dd May 9th, 2007
E-mail (note: according to my Mac dictionary you can spell email with a hyphen or without - both are acceptable) by now has become ubiquitous. We all use it although sometimes it uses us — to distraction. Anyway, I’ve been wondering about some email etiquette or convention questions lately. So, here they are:
- How to determine when to end a thread of responses/replies?
This may seem like a simple question, but I think it’s one we all have grappled with. You send a message, that person replies. Now, if there is still some clarification to do, then, of course, you respond. But, if it seems like all questions have been answered, do you send a “final” reply and if so, where does it end? Here’s an example:
Mr X: “Ms. Y, could you please send me the 3 readings I still need so I can post them on the web site? Thanks.”
Ms. Y: “Here they are. Thanks for reminding me.”
Mr. X: These are terrific. I really liked the third one from Sarah. I’ve posted them all.”
Ms. Y: Thanks so much. Yes, I really like Sarah’s reading too. I may use it tonight in class.”
Now, does Mr. X reply with something like: “Great idea. I’m sure the class will like that.” or just stop the conversation? The problem in email is that we don’t have a convention for ending the conversation as we do in face to face dialogues. In that case, we each say “goodby” or “see ya later” or whatever.
- Should you ever use all caps?
Until about 2 years ago, I was unaware that there is an email etiquette rule that says USING ALL CAPS MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING! (IT’S ALSO MORE DIFFICULT TO READ.)
Since then, I have avoided using all caps. I don’t want to be shouting or yelling when I send an email to someone. Also, now that I am aware of this convention, when I get an email with word(s) in all caps, I immediately get defensive, just as I would if someone was yelling at me.
- So, should you tell someone who uses all caps about the all caps etiquette rule?
Here, you have to be careful. If you come across in the wrong way, you’ll tick off the person. That’s bad, unless that’s what you want to do. I think the best approach is to do this in a lighthearted way and not come across sanctimoniously. Easier said than done. Guess I can point people to this post.
Anyone have any other email issues/questions? What about abbreviations for example? Feel free to add to the dialog with your comments.
Here are a couple of links to discussions of email/net etiquette:
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dd April 8th, 2007
This is one of the most clever and hilarious videos ever. Take a look and say hello to Soubriquet while you’re there.
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dd January 12th, 2007
As if things could not get any worse for the company we all love to hate, Microsoft (MS), here’s a real juicy tidbit. Just published by seattlepi.com is a confidential 2004 memo written by a top exec to Msrs Gates and Ballmer. Message: “We’ve lost our way” but Apple knows the way. In fact, Mr. Jim Allchin, formerly project manager for the Windows Operating System (OS), says that if he didn’t work for MS, he “would buy a Mac today”.
Apple is hitting on all cylinders these days – both in computer hardware with its stylish Macs, computer electronics with its iPods and the new amazing iPhone and with its secure, easy to use, and beautiful software and operating system. Its current OS, Tiger, already outshines the 5 years too late, but soon to be shipping Windows Vista. And Apple’s new OS X version, Leopard, is just around the corner with a whole slew of useful new features like “Time Machine” to enable ordinary users to automatically backup their files with versioning to boot!
Now, it looks like even top-level MS execs are abandoning ship. By the way, Mr. Allchin recently left MS. Steve Jobs offered him a job. Maybe now he’ll get his Mac.
Technorati Tags: mac microsoft
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dd January 10th, 2007
Time magazine’s “person of the year” is us. That’s right — the bloggers, You-tubers, Podcast makers and listeners, in your FaceBook and in MySpace internet junkies. The world is forever changed and in some ways communication is now totally distributed as we no longer have to rely on a few big media companies for news or entertainment. We now “roll our own”. This is all good, right?
“Hell yes” would be my first answer. For a soon to be turning 60 year old, I’m as geek/technology crazed as they come. I have created and listen to podcasts, I love my iPod, am now blogging with WordPress, not using that “for wimps” only Blogger stuff. I can iChat, put my photos on SmugMug, have a Mac and can’t wait to get the new iPhone.
But, Howard Kurtz in his Washington Post Media Notes column of Dec. 25, 2006 laments the loss of what he calls “Ed Sullivan moments”. My grandmothers, of course, would have called these “Ed Solomon moments”. What he is referring to is a time when families all over the country would gather around their black and white TV (younger readers — ask your parents or grandparents to explain concept to you) to watch programs like Ed Sullivan. Many of us watched the same show since there were only 2 or 3 channels available (wow, doesn’t this seem ancient?). And, then the next day we could all talk about the show - at school, at the water cooler, over our party line phones, etc.
Now that we have millions of channels for news and entertainment on the internet, do we have anything shared to discuss? NBC anchor Brian Williams asks in Time,
“Does it endanger what passes for the national conversation if we’re all talking at once? What if ‘talking’ means typing on a laptop, but the audience is too distracted to pay attention?”
What do you think?
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dd December 28th, 2006
I just recently went through a migration from the new Blogger (formerly called Beta) to WordPress. Along the way, I learned a few lessons that may be of interest to other WordPress converts:
- Where to host your WordPress blog site? While it is very easy and cheap (as in free) to host your site on wordpress.com it is also very limiting. By hosting your WordPress Blog on an isp, you get complete freedom to tweak it as you wish. And, isn’t this one of the reasons for migrating in the first place? The hosting provider I use is SiteGround. They are very reasonably priced and provide excellent WordPress support (and support in general).
- How to transfer your old posts and comments from Blogger to WordPress? While migration support from the old Blogger is built in to WordPress, you’re more on your own (at least as of this writing) for migrating from the new Blogger. Enter this great script from romantika.name which can be found here. Read the instructions there. In summary, you just upload the script to your Wordpress blog directory and “run” it. Let’s say you have uploaded the script to http://yourdomain.com/blog. Then, just visit this URL to run the script: http://yourdomain.com/blog/blogger-beta-import.php.
Cautions:
- To verify that everything is transferred correctly and will display correctly in the various browsers, especially the persnickety Internet Explorer, use the W3C validator and plug in your WP blog home page. Fix all the errors the validator discovers.
- This will catch almost all the problems, But, if there are remianing issues, you may need to find the problem posts and review the html. You can select all the html form the WP editor and then paste it into a nice syntax checking editor (e.g BBEdit on the Mac). Then, do a syntasx check to discover any errors not discovered by the W3C validator.
- Keep your Blogger-beta site around for a while. I would suggest not deleting your blogger site until you are absolutely convinced the migration is complete and you are completely happy with the results. If nothing else, the Blogger site is your backup in case you need to correct anything or remigrate anything.
Good luck. I think you’ll be happy you made the switch. WordPress rocks!
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