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Skip the Slow Boat, Rocket into Cyberspace
by Andrea McCann
Electronic mail, better known as e-mail, can be a fast, flexible and comparatively inexpensive way to correspond with friends, family and business associates.
A sender can dash off a message to the other side of the world in a matter of seconds – no need to wait on the proverbial slow boat to deliver a message written on paper! E-mail is available anytime – a plus for people who don’t keep “bankers’ hours” – and messages sit in a mailbox until the recipient has a chance to read them. E-mail accounts can be read from any computer with Internet access.
“A lot of people don’t use e-mail because they think it’s hard,” says Shandy Froedge of Crawfordsville, Ind. “But it’s not once you get the hang of it. It’s quick and easy to use, and it’s cheaper than a phone call. I have friends in other states I can talk to four or five times a week.”
Froedge, a three-year board member and 2000 secretary of the National Junior Swine Association (NJSA), says she couldn’t afford that luxury without e-mail.
She says during her involvement with NJSA, officers and board members used e-mail a lot to keep in touch since they all lived in different places. She says e-mail made it easy for them to touch base with one another and make sure they each were fulfilling their responsibilities.
“We all still keep in touch by e-mail,” she says.
Darrell Anderson, CEO at the National Swine Registry (NSR), says: “E-mail has increased my communication ability with our leadership and staff, as well as with business associates.”
He uses it to correspond with both internal and external staff and to stay in contact with the board of directors, whose executive committee receives a weekly update from him via e-mail. He says it’s particularly useful for communicating with staff members who sometimes work from home or the road.
“We have a part-time international marketing director who works outside the office,” he says. “It’s a convenient way for me to stay in touch with him.”
Besides just keeping in touch, e-mail can be an expedient way to send someone a document for proofing or for approval. Froedge says the NJSA officers and board members occasionally did that with short text files, but not for any large files. Anderson says NSR staffers and National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) board members use the attachment feature extensively to allow each other the courtesy of approving the content of a document before it’s used.
Howard Parrish, ofParrish Farms in Edon, Ohio, is a big fan of e-mail because it brings them business. The farm’s Web site has a link to their e-mail address, and Parrish says they receive numerous e-mail requests for catalogs and information.
He doesn’t approve of the use of e-mail chat rooms, however.
“They’re not good for the industry,” he says. “Sometimes bad information and rumors are spread. People confuse facts and are overcritical about things.”
For all its benefits, e-mail can still have its drawbacks if users aren’t careful or don’t know how to use it effectively.
“E-mail is a time-saving feature,” Anderson says. “You can get right to the point, and you don’t feel like you have to carry on a conversation. People get briefer and briefer.”
“The downside, though, is that it’s easy to miscommunicate when the other person can’t hear your tone of voice or if you accidentally leave a word out. You can be misinterpreted, and it can cause a misunderstanding that may not get resolved. You may not even realize there’s a problem.”
Froedge agrees. She believes there are more advantages than disadvantages to using e-mail, but she says issues and controversies may be better resolved in person.
According to Frank Poduska, Solution Center manager at Iowa State University, sending a very large text or photo file to someone is something else that can create a problem. The reason, he says, is that Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) allocate a certain amount of space for your e-mail. If the file being sent exceeds the amount of space available to store it, then you’ll never receive it.
“Some ISP’s block large attachments,” Poduska says. “One to two megs may be pushing the limit. It depends on the ISP.”
To avoid trouble with electronic photo files, Poduska suggests placing images on a Web site and sending people the URL so they can download the image from there if they need it. Or, he says, send them a thumbnail image. Then, if they want the larger image, they can request it. He also says scanning photos at 72 dpi and saving them as JPG files is sufficient for viewing on a computer monitor and saves space because the files are smaller than if, for example, the photos are scanned at 300 dpi and saved as TIFF files, which is recommended if they’ll be printed. Also, more computers have the capability to easily read JPG files than some other image file types.
“Communicate with the person and tell them what you’re sending first,” Poduska recommends. “That heads off problems.”
Anybody in the world who finds your e-mail address can send you messages and attachments, Poduska says. That can be another potential disadvantage of e-mail – not unlike regular mail. Such unsolicited, and usually unwanted, “junk” e-mail is called spam. To limit your chances of receiving spam, Poduska says you should avoid putting your e-mail address on Web pages or publishing it in news groups. He says some e-mail groups use the “blind carbon copy” (bcc) feature to maintain privacy when they send e-mails. That way, readers can’t see other people’s e-mail addresses. If that’s important to you, check for that feature before subscribing to e-mail newsletters or news groups.
“Spam filtering is one feature to look for in e-mail,” Poduska says.
If an e-mail program includes a spam filter, you can plug in keywords and addresses that might be in e-mail you don’t want to receive. The filter will sort out and eliminate any e-mail containing those words and addresses before they ever reach you.
Many e-mail programs will handle viruses in a similar fashion. Upon detecting a virus in an e-mail message, the program will automatically dispose of that message before it can reach your computer system and infect it.
“Two percent of e-mail just evaporates,” Poduska says. “It disappears into a black hole.”
Poduska recommends looking for the following in an e-mail program:
• Virus detection
• Spam filtering
• Plenty of space allocation
• Ability to dial in from computers other than your own if you travel a lot
• E-mail stored on a central server (versus on your own machine) if you don’t have a computer you can take with you when you’re away and will want to check e-mail
In addition, he says, some services limit the number of e-mail messages you can get in one day. If that could cause difficulties for you, be sure to ask about it.
Most ISP’s provide an e-mail program as part of their package. Since it’s part of the package, there’s no additional charge unless you exceed the allocated minutes in a given month. If you don’t get an e-mail program with your Internet service, or if you just don’t like the program you have, you can subscribe to e-mail services, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, online.
“I use AOL,” says Froedge. “I got it with my computer Internet service and have had no complaints.”
You won’t hear any complaints about e-mail from Anderson, either.
“I use it to the point I wonder how I ever lived without it,” he says.
Yet he believes there are a lot of possibilities for enhanced e-mail use at NSR. Already, breeders can contact individual NSR staff members by using the e-mail directory on the NSR Web site. In addition, when a breeder sends in STAGES data, it’s put into the computer overnight and performance data is calculated. If the breeder has signed up to receive that information back via e-mail, he’ll have it first thing the following morning.
Anderson says the quarterly NSR newsletter is posted on the Web site, but it could also be e-mailed to breeders who’d like to get it that way.
“It’s got a lot of potential,” he says.
Miscellaneous E-mail Tips & Information
• Pick an e-mail address that won’t embarrass you when you represent yourself via e-mail for business purposes. Some version of your name or your farm name might be appropriate, whereas “sweetcheeks” or “porkchop” might seem cute today, but might make you uncomfortable tomorrow.
• Be aware that some addresses may already be taken, especially if you decide to use your name, and it’s a fairly common name. For example, johnsmith@msn.com might be in use, so John might want to try jsmith@.msn.oom or j~msn.oom or smithj@msn.oom. If none of those options work, he might be prompted to add a number to his name, such as johnsmith77@msn.com.
• Some e-mail programs may have character limits on address names, so you may have to work within those limits when thinking of a name to use.
• Newsgroups are discussion forums about specific topics. Messages are posted, and you look at only the ones that you want to read.
• Listservs are lists of e-mail addresses used to automatically send e-mail to people with a common interest all at once. You can subscribe to listservs and receive newsletters and other information from organizations, etc. It’s a good idea to save the subscribe/unsubscribe instructions so you can refer back to them later. It’s often hard to figure out how to unsubscribe if you decide the information you’re receiving no longer interests you.
• You can usually set up your own mailing lists in your e-mail program. For instance, you might have one called “family” that you use to contact all family members at once with news, events, etc. If you’re an officer or a committee member in an organization, you may want to set up a listserv to facilitate your communications with that group.
• If you respond to an e-mail from a listserv, be aware that the message will go to everyone on the list, effectively broadcasting your e-mail address to who-knows-how-many strangers.
