Posts Tagged 'handheld'

Brevity is the soul of Wit… so where is the soul of Email?

Posted on July 8th, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions

If Brevity is the soul of Wit (as Shakespeake has Polonius tell us), how much of this soul can we expect in the age of electronic communication? Not much, probably. Brevity requires more investment than verbosity. Blaise Pascal once wrote, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. Since in today’s overloaded work culture nobody has any time for anything, the tendency is to make emails longer than necessary, to the detriment of the hapless recipient. There are three places where you see a combination of brevity and.. Read more

Do not Disturb!

Posted on May 30th, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

My Nokia E71 smartphone has a selection of available specialized profiles, of which the most useful one is probably “Silent”, for use in meetings and theatres. Useful, yet I use it with trepidation. I fear the Silent profile because I KNOW, I’m practically certain, that I will forget to turn it off when the meeting is over, only to discover later an accumulation of “missed calls”. The obvious solution, which seems to elude the good designers at Nokia (and at the makers of every other Smartphone I’ve used to date), is to implement a profile of “silent for one hour”,.. Read more

Leave your Blackberries at the door!

Posted on January 29th, 2010 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Blackberries and other Smartphones have On/Off switches, and the ability to put them in Silent or Vibrate modes; yet few people have the presence of mind, or willpower, or even awareness, to use these capabilities when entering a location where the ringing and buzzing may be harmful – notably classrooms and meetings. Something stronger is required, and I saw it recently. I went to give a workshop to a management staff at a large company, and I observed a delightful act of conscious control: when going into the room, everyone left their phones on a table at the door, placing.. Read more

And now, Undersea Cellphone Interruptions

Posted on January 2nd, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

We’ve heard how man-made noise pollution from ship propellers and sonar disturbs the lives of whales and damages their famous whale song communications. It seems that underwater distractions and interruptions are now destined to affect humans as well… I saw this while flipping pages in the ubiquitous SkyMall magazine on a plane: an ad for a NEW! Underwater cellular phone system. It leads with the question “Have you ever wanted to make or receive a phone call underwater?” Why, of course! Happens to all of us, all the time! What the ad  doesn’t ask, perhaps because it assumes this is.. Read more

SMS in Banking: no, thank you!

Posted on December 21st, 2009 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I was talking to a friendly young lady on my bank’s telephone access line (a very convenient service, that). After she handled the transaction I needed, she told me in a cheerful voice that I’m entitled to the bank’s new SMS service, which she proceeded to describe. This great new service would enable me to receive SMS messages right to my mobile phone whenever anything happened in my account: credits, debits, credit card transactions, and so on. Each would blare an alert on my belt. That, I was told, would save me a lot of effort checking what was going.. Read more

So, is a Blackberry a pro or con for WLB?

Posted on November 29th, 2009 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was interviewed by a journalist about Information Overload recently and she asked whether I agree that having a smart phone helps people to balance work and home life? My first reaction would be “yes, if you use it wisely”. After all, when we deployed Notebook computers at Intel in the mid-nineties it was eminently obvious that they can be a boon for one’s Life: instead of staying late at the office to finish your work, you could take it home to do after dinner, with the kids safely in bed… and of course, Notebooks enabled Telecommuting, which (at a.. Read more

Information Overload and Haute Cuisine

Posted on November 27th, 2009 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

We tend to think of Information Overload in a knowledge work context – business offices, hi-tech, and the like. But my friend Rich Poliak was in the restaurant business for a while, and he gave me a fascinating glimpse of the situation between the kitchen and the dining hall. It turns out that everyone in his restaurant – the Chef, the line cooks, the servers and he himself – were often checking messages, texting and posting on Facebook, Twitter, etc. He attempted to place a policy of no cellphone use during work hours except for breaks, but it was difficult.. Read more

Mobile phones and parenting

Posted on November 22nd, 2009 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

The impact of handheld devices on our social lives is visible enough; we all see people stop in the middle of a conversation to answer a ringing mobile phone. We’re even becoming used to it, willing to forgive this rather rude behavior. But there is one category of such interruptions where the rudeness is inexcusable, and that is where the affected party isn’t a “consenting adult”: we also interrupt our interaction with our children. The Wall Street Journal carried a wonderful article titled “Blackberry orphans” a few years ago that discussed in some detail how the toll on parental attention.. Read more