computer & business

So, 2009 it’s approaching to its end. One more year has just passed right in front of our eyes and just like presents, food, turkeys and debts; top lists of: music, gadgets, movies, you-name-it are being posted and published anywhere, and by the first time I’ve found one list that in my opinion has a real wide perspective of what happened during and along this year, and its the Popular Sciencie’s ‘Best of What’s New’ list in its 2009 edition.

They arrange the winners in categories and in each of them is a winner. Personally I was attracted by the Security and Computing Cetagories, X-Flex Blast Protection System and the WolframAlpha are the winers respectively. You may wonder what is the thing that makes this two inventions so awesome, well basically WolframAlpha offers answers intead of links, just like everyone (including me) was thinking when it came to life. Even though i think WolframAlpha still have problems with making the users understand what its main purpose is.

And, about the X-Flex Blas Protection System, well I’m not saying anything (with my frightful English) else, you just watch this video.

Memo.

Hi, how is it going?

It’s Memo here :)

Welcome to the blog and I really hope that you can find useful information, fun and coherent topics to read about here.

Just like my dude Octavio, English is not my first language, therefore I hope you can help me to correct my mistakes and also to leave your comments.

So, once again, welcome and cheers.

Source: Harvard Business IdeaCast 159

—-

A lot of emails get into our inbox, work- or personal-, every day.  This huge amount of information can affect different aspects of our lives: productivity, creativity and in some cases it can even slow down the process of making a decision.

Investigations have found that 1/3 of the emails that a person gets, are actually not necessary.  There is also evidence that shows that every sent email, generates two emails in response.

All this messages are the causes of email bankruptcy and online silence.  Email bankruptcy refers to the decision made by an email user to close his or her account because of all the unnecessary data that he or she gets every day.  Online silence is the situation in which, after some messages, the sender of an email does not know what happened to his or her original petition.

With all those emails going and coming, it is easy to feel overwhelmed so, what can we do to avoid all of these negative effects?

In the professional field, some organizations try to establish some kind of norms in order to make use of the email service.  Some companies have a policy declaring that after 10pm, the email service is going to be deactivated so everyone can take a rest of all this continuos flow of information.

Out of the office, we can use tech tools, such as social networks, to filter information and do the job for us.  Although this can be of great help, there are two disadvantages: you need to share personal information (you may not feel comfortable doing this) and you will get only the information that adjusts to the “profile” that you are sharing (and this means that you may be missing some interesting stuff that does not adjust to your “profile”).

—-

It would not be fair to say that I am a responsible user of information, because I know that I have sent out some emails that were not really necessary.  Nevertheless, I always try to make my point:

• I do choose a descriptive subject or title for my message
• I also try to stick to KISS (Keep It Short and Simple)
• I state my petition in a clear way
• I try to avoid the “FYI” statement because of its effect (a simple “FYI” does not tell you something about the content of the message so you may think “I will check it out later” and then you just forget about it)

At work, I get an average of 20 - 30 emails per day and this is already hard to manage (I don’t want to think about all the work that would represent manage an inbox that gets 50, 100 or 200 emails per day, and I know there are persons who get this amount of messages).  What I do in order to manage this amount of info and, what is even more important, keep a track on the important items is to separate messages using folders and also bookmarking the items that requires special attention (so I will not forget them).

Are you a responsible user of information?

—

oc

Welcome to this blog!

The main purpose of this blog is to talk about computers, technology and business.

I am not an expert in these topics but I have some experience and, more importantly, you can always give an opinion about something.  It is a good exercise to think about something and expose your ideas and thoughts about it.

A friend of mine, Memo, will also post his thoughts about this kind of topics in this blog, so I am not the only one who will share ideas here.

My posts will be in english, but my first language is spanish, so please forgive my mistakes.

—

oc