What if your cell phone could give you a heads-up, to let you know whether an email you are about to read is positive, negative or neutral? In Britain, scientists at the University of Portsmouth have developed an application that will do exactly that. After scanning the text of incoming mail, the app displays each message onscreen against a colored […]
more about: Internet
Stop Asking Me if I Got Your Email
The great thing about email used to be that I could send it whenever I wanted and you could reply when it was convenient. No more. “As our inboxes have become more demanding, we have all become less responsive — because we get so many messages it’s hard to keep up. But the harder it is to keep up, the […]
A Priest and a Rabbi Walk onto a Facebook Page…
“How do I deal with people who make rude or inappropriate comments on my Facebook posts (think: off-color religious or political jokes)?” writes a reader who asked to remain anonymous. “These are not close friends—sometimes people I barely know but am connected with online. I worry it’s offensive to delete their comments, but I don’t want other people in my […]
Is It Facebook’s Fault if You’re Self-Centered?
Does Facebook turn you into a narcissist? This is the question posed (but not answered) by a recent column in the New York Times. Citing a number of recent students of Facebook users, the Times article described the research so far: Facebook users who tag themselves in photos and frequently update their statuses are more narcissistic; self-centered people are more […]
Oversharing: When Couples Tweet Too Much
Singer Rosanne Cash got in trouble recently for tweeting that her husband was napping. “Don’t’ tell people I’m taking a nap!” he said, really annoyed. That story and others, reported today in the New York Times, describes a modern etiquette problem that can derail romance: oversharing. Before the days of Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr, it wasn’t so easy to blithely […]
Bad Manners: Using Twitter to Hound People
Director Spike Lee caused a stir this week by gossiping on the Internet. Lee re-tweeted to his 250,000 Twitter followers a Florida address purportedly belonging to a man who last month shot and killed a teenage boy who was wearing a hoodie, an incident that sparked nationwide outrage. Unfortunately, Lee re-tweeted the wrong address. As a result, “A couple who […]
Can an Interest in Pinterest Get You Sued?
I like to pin pretty pictures on my online bulletin boards as much as the next Pinterest user. And I love it when people “like” my choices or repin them. But not everyone feels the same way. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal raised the question of whether you can get into trouble for pinning images you don’t […]
Dad to Daughter’s Laptop: ‘Bang Bang, You’re Dead’
In the eight days since a fed-up North Carolina dad who shot up his teenage daughter’s laptop with a .45-caliber pistol uploaded a YouTube video that documents the incident, more than 25 million viewers—parents and children alike—have watched him pump eight bullets into the computer. “That right there is your laptop. You see it’s out there on the ground. This […]
Be Nice on Pinterest: The polite way to ‘pin’
I’ve been obsessed lately with Pinterest, the site where you can “pin” collections of interesting pictures onto an online bulletin board you share with your friends. Yeah, me and nearly 11 million other Pinterest users. You’re probably on Pinterest too, loving this well-designed new site that is on track to become the fastest-growing social networking site since Facebook. The way it […]
