Saw an infomercial for Australia’s biggest ISP (Telstra BigPond) today and learnt something amazing. The “expert” talking to the presenter said something like:
People do a lot of things on-line these days. Watching movies, checking emails, browsing…
I was a bit taken back… People use the internet for checking emails? I have been doing it wrong all these years!
Well, unless you know some way to check new email without being online, I’d say “expert” was right on this one.
He didn’t say we were using World Wide Web to check our emails ( although that is also not entirely incorrect if we consider webmail services ).
SMTP is a part of Internet standard and uses Internet Protocol.
They’re probably talking about ‘using a webbrowser’, instead of going on-line, no?
In my immediate surroundings, people think they only ‘go on-line’ when they open their browser. As if being on-line is an action, rather than a state.
Yeah… BigPond probably charge you extra for being allowed to “check emails”…
I love the terminology of that phrase too. “Checking” email. As if they might go missing. We don’t “read” or “reply” to email, we just “check” it.