A common situation for Webmail users is that when the receive an email with one or more picture attachements in it, they are faced with an option to view or download the image. This is a situation that can perplex some novice computer users when they face these situations.

Viewing an image

When you select the “View” option for that image, you see the image using your Web browser. This can work well with some Web browsers but not with others and can be annoying if the browser that you are using either shows “actual size” only or while the photo is loading.

In some cases, some browsers such as Internet Explorer can provide a user interface for panning and zooming on digital pictures that can be frustrating and unintuitive to some users. It can be good enough if you are viewing small images or viewing an image “at a glance” with a properly-behaving browser.

Downloading an image

When you select the “Download” option, the image will be copied to your computer’s local storage and you are then presented the option to “open” the image or “save” it somewhere else.

If you “open” it, you use your operating system’s default image handler which, for most desktop environments, would be a dedicated image viewer or your image management program.  Some users may find this program’s interface more intuitive because it shows the image at best resolution on the screen yet allows them to use the image handler’s zoom and pan controls to view the detail.

You also have the option to “save” the image to somewhere of your choosing on your computer’s file system to “take it further”. This can be useful for saving it to a USB memory key so you can have it printed by your favourite digital photofinisher or to show on that digital picture frame or TV. Similarly, you could “save” it to your image library as something to “come back to” later; or to view using your DLNA-capable smart TV or video player.

What do you do?

Whether to view or download that image in your Webmail can depend on what you want to do with the image.

If you want to take the image further, it is best to “download” the image and use the “save” option. On the other hand, you can just “view” the image if you are comfortable with how your Web browser shows images or “download” if you find that the image viewer or image management program’s viewing interface does the job better for you.

In the first article of this series, I talked about the two different classes of email interface – the client-based interface and the Webmail which is the Web-based interface.

Then I talked about the different folders and views that are part of an email user interface such as the Inbox, Outbox and the Sent Items folder and the Unread Items and Starred Items / Flagged Items view.

Now I will be talking about the basic tasks associated with using email such as reading new email and sending out email. This will also include extra tips to get the most of your email.

Tasks

Sending a new email

1. If you are sending a new email, you just click on “Compose”, “New Message” or “New Email”. It may be a button with an envelope and a + symbol on it. This gives you a blank form to work with.
   

   Compose Email or New Email form

2. You enter the email address of the correspondent or, in most cases, their name if you have the correspondent in your Contacts list, in to the “To” area.
3. You can add extra email correspondents if you intend to send it to other people. As well, you can add other email correspondents in to the “Cc” field which stands for “Courtesy Copy” or “Carbon Copy”. There is also a “Bcc” field where you can enter a correspondent’s email address or name but the correspondents who are in the “To” or “Cc” fields don’t see the fact that you sent a copy to the “Bcc” correspondents.
4. Then you enter the subject of the email in the “Subject” field. It is a good practice to use this so that the correspondent can know what the email they are receiving is all about.
5. Subsequently you write the text of your message in the large “Message” field.
   In most email user-interfaces, you have the ability to vary the way your text looks using the formatting buttons typically located above the message form. Here, you could do this before you type the message or select the text you want to modify and use these buttons to modify the look.
   As you work, the email will be held in the Drafts folder and, with some email interfaces, you may be required to expressly save or delete the email if you close it.
6. When you are satisfied with the message you are to send, click the “Send” button. The message will appear in the Outbox as it is being sent, then will appear in the Sent Items folder once it is sent.

Reading an email

This task is the simplest to do in that you just visit your Inbox and click on emails that you want to read.

New emails that haven’t been read will typically appear in bold and some email user interfaces will provide a view or filter that shows only the new emails.

You can mark important emails as “starred” or “flagged” as a way of bookmarking them for later reference. When you need to come back to them again, you select the “Starred Items” or “Flagged Items” view to see just these emails in your Inbox,

Replying to an email or sending the email to someone else

1. When you read an email and want to reply to it, you just click the “Reply” button. On the other hand, if you just need to send it to someone else, you just click the “Forward” button. The “Reply All” inserts the addresses that a multi-destination email was sent to in to the “To” line and is best used if you really intended the contents of your reply to be seen by the other correspondents.
   

   Reply and Forward buttons

2. You will see a “new-email” form with the text of the original message set in a manner to identify it as that. The Subject will be the same but with “Re:” in the case of a reply or “Fw:” in the case of a forwarded message. The cursor will be position in a blank space above this text.
   As well, the name or email of the sender will be placed in the “To: field” of this message if you are replying to the email.
3. Here, you write the text of your reply or explanatory text for the forwarded email. The process for sending this email will be the same as for a new email.

Deleting emails

When you delete an email in most email user interfaces, it will be moved to a “Deleted Items” or “Trash” folder and won’t appear in your Inbox. You can come back to that email or move it back to your Inbox.

But when you delete emails from the “Deleted Items” folder, they will be gone for good. Similarly, if you click on an option to “Empty Deleted Items”, all the emails in this folder will be gone for good.

Similarly, there is an option to permanently delete an email from the system when you see it in the inbox. This may be in the form of selecting the email and choosing the “Delete permanently” option or, with most desktop email clients, selecting the email and then pressing Shift and Delete on the keyboard at the same time.

Printing out an email

If you want hard copy of your email, there are different ways to go about it depending on the email user-interface you are using.

If you are using a client-based email interface, you just simply view the email then select the print option in your email client. This typically would be done by clicking “File-Print” or by pressing Ctrl–P / Command–P on your keyboard; then selecting the printer you normally use then clicking the “Print” button.

For Webmail users, they just look for a “Print” option on their Web-based user interface which will provide the email in a printable form without any extra display clutter such as columns, banner ads, etc. Then, depending on the interface, you will start the print process by clicking a “Print” option on the printable view.

Some Webmail interfaces may immediately cause the browser to show the printout user interface so you can start the print process. But there are some other Webmail user interfaces that work properly with modern Web browsers by properly setting out the email for printing when you start printing using the Web browser’s print command.

Junk-mail filtering

Most Web and desktop email interfaces use a “junk-mail” filter function which keeps junk email a.k.a. spam out of your inbox. Typically they use one of varying algorithms to determine if the email is junk or not and, if it is junk, the interface will direct the email to a “junk-mail” folder.

Here, you can override this setting for particular contacts that you deal with by using a method specific to the interface. In most client-based interfaces, this may require you to right-click /Ctrl+click the email address and select “mark as safe”, “mark as trusted” or a similar option for that address.

As well, it may be worth checking this Junk Mail folder if you find that the business email you were expecting had not shown up in your Inbox when you were expecting it.

Tips

Using email in conjunction with instant-messaging, mobile-phone texting or social networks

Some of you may catch on to instant-messaging programs, social-network messaging functions or mobile-phone texting services and forget that email does exist. Here you may become tempted to write longer messages fit for email services using these services; and I have covered this topic on this site previously as I have had to help users who were wanting to take material in their conversations further such as to prepare legal release documents.

But the email still has its role even if you use these services as your online communications tool. Most of the instant-messaging systems and social networks don’t have a way of taking the text of a message further than the conversation you have with your correspondent. This may be important if you want the message to be printed or used as part of a document for example.

Here, you need to make sure that you know the latest email address of your regular correspondents that you talk to on Skype, Facebook or Windows Live Messenger; and have these addresses in your email interface’s Contacts List / address book. Then, if you want to pass information that is to be taken further than the conversation you have in this application, you send that information using email.

Then your chat / messaging session on Facebook or your texting session on your mobile phone can just exist for conversation-style text communication.

Cleaning out your email inbox

If you have to clean out your email inbox, delete the newsletters and any automatically-generated confirmation and notification emails first. Then empty the “Deleted Items” folder.

If there are receipts that were generated as part of an e-commerce transaction, print these out or make PDFs of them using a “print-to-PDF” program so you can reconcile them with your credit-card statements. Then you can delete them. This is important with businesses and others who need to retain transactions over a significant number of years for the taxman.

Conclusion

These articles, which are written to work for most Web-based and client-based email interfaces in current use, will help you to understand how to get the hang of your email system.

Introduction:

A common situation I have observed with some retirees and older people who have left the workforce is that they leave their computer skills at the office door. Here, they severely reduce their use of the computer because they associate it with their work life.

This situation can be dangerous when it comes to using the computer for personal use because it can be easy to fall out of practice with the various computing and IT skills.that will come in handy over the life that you spend in this new “free” situation.

Computer activities in this new situation

The computer as a communications tool

If you are deciding to reduce your computing activity after your retirement, it would be a good idea to keep those skills associated with Internet-based communication such as email or Skype alive. This would be important where you have relatives or friends who are located a long distance apart or you consider a move to the country or a nice outer-urban area as part of your retirement plans.

For example, a good practice would be to check email once a day and reply to messages or compose and send messages at least a few times over the week. Similarly using Skype or a similar service at least weekly, if not fortnightly, would work well in saving international or other long-distance telephone costs while being able to see whom you are talking to. Think of situations like seeing and hearing your excited new grandson or granddaughter on your computer or TV screen or celebrating a birthday “across the wire”.

In some cases, the Social Web can be a valuable communications tool through creation and management of online photo albums and online diaries where applicable. As well, most of the Social Web platforms like Facebook have integrated instant-messaging functions so you can use this as an adjunct to email and / or Skype.

The Web as a research and shopping tool

The Web can be used as part of your business, shopping and travel life, whether to find the best prices for particular goods and services or simply to know more about a particular item of interest.

For example, you could use Google as a starting point for research on a topic or item. On the other hand, you could visit online merchants to buy goods or organise services like travel. You can even use this online method of shopping as an adjunct to visiting your local or favourite shops.

Using office applications at home or as part of your hobbies and interests

The office applications like Microsoft Office or Apple iLife can be used beyond the office door. Here, they can come in handy for your personal lifestyle efforts.

For example, a word processor can cone in handy in writing something like a memoir or other “magnum opus”; or documenting that special trip you had done. Similarly a spreadsheet can come in handy for having information in an organised form, for example managing a guest list for that special party. Even that dreaded Microsoft PowerPoint application could be used for creating “title slides” that are to be part of screen-shows or home-video projects.

The computer as a multimedia tool

A common task you will end up doing is to store and manage music, photos and video on your computer. This will be more so as you use your digital camera and / or smartphone to take photos and videos of family events and your travel. Similarly, you may “dump” your CD collection to your computer’s hard drive so you can play it over your home network or create “mixtapes” on to USB thumbdrives or memory cards for the car.

Here, you can still use your computer and associated programs to organise, edit and curate you digital media so you have it how you want it. This can be done using a mix of the popular tools like iTunes, Windows Live Photo Gallery, iPhoto, Audacity or Picasa.

The goal is to engage in the other non-work activities like family, hobbies and travel first but use the computer as a supporting tool for these activities.

Choosing the equipment

Toshiba Satellite L730 full-function ultraportable

If you don’t have computer equipment to use at home after your retirement, you may be in a position to buy new equipment for this period in your life.

When you choose the equipment, you could offer to buy out your company-supplied computer from your previous employer for use at home if you can do so. A possible advantage of this may be that your employer can turn this asset of theirs in to cash that they can use towards a newer more up-to-date computer.

On the other hand, you could buy a decent consumer laptop or all-in-one / low-profile desktop with consumer-priced software. You may also want to consider a “2-in-1” computer which can be a laptop or a tablet. This is important as an more of these “fold-over” convertible or detachable-keyboard computers are appearing at a lesser price premium compared to a traditional “clamshell” laptop. As well, the advantage here may be to “free up” the iPad that one is normally using to watch video content personally or simply have one device for all of your computing activities. This can help you start afresh on new equipment that you fully own. Have a look through the Product Reviews, especially the laptop reviews so you can get a fair idea of what you want to purchase.

Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet computer

In some cases, if you just want to work with email and Web browsing, you may find that you could get by with just a tablet computer like an iPad, an ASUS Transformer Prime or an Acer Iconia Tab. These can even just work as a secondary computer that you use around the house. Even if you do have a 2-in-1 computer, you may find that a tablet may come in handy as a “spare” secondary computing device for children when they play games for example.

HP Photosmart 7510 multifunction inkjet printer

Similarly, a network-capable consumer inkjet multifunction printer could suit your needs as a hard-copy device. Here, I have reviewed many of these printers on this site, but would recommend those units that use separate ink cartridges for each colour and can print on both sides of the paper if you value a machine that isn’t costly to run.

It is also worth reading my article about equipping the “family house” for broadband as extra guidance on this topic. This has guidance regarding the right broadband plans to choose, especially when you want to take advantage of packages that integrate this service along with telephony and/or multi-channel pay TV.

Seeking assistance from others

You may need to seek assistance with newer computing situations or find that you have trouble remembering a particular procedure that you have started to fall out of practice on. Here, there are many avenues to benefit from this assistance.

Firstly, there will be younger relatives and friends who would be able to help you with these skills and / or keep your equipment in proper shape. Similarly, if you do maintain contact with your former employer and they have an on-site or contract IT team, this team may also help you with these skills or your equipment.

As well, there are plenty of computer-skills courses offered by community organisations like U3A in Australia that are targeted at retirees and similar people. The best place to ask about this is through your local council who will put you in the loop with these organisations.

This is especially if you have to face newer computing environments and practices or simply find it hard to keep certain skills alive within the context of your new life.

Conclusion

The main essence of this article is that those computing skills you acquire through your working life are still valid even as you leave the office for good. Here, they can be used to augment your communications with relatives and friends or sustain your hobbies and interests that you have more time to nurture.

Update – 31 January 2017: I have added to this article a mention about the recent crop of convertible or detachable “2-in-1” laptop computers that can become a tablet with them being at a very low price premium compared to standard laptops.

A common task that I have had to help people with lately is when they use an instant messaging service or the messaging function in a social-network service to send a message that is to be handled further. This is more so with people who rely heavily on Facebook as their online communications medium and start to forget their email address.

For example, it may be a message that is to be sent to somebody by email or to be printed out in order to be signed then sent by postal mail or fax. This includes messages that contain “boilerplate text” that is to be modified with further information before being sent or printed out.

Most instant-messaging or social-network messaging user interfaces don’t have a way of allowing you to print out or select the text of a particular message. This is typically frustrated by the “conversation” view that these user interfaces show the messages in, and this problem can be made worse by hard-to-manipulate user interfaces like laptop trackpads or touchscreens.

What do you do?

Here, it would be preferable that if you are talking with a correspondent via a service like Facebook, make sure that each of you know each other’s email address, not just the “handle” or member-name for these messaging services.

Then, send the message that is to be “taken further” to the correspondent using email rather than the message system. Infact you compose the message to be taken further using your email software or Webmail user interface. The correspondent can then print out that message or copy it to their word-processing software for modification and printing out.

Article

BBC News – Health care by TV and remote control

My Comments

The home network and the Internet is now becoming an essential part of personal health care in may ways thanks to a variety of technologies.

Facilitation technologies

Level playing field for health-care sensor devices

Certain technologies are making this feasible through the use of device classes for health-specific devices such as blood-pressure / pulse cuffs, blood sugar monitors and heart-rate monitors. They are also being enabled with low-voltage wireless technologies like Bluetooth Smart and up-and-coming low-voltage Wi-Fi designs.

These devices are being made able to work from two AA batteries or a 3V watch battery for a long time, yet use an industry-common data link and device class. The actual benefit from these design factors is the ability to supply health-care sensor devices that are cost-effective to buy and maintain; yet are able to integrate with common computing devices.

Ubiquity of open computing platforms for this application

It is being extended with the availability of regular, mobile and TV-based computing platforms like Windows, MacOS X, iOS and Android as foundations for software that records and / or reports medical-status information.

The software can be designed to keep a local or cloud-based record and signal to health-carers and/or close relatives and friends if there are abnormal events. In some cases, details can be passed through immediately to the health-care professional who is supervising the patient.

Where do I see this being applicable

I see this technology being applicable for the management of chronic illnesses where the patient can manage the illness themselves with little outside intervention. This may extend to the care of pregnant women who have a low risk of birth complications. Even when the patient must travel to the health-care professional for an appointment, both the professional and the patient are in a better position to know “what’s going on” through the treatment process.

It also adds a sense of dignity to the care and treatment process by allowing one to integrate the management procedures in to their lifestyle without feeling awkward about it. This would benefit younger and middle aged people more so especially when they are encumbered with these illnesses like diabetes.

I see it also benefiting people living in rural areas in many ways. The telehealth technology can allow a specialist based at a small or larger town to manage multiple patients and only have to travel out to attend those at risk. As well, the patient wouldn’t need to travel out to the doctor unless necessary.

It can also assist with the ageing process for seniors who want to live in their own home, live in an “own space” near their relatives such as a granny flat or live in low-needs supported retirement accommodation. Here, the technology can help with supervising medical and other therapies or simply make sure they are OK without intruding on their lifestyle and dignity. In this case, it could augment other technology projects that are in progress or being completed that assist older people with their daily lives.

Similarly, the technology would help with sports medicine in allowing athletes and fitness enthusiasts, along with their trainers, know their limits and how they are performing through their workouts so they can exercise in an optimum way.

Conclusion

I would still like to see the telehealth technologies work as a complement to the personal touch in personal health care rather than distance the patient from the professional. The technologies can be seen as a tool for helping us stay well and independent; as well as conquer distance.

Previous coverage

Feature Article – Videoconferencing on the home network

My Comments

Some of you may have relatives who are far away or are ill and unable to come out for the Christmas festivities. So you may find that Skype would work as a valuable too for this season.

Skype-enabled video devices

You may have recently purchased a Skype-enabled TV or, if you are in America, had Comcast install one of those new cable-TV set-top boxes. Increasingly, some of the “smart-TV” devices like TV sets, Blu-Ray players or network media adaptors may have Skype functionality on-board, able to work with an optional camera module.

If you are buying a device that you know has Skype integrated, make sure that you buy the Skype camera for this device. You could use this as a deal-maker when you are buying any of these devices. For the abovementioned Comcast subscribers, if you are running with the newer cable-TV boxes, contact your Comcast customer-service line and ask how you can get that Skype camera and whether the Skype facility is running.

Here, you could enable this device to an account primarily used by your household and make sure you have the camera accessory for the video equipment.

Your laptop computer

If you are using your laptop or other computer, you would need to connect it to the main TV screen. Nearly all plasma or LCD flatscreen TVs have a VGA or HDMI connection which can allow you to use it as your computer’s display. If you use a DisplayPort-equipped computer like a MacBook Air, you may need to use a DisplayPort-HDMI adaptor in order to use these connectors.

As well, you may have best results with this setup when you use a USB webcam or a regular video camera or camcorder connected to a USB-based AV capture card. Here, you can have the Webcam fixed at the top of the TV.

Configuring Skype appropriately

AV Peripherals

You may have to make sure that if you are using an HDMI connection or an external camera or microphone, you have the video and audio devices setup appropriately. Some HDMI setups may enumerate the audio feed to the HDMI device as a discrete sound device and you may have to select this as your sound output in Skype if you want the correspondent’s voice through the TV or home-theatre.

For the USB Webcam or the USB AV capture device, you would need to set Skype’s video source and microphone to the Webcam or AV capture device.

Quality of service

Skype does perform properly with quality of service for most Internet connections but I would make sure that you use a wired connection to the router or have a strong Wi-Fi connection between the wireless router and the device if you are using a Wi-Fi link.

You may want to do a “dry-run” call with the intended household before the big event so you are sure that it is going to work properly. This may be a limitation if you intend to have the Skype-enabled TV or video peripheral as a Christmas gift.

Contact Lists

Another good hint is to make sure that the households are registered on Skype and that each one is part of each other’s Contact List. This could be established by sending each other their Skype name through an email. It could be followed up by arranging a contact time to make this videocall through subsequent emails, taking into account the time differences between the locations.

Conclusion

With Christmas being the time to catch up with family and friends overseas, why not make it the time to do it with pictures the Skype way.

ScoreMobile scoreboard app

If you look in your mobile platform’s app store, there are quite a few sports apps which turn your smartphone or tablet in to a scoreboard or leaderboard for your favourite sporting events. Some of the scoreboard apps allow you to monitor a particular team’s games, view league ladders or see on-demand video of game highlights. Examples of these include the ScoreMobile apps; and the “Footy Now” / “League Now” apps for the AFL and NRL football leagues respectively; all of which are available on most of the main mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

Most of these apps are free or advertiser-funded and are written in conjunction with companies and other interests associated with the particular leagues or codes that these apps work with  As well, they work via whatever Internet connection your device is using at the moment, whether it’s the Wi-Fi home network, the Wi-Fi hotspot at your favourite bar or the wireless broadband service that you device is associated with. But are they a useful download for your phone or tablet?

I would say that they provide a useful role for any sports followers, whether they watch the game on TV at home or their favourite bar or cafe; or go to the stadium to watch the game.

Footy Now AFL scoreboard app

One key use for people who watch the game in a public place such as the stadium, a large outdoor screen in a square or a packed-out bar, is to have a “handheld scoreboard” that they can glance at  Here, they may not see the scoreboard easily due to them being in the wrong seating position or being further back from the venue’s TV screen.

At home, you could be outside listening to the radio commentary on that small portable radio yet be able to check the scores at a glance. This may then be useful for knowing whether to head inside to see the action on TV and can be a boon when there is confusion in the commentary which can happen with some plays. Two best examples of such a confusing situation is a batsman hitting a run but being caught or run out in cricket or a scoring event (try, goal or touchdown) in a game of rugby, Australian Rules or American football which can be escalated to a higher scoring play.

For Australian readers, this could extend to you having a tablet computer showing the scores for the AFL or NRL Grand Final near the barbecue while you are cooking the meat for the Grand Final lunch.

Another benefit that these apps provide when it comes to upcoming sport fixtures is the way the time for that fixture is conveyed. These apps show the time that the game or race is expected to actually start with it represented in your local time zone. It can be important when you watch the event on TV so that you are sure you have switched over to the right channel especially if you are avoiding the preliminary events or commentary before that fixture. Or it could be to make sure you are at the location you want to watch it at in time for the start if you are visiting the venue, a favourite “watering-hole” or your friend’s place where they have the big TV.

These apps would also appeal to travellers and expats who like to follow their favourite matches while they are travelling. An example of this was a friend I know who had used one of these apps on his iPhone to follow a baseball game that was taking place in the US while he was over here in Australia. Similarly a Manchester United fan could follow that soccer team’s performance anywhere around the world even if there isn’t a TV broadcast of the games where they are.

League Now NRL scoreboard app

For these apps to work properly, they need to have proper support for push notification but without placing too much strain on the device’s battery runtime. As well, these apps need to be able to work in a manner that doesn’t take over the processor power of these devices when they are just showing scores. As well, the data backend has to be synchronous to the scoreboard at the actual game in the same manner as what is expected for the TV scoreboard – a football goal appears on the mobile scoreboard app as soon as the pitch umpire declares that goal.

So whether you are an avid sports follower or just casually watch some sporting events like football finals or Grand-Prix car races, the mobile scoreboard apps do have a place on the smartphone and tablet devices.