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Late on a Tuesday afternoon in June, I received an e-mail saying a granddaughter had tested positive for swine flu and that her mother, my pregnant daughter, was also ill. Hearing the words ’swine flu’ in the same breath with the name of two family members caused a pang of anxiety and concern – perhaps even a bit of fear.
This is the story of my journey into the “belly of the beast” in the hours and days following that e-mail. As the media frenzy again suggests an impending crisis, perhaps some of what I learned may benefit you and your family.
Learn to use e-mail (and other technology) far more sparingly and with far less dependency. Don’t and you risk losing control of your life, emotional and physical burnout, workplace meltdowns, and unhappiness.
That’s the argument John Freeman makes in his new book, The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox (to be published in October by Scribner). Here are some his thoughts as expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled “Not So Fast”.
Melinda Beck, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has a good summary of ‘advanced directives’ – those documents that give direction to family and medical professionals who “may have to decide whether you would want to be kept alive artificially, what level of disability you’d be willing to live with and how to let you die if you had no hope of recovery.”
Greg Shultz, in the 10 Things blog on Techrepublic.com, shares how you can use your USB flash drive to do a whole lot more than just move data around. Flash drives big enough to handle any of these tasks are cheap enough that you’ve got to wonder how you lived without them – especially when you see all the things you can do with them.
Social networking posts and photos can come back to haunt you in a job search. Litigation or criminal investigations can result in a subpoena that gives others full access to your computer – letting the world see incriminating or embarrassing details from your past. Once information shows up on the internet it is almost impossible to get rid of it.
Can you make information ’self-destruct’ on schedule? That’s the promise of Vanish, a free web-based system created by a research team at the University of Washington.
Google Voice will shake up how you use phones. You get a free virtual phone number and calls to that number ring on up to 6 phones at the same time. Free long distance calls in the continental U.S. and lot of other free goodies.
It is only available by invitation. Sign up to get on the list. I got an invitation about a week after signing up.
Earlier we showed you how your home computer can turn you into a criminal. Now it’s the toy you sell to your neighbor at a garage sale or yard sale. In the name of product safety, a 2008 law limits the sale of used toys, clothing and other items. But is this really about product safety? Or is it about cutting off the sale of used items so manufacturers can sell more new items?
According to spellr.us, one of every six web pages of the world’s top universities contain at least one genuine spelling error. Some of the mistakes are obscure misspellings. Others are obvious and embarrassing. But any mistake on a university website suggests that perhaps the institution should offer remedial spelling courses (or that no one is proofing the pages).
Michael Jackson’s estate, as we’ve said before, will be a nightmare to probate. Might you be interested in getting a seat on the sidelines where you can see the gory events unfold instead of just reading what the media summarizes? The Los Angeles probate court handling Jackson’s estate is online. Here’s how to open the door so you can claim your seat.
Email is a great tool. It’s fast. It’s easier than snail mail (typing a letter, printing it, finding an envelope, finding a stamp, and so on). You can send someone documents without killing a bunch of trees. But email is useless if you don’t have an email address. There is no single place called ‘directory assistance’ for email. But there are ways to find an email address. Some may be harder than others. But it’s not impossible.
Everyone has heard about phishing and malware. You’ve seen them in email links that take you places you really don’t want to go. After looking at a PowerPoint by Michael Kassner, I began to wonder how much the bad guys have affected our use of email – and if it’s time to call out the sheriff like we did in the old west and run the bad guys out of town.
Have you ever wanted to know what interests your customers right now – to read their minds and find out what hot button you can use to get their attention? Are interested in identifying emerging trends? Google Hot Trends can help you in your quest. Every hour Google updates a list of the hottest 100 topics people in the United States are searching for. You can look at daily lists back to May 15, 2007.
After the Lakers won the NBA championship last night, fans did as fans often do – they rioted. A Google news search can give you the low down. The question is, what was going on in the hours before the game ended? Were fans using the internet looking for information about where to go for a little after-game ‘fun’?
Google may indeed have a crystal ball that lets you peak into the future. It may help you predict things like whether there’s a growing (or dying) market for a product or service. Or who is going to win a political race. And who knows what else. It may be able to do that faster and cheaper than other tools you might be using.
Bet you didn’t know just how easy it is to become a bona fide criminal. You can do it from your home computer and hardly break a sweat. Here are some ways to make it easier for you. Or, if you’re so inclined, here’s how you can keep yourself on the right side of the law by knowing what not to do.
There are two reasons to read this article. The first is so that the next time you tread close to the line, you can step back and keep yourself out of jail. The second is so you can ask yourself if, as a society, we’re starting to go overboard.
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