NetLingo Blog: Let's Talk Tech

In the age of Twitter, it may be necessary to lay down some rules - such as, don't let your personal gadgets interfere with your personal relationships. Or to say it in Twitterese: Put down that phone! (Only 20 characters.) For some, the rule on a first date with a woman is clear: No Twitter twaddle. No cellphones, no iPod, no BlackBerry, no blinking device of any kind. "When I take a woman out and her cellphone is glued to her hand, there is no second date," says a man who meets women through MySpace. "One woman was so obsessed with MySpace, she had to check it while with me at my home - and then proceeded to get into a virtual argument with her ex. I escorted her to the door."

Think that's bad? Try this scenario: You are having dinner in a restaurant with a friend and you are both twittering away, sending out banal remarks - "tweets" - in 140 characters or less to hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people around the world who "follow" you on the rapidly growing microblogging messaging service. On your phone, you see her tweet: "I don't like the chicken I'm eating." What? Why doesn't she send it back? Suddenly, it hits you: She's telling scores of random strangers around the world that she doesn't like her meal, but can't be bothered to tell you sitting at the same table?

Launched in July 2006, Twitter is the fastest-growing social networking service, recording a 1,841% increase in accounts between February 2008 and February 2009, says co-founder Biz Stone. It now has an estimated 8 million users. Still, all the world's not a-Twittering (yet); is there really a problem with personal gadgets ruining personal relationships? "I do think it's widespread," sighs Soren Gordhamer, an expert on the over-stressed and over-connected, and author of the forthcoming "Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected." Gordhamer says technology aimed at bringing people closer through communication also may be creating distance.

"There are cool aspects. The challenge is: When do we use them and when do they use us?" Gordhamer says. "A tool isn't good or bad; it's just a tool. The question often not explored is what are some of the ways in which it's actually reducing quality of life and relationships?"

IRL,
Erin

Recent research suggests that men and women use the Internet differently. The results strengthen stereotypes that men are visual and focused on destinations and women are verbal and inclined to emotional connections and community-building.

The jury is still out on whether all this online activity is rewiring the circuitry of our brains. But as scientists and sociologists begin to probe the Internet's impact, some wonder if it is reinforcing sex differences or doing exactly the reverse, leading us instead toward a brave new wired world of gender neutrality. Then there are some who suggest the real concern is whether the Internet is dumbing us down. Hogwash, say others. What if, instead, Google were making us smarter?

The knowledge that the Internet provides may be fragmented, unlike the "readily bundled" information of a book, but it allows informed users to be the author of their own searches. The nonlinear approach to information-gathering on the Internet can help a person learn to navigate the world better. How your brain adapts to the Internet depends in part on how you make the Internet adapt to your needs. The trick, is teaching Web-savviness. As seen in The Washington Post, read the full story "The Online Male Takes a Licking and Keeps on Clicking" here...

As seen in Cosmopolitan magazine, firing off too many text messages can kill a budding relationship. Casual electronic notes have become a huge part of dating, and experts speculate that texts have surpassed actual phone calls between many couples. New love is exciting and it's easy to find yourself with an itchy text messaging trigger finger (or thumbs, rather) when in the throes of it. Just beware: There's such a thing as too much texting... overdoing it can freak anyone out. Here's when to step away!

1) Don't do it "right after" your first few dates. It may be tempting to contact someone "right away" that same night, but remember, meeting people takes time.

2) No matter who you are, don't do it when you're drunk. Stop yourself from sending a tipsy message, and do not send a message that suggests you two meet up ASAP.

3) Don't text when you're angry. It's hard to "take back" and it can actually sound meaner than it is.

4) We know you may like to have fun, but don't text when you're trying to be funny. The fact is sarcasm and joking can come off as aggressive.

5) Try to resist become Mr. or Mrs. Text-o-rama by not sending too many texts in one day. Once you're in an ongoing relationship, you may be tempted to rely on texting as a regular form of communication, and there's nothing wrong with staying in touch that way sometimes. But electronic communication discourages phone conversations and one-on-one time.

And don't pull an EWI either,
Erin

In a bizarre case in New Jersey, a 14-year-old girl was arrested and charged with child pornography after posting nude photos of herself on her MySpace page. Known as sexting, the case comes as prosecutors nationwide are pursuing cases resulting from tweens sending nude photos to one another over cell phones and e-mail. What happened was The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped off a state task force, which alerted the Passaic County Sheriff's Office. The Associated Press then reported "This is a wake-up call to parents" because "she wanted her boyfriend to see these very explicit photos." The girl, whose name has not been released because of her age, has been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. She was released to her mother's custody. If convicted of the distribution charge, she would be forced to register with the state as a sex offender under Megan's Law and go to jail.

It's bizarre because at that point the law has been flipped to punish the very people that it was designed to protect, as pointed out on Buzzle.com. It's controversial because concerned parents and citizens are criticizing the trend of prosecuting teens who send racy text messages or post illicit photos of themselves. They do not want to charge teens under laws that were designed to protect them, including Maureen Kanka, the mother of the girl that inspired Megan's law. "This shouldn't fall under Megan's Law, this girl needs counseling because the only person she exploited was herself." The legal question up for debate is when a teen chooses to exploit him or herself online or on some other platform, can authorities then claim that the teen is committing a crime? Prosecutors in states including Pennsylvania, Connecticut, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin are trying stop it by charging teens a fine who send and receive the pictures because they "knowingly" do so.

Get real. The lesson comes back to where it always leads: family. Parents need to communicate values to their children, engage with them in their lives, and keep tabs on who they're communicating with... there is such a thing as a digital footprint. The challenge is that many teens and tweens are far more technically savvy than their parents, teachers, and even authorities. This is why next month NetLingo is announcing a special series called "Get With the Program" to help bridge the digital generation gap between adults and kids. It will teach parents and educators how to empower kids to use the Internet productively, and it will teach everyone about current Internet trends and technology, highlight the important issues you need to know, and keep you up-to-date on all of the Internet terminology used in our online world.

You can keep up, keep coming back,
Erin

Read more here...

Meet Bandit-II a "socially assistive" robot being developed at the University of Southern California. Robots can already perform surgery and track your meds. Now, new models aim to provide therapy and support. Before consumers send their Roombas for repair, they sometimes etch their names on the machines in the hopes of getting their own robots back. Somehow, they grow attached to the squat, disk-shaped sweepers and worry that a new robot will have a different personality. "People are grateful that the Roomba improves their lives, so they reciprocate by giving it attention like they would a pet. Many owners who gave their Roombas names also paint them, dress them in costumes or turn them on to entertain friends.Difficult as it is to design a robot that can assemble a Toyota or handle toxic waste, researchers are working on making machines that can coach, motivate and monitor people with cognitive and physical disabilities -- machines that are "socially assistive." As seen in The Washington Post, read more here...
Film @ 11,
Erin

Because what happens in Vegas, stays online.

Checking out job sites? Surfing around looking for possible new career opportunities? Don't become the victim of an online scam in the process! The term phishing first emerged as an email trick in which a legitimate looking message (appearing to be from a respected company such as Citibank, eBay, PayPal, AOL, etc.) says it needs your personal and financial information to update their files; instead it is a false attempt to get your private information to later use for identity theft. Nearly 50% of adult Americans have received these bogus e-mails; I get at least one every day! To see an example and understand how it works, and to learn what you should never do, read this.

Now phishers are on the attack in the online job front. If you're launching an online job hunt for the first time in awhile, be cautious. Most legitimate job-search sites screen postings, but bad listings slip through the cracks. What to watch for? Listings that are vague about the hiring company or position, specifically ads that are pretending to offer a job but are really trying to get you to give up personal information, such as a Social Security number. Even if you think the ad is the real deal, don't hand over your personal information or your credit card. Legitimate jobs don't come with a price tag.

DBEYR,
Erin

Robotics expert David Levy, author of Love + Sex with Robots says in five years, people will be having sex with robots and in forty years, full-blown romantic relationships. Apparently the development of artificial intelligence and robots is proceeding so rapidly that "soon it will be possible to produce anatomically correct mechanical partners that are sort of an upgrade to the sex dolls on sale now, complete with sound effects." It will take quite a bit longer for robotic science to progress to the point at which artificial intelligence is capable of holding conversations with humans and forming a reasonable facsimile of a romantic relationship, but Levy says it's inevitable. "You will find robots conversation partners that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human." It may seem grotesque to fall in love with a robot, but Levy says that for people with psychological problems or physical deformities, it could be a huge consolation as there are millions of people in the world who have nobody. Call me old-fashioned but that sounds like a major RTBS. Film at 11.

Like many people who use the Internet to communicate with friends and connect with people, I'm continually amazed at how rude and insincere humans sometimes behave when interacting on electronic devices--seemingly because you're not F2F in real life. Take Jennifer, she'd been corresponding with Mr. Online Dating Guy for several weeks and when they finally met, it was clear he lied about his age (she's 41, he said he was 48, he was actually 61). When he asked her the next day --via text-- if he scared her away, she said it concerned her that he lied because she values honesty. Apparently the dude went from gentleman to you-know-what in 0.5 seconds and proceeded to text her a series of nasty messages. The moral? Don't spend too much online time with strangers you want to meet, and certainly don't while away the hours conjuring up future fantasies about your potential love mate until you've actually met IRL! Clearly you want to see if there's chemistry, and you have to find out if they're really telling the truth... otherwise it can turn into a major time suck.
As my friend would say, he's a RTBS.
Erin

I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that after 6 months of hard work, my team and I have launched the new and improved NetLingo website! We converted the old Cold Fusion site to a PHP environment, complete with custom CMS and 4 Word of the Day newsletters. PLEASE CHECK IT OUT AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS ;-) http://www.netlingo.com

There's several more features on their way, due to be released over the next 2-3 months, including our "Get With The Program" for parents series, our "Add Your Own Lingo" and become a wiki editor initiative, and back by popular demand our "Gifts for Geeks" online store with gadgets and gizmos that are all the rage.

Be sure to Sign Up for any or all of the Newsletters: You can get business terms, technology terms, cyber jargon terms, or the acronym of the day. It's an easy way to learn a little bite size chunck each day!

Congratulations to Chip of ExpertHost (for putting up with me during this trying time) and his team of programmers! I'm so very grateful.

TISC,
Erin

It's official, technology is slowly killing romance. And many are ready to hit "delete." Take Natalie, she had a boyfriend who was Mr. Text-o-Rama. He never wanted to talk, but he always wanted to text. A flirtatious text here and there is fine, but a text of more than 100 characters? Overkill. "Good morning" or short texts during the day are fine but receiving one at 7pm asking "How are you?" is a chicken way of saying "I want to talk to you without actually calling." There are some texting rules for dating: Don't flirt too long virtually; if someone doesn't text you back in 24 hours it's not happening; only cowards settle arguments via text, and text breakups don't count. And yes, "I love you" is fine -- but only if you've already said those words in person. Read more here...

<3
Erin

Many social critics have blamed the distractions of technology for weakening family ties, but that's simply not true. According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, 47% of adults said the Internet, cell phones, and other handheld devices had actually improved communication within the family; only 11% said they have harmed family cohesion. Face it, the burden is on parents to keep up with technology and communicate about it with your children. Most of the dysfunctions associated with heavy Internet usage, such as online porn, gambling, and identity theft, are committed by adults. In fact, the next edition of the DSM of Mental Disorders will include new mental illnesses such as "Internet Addiction" and "Parental Alienation Syndrome." As the kids would say "Don't be 404, get a clue!" You can start here...
GWI,
Erin

The Washington Post reported today that If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

Read the full story here...
FYSBIGTBABN,
Erin

People are waking up today with new hope!
GOBAMA!

Adios dubya,
Erin

Barack Obama plans to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first president to have Internet access there. But he'll probably have to give up using email since emails can be hacked into and subpoenaed. Neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush used email during their presidencies (can you imagine!), but unlike Mr. Obama neither of them was a devoted BlackBerry user. One possibility under consideration is that he could continue to receive emails, but not send them. Why? There are 3 main reasons: In addition to the risk of digital communications being hacked into, there is the Presidential Records Act, which could open all presidential emails to public scrutiny, as well as the possibility that the location of a presidential mobile device could be tracked. Kind of makes me appreciate my email after all!
AMBW,
Erin

I like to follow Internet start-ups, especially when they involve subscription services and have the potential to grow into mega-success stories. One company I'm particularly interested in is Jott based in Seattle. They are a voice-to-text service who moved out of beta in August 2008 and added a premium feature for $4/month. According to the company, about 30% of Jott's active users have opted for the premium, no-ads version of the service since then. 30%? In 5 months? Not bad!

What is Jott? People use Jott to send voice-to-text emails and SMS messages, to send Twitter messages, to add calendar items as a personal reminder service, and so on. It's way cool. The way it works is that voice messages are transcribed into text messages via software by, you guessed it, good old-fashioned wetware (as in humans ;-)

The free version of Jott is going to end on February 2, CEO John Pollard told Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com. The terrible advertising market, he said, means every customer has to pay their own way from now on. Customers will need to pay $4/month to continue the service, the current price for a premium account. This includes users of the Jott iPhone application.

I read today that Jott is also preparing to roll out a new service, voicemail-to-text. Like their competitors (including Spinvox, PhoneTag, GotVoice and others) voice mails will be converted into text messages and sent to the subscriber within a couple of minutes. The application is priced at the same level as their competitors, $10/month for up to 40 messages. Now that sounds a little suspect to me but we'll see as the product launches today. Film at 11!

YNK,
Erin

"Plans for Saturday?" That was the subject line of an email I received the other day, and I was excited about the prospect of some fun, until I realized I was not the intended recipient. My colleague had sent it to some family members and mistakenly included me. In this case it was a harmless mistake, but the inadvertent hitting of "Send" is becoming a part of daily life sometimes with more serious consequences.

Surveys have found that the percentage of Americans who've sent embarrassing emails to the wrong person at work has doubled over the past five years to 20%. Embarrassment is the mildest possible consequence, I've read about employees ending up in jail! So next time, before you hit "Send," remind yourself of little r, and count to 5 to save yourself from the dreaded ohnosecond.

BRB,
Erin

It is so funny to see the difference between teens and parents when it comes to online communication. I say funny because I'm on the outside looking in (I don't have kids), but I remember when I was a teen, I was a hellion so I'm sure my Mom doesn't think there's anything funny about trying to communicate with an adolescent. I can't imagine her trying to control me if we had the Internet around back then. But I digress, my point is that many parents "hate" texting but I'm here to change your mind. For starters, look at it like this: It's another way to communicate with your child and isn't that what every parents wants? To communicate more with your child?

A friend was explaining that the only way his daughter will "call" him is if he "texts" her. He could call her cell phone and leave message after message and he'll never hear from her, but if he texts her, she'll respond immediately. "Why is that?" he asks me. "Because" I say, "it's easier and quicker for her to punch a few buttons and touch base with you. If she thinks she has to call you, then she feels like she has to spend time talking to you and ultimately answer whatever question you may have at the moment. Basically she doesn't really want to do that. With texting she is in control."

Most teens I talk to think it's cool when their parents finally adopt texting, and in fact, they appreciate it tremendously. Here's the skinny: If you want to have a conversation with a child who still lives at home, do it over dinner, don't expect to do it on the phone or worse yet, via text or email. You simply cannot have a relationship via text, it's meant for short messages, to keep each other posted on what's going on. Just because your tween is texting her fingers off with her BFF Jill, doesn't mean she'll do that with you. She has a different kind of relationship with her peers, respect it, encourage it, but monitor it. Keep in mind that this kind of communication is empowering to youths, and in the end, they are communicating more and more with each other. Again, isn't that what every parents wants? For your child to express him or herself and communicate more?

One startling statistic is that 95% of parents don't recognize the lingo kids use to communicate online. NetLingo is here to help! One way to get a clue is to keep up-to-date with text lingo. Check back to this blog too, I'll be writing MANY posts about text messaging in the future because it remains to be "a gr8 db8."

TTFN,
Erin