How A.I. could change the workplace

What about a system that automatically changes wording in communications to eliminate your co-workers’ unhelpful quirks? This is just one of the interesting ideas in my Wall Street Journal article about how A.I. can help with workplace communications. An excerpt from...

Facebook Reactions: Campaign Edition

The advent of Facebook Reactions has brought forth a remarkable range of suggestions for alternative icons; the endless presidential campaign has produced an ever-growing range of tribute memes. But if we’re going to have the reactions we need to survive this...

Threat-based parenting: Dos and Don’ts

As featured on Medium, a handy guide to getting those pesky kids under control with the power of threats. Thanks to the rise of screens, there’s never been a better time for threat-based parenting.

End those digital fasts with these 5 April Fool’s Day pranks

Well, folks, it’s almost that time again: Easter. Also known as the end of Lent. Or what should be known as national coming out day for all the people who’ve just spent the past 40 days doing some kind of digital fast. They inevitably come back with a...

The 23 stages of the task management software lifecycle

Totally on top of all pending tasks Moderate slippage of select tasks leads to mild anxiety Catastrophic failure to complete one or more mission-critical tasks leads to wholesale re-evaluation of career choice, self-worth and why are we even on this earth anyhow?...

Which Facebook updates could you live without?

The beauty of being married to a man with absolutely no interest in sports is that I would remain blissfully unaware of the start of hockey season, at least until I get to the office Monday, were it not for Facebook and Twitter, which are suddenly overflowing with...

More jobs of the future: essential staff for your tech lifestyle

A while ago I blogged a list of anticipated jobs of the future: new categories of employment that will be necessitated by our increasingly plugged-in lives.  Now it’s time to add a few to the list: Update concierge: 2 laptops + 2 home computers + 1 ipad + 1...

Another view of the Internet in 1971

Rob Cottingham, who was actually around in 1971, remembers the early Internet a little differently. He’s annotated the Computer History Museum’s 1971 ARPAnet map, which I included in my kick-off on my 40 years of looking back on the Internet: Thanks, Rob,...

For Lent, I’ve decided to give up reading about digital fasts

Gosh, how I love digital fasts. And Lent 2011 has given us a bumper crop of digital fasters who now find 40 days without Facebook (or Twitter) more profound and painful than a month without booze, TV or smokes. Well, if they can live without us for 40 days (sniff!)...

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...