Internet Access Through Email

Most Internet services can be accessed by email. Just about the only technologies you can't access by email are those that are inherently interactive by nature, such as IRC and MUD's, where you need to participate in real time.

The most common form of Internet access by email is getting web pages for people that don't have direct web access, perhaps because they are not directly connected to the Internet or they have a very low bandwidth connection. The following sites provide references and services that get web pages by email.

• Web2mail.com

• WWW4mail.org

A couple of sites that worked last time we checked are listed below with examples. You retrieve web pages by sending an email request to the site, where the page "http://www.yahoo.com/" is used as an example and you can substitute the page you actually wish to retrieve.

• Send an email to agora@dna.affrc.go.jp with a message of www to get instructions. Get a web page by sending an email to agora@dna.affrc.go.jp, with a two line message of:

send http://www.yahoo.com/

• Send an email to www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it, with a message of help to get instructions. Get a web page by sending email with the following message body:

GET http://www.yahoo.com/

The following sites provide statistics on use of their web email servers:

• Agora Statistics Summary

Boyd's resources. Gerald E. Boyd was an early Internet guru and helper to new users, and author of the Accessing The Internet By Email FAQ, providing detailed information about how to access a range of Internet resources by email, also found on the web at rtfm.mit.edu. The FAQ also includes a tutorial on accessing Usenet newsgroups by email, including posting and reading newsgroup messages by email.

Mr. Boyd was also the moderator of the Accessing The Internet By Email mailing list, which you can join by sending an email to listserv@listserv.aol.com with anything in the subject, and the following message body:

subscribe accmail