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Dec 26, 2008

Emailaholic or responsibility?

According to Pew Internet Project, 25% of employed email users say they check email "often" even when they have taken a sick day, compared with 17% who say they often check their inboxes before they go to work for the day, and 19% who frequently check their email after leaving work for the day

Fully 22% of employed say that they check their work email accounts “often” during the weekend, compared with just 16% who reported doing this in 2002.

34% employed email users in jobs earning 75,000 USD or more say they check their work email often on the weekends, while just 17% of those earning under 50,000 USD do so.

34% of employed email users say they will at least occasionally check their email on vacations; 11% say they do so often, 14% say they sometimes check in and 9% rarely log in to their email while taking a vacation day.

Dec 19, 2008

50% of corporate employees check their email constantly

Half of work emailers who are currently employed at large corporations check their email constantly, compared with just 32% of those who work for small businesses.

Indeed, there is a considerable amount of overlap in the patterns seen here with wages and job types; as mentioned previously, many of those who earn less than $30,000 work in the service industry, skilled and semi-skilled jobs-professions that are not associated with high levels of internet or email use, according to Pew Internet Project.

Dec 16, 2008

Effects of information overload

A sustained negative neurological effect of information overload has been identified by psychiatrist E.M. Hallowell. He has called this effect Attention Deficit Trait (ADT).

It isn't an illness; it's purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live. When a manager is desperately trying to deal with more input than he possibly can, the brain and body get locked into a reverberating circuit while the brain's frontal lobes lose their sophistication, as if vinegar were added to wine.

The result is black-and-white thinking; perspective and shades of gray disappear. People with Attention Deficit Trait have difficulty staying organised, setting priorities, and managing time, and they feel a constant low level of panic and guilt.

Attention Deficit Trait extends to people working in knowledge environments, which in today is a large portion of the workforce. A Basex survey showed that 28% (2.1 hours) of a knowledge worker’s day is consumed by interruptions. In the United States alone, this translates to 28 billion lost working hours and $588 million in lost profits every year.

Other studies have also shown negative consequences as a result of information overload, such as ignoring anything past the first few options, making mistakes, having difficulty relating the details to the overall issue, wasting time, and needing more time to reach decisions. Read more...

Dec 10, 2008

Employees occasionally check their personal inboxes?

According to Pew Internet Project 54% of employees with personal email accounts say they occasionally check their personal inboxes while at work. Were they completely honest about this issue?...

In the other hand, 39% of all personal emailers say they check their personal accounts at least once a day at work, while 15% report checking in less often than that. Just 7% admit to refreshing their personal inboxes at work constantly, and 4% say they check in several times an hour.

Read more

Dec 4, 2008

The wired world may be changing the way we read

Some scientists think. There are no firm answers yet. But Gary Small, a psychiatrist at UCLA, argues that daily exposure to digital technologies such as the Internet can alter how the brain works.

When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation, Small asserts.

So brain circuits involved in face-to-face contact can become weaker, he suggests. That may lead to social awkwardness, an inability to interpret nonverbal messages, isolation and less interest in traditional classroom learning.

More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates warned about a different information revolution — the rise of the written word, which he considered a more superficial way of learning than the oral tradition. Read more abou it...

Dec 1, 2008

In a depressed economic situation...

Business productivity and saving has become more important. If you are concerned with these issues, E-mail at the workplace is an uselful book for you.

Email overload has become a kind of epidemic in the workplace. In average, employees spend over 40% of their time managing email. Nearly half of that time is lost, it is unproductive. But, there is a lot you can do to improve you email managing skill.

If you want to improve e-mail performance in your workplace, creating more efficient messages and meeting your business communication goals more effectively, this book is for you. Visit www.emailattheworkplace.com. Inside you will find recommendations on how to structure e-mails content, differentiate your subjects better, understand writing communication principles, increase e-mail comprehension and obtain more effective answers.

E-mail at Workplace provides practical guidance for managing writing messages and recipients perception of them, taking into consideration emotional impact that written words have as well as the habits of reading e-mails.

E-mail at the workplace in Amazon.com.

Nov 28, 2008

E-mail overload: Epidemic at workplace?

In average, employees spend over 40% of their time managing email. Nearly half of that time is lost, it is unproductive. So, inappropriate use of email in the workplace severely affect the profitability of businesses, both as professional reputation.

Most of the unproductive habits with e-mail management are due to a lack of global perspective on the various issues related to written communication, above and beyond language use or the mastery of technological resources.

According to a report published by Cisco Systems in September 2006, "The Psychology of Effective Business Communications in Geographically Dispersed Teams", e-mail users can spend 4 times more to exchange the same number of messages compared to when they communicate face-to-face.

In the present depressed economic situation, companies face a financial challenge: Managment of e-mail. What can you do?

Nov 25, 2008

Websites time wasters plaguing workplace productivity

According to InternetSafety.com, a company focused on safety products, there are 10 kind of websites that currently diminish employee productivity at the workplace. The listing demonstrates the diverse range of online distractions at workplace that tempt workers from 9 to 5:

• Social wetworking sites, as MySpace.com or Facebook, amomg others (over 170 million people are active users).

• Online videos sites, as YouTube or Google Videos (over 100 million YouTube videos are watched each day).

• Adult sites with sexually-explicit content.

• Shopping sites (70% of all online purchases occur between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm).

• Vacation planning sites, as a stress reliever or because of job dissatisfaction, they remains a top pastime at work.

• Job searches, as Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and Jobster.com.

• News and blogs, as Gizmodo.com, Perezhilton.com, Engadget.com and Blogger.com.

• Online auctions in sites such as eBay, uBid, and auctions.yahoo.com.

• Online games, as games.yahoo.com, congregate.com, popcap.com, and forumwarz.com.

• Gambling sites (60% of all U.S. adults have gambled in the past year).

What time waster website do you prefer?

Nov 18, 2008

What does deteriorate senders reputation?

Wether senders send e-mails very frequently, recipients might feel that they are being inconsiderate towards them an the work they are doing at the time. Therefore, they “charge extra” by not paying attention to those messages.

Remember also that senders positioned as people that permanently send chains, jokes, accusations, or messages to cover their backs and/or justify themselves also have a high cost in the attention of recipients, and they are also perceived as inconsiderate.

In the long run, these practices only deteriorate the reputation of senders, and recipients end up thinking that it isn’t worth investing time in those messages, erasing them without reading them.

Some people write messages that are extremely dense and difficult to understand, and it is difficult for their recipients to pay attention to those messages. These are the cases where the recipient got more work, having to phone sender to get the message quicklier, and saving time “digesting” the information.

Nov 11, 2008

Americans employee with an email account: 81%

Among those who are employed, 96% are in some way making use of new communications technologies- either by going online, using email or owning a cell phone. This group includes employed respondents who are either internet users (86%), have a cell phone (89%) or an email account (81%). Additionally, some 73% of workers use all three basic tools of the information age: they use the internet, have an email account, and have a cell phone, according to Pew Internet Project.

Nov 7, 2008

Internet traffic from search engines in October

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. According to Hitwise, traffic from Google and other search engines to specific Web categories in October 2008 is as follow:
Health and Medical: 44.92%
Travel: 35.71%
Online Video: 31.83%
Shopping and Classifieds: 25.14%
Entertainment: 23.57%
News and Media: 20.90%
Business and Finance: 18.61%
Social Networking: 18.61%
Sports: 12.01%
Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users.

Oct 28, 2008

US adults have both personal and work email accounts

More than half of working adults (53%) have both personal and work email accounts. And while 22% say they only maintain personal addresses, just 5% say that their email use is limited to a work account (of course this is what they will say).

54% of employees with personal email accounts say they at least occasionally check their personal inboxes while at work and most do so on a daily basis. Personal email spills over to the cell phone and Blackberry, too: Among employed respondents who actively use their cell phone or Blackberry for email, 44% say that most or all of the messages they send and receive are personal, while 32% say that most or all of the messages are work-related.

Another 25% say their email use is equally split between personal and work-related messages. 37% of those with work email accounts check them constantly, up from 22% in 2002, according to Pew Internet Project.

Oct 26, 2008

The future of enterprise information governance

Information is the lifeblood of any modern-day business. Companies succeed and falter based on the reliability, availability and security of their data.

A corporation's capacity to handle information depends upon a variety of factors, including engaged executives and a company culture that supports collective ownership of information.

However, strategically created enterprise-wide frameworks that define how information is controlled, accessed and used are arguably the most critical elements in a successful information management programme.

The mechanisms that enforce those frameworks, are referred to as information governance.

A survey undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit say that only 38% of companies have a formal enterprise-wide information governance strategy.

Fewer than half of all respondents feel that information governance is important to their company’s success today, suggesting complacency or ignorance about the need for governance structures to manage corporate information.

There are several reasons why proper information governance remains elusive, but the biggest challenge worldwide is identifying the cost/risk/return tradeoffs of managing information company-wide (40%). Enforcing policies company-wide (39%) and gaining support from department heads and line-of-business managers (35%) are also obstacles.

Oct 24, 2008

22% of Americans have to reply to work e-mails away from work

The off-hours checking of work-related email is not an act generated solely by the volition of the employee.

Some 22% of employed email users say they are expected to read and respond to work-related emails, even when they are not at work.

Blackberry and PDA owners are more than twice as likely to report that their employer expects that they will stay tuned in to email outside of the office.

Fully 48% say they are required to read and respond to email when they are away from work, according to Pew Internet Project.

Oct 20, 2008

How many Americans believe that using email increased their workload?

Most employed email users do not believe that using email has increased the amount of time they spend working overall. Just 17% attribute some increase to email, while 6% feel as though email has actually cut down the amount of time they spend working.

About the same modest number report some increase in the amount of time spent working specifically at home (16%), while 5% note a decrease. A smaller segment (10%) note an increase in the amount of time spent working at the office, while nearly the same number (7%) say email has cut down the time they spend at the office, according to Pew Internet Project.

Are you agree with these opinions?... Had email increased the amount of work in your case?

Oct 18, 2008

60% of users use e-mail on a typical day in 2008

In 2002-2008 the use of email on a typical day rose from 52% to 60%, for a growth rate of just 15%.

These new figures propel search further out of the pack, well ahead of other popular internet activities, such as checking the news, which 39% of internet users do on a typical day, or checking the weather, which 30% do on a typical day, according to Pew Internet Project.

Sep 30, 2008

E-mail at workplace downside

A study published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that workers in general have mixed feelings about the increased use of e-mail and the Internet in the past few years.

In a survey of 2,134 adults in March and April, 96 percent used e-mail, the Internet or cell phones. Of them, 80 percent said these technologies nhave improved their ability to do their jobs, and 58 percent said these tools have given them more control over when to work.

But 46 percent also said these devices increase the demands that they work more hours, and 49 percent said that the technologies make it harder to disconnect from work when they should be off.

Half of the respondents who were employed and had e-mail said they check their work e-mail on weekends, and a full 22 percent said they checked office e-mail "often" on the weekends, up from 16 percent who said the same thing in 2002. Read more...

Sep 29, 2008

Common mistakes in email managment

Top 5 defects that impact the attitude of the recipient when reading e-mails, affecting their attention and interest, their understanding of the message, and their motivation to respond:

1. An e-mail that is not easy to understand or recognize, because the content isn't clear or the information is vague.

2. The title of the e-mail is indistinct or too generic, making it difficult to identify or to follow-up related messages.

3. The sender cannot be identified, because the name of the sender is an entity or department, or because the name of the person does not appear, only his/her e-mail address.

4. An e-mail that contains too much information on different topics is more difficult to read and to understand, and it is more complex to answer.

5. The content is too long, particularly if there are too many mails to read (and longer messages tend to be irrelevant).

Read more...

Sep 24, 2008

What Americans do online

* Use an online search engine: 89%
* Check weather reports and forecasts: 80%
* Get news online: 73%
* Visit a state or local government website: 66%
* Watch a video on a videosharing site like YouTube: 52%
* Look online for information about a job: 47%
* Send instant messages: 40%
* Read someone else’s blog: 33
* Use a social networking site like MySpace: 29%
* Make a donation to charity online: 20%
* Downloaded a podcast: 19%
* Download or share files using peer-to-peer networks such as LiveWire: 15%
* Create or work on your own blog: 12%

Source: Pew Internet Project (1553 cases).

Sep 17, 2008

US adults still use e-mail for sharing information

US adults still depend on personal email as a main source of receiving shared content: 69% still rely on email to share content and information, Forrester Research reports.

Personal emails made up 56% of shared content received; however, more than 50% of youth use instant messaging, videos from YouTube, and wikis to share content, while notes on social networks and text messages on cell phones equates respectively to 30% and 41% for how this demographic receives information.

Power Sharers are a new category defined as individuals that share content at least weekly and share with 11 or more people through at least one channel.

Adult Power Sharers represented 35% of the online population, and Youth Power sharers make up 62% of the online population, showcasing how each of these groups feed the viral cycles and influence networks.

92% of adults trust an email from someone they know, while 70% trust messages through someone they know through a social site. 64% of adults and 60% of youth still use the traditional cut and paste method to share a URL or information. (More...)

Sep 10, 2008

Qualitative shortcomings of emails at workplace

According to the study called "Quality improvement of e-mail communication in work groups and organizations by reflection", the most frequent qualitative shortcomings that recipients must face in managing the number of e-mails received were:

• Receiving multiple e-mails with the same or similar information, from different sources.

• Receiving incomplete or poorly written messages means that they will immediately receive more messages on the same subject to complete the information or to clarify it.

• In some cases it is difficult to understand to what specific activity or job the mail corresponds to.

• Receiving e-mails from unknown senders.

• Receiving e-mails where the purpose of the sender isn't clear.

• Receiving incomplete messages that require clarifications by telephone.

• Receiving messages where it is difficult to establish the importance and/or urgency.

Read more...

Aug 30, 2008

Best practices for email in the workplace

What may be appropriate when emailing family and friends may not be appropriate when emailing co-workers, clients or providers.

You may think that the appearance of an email has any impact, when in fact it can affect the efficiency of your message.

These are some best practices to ensure the look of your emails do not negatively influence their effectiveness, and to ensure you are getting the right message across:

1. Your name and your recipient name must be visible. It is the first step in order to receives attention and trust.

2. Use a subject line that gives the recipient an idea about the content. Otherwise, it may be ignored or end up in a spam folder. The subject line is a key to differentiate your email.

3. Start your email with a greeting. A proper greeting sets the tone for your message. Messages lacking a greeting may come off as rude. A simple greeting such as Dear, Good afternoon, or Hi is appropriate.

4. Include the recipient name in the greeting. Is the key to get his attention on the message.

5. Include the most important information at the beginning of the message to get your recipients attention. And keep your emails to the point.

6. Avoid using slang terms. Slang may be appropriate for emails outside of the workplace. Your recipient may not understand slang terms. They could be even offensive.

7. Follow good manners. If you are requesting something from your recipient, include "please" and "thank you".

8. Use proper grammar and spelling. Bad grammar and spelling may create the impression that you, the sender, are careless, sloppy, and do not pay attention to details.

9. Avoid typing in all uppercase letters. Typing in all UPPERCASE is the equivalent of yelling. Instead, stick with the basic rule of basic sentence casing.

10. End your email with a closing. Just including your name may come off as being abrupt. Try including a simple closing such as "Regards", "Sincerely", or "Thank you".

Aug 24, 2008

How many Internet users buy from spam emails?

29% of Internet users buy from spam emails. The most commonly purchased items include sexual enhancement pills, software, adult material and luxury items such as watches, jewellery and clothing, according to Marshal.

Botnets are networks comprised of thousands of infected personal computers, controlled remotely by criminals. They have enabled spammers to push down their costs through economies of scale and eliminated the need for spammers to host their own spam servers as they simply take control of other people’s computers instead.

Recent FBI prosecutions of bot-herders and investigations of message-boards used by spammers, suggests the going rate for spammers to send a mln spam messages is as little as $5-10.

Read more...

Aug 15, 2008

Amount of e-mail spam from January to June 2008

74% of all e-mail in Q2 2008 was spam. Turkey became the country with most zombie computers (11% of the global total), followed by Brazil (8.4%) and Russia (7.4%). The USA, which in the Q1 2008 accounted for 5% of all zombies, is now in ninth place with just 4.3% of the total.

Google Adwords has been at the center of one of the most notable attacks over the last quarter, PandaLabs says. This Google service had been used previously to launch phishing attacks and the trend continues. This type of attack uses social engineering to trick users into revealing confidential details (bank account numbers, passwords, etc.).

Aug 5, 2008

Using company and professionals's e-mail

Using email at the workplace has its own special concerns for the user.

When you send an email message on behalf of an organization, or when you receive any email at an account controlled by your company, you should be aware of some of the realities of using email in the workplace.

For example, you must know the rules for using email on your organization. Everyone that uses email should have some kind of "e-policies" that covers how that resource can be used.

Ideally, that organization's email use policy is written down and everyone in the organization is made aware of the policy.

If there is no explicit policy, then review policies concerning the use of the organization's resources and use your judgment as to what is proper conduct.

Before you send out or forward any email message, ask yourself whether the contents of that message will come back to haunt you.

For instance, matters that are usually discussed in whispers at the office are best kept out of an email. Rumors, gossip, and other issues not directly related to the organization's business should be kept out of an email.

Before you send out any email, ask yourself the following question "If this email were accidentally sent to everyone in the organization, would I be in some kind of trouble?"

Jul 20, 2008

Top 10 online time wasters workplace productivity

InternetSafety.com, an Internet safety solutions company, announced it has compiled the "Top 10 Online Time Wasters" that currently diminish employee productivity at the workplace.

"Surfing the web for personal reasons while at work continues to compromise the effectiveness of American workers", said Shane Kenny, President and COO of InternetSafety.com. "Billions of dollars in lost productivity are the result, which is why courts are upholding employers’ rights to terminate employees for excessive web browsing. It’s important for everyone-companies and workers alike-to understand the drain that results from casual Web use."

See their list top 10 online time wasters.

Jul 11, 2008

Neurological effect of information overload

They are numerous studies to suggest that information overload makes us dumber: Persons exposed to excessive amounts of information are less productive, prone to make bad decisions, and risk suffering serious stress-related diseases.

University of London researcher Glenn Wilson showed in a 2005 study that people taking an IQ test while being interrupted by emails and phone calls performed an average of 10 points lower than the baseline group without those interruptions.

A frightening footnote to this study is that another test group had been tested after smoking marijuana, and they only performed an average of 4 points lower than the baseline group – from which one might reasonably conclude that persistent interruptions have a two-and-a-half times more detrimental effect on the brain than smoking marijuana.

Some studies have shown that sufferers of information overload:

* Suffer distraction, inner frenzy, and impatience.

* Have difficulty staying organized, setting priorities, and managing time.

* Become highly selective and ignore a large amount of information or give up and don’t go beyond the first results in many cases.

* Need more time to reach a decision.

* Procastinate.

* Make mistakes.

* Have difficulties in identifying the relationship between the details and the overall perspective.

* Waste time.

Read more...

Jul 2, 2008

Lost in e-mail at workplace: Facing a self-made beast

Cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.

Some of the biggest technology firms are banding together to fight information overload.

Recently they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers cope with the digital deluge: Information Overload Research Group.

Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.

Many people readily recognize that they face continual interruption, but the emerging data on the scale of the problem may come as a surprise.

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times, and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits.

The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

Companies are also realizing that there is money to be made in helping people reduce their digital gluttony...

There is a vernacular forming around information overload. Silicon Valley denizens speak of “e-mail bankruptcy,” or getting so far behind in responding to e-mail messages that it becomes necessary to delete them all and start over.

Another relatively new term is “e-mail apnea,” which refers to the way that people, when struck by the volume of new messages in their in-boxes, unconsciously hold their breath.

But the problem, researchers say, is not just volume but also etiquette. Bad actors hit “reply all” on a message instead of responding to an individual, or forward jokes to big groups.

Some say the problem has a psychological dimension in that e-mail messages provide an insidious feedback loop.

See more on The New York Times.

Jun 24, 2008

The workplace and the e-mail trail

Ever wonder whether your boss can see what you write in your work e-mails? Companies large and small are monitoring employee e-mail, looking for everything from proprietary data leaks to cyberslacking.

E-mail and other electronic communications have dramatically changed the contemporary legal landscape. By some estimates, more than 90 percent of the cost of a lawsuit today can come from sorting through e-mails and other electronic documents to determine which ones are relevant to the case.

Ken Withers, director of judicial education at a legal think tank called The Sedona Conference, says that 20 years ago, a case that involved 300,000 pieces of paper was considered huge.

"That's considered a drop in the bucket today," Withers says. "The equivalent of 30 million or 300 million pieces of paper, if these were printed out, would not be unusual." More...

Jun 20, 2008

E-mail is at risk of killing its own usefulness

Daily e-mail volume is now at 210 billion a day worldwide and increasing, according to The Radicati Group, a market research firm.

The burden of managing all that e-mail has prompted a backlash. Many admit the distraction makes it near impossible to get work done, or even socialize normally.

Companies are coming up with both behavioral and technical answers to the e-mail overload issue. Some major companies, like Intel, discourage the use of the "reply all" feature, which generates lots of extra mail. Other companies try to enforce "e-mail-free Fridays." More...

Jun 8, 2008

What is the future of e-mail?

An old digital format still has plenty of life left. Compared with today's virtual worlds, e-mail is solidly Web 1.0 —an almost archaic communication channel. Yet e-mail works, and marketers and advertisers keep putting it to new uses.

Moreover, consumers —whose opinions are the ones that matter— genuinely like e-mail. Nearly three-quarters of adult e-mail users in North America said they used it every day, according to an April survey conducted by Ipsos for Habeas.

Two-thirds of adult respondents said they preferred e-mail for communicating with businesses. Just as many —and this is the important part— said they expected to still prefer e-mail five years from now.

That is not to say that consumers are ready for random, untargeted e-mail. Opt-in is still key. Consumers are even willing to help marketers custom-tailor their messages.

More than 88% of respondents said they would like more choices in e-mail content and frequency, including options on advertisements and special offers.

So if e-mail is set to remain a consumer favorite for the next several years, that must mean e-mail ad spending will grow during that time, right? Yes and no.

eMarketer predicts that e-mail ad spending in the US will hit $492 million this year, then increase by 55% to $765 million by 2012.

And while e-mail accounts for only about 2% of all online ad spending, eMarketer predicts that percentage will actually drop to only 1.5% of online ad spending in 2012, despite the growth in dollars spent. The amount spent on other formats will dwarf what is spent on e-mail, thanks to its low cost.

E-mail is cheap marketing. The pricing scales well, too: The cost of sending a million e-mails is little more than the cost of sending a thousand. However, this can also cause problems.

"E-mail is so inexpensive that it lulls many marketers into underestimating its influence on entire campaigns and a company's brand," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

May 27, 2008

Workers live in a continuous partial attention stage

Nowadays, proffesionals workers live in a state of continuous partial attention. The motivation is we don't want to miss anything because being connected makes us feel important.

It's my BlackBerry or my cell phone. How many phone calls did I get? Who did call me? Who is looking for me? What did I miss?

A lot of people would be lost without the telephones, handheld messaging devices and computer instant messages, said Putzier.
In some cases, people would feel bad if they weren't constantly interrupted.

For some people, interruptions aren't interruptions to their job. Interruptions are their job. Workers tend to be unable to resist the temptation of calls or messages.

Why don't they just shut off your e-mail? Why don't they shut off your phone or close your door? The answer is because you can never tell where a more important message will arrive.

Basex calculated the cost of interruptions in lost working hours to U.S. business is $588 billion a year.
No doubt: It's a lot of time and productivity wasted.

A sort of double-edged situation?

People like the convenience and possibilities that this technology affords them when they want to use it, but they don't like the intrusions that it creates for them when other people want to express the same rights.

The constantly connected trend is sowing the seeds of its own negative effects. Increasingly we fill more that we are overstimulated, overwhelmed and unfulfilled by information technologies.

May 26, 2008

Teens engage in electronic communication

87% of all teens engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites, according to Pew Internet Project.

Although participation in these activities is widespread, 60% of teens who send these communications do not consider them to be “writing.” 38% of teens think of these communications as writing, and an additional 2% don’t know whether they consider them to be writing or not.

Apr 30, 2008

Internet addiction problem in Asia

After a series of 10 cardiopulmonary-related deaths in Internet cafés and a game-related murde, South Korea considers Internet addiction one of its most serious public health issues.

Using data from 2006, the South Korean government estimates that approximately 210,000 South Korean children (ages 6–19) are afflicted and require treatment. About 80% of those needing treatment may need psychotropic medications, and perhaps 20% to 24% require hospitalization.

Since the average South Korean high school student spends about 23 hours each week gaming, another 1.2 million are believed to be at risk for addiction and to require basic counseling.

In particular, therapists worry about the increasing number of individuals dropping out from school or work to spend time on computers.

As of June 2007, South Korea has trained 1,043 counselors in the treatment of Internet addiction and enlisted over 190 hospitals and treatment centers. Preventive measures are now being introduced into schools.

China is also greatly concerned about the disorder. The Director of Addiction Medicine at Beijing Military Region Central Hospital reported 10 million Chinese adolescent Internet users meet Internet addiction diagnostic criteria.

As a result, in 2007 China began restricting computer game use; current laws now discourage more than 3 hours of daily game use.

In the United States, accurate estimates of the prevalence of the disorder are lacking. Unlike in Asia, where Internet cafés are frequently used, in the United States games and virtual sex are accessed from the home.

Attempts to measure the phenomenon are clouded by shame, denial, and minimization.

To face this growing situation, society have to discuss more about new habits related to new technologies use.

Read more->

Apr 16, 2008

Time to recognize Web addiction as illness

Compulsive emailing and text messaging could soon become classified an official brain illness.

An editorial in the past month's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction (including "excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations and email/text messaging") is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry's official guidebook of mental disorders.

Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online, according to Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect "basic drives," like eating or sleeping.

Block says about 86 per cent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed.

He argues the phenomenon warrants being included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry's official dictionary of mental illnesses. The next edition, DSM-V, is due out in 2012. A draft is expected to be available for public comment next year.

But some say the research into Internet addiction is in its infancy and wonder how doctors decide when computer use crosses the line from the normal, to pathological.

British psychiatrists, reporting last year in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, say a "significant minority" - some estimate between five and 10 per cent of online users - are addicted to the Internet, and that while early research suggests most are highly educated, highly introverted males, more recent studies suggest the bulk of the problem is occurring among middle-aged women on home computers.

Some use computers like they would drugs or alcohol as a way to escape reality, the researchers say. Addicts may be addicted to everything from the sheer act of typing, to chat rooms, online shopping or three-dimensional, multiplayer games users have described as "heroinware."

According to addiction therapist John Macdonald, of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, computer use becomes problematic when the behaviour starts affecting people's lives.

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Mar 13, 2008

56% of Internet users send e-mail every day

According to a survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project, in February-March 2007 56% of respondents reported sending email every day.

50% of the respondents stated they first went online for “personal” reasons; 31% said work was the cause; 19% said school was the cause.

Mar 6, 2008

36% of e-mails to the bank go unanswered

US banking industry holds in excess of $7.17 trillion in loans, including the billions of dollars in mortgage, credit card, auto loans and commercial loans. 36% of customer emails went unanswered by the banks.

96% of those audited did not offer live chat as a communication channel. 94% of banks did not offer a true dynamic, flexible knowledge base - the majority of banks offered little more than a list of static FAQs, Talisma reports.

Why some service companies don't offers better service trough their websites?

Feb 29, 2008

What do marketers think about online best ROI?

30% of managers plan to use e-mail marketing and 32% - search marketing, according to Sapient.

38% said that search is the channel providing the greatest ROI (Return Of Investment) to managers’ organizations.

28% of marketers thing that search will increase spending the most in the next 6 to 12 months.

These figures show the SEO (Serach Engine Optimization) importance in your website.

Feb 16, 2008

66% of online doctors forwarded content to colleagues

63% of connected online physicians participated in various pharma-sponsored marketing programs monthly including online detailing, versus 53% of unconnected online physicians, according to JupiterResearch.

66% of connected online physicians forwarded useful content to colleagues, while 58% recommended specific Web sites to patients.

As you can see, email is a powerfull viral marketing tool, only if your web content is useful.

Feb 4, 2008

90% of e-mails delivered to large companies in November 2007 were spam

Nearly 9 out of 10 email messages delivered to large enterprises in November 2007 were spam, according to Proofpoint. While overall spam levels dropped slightly (from 89% in October to 88% in November), large companies were still receiving an extremely high volume of spam, with an upsurge in attachment-based spam of almost every kind.

Image-based spam made up nearly 10% of all unsolicited emails delivered to enterprises in November 2007, up 24% from the previous month. About 5% of all spam came in the form of Microsoft Word (.doc) attachments, a 65% increase over from October 2007.

Jan 26, 2008

E-mail CTR reaches 3.9% on Wednesdays

MarketingVox quotes eROI report, saying that the best day for e-mail is Wednesday. The average open rate on Wednesdays was 25.4% with an average click-through rate of 3.9%. The second-best day to e-mail is Monday, with an average open rate of 24.7% and a 3.1% click-through. Saturday commanded the highest CTR of 5%, but the lowest open rate with 18.7%.

Jan 18, 2008

60% of business correspondence has grammar or spelling errors

60% of all business correspondence still gets sent containing one or more grammar or spelling errors, according to WhiteSmoke. 32% of writers are failing to use all the words needed for a grammatically correct sentence. 28% of mistakes relate to punctuation, that is, knowing when to use a period, comma or question mark. Agreement between sentence elements comes up next in 8% of the data.

Jan 10, 2008

Suggestions against "phishing"

Don’t answer messages that read something like: “Our servers have been updated... Our security systems have been temporarily suspended and will be up again on... We are forced to ask for your cooperation to quickly restore the data in the new platforms... Connect to...” These are sophisticated technological mechanisms to get fraudulently e-mail addresses and other data, an illegal practice known as “phishing”.

Don’t answer even if you know the sender. If you are registered in a web page that must update its data, the most legitimate procedure is for the page to request it when you visit it, and not through an e-mail.

In the case of corporate e-mails, it is better for the company to establish specific security procedures that are totally different from “phishing”.

These suggestions are taken from my book Email at the workplace.

Jan 5, 2008

$3.2 bln lost to phishing in 2007

Phishing attacks in the United States soared in 2007 as $3.2 bln was lost to these attacks, according to Gartner. 3.6 mln adults lost money in phishing attacks in the 12 months ending in August 2007, as compared with the 2.3 mln who did so the year before. Of consumers who received phishing e-mails in 2007, 3.3% say they lost money because of the attack, compared with 2.3% who lost money in 2006, and 2.9% who did so in 2005. The average dollar loss per incident declined to $886 from $1,244 lost on average in 2006 (with a median loss of $200 in 2007), but because there were more victims, $3.2 bln was lost to phishing in 2007, according to surveyed consumers. Some 1.6 mln adults recovered about 64% of their losses in 2007, up from the 54% that 1.5 mln adults recovered in 2006.