The Internet access, webpages search and retrieving, FTP search, reading and posting in Usenet newsgroups, searching grants, finding email addresses, tracking UPS packages, sending a fax, accessing the Microsoft knowledge base and many other services can be performed by email using your mailing software: MS Outlook Express, Eudora, etc. The most comprehensive description of this service is given by Gerald E. Boyd (gboyd@expita.com, http://www.expita.com), this file can be received by email:

- for users from the USA, Canada and South America: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu, in the body of the message write only:

send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email .

- for users from Europe, Asia ... listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk, in the body of the message write only:

get lis-iis\e-access-inet.txt .

- on the Web in HTML format at:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/Internet-services/access-via-email .

Russian readers can download http://www.softbest.ru/files/email.zip, the same file can be downloaded right now from my site: email.zip (27.577 kb).

The mailing robots and correspondent service appear permanently, in ezines most frequently following servers are listed:

I use agora@dna.affrc.go.jp for a search and  www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it  for downloading files and never had any problems with them.

Web search by email.

To find information by keywords, e.g. liquid crystals send an e-mail to agora@dna.affrc.go.jp and in the message body write:

The search will be performed by Google, Lycos, WebCrawler and MetaCrawler, respectively. Agora limits the search information by 500 lines in a message.

Download files via email.

If the exact address of the web page is known, it can be downloaded as an attachment to e-mail. For example, to obtain this web page http://avax.narod.ru/eng/www4mail.htm by the mailing server   www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it send a message with the body

tsource http://avax.narod.ru/eng/www4mail.htm

(note the case of the letters).

Another examples of commands to this robot:

Other advanced options, in particular, include: retrieving frames, password-protected pages, links to images on the pages, changing coding MIME, BASE64, UUENCODE, etc. Send help in the message body to www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it to receive complete instructions. This server limits your quota to 300 requests or 10.000 Mbytes per week.

Search a grant for higher education by email: send blank email to send-faq@finaid.org   or  query@finaid.org .

The Microsoft knowledge base via email.

To get the index of the Microsoft knowledge base, send an email to mshelp@microsoft.com with the subject: index .

Tracking UPS packages via email.

To track your UPS packages send an email to totaltrack@ups.com   and insert the complete tracking number in the subject line or the body of the message .

Company  PageGetter.com offers excellent service to retrieve framed pages, only text, stock charts, horoscopes, weather forecasts, etc. Visit their site http://www.pagegetter.com for details. To retrieve framed pages send a message to  frames@PageGetter.com, they will be split into multiple emails. If the pages contain graphics, send your request to  web@PageGetter.com, if you need only text, the address is  text@PageGetter.com . The addresses of the requested pages must be shown in the message body or subject line. Large size text files can be split into separate messages by the additional command in the message body:  rsize=xxxx, where xxxx - is the the maximum size file you would like to have returned to you. A very interesting plug-in ProntoLite http://www.pagegetter.com/prontol.htm has web-interface, size about 58 kb, it works with your email agent. To receive its latest version, send a blank e-mail to PRONTOLite@PageGetter.com .

Check headers and message size in your inbox first.

The search result can be a large file, so check its size before receiving your e-mail. Under Windows 95 it can be performed as Microsoft Exchange -> Service -> Dial up connection -> Get headers  (the menu titles in your version can differ). You will receive the headers of the messages in your inbox, their sizes, senders names and after evaluation messages can be downloaded/copied from the server, deleted directly on it without downloading, etc. This is a good, simple and effective protection against spamming and viruses as well. Another very useful utility for checking the email inbox is Magic Mail Monitor:  http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/2576/magic.zip (file size: about 61 kb, freeware), or find a new one by keywords mail+checker. See tips below and visit also the software subportal of this site.