E-Mail 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?

Well to answer this question i perused threw multiple e-mails in my inbox. Looking into the e-mail after scanning the actual contents there are a few things you can gather.
Firstly you can see the address the message came from, and from this you can work out the domain of the e-mail account. eg ght@hotmail.com would be from the public email host hotmail.
By looking at the last part of the address you could Google search the name and ascertain if its from a business, private/public address or spam most of the times.

You can also work out if its from a list server and if it has a reply address the same or different from where it came.

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

The 'cc' function is a an often useful function for many. 'cc' or carbon copy is pretty much what it stands for.
In the work environment it is useful and sometimes necessary to cc managers or colleagues when dealing with people. For accountability, to show you have responded and to also keep others in the loop of progress or movements with tasks.

'bcc', or blind carbon copy is similar to cc with the major difference of not letting the recipient know that someone else has received the e-mail you have sent.
It is something that can be invasive and useful.
By invasive i mean an unaware recipient could think they are privy or exclusive to what has been sent but in actuality others also have received the same message. Which can be sometimes misleading.
But on the flip side, its useful if sending something out and you do not want people to know a certain somebody is receiving the message as well. As to not offend someone.
It still regardless is a clouded line in email etiquette.

The 'reply all' function is also a very useful and sometime annoying feature of email.
If the message in your reply is important to all on the mailing list then it simplifies the process of not having to entering all the email address's manually which can be quite time saving.
Some times this function acts as a real pain... when people just hit reply all when the information they are replying has no bearing directly on you at all! So if the the mailing list was lengthy and most people replied for example, there shoe sizes, then you would have a lot of new emails with information, as you as a fellow recipient have no point wanting. Annoying indeed!

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

In this current day i have found that interoperability between systems is not as much of a problem as what was say 10 years ago. These days if i send document in either pdf or word documents most people should have no problem opening them. As long as the version of word is supported. For example, i save all my word documents as .doc files in office 2007 instead of .docx which word by default tries to save it as. Just in case someone doesn't have the required plug ins to open it.
Talking about plug ins, that's the real problem with sending multimedia via emails. Some files use different codecs for encoding/decoding audio and video files. And if both sender and recipient don't have the necessary software and codecs then the file can not be properly interpreted. Which can lead to problems.
So sending multimedia is always a tricky situation to the unskilled recipient who may not know how to open the file. I find it best to encode audio and video with windows media player standards so most people can easily open files i send.


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

In the email program i have setup, which is a public Gmail account, there is an automatic spam filter setup. This filter is in place to grab unwarranted mailings and bulk spam that i do not want to read.
I have also a filter setup to put personal email's, from my family's email address's into there own folder so i can quickly ascertain between what emails are for business and what emails are for me on a personal level.

5. How have you organized the folder structure of your email and why?

Since mainly using my g-mail account in the last couple of years, for portability reasons (can access my mail via a web portal anywhere in the world) i have not had a lot of folders setup as such.
I have one folder for family, one for work, and another for school. Any other mailing that i want i archive or leave in my in box. To find mail i always use the search function if in doubt.