Publications

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Alive offline

Alive offline

If the Internet is addictive, then how come there's no withdrawal symptoms? I've been on vacation for three days and haven't blogged, barely tweeted, barely Facebooked, and have yet to check into a single location using the local version of FourSquare. It's hard to...

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

Unplugging is not the only way to take control of your relationship to the Internet. If you want to create a more meaningful life and a healthier world, there are ways to pursue that online as well as offline. But you need to find tools that are more nuanced than the...

Focus Your Attention Online

The risks of risk management

Risk may not be something you always want to limit online. This post tells you how raising the stakes of your online participation — by posting under your own name, by giving your blog’s URL to your colleagues, by being more candid and authentic in what you say online — can increase the value of your online engagement.

Defining the impact of social media on social capital

Defining the impact of social media on social capital

What are your online friendships worth to the community you live in? That's the practical question that is implicitly raised by Jon Hickman's interesting and slightly perplexing post on Social capital & social media. Hickman writes: ...as academics start to...

The Harvard Business Review

Alive offline

Alive offline

If the Internet is addictive, then how come there's no withdrawal symptoms? I've been on vacation for three days and haven't blogged, barely tweeted, barely Facebooked, and have yet to check into a single location using the local version of FourSquare. It's hard to...

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

Unplugging is not the only way to take control of your relationship to the Internet. If you want to create a more meaningful life and a healthier world, there are ways to pursue that online as well as offline. But you need to find tools that are more nuanced than the...

Focus Your Attention Online

The risks of risk management

Risk may not be something you always want to limit online. This post tells you how raising the stakes of your online participation — by posting under your own name, by giving your blog’s URL to your colleagues, by being more candid and authentic in what you say online — can increase the value of your online engagement.

Defining the impact of social media on social capital

Defining the impact of social media on social capital

What are your online friendships worth to the community you live in? That's the practical question that is implicitly raised by Jon Hickman's interesting and slightly perplexing post on Social capital & social media. Hickman writes: ...as academics start to...

OneZero

Mac users, meet your menu bar

Mac users, meet your menu bar

Can you recognize the signs of SMBB? Selective Menu Bar Blindness affects millions of Mac users, but has yet to be widely recognized as a chronic and debilitating condition. Patient X -- let's call her "Shmalexandra" -- was treated for a classic presentation of the...

How Apple could offer “digital valet” service

How Apple could offer “digital valet” service

I spend a lot of time tweaking my systems. And by a lot, I mean....a lot. Between my Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPad and our two home media servers, I figure that I'm upgrading something every week. Then there's my online system: the widgets I install on my WordPress blog,...

Breaking up affordably

Breaking up affordably

What can you learn from Sprint's fantastic new ad for its mobile billing package? Check it out: Now, the lessons: Do not break up via electronic media. Nobody is interested in hearing about the technical considerations behind a personal, social or business decision...

3 tech alternatives to the lost-and-found

3 tech alternatives to the lost-and-found

Yesterday Little Sweetie returned home without her retainer. This is the moment we have been dreading for the four months since she got it. While interrogating her about possible locations for said orthodontic appliance, I couldn't help digressing into a conversation...

Learning to live with your lover’s virtual past

Learning to live with your lover’s virtual past

William Quincy Belle has a hysterically funny take on Shape's annual sex survey, which (among other things) looks at the impact of technology on our sex lives. Here's my favorite part of his blog post: 72 percent of women admitted in the survey to looking through a...

JSTOR DAILY

Mac users, meet your menu bar

Mac users, meet your menu bar

Can you recognize the signs of SMBB? Selective Menu Bar Blindness affects millions of Mac users, but has yet to be widely recognized as a chronic and debilitating condition. Patient X -- let's call her "Shmalexandra" -- was treated for a classic presentation of the...

How Apple could offer “digital valet” service

How Apple could offer “digital valet” service

I spend a lot of time tweaking my systems. And by a lot, I mean....a lot. Between my Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPad and our two home media servers, I figure that I'm upgrading something every week. Then there's my online system: the widgets I install on my WordPress blog,...

Breaking up affordably

Breaking up affordably

What can you learn from Sprint's fantastic new ad for its mobile billing package? Check it out: Now, the lessons: Do not break up via electronic media. Nobody is interested in hearing about the technical considerations behind a personal, social or business decision...

3 tech alternatives to the lost-and-found

3 tech alternatives to the lost-and-found

Yesterday Little Sweetie returned home without her retainer. This is the moment we have been dreading for the four months since she got it. While interrogating her about possible locations for said orthodontic appliance, I couldn't help digressing into a conversation...

Learning to live with your lover’s virtual past

Learning to live with your lover’s virtual past

William Quincy Belle has a hysterically funny take on Shape's annual sex survey, which (among other things) looks at the impact of technology on our sex lives. Here's my favorite part of his blog post: 72 percent of women admitted in the survey to looking through a...

THE VERGE

10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life

5 essential steps to online security

Today's practice: Tighten your online security. You'd think that writing a dissertation about political computer hacking would make a girl sensitive to the challenges of online security. And it has, up to a point. But I recently decided to up my level of tech...

Make a family tech schedule

Make a family tech schedule

Today's practice: Make a family tech schedule. We recently took the bold, terrifying step of pulling all the gaming consoles (Xbox, Playstation and Wii) out of our home media center, and sending them on a vacation to the closet. We took this measure in response to our...

What experience do you want to have online?

What experience do you want to have online?

Today's practice: Think about the social media experience you want to have, not the brand you want to build. About three years ago, in a conversation that ultimately led to me shifting gears and joining Emily Carr, the very wise Morgan Brayton passed along a pivotal...