Introduction to Multimedia: The Internet & the Web

Electronic Communication

A discussion of the underpinnings of electronic communication, focusing primarily on email at RIT. We'll look at your various email options, the RIT LDAP directory, myCourses, and other systems.

We will also have a brief discussion about other kinds of what is being called "social software," including weblogs, wikis, and other interactive environments.

MyCourses Server Exploration

We will take a look at the RIT MyCourses server.

Readings on Electronic Communication

Pages 1-6 of the Unix book
How Email Works - General introduction to e-mail mechanics.
What is Social Software - An overview of various "social software" tools, from mailing lists to weblogs to wikis.
Matt Webb's "Slices of the Ongoing Conversation on Social Software" and "More Ramblings on Social Software"

Lab Exercise: RIT Email

Overview

There are a lot of e-mail options at RIT, and even more outside of RIT. Making a decision as to which client to use, and which account to receive your mail through, is no small task. During today's exercises, you will get some hands-on experience with a variety of e-mail environments so that you can make an informed decision about the systems that you use.

If you do not know how to accomplish the tasks laid out in this exercise, then you should go to see a tutor for help "getting up to speed" with these tools.

Pine on UNIX

Use a secure shell (SSH) program to connect to gibson.rit.edu (ssh in a terminal window on Mac OS X, or PuTTY on a PC), and log in with your DCE ID and password.
Using pine, create a new message and enter your DCE user ID at the To: prompt. Press enter or tab. What happens? (Cancel the unsent message before continuing.)
Create an entry in your Pine address book for a friends email. Give it a nickname like "friend". Then compose a new message with the subject "Grace to Friend Test," and send it to the nickname that you just created.
Quit Pine, and logout from Gibson.

RIT LDAP Server

Go to start.rit.edu.
Select "manage your mail preferences" to see where your official RIT mail is sent. If you would prefer to receive your RIT correspondence at another address, you can change that here. BE CAREFUL. Official correspondence from your instructors, the registrar and other RIT offices will be sent to this address, so if you change it to a non-RIT address be sure it is one that stays functional.
You can create a "personalized" email address by selecting a user id for the mail.rit.edu redirect system. (This does not create a new email account; any mail sent to this new mail.rit.edu address will be automatically redirected to the address you specified in the "email address" field.) For example, my "official" RIT address is jxsast@rit.edu, but my "personalized" address, which I use on all correspondence, is jeffs@it.rit.edu. Mail sent to the personalized address goes to wherever my RIT address is forwarded to.
Return to the start page, and choose "Manage your identity preferences." Make sure your first, middle, and last name are displayed the way you would like.
From the start page, choose "Manage your contact information preferences." Add whatever information you'd like to have publicly available on the RIT directory server.

Exchange Webmail

Use a your browser to go to the RIT Exchange Server, and login with your DCE user name and password.
Create a new message and send it to a friend with the subject "Webmail to Friend Test".
Create another new message, and type in only your last name in the "to" field. Select "check names" from the top of the window (the icon is a face with a red checkmark). If there's more than one person at RIT with that last name, it should now appear as a red link. Click that link, and find your name. What happens?

Additional Materials Online

Electronic Communications