Hotmail
The X and Y generation's
first free e-mail account was hotmail. Everyone was doing it at the time and it
seemed like the greatest invention ever. People have developed friendships,
ended friendships and begun new ones through using my email.
Years later, younger
generation (the ones born after 1985) did the same while using msn, an on-line
messenger. Kids would actually maintained meaningful (?) relationships that
seemed to be based purely on sending messages back and forth between each other,
that way. It took care of shyness, it
made communicating easier, the notes passed in class became a thing of the
past.
Hotmail is great because it
not only offers a free email but also gives you news, allows you to chat with
people all over the world and is yet a wonderful tool that makes internet such
a great and useful necessity.
Since hotmail there were
more free email tools developed, such as Yahoo or Lycos. Many
found it quite difficult to part with hotmail but it had to be done because with
time hotmail started to be unable to block junk mail and few years ago the
hotmail antivirus protection was not up to speed (it is now)...
I remember visiting my
grandmother in another country and trying to explain to her how was it possible
that I was getting mail from friends without actual letters arriving in my
mailbox. It was a generation thing but for the life of me I could not explain
it well to my grandmother who was already lost before I finished saying the
word "internet".
My grandma just didn't get
it and it was too bad because I thought it would be wonderful to keep in touch
with her more frequently if she was able to email me or download pictures that
I would send her. We keep in touch, of course, but through the traditional mail
system.
Most of you computer users
know of and probably have used hotmail so this is not telling you anything new
but it is important to stop and think for a moment and appreciate how hotmail
helped the entire human race become so much more in touch with each other. People
in America can have friends in Australia, South Africa and Japan whom they kept
in touch with for years by first using hotmail and then later on, similar free
email tools. We should all be grateful to hotmail for making my world a little
more accessible.
It is also because of
internet tools like hotmail that a lot of us were able to find jobs and get free
deals on travel, or just find out the news from the part of the world that is
of our interest. If you notice, many job postings today ask, some even require,
that resumes get sent through email, that a cover letter gets copied and
pasted, that you attach jpeg files and downloads if you have a portfolio.
It is also during difficult
times - such as during war or other political change - that hotmail becomes
really handy. You can get the latest news even before your friendly broadcaster
gets to say his piece on television, you can find out live about events that
concern you.
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