Email is a simple and clean way to send digital letters to all of your friends. You usually log on to your email server’s homepage to check your email, but there are programs to get faster access and added security. Email programs allow you to easily and quickly check your email because they save your log in information and log you in automatically.
Outlook Express: Microsoft's built in email management program. It gives you all the basics of security and email HTML editing. It comes with Internet Explorer and later versions of Windows such as Vista.
Thunderbird: Thunderbird not only adds a wall of protection around your email, it has a built in junk-mail filter that people rave about. It also protects you from phishing websites and messages that try to gather your personal information.
Instant Messaging programs are great. You can chat back and forth with friends and contacts in a live chat. It's faster than email, but requires that your friends be online and in your contacts list. Most IM programs come with a large collection of smiley face icons but the newer versions have built in voice and video chat features so you aren't limited to just a smiley to express yourself.
Yahoo Instant Messenger: One of the classier IM programs, it’s been around this long for a good reason; it's very clean and user-friendly. It has a great contact list and while you chat, you can challenge a friend to play games.
Pidgin: Pidgin is more versatile than other chat programs because it can combine your contacts from a lot of other IM programs into one. If one friend uses Yahoo while the other is stubborn and uses AOL – you can still chat with them both at the same time in Pidgin! Its cross-program chat features are some of the best.
Blogging is like owning your own news website because you can post whatever you like -- from pictures to plain old text. Blogs can be about whatever topic you want too! You can make a blog about your dog, your favorite recipes, cars or anything else you can think of. You're reading this on a blog right now. Vlogging is just like blogging only in video form! A lot of vloggers use YouTube to host their videos, which they then link to on their blog site. It's a great way to explain your feelings or show someone how to do something that might be hard to explain in writing.
The most popular and largest communication method on the net aside from blogs is the world of social networking websites. Massive monsters like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and others allow you to track thousands of contacts, friends and family in one place, play games and find people you forgot you knew. Each has its own learning curve, but they are all worth it!
About the Author : This is a Guest Post from Amy Silver,a Public Health student who loves her dogs and finding a good deal. She's recently started blogging and you can find her at twitter.com/amyjsilver.
