Email and Skype keeping in touch and up-to-date

Email

Email is a very popular way to contact organisations and businesses, stay in touch with friends and family or receive updates, news and bulletins from people or companies you have an interest in.

Having an email account means you can:

• Send and receive messages from friends and family
• Receive newsletters and updates from organisations, people or businesses that you choose
• Sign up to other online services (online services nearly always require you to have an email address)

So how do you create your own, unique email address? Well, you can either:

Use an Internet Service Provider (ISP)
If you have the internet at home from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) such as BT Broadband, Sky, Virgin Media or AOL, you will probably already have an email address that was set up when you first got the service. If you are can’t remember your email address details, just contact your provider and they’ll be able to help.

Get a free internet-based email address
You can register for a free email account with a website that offers a free email service. Once you’ve registered an email address with one of these providers, you will be able to send and receive emails on any device with internet access.

Some of the most popular free email account services are:

Outlook
Gmail
Yahoo

They all provide similar features and have some built-in safety features to filter out any spam (unwanted emails). This short video shows you how to set an account up.

Skype

Skype is a really good way to keep in touch with friends and family wherever they are in the world by making phone and video calls over the internet. Skype is a software programme that allows you to do this.

To get started you’ll need a reasonably fast, reliable broadband internet connection, a microphone and some speakers or a headset. You’ll also need to download the Skype software and register an account.

If your friends or family have Skype as well then it’s free to call them. You can also use Skype to make calls to regular landline numbers and mobile phones for a relatively small cost on a pay-as-you-go or monthly subscription basis. For more information visit Skype.