| Electronic
mail. You can send and receive messages over the Internet from your
friends and family when you have this feature.
E-mail (electronic mail) is the
exchange of computer-stored messages by telecommunication. (Some
publications spell it email; we prefer the currently more
established spelling of e-mail.) E-mail messages are usually encoded
in ASCII text. However, you can also send non-text files, such as
graphic images and sound files, as attachments sent in binary
streams. E-mail was one of the first uses of the Internet and is
still the most popular use. A large percentage of the total traffic
over the Internet is e-mail. E-mail can also be exchanged between
online service provider users and in networks other than the
Internet, both public and private. |
