True to chain letter form, Lindsey emailed me the following “friend survey” today. With exception to nos. 23 and 41, her responses made me proud to call her my wife—especially with Valentine’s around the corner. They also make me look chivalrous, which is always a good thing.

Warning: some of her answers are a little sappy. But this is my blog—not yours. You can get lost if you have a problem with that! (more…)

OREM, Utah — After four convenient but usually bad-habit forming years, I canceled my Blackberry email/data plan with T-Mobile last week. To my surprise, I was amazed that my email would actually wait for me on the computer, as opposed to following me around wherever I went. Now, if I’m away from my desk, my email will tell me how many unread messages I have upon my return, so as not to overlook anything. (Some fancy email programs even support audible alerts, such as “You’ve got mail!” Really neat stuff.)

In a flurry of discovery, and in search of more answers, I asked a representative of ARPANET, the inventor of email, for comment. “The great thing about email is that it’s free, provided you don’t give money to your cell phone provider for the same service,” the spokesman said. “And unlike the Post Office, you don’t have to put a hold on your mail if you’re away, say on nights and weekends. If it fits, it ships—which is all the time.”

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In preparing for this story, I asked a friend who uses the internet much less than I do some questions. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I read the following addendum to his answers:

Things I hate about online people:

1. Everyone thinks they are an expert or critic.
2. People become increasingly aggressive when shielded by the blanket of anonymity online.
3. Online folks are much more interesting within the confines of their computer than they are in real life.

In January, I made the switch from an unlimited data plan to email only. This means I no longer have access to T-Mobile internet.

I had the unlimited data plan for two years (service is a little slow, but still convenient), but I’m happy to report I’m doing fine, saving a little money, and likely to father fewer Blackberry orphans as a result of my downgrade.

What’s more, my trusty Curve supports Wi-Fi, so if I really need access to the internet on my phone while not at home, it’s not that difficult to find a public connection.

For as technologically inclined as I am, it’s ironic how technology averse I can be, in an effort to maintain some level of privacy and social sanity. Do you ever feel the same?

It’s amusing when ignorant people start using the internet. (via Digg)

Gmail launched in March 2004. But after more than four years, the site still uses “beta” on its logo.

For the uninitiated, “beta” is a fancy way of saying, “this software or website is a work in progress.” But all software and websites are works in progress, so the term is primarily used today to sound cool — nothing more.

So let’s drop that “beta,” Google. Besides, you’re not as cool as you once were (but I still love ya).

See also:

• Avoiding my email for a day to get “actual” work done
• Web page tabs I always have open
• Working in a webtop environment

File Dropper: Great for sending large files across the internets in two easy steps. Get that cumbersome FTP upload process out of my face!

After four years, I canceled my Vonage line on Friday. I only used 20 minutes per month on average over the last year, so it made sense in my case to ditch the service, even though it works fine. Instead, I will rely solely on Blackberry and Skype for voice chat, as I have done for personal use since 2003.

I have so far managed to cut back my phone use by only answering expected or known calls. I check voice mail as soon as I’m notified, and I have a policy of returning both calls and emails within two working hours.

I tell my professional contacts that email is “preferred,” and my cell phone is “secondary.” To further encourage asynchronous communication, I reward emailers with faster response times. It works cleverly well, and I’m one step closer to my goal of ditching web access for an entire year. Whatever it takes.

I did something yesterday that I don’t recall doing before. With exception to a single message, I avoided my email from 8am-6pm while still working. No gmail, no Blackberry, no nothing. I had to finish up a magazine article by this morning and needed the extra focus and added attention to get it done. I have a personal goal of replying to every action email within 2 business hours, so this was hard for me to do. But having put out existing fires and working under a tight deadline, it worked. And you know what, I actually enjoyed it. Ordinarily, I treat my email like life support, so it was nice to break away and breathe on my own terms as opposed to constantly checking my mail at all hours of the day, including nights. I should do this again.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check my email…

I loves me some FireFox tabed browsing. I frequently use tabs as ad-hoc bookmarks while holding control + clicking to open a new page for later review. To that end, here are the tabs I have open religiously, usually in this order:

1. Gmail. The epicenter of my web efforts. Work. Play. Personal. Planning. Notes. Scheduling. You name it, I’m doing it here. It’s funny ’cause I encourage everyone to email me first because it has a higher priority for me than other communication methods such as phone or voicemail, and it documents everything to boot! It’s funny, ’cause while other people use “just email me” as a brush off, I’m genuinely sincere from a productivity and response perspective. Asynchronous communication for the win! (Side note: I don’t and haven’t used Microsoft Office for over a year now minus a handful of rare, quick occasions. I use Gmail for all that now.)
2. Bloglines. Information overload and feed reading goes here. I live in this thing too, probably too much and periodically close the tab for productivity’s sake.
3. Thesaurus. This goes hand-in-hand with its dictionary counterpart and is a must have for aspiring writers like “mua” and lovers of the English language. It’s like a writers inventory: the only thing he sells is words.
4. Blogger, Blogsmith (non-public). The two most widely used blog publishing platforms that I use daily. Griffio customizes WordPress installations, however, as a nifty publishing/CMS software for our clients as well. So I’m in those a lot too. Mmm… Blogging and self-publishing for the win!
5. Wikipedia. This bad boy has stolen about 50% of my research traffic that formally went to Google. It’s quicker, faster, leverages the masses for balanced/non-bias information without all the ads. Even better relevancy than Google now. I could live on this site all day long if I had to.
6. Google SERPS. Yup, I still use the mother of all search despite my critiques of it. I use the engine for info discovery and Google images to accompany my blogging.

You will then see the rest of the tabs filled with upwards of 10-15 web pages I intend to check out later in the short-term. If I don’t get around to them, they get bookmarked and tagged in my Delicious account. Other notable tabs I consistently have open include websites I’m working on, Site Meter for traffic tracking, Delicious, Digg, and Flickr to name a few. I’m an internet junkie and would royally be out of a job if I were at this stage in my career 15 years ago when the web was non-existent. What tabs do you rock on a consistent basis?