Latest publications

Read my latest stories for The Wall Street Journal, Passcode, The Harvard Business Review, JSTOR Daily and more.

Social media gives information workers the experience of materiality

Social media gives information workers the experience of materiality

Today's practice:  If you haven't created something lately, try creating something online. At our all-university kick-off meeting for Emily Carr's spring semester, President Ron Burnett talked about the university's work in terms of materiality; in terms of the work,...

How self-reliance hurts online community

How self-reliance hurts online community

Today's practice: The next time you spend more than 15 minutes struggling with a tech challenge, stop trying to solve it yourself and ask someone for help. When our home media server froze as we were trying to watch a mother-daughter show tonight, I swung into...

How much social media is enough?

How much social media is enough?

Today's practice: Focus on quality, not quantity. Today's tweets are full of references to New Year's resolutions: "Tweet more". "Tweet less". "Blog more". "Blog less." "Check Facebook no more than once a day." "Check Facebook at least once a day." You get the idea....

Top 2011 posts from other sites

Top 2011 posts from other sites

For the past week, I've been rounding up the top posts from 2011 on this site -- both your favourites and my own. Today, I'm closing out the year by sharing 11 of the best posts I've read elsewhere this year. There are many others that belong on this list, too! Social...

Top how-tos and tech tips of 2011

Top how-tos and tech tips of 2011

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Top 11 of 2011

These top 2011 posts offer tech tips and how-tos on social media, web apps and blogging. From creating a desktop folder that stays in sync with Google Docs, to configuring Facebook to protect your kids’ privacy, you’ll find step-by-step help for getting things done online.

What the Internet did for you in 2011

What the Internet did for you in 2011

My year-end post for the Harvard Business Review asked the question, What did the Internet do for you this year? In that post, I wrote: Appreciating the moments when our online work and lives just click tells us that all this time we spend online is not a compulsion,...