Latest publications

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

Mindful of social media

Mindful of social media

Lori Deschene of TinyBuddha has a fantastic post on 10 Mindful Ways to Use Social Media at Tricycle. It's hard to pick just one to share but if I have to... If you propose to tweet, always ask yourself: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Sometimes we post...

Two tweaks for your e-mail vendetta auto-responder

Two tweaks for your e-mail vendetta auto-responder

Yesterday I set up a vacation responder as part of my e-mail vendetta. If you're thinking of doing the same, you might note a couple of tweaks: I forward multiple e-mail addresses to a single Gmail account. But Gmail's vacation responder doesn't do a good job of...

Don’t try this at home: Implementing the e-mail vendetta

Don’t try this at home: Implementing the e-mail vendetta

Today I declared war on e-mail. Well, not all e-mail: just the tyrannical assumption that we should all reply to every single message we reply. In a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, I called for a vendetta on the mandatory universal reply. That means...

Tied to technology

Tied to technology

My latest toy is an iPod nano watch. It's just a plain old iPod nano, but it slides onto a watch strap specially designed to watch-ify it. I loved it for being red and iSomething and tiny but even so I wasn't particularly sure that it was a wise (read: financially...

Could you imagine life without Facebook?

Could you imagine life without Facebook?

Progressive Media Concepts recently posted an interesting question: What Would You Do If Facebook Shut Down Tomorrow? One I recovered from my blackout (it's my body's automatic self-defense mechanism when faced with the unthinkable) I read on, curious to hear PWC's...

Internet tunes: Craiglist Hookup – Missed Connections

Internet tunes: Craiglist Hookup – Missed Connections

Kate Allen has a great article in yesterday's Toronto Star about the phenomenon that is Craigslist's Missed Connections. It features the true story of a couple who met through MC two years ago...so yes, you can find love that way. Kate interviewed me for the story,...

Social media for the 28th day: 9 tech tips for easier periods

Social media for the 28th day: 9 tech tips for easier periods

Today's post is a special for my female readers. Gentlemen, please avert your browsers as I'm about to discuss icky girl things that would constitute a betray of my gender if you all keep reading. Ladies, now that it's just us, let's talk about how to optimize your...

There are motherf&!#ing blogs on the motherf&!#ing plane!

There are motherf&!#ing blogs on the motherf&!#ing plane!

About an hour ago I tweeted the following: Desperately trying to think of a tweet that makes it clear I'm tweeting from the plane, w/out making it sound like that's the point. The responses to this tweet were so fantastic that I just have to round them up:...

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...