Module 2: Email Task

After reading through the various tutorials about email I was then prompted to answer the following questions:

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

A: By looking at the senders email address you can find out the domain name (yahoo, hotmail, etc), country of origin (.au = Australia, .net or .com can be elsewhere), and in some cases, name ( For example James.Bland@student.curtin.edu.au).

Q: In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?

A: To be honest i've never used the 'cc' or 'bcc' =S. Because I mainly use hotmail to email people the 'cc' and 'bcc' features are hidden unless you want them to be shown. However after reading through the tutorials i am aware of what each one can be used for:

Multiple Recipients:

• Use TO: List each primary recipient in the TO: field of the message form. Separate each e-mail address with a comma.

• Use CC: if you want to send a copy of your message to someone.

• Use BCC: if you want to send a "blind" copy of your message to someone, without other recipients knowing about it.

I personally have only used 'TO' as this suits my emailing needs just fine.

However i often use the reply button as this allows me to quickly email people back without having to fiddle around with typing in their email addresses. This feature is also useful for quoting etc.

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

A: When sending an attachment it is important to follow the following steps:

• Make sure you have saved the file in a format that will be readable by the recipient.
• Compress large files! From experience receiving large power point presentations I know firsthand how important compression is. It saves a lot of time for both users.
• If you are unsure of the recipients software/system send the attachment as a rich text file (RTF). This type of file can be opened by all users.

Q: What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

A:The only filter than I have active at the moment is a spam filter. This is because i dislike my email inbox being filled with random adverts. It makes it difficult to separate the wanted emails from the rest.

Q:How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?

A: Hrm folder structure =S. The only folders I have with hotmail are:

• Inbox

• Junk

• Drafts

• Sent

• Deleted

This structure seems to work pretty well for me! Everything is well organised and easy to find =).

Module 1: Internet Tools

For this exercise I was required to read the text http://computer.howstuffworks.com/router5.htm which explains traceroute. However after reading it i barely understand it better than I did before i read it =S. Maybe its because i am listening to music at the same time or maybe its just supposed to be suuppeerr confusing D: But whatever, i'm sure it'll become clearer later right?

WRONG haha.

I then proceeded to http://centralops.net/co/ where I used the traceroute tool. Here i learned that there were 21 hops from the tools site to the curtin server. So far I am unsure as to how I am supposed to know how many milliseconds it took between these 2 =S. Tomorrow i'll ask people on the dicussion boards if they can help me and then i guess i'll get back to you =).

Oh also the IP number for the curtin server is 134.7.179.53. I have pasted the traceroute below for you all to look at!

Tracing route to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.53]...

hop

rtt

rtt

rtt

ip address

domain name

1

0

0

1

70.84.211.97

61.d3.5446.static.theplanet.com

2

0

0

0

70.84.160.162

vl2.dsr02.dllstx5.theplanet.com

3

0

0

0

70.85.127.109

po52.dsr02.dllstx3.theplanet.com

4

0

0

0

70.87.253.21

et3-1.ibr03.dllstx3.theplanet.com

5

99

1

3

157.238.225.5

xe-4-4.r03.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

6

0

0

0

129.250.2.153

ae-2.r20.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

7

6

6

6

129.250.3.130

as-0.r20.hstntx01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

8

6

6

6

129.250.3.25

ae-0.r21.hstntx01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

9

48

48

48

129.250.3.121

as-1.r21.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

10

48

48

48

129.250.5.90

xe-0-1-0.r03.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

11

48

48

48

198.172.90.102

p4-1-1-0.r03.lsanca03.us.ce.gin.ntt.net

12

196

196

200

202.158.194.153

so-3-2-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au

13

208

211

212

202.158.194.33

so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au

14

222

220

217

202.158.194.17

so-2-0-0.bb1.a.adl.aarnet.net.au

15

248

248

244

202.158.194.5

so-0-1-0.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au

16

250

248

248

202.158.198.178

gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au

17

248

250

245

202.158.198.186

gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au

18

*

*

*

19

*

*

*

20

*

*

*

21

250

249

250

134.7.179.53

Trace complete

-- end --

So as fun as all this was i'm not quite sure how it benefited me >.<. Its really just confused me a great deal haha. I think i might look into this some more and post my findings later. EDIT: After looking at everyone elses blogs I have come to the conlusion that the time from the tools site to the curtin server is 250 ms. Wootwoot module on down! 4 more to gggoooo!

Module 1: CAPITALIZATION MATTERS! (FTP)

Yes thats right it does matter! haha. Okay so how did i come to this conclusion... Well first i decided that instead of downloading and installing filezilla i would just simply type ftp://recall.curtin.edu.au into my firefox browser. To my surpise this worked! I then continued to search through folders and subfolders until i found the readme.txt. I eventually found the file in: ftp://recall.curtin.edu.au/../../../Anonymous/MSC/readme.txt.

Ok so the way i see it... This ftp system is pretty much like using your own computer where you have a C drive and then a lot of subfolders within that. However with this system your in someone elses computer and are able to access specific files and folders. This seems rather limited and i know from experience that these servers tend to be slower than downloading directly.

Module 1:Task B

LOG ENTRY:

So i've just gone to telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl to "have a bit of fun" and would you look at that! Its Star Wars! hahah. This is brilliant and I cannot belive that anyone would have the time to do this. It must have taken years of work or some pretty crazy slave monkeys haha. I am very impressed! Although we can get much more appealing and graphically detailed animations and movies on the internet today, something like that just makes you say "WOW!" haha.

I imagine that back when telnet started that people never expected that was possible, nor did I when i started looking into telnet! As awesome as this is though, its not so practicle. This would have taken years to make whereas something like this made in say FlashMX would have taken about half the time, if not less.

I am sure that as telnet developed, people would have become frustrated with the lack of user interface. New users may have found telnet extremely confusing. This is just one of the problems that telnet would have faced.

Module 1:Task A

LOG ENTRY:

Ok then so i've just found out that I already have a telnet client on my computer by typing in telnet:// into my browser. So right now i'm thinking thats pretty cool! I never knew that existed =O.

I then proceeded to go to telnet://library.deakin.edu.au where i was greated by a friendly yet confusing message: What kind of terminal are you using? V= VT100 / W = NCSA VT100? Erm what? Okay so i guess i'm just going to go for the first one and hope for the best... Woots it worked haha. *searching for the author* 2 of them came up but the first one seems slightly more english so i'm guessing thats the one we are looking for. *hit P for print and enter in my email addy*... *checks email*. Oh woops i entered in my email wrong haha *goes back to telnet and does it all over again* >.<". Yaayy I got my email correct that time and I have now recieved an email from Deakin Uni Lib! The email I recieved says: You searched for the AUTHOR: bennahum
2 AUTHORS found, with 2 entries; AUTHORS 1-2 are:

1 Bennahum David A 1936 ................................. 1 entry
2 Bennahum Ninotchka .................................... 1 entry

That wasnt as exciting as I had hoped >.<. I was hoping that it would show me the texts instead of what i had already seen. So far telnet seems pretty awesome though. However it may become similar to my Nintendo Wii experience... The novelty always wears off. Not being able to copy and paste and such into the telnet browser made it kind of frustrating. However it does load faster than using a normal browser. I can see telnet as being slightly limited however in terms of graphics and eyecandy.