessary for employers to provide netiquette lessons to new employees, justified by the dominance email has as a form of communication in the workplace.

3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

Technically by sending a message attachment as a plain text file will ensure it can be opened by any received regardless of what programs they are running anther machine.

Not making assumptions about your recipients will also overcome this issue - the invisibility of difference.

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?
In my email system I have rules set up that automatically allocate categories to messages received from certain parties or messages that contain particular key words in the subject line.

I also have junk message rules to automatically deleted junk messages that I do not want to receive.

The primary purpose of this is to streamline me messages by removing unnecessary items and categorising the important message that i want to keep to allow easy retrieval later on.

5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?
My folder structure ha been kept simple with the inbox the main operating mail folder. Search folders allow the organisation of messages that have previously been allocated to a category.

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