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Internet Addicts Start "Unplugging" Once a Week

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Apr 22nd 2008 at 9:03AM

Is It Time for a Tech Sabbatical?
It is well established that we are a culture driven by connectivity. And its not just Americans that check E-mail on the john. or text while driving -- it turns out hat even the Italians and British are choosing TV over sex. But some out there are choosing fight back against their (our) addiction.

Sharon Sarmiento realized she had a problem when she started blogging in her dreams and hearing phantom instant messages while far from her computer. Similarly, Ariel Meadows Stallings compares her time in front of the new boob-tube to being blackout drunk: "I would sit down to check my email and it was almost like I would wake up six hours later and find I was watching videos of puppies on YouTube," Meadows told a Reuters reporter. Both women have taken to "unplugging" at least one night a week and have blogged about their battles with Internet addiction.

Unplugging once a week, one weekend a month, or even for two weeks out of the year is probably good not just for your personal relationships, but also for your mental health. It's difficult at first, and many even suffer from withdrawal symptoms such as tremors or extreme nervousness and irritation, but we can assure you that once you get past the initial pain, it's amazing how pleasurable not having to hear the ping of your instant messenger every 30 seconds can be .[Source: Reuters]
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Corporate Email Coming to iPhone - Look Out BlackBerry!

by Will Safer, posted Mar 6th 2008 at 2:55PM

The Apple iPhone, soon to be corporate email capable.
One of the biggest knocks against the iPhone has been its inability to handle enterprise email, which is how companies manage the email that is delivered to employees who, for example, use Blackberry's as their smartphones. That's changing now, as Apple today announced it will support the "push" e-mail systems necessary for corporate email to show up on their popular phone and music-playing devices.

People have, of course, been using iPhones for email reading and writing since they were launched last year -- but it's been of the individual Web account variety, typified by Google's Gmail service.

With this new advancement, expect to see more and more people using iPhones for business purposes. That's good news if you're an iPhone user and have been eager to ditch your work-supplied BlackBerry. This isn't great news if you're BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion, which until now has dominated the workplace handheld market.

The release of the iPhone 2.0 software in June will include support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide secure, over-the-air push email, contacts and calendars. The software beta will be available to users by the end of June, so companies can start integrating the application into their systems and get things started with their employees.

The software rollout doesn't mean everyone will immediately be able to use their iPhones for work. Developers will still have to set the systems up for each business and an annual fee will apply to each user who wants the service on his or her iPhone. Still, expect to see many BlackBerry's disappear from workers' belt clips this summer, as Apple continues to be the hot alternative for mobile connectivity.

To read the entire transcript from the Apple event, click here.

From Engadget.

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Jilted Lover E-Mails Nude Photos, Faces Jail Time

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 28th 2008 at 12:15PM

Jilted Lover E-Mails Nude Photos
Note to jilted lovers everywhere: those 'personal' pictures your lady or guy friend sent you are not good fodder for revenge. A man in the UK is facing jail time after forwarding nude images of his Internet lover to her entire address book.

Stephen Hailes, 48, met Karen Parker, 36, in a chat room this summer and the two began an Internet love affair. During their online tryst, Parker, a married mother of two, sent Hailes a collection of nude images. At some point he broke into her E-mail account and discovered she was flirting with other men, sending them the same photos and even meeting off line (Who would have guessed?), which they had yet to do. Apparently Hailes could deal with being the other man, but couldn't handle the prospect of other other-men.

Parker learned of Hailes' actions when friends began contacting her to ask why she had sent them naked photos. In his defense, Hailes claims he only meant to send the images to Parker's husband so he would "realise what sort of woman his wife was." Hailes says he must have clicked the wrong button, though we're unaware of a button in our E-mail clients that automatically sends to our entire address book.

So let this be a lesson: Don't start forwarding naked images of your ex-girlfriend to people if you don't like prison time. And even more importantly, don't send people you don't know nude photos of yourself.

From The Sydney Morning Herald and Fark

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Valentine's Day e-Card Could Be Virus In Waiting

by Will Safer, posted Feb 13th 2008 at 11:01AM

Storm Worm is coming this Valentine's Day.

Be wary when opening e-mail greeting cards this Valentine's Day if you don't know the sender. As Switched.com has been warning all its readers for a few weeks now, the message could turn out to be a computer virus, in this case known as a "botnet," which can take over your computer to send more viruses out, link to other computers doing the same, or even steal your personal information.

The FBI suggests not opening e-mail if you don't know the sender.

This particular e-mail baddy is known as the Storm Worm virus, and saw activity around several holidays last year. It takes advantage of people who let down their guard because an e-mail greeting card is often entertaining and seen as non-threatening.

Typically, the e-card arrives in a user's in-box, the e-mail is opened, and the user is directed to click on a link within the text to retrieve the full card. That's when the virus download occurs. The Storm Worm will be downloaded to that computer and begin its bad work, which ultimately is to deny service to a large network.

Storm Worm (so named because the subject line of the e-mail messages originally contained the line "Many Dead As Storm Batters Europe") was the most pervasive Internet attack last year.

Here are Switched.com's quick three tips to avoid Storm Worm and other viruses, trojans and malwares from being downloaded to your computer:
  1. Don't click on a link in an e-mail message from someone you don't know.
  2. Turn on your e-mail reader's spam prevention.
  3. If an advertisement you find on a Web page looks suspicious, type in the company Web address yourself instead of clicking directly on the ad (Sometimes Web ads are another way viruses and trojans get distributed.)
Are you looking for a safe way to send a Valentine's Day greeting card -- or a card for any other occasion? Try Hallmark, Bluemountain, or, of course, our parent, AOL, which has a whole site dedicated to just that.

From News.com.au.


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Misdirected E-mail Reveals Billion-Dollar Drug Lawsuit

by Will Safer, posted Feb 8th 2008 at 4:23PM

E-mail sent to the wrong address

Here's another tale of e-mail messages gone awry that ought to teach you to be careful the next time you hit the "send" button.

A lawyer for pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly mistakenly sent an important e-mail to a New York Times reporter whose name is similar to that of another lawyer working with her on a billion dollar settlement between the drug company and the U.S. government.

Eli Lilly is looking to settle accusations that it hadn't properly marketed the drug Zyprexa, which was developed to treat schizophrenia. If the settlement goes through -- the Times article notes -- the fine would be the "largest ever paid by a drug company for breaking the federal laws that govern how drug makers can promote their medicines." The company had wanted to keep the negotiations quiet.

The New York Times reporter, Alex Berenson, started making calls to the company for comments after getting the e-mail that had been intended for lawyer Brad Berenson, who works at white shoe firm Sidley Austin. The New York Times ended up putting the story on the front page of the newspaper. Eli Lilly executives thought at first the government had leaked the story, but soon found out it was from the Philadelphia-based firm Pepper Hamilton, which is part of its outside legal team.

There's more than one way to make a big e-mail mistake like this. Sometimes a person puts in the wrong address. Sometimes a person sends the wrong message to everyone. And sometimes you've got the right email address but you're forwarding all the wrong information!

The lesson here? Pay attention to the who, what and where of your email. It's a great convenience and good tool for business -- but dangerous in the hands of the sloppy.

Word is Eli Lilly will continue to retain the two lawyers' law firms -- but there is no word on what role the sloppy lawyer will play in the case going forward.

From NetworkWorld.com and Portfolio.com.

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E-Mail, Text Messages, IMs Cost The US $650 Billion in 2006

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 27th 2007 at 12:50PM

Multitasking
For a society so obsessed with productivity, we're pretty bad at actually being productive. Sure, services such as Google and Wikipedia have been described as being time hogs, but apparently the real killer is multitasking.

2008 is being dubbed the "year of information overload" by Basex Inc., a research firm. The human brain is not hardwired for paying attention to several things at once or for handling constant interruptions. The pressure put on us by technology to respond immediately to E-mails, text messages, and IMs cost the US economy around $650 Billion in 2006, according to Basex.

The solution is to ignore those expectations of instant gratification, according to Johnathan Spira, the lead researcher at Basex. Resist the urge to immediately follow up on every E-mail, phone call or IM, and learn to walk that fine line between getting things done and pestering your co-workers when hitting that reply all button.

From AOL Money & Finance

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Teens Still Prefer Landline Phones, Says Study

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 20th 2007 at 5:18PM

Teens On Phone
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has been mighty busy as of late. Hot on the heels of its study that revealed that people like to Google themselves, but like to Google others even more is a fresh batch of stats about how teenagers communicate.

The survey of 12 to 17 year old boys and girls turned up some shocking information -- teens still prefer a good old-fashioned landline phone to other means of communication. 39 percent of teens said they talked to friends everyday via a landline phone. That's actually slightly more than the 35 percent who said they talked to friends on their cell phones everyday, but is almost twice the number who relied on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and good chunk more than those who used text messaging daily.

Not surprising is the lowly 14 percent who said they used e-mail daily. Past studies have already shown that young people are not fans of the oldest form of electronic communication.

One thing is for sure - they won't be using public pay phones for long, as AT&T plans to phase those out.

From USA Today

Gallery: Public Phones and Phone Booths of the World



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Facebook to Drop "is" From Status Updates

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 21st 2007 at 1:02PM

Facebook Status Updates to Drop 'is'
Facebook's status updates are fun and interesting, but the inclusion of the word 'is' rubs some people the wrong way. Trying to form proper English sentences with the phrase "so-and-so is" is limiting and sometimes difficult. Regardless, some have simply chosen to ignore it, leading to clunkers like "Devika is what me worry" that make us shudder...

Others have taken a more proactive approach, forming a very popular group on Facebook whose sole purpose is to convince the developers to pull the offending "is." Facebook has heard your calls and is banishing "is" from the status updates. The code is in place and application developers (like Twitter) can already choose to remove "is" from the status update, and will be removing it completely for all users in the near future. This means you'll be able to use the verb of your choice when drafting your status update.



Other updates coming down the pipe to please the Facebook faithful include e-mail opt-outs for applications. Not everyone wants to get an e-mail every time some jack ass "bites" you with the Vampire application, so banish this acceptable form of what is essentially spam from your in-box by simply unchecking a box.

All of this said, some of us might actually miss that "is" from our status updates. Constrictions in terms of word count or word choice force us to come up with innovative solutions when writing. That "is" led to some pretty amusing and clever updates, but using our own verbs will probably achieve the same outcome.

What do you think? Will you miss the "is" in Facebook status updates?

From Read/Write Web and Venture Beat


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FCC Warns of Fake Do Not Call Registry E-Mail

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 16th 2007 at 1:50PM

FCC Warns of Fake Do Not Call Registry E-Mail
You've probably seen it -- it's an e-mail going around that claims all cell phone numbers are about to be released to telemarketers. According to the e-mail, the only way to avoid getting cold calls about switching your long distance carrier on your mobile is to register your phone number with the federal government's Do Not Call Registry.

The FCC has been quick to point out, however, that this is simply not true. In fact, it is illegal for most telemarketers to call any mobile phone, so registering your cell with the Do Not Call Registry is simply unnecessary. (The law stipulates that companies can't use auto-dialers to call cell phones, pagers, or any other service where the recipient would have to pay for the call.) Since most telemarketers use auto-dialers, they are generally unable to pester you on your mobile with out facing legal consequences.

The FCC has no idea where the e-mails are originating from, or why anyone would want to send such a scam, especially since nothing bad happens -- no opportunity for financial gain, no harvesting of phone numbers -- if you do actually register your mobile number on the site. It's a pointless scam! And yet, we guess the FCC is saving all of us from the extra stress we might get from worrying about missing the mobile Do Not Call registry deadline.

From USA Today

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How to Get the Most Accurate Commuter Info

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 9th 2007 at 9:32AM


Staying on top of the latest delays and service changes related to your daily commute is almost impossible, but not being in the know can often have serious negative consequences on your schedule. Many local transportation systems send out their own alerts, but they tend to be overly general, often late, and usually only sent out under the most extreme of circumstances.

That's where Joshua Crandall got the idea for his start up, Clever Commute. Clever Commute connects commuters, primarily from the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas, in a network for exchanging messages, advice, and alerts -- primarily using their BlackBerrys.

Users can sign up for alerts for trains on New Jersey Transit, PATCH, Long Island Railroad, and Metro North railroad, as well as some commuter buses, and ferries, including the Staten Island Ferry. The service has also recently opened up to riders of the El trains in Chicago. It works like this: If there's a delay, you'll get messages from other users who are already on whatever train line you're subscribed to. Likewise, you can upload messages to be sent to other subscribers on the same route.

And it's not just for delays: If you leave, say, your iPod on the train, you can send a message to the group and hope that someone honest found it.

Currently the service operates mainly with e-mails, though you can also subscribe to a personal RSS feed of alerts. The service could really grow if it decided to open up to the non-BlackBerry crowd and embraced a text message based Twitter-like system, but we'll just have to see how the young service evolves.

From The New York Times

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Don't Just Call Your Friends, Spam Them!

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 25th 2007 at 4:23PM


Mobile, instant, always-on access to everyone you know is the new obnoxious forefront in communications technology. A new start-up calling itself Trumpia, has decided to take the obsession with constant communication to its absurd illogical extreme.

Sign up with Trumpia, then betray your own sense of decency by inputting all of your friends' contact info ... and we mean all of it. Input, e-mail, cell phone and instant messenger information. Then you can "blast" all of your friends at once, hitting them on every communication device possible short of a ham radio.

That way, no one can possibly claim that they didn't get your message -- unless they were lost for a few days in the Himalayas. In fact, the only way your (soon-to-be former) friends can stop you from "blasting" them, is to sign up for the service themselves and block you.

If you think the whole thing sounds kind of shady and caustic, you're not alone.

From TechCrunch

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Majority of Americans Can't Spot an E-Mail Scam

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 15th 2007 at 2:33PM

Majority of Americans Unaware of Online Threats

If you received an e-mail today from a deposed Nigerian prince offering you millions of dollars in exchange for just a few thousand up front, would you immediately recognize this as one of the oldest e-mail scams in the book? (So old, in fact, that it led 'Dateline' and Chris Hanson to franchise 'To Catch a Predator' into 'To Catch a Con Man.')

If you didn't catch the scam, you're not alone. A recent study of 2,482 American adults found that 58 percent of us are totally unaware of scams such as this one. What's more, a surprising 17 percent of adults admitted to falling victim to an online scam in the last year. Of those victims, 81 percent admitted it was their own fault by opening unsolicited e-mail or sending personal information to companies that they believed were legitimate.

Microsoft seems to think that the lack of actual physical visibility is part of what makes us so susceptible to online threats. A man with a gun is visible, while a guy trying to steal your credit card info via a fake e-mail from eBay is not. Microsoft does offer some good tips for slightly safer computing, like keeping your anti-virus software and firewall up to date.

Fortunately for you, Switched.com has put together this list of the top five e-mail scams to help you flag a scheme as junk mail before you and your bank account fall victim to it.

From Ars Technica

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Top 10 Most E-Mail Addicted Cities

by Switched Staff, posted Aug 6th 2007 at 11:32AM

Top 10 Most E-Mail Addicted Cities

Though a youngster today might look at you with absolute bewilderment at the mention of the word "e-mail," the medium is actually more popular than ever with Americans. AOL just completed a massive, broad-sweeping survey on the subject, which polled residents of the country's top 20 markets.

From the survey, an index rating was created based on the percentage of residents online who have more than one e-mail account, the average number of times e-mail is checked per day, the average number of times a day personal e-mail is checked at work, the percentage who check e-mail more than once a day while on vacation, the average number of hours spent per day writing or responding to e-mail, and the percentage who think they are addicted to e-mail. The higher the index rating, the more likely residents of the market are addicted to e-mail.

Here are America's top 10 e-mail addicted cities:

#1 Washington DC
This year, Washington was the most e-mail addicted city in the country. More than eight in ten Washington users (82%) have multiple e-mail accounts. Four in 10 DC residents say they keep a PDA by their pillow when sleeping to listen for late-night emails, while 58% of city residents fessed up to checking e-mail with a portable device while sitting on the toilet.

# 2 Atlanta
Atlanta ranks as the 2nd most e-mail addicted city in the survey, making a dramatic jump from 12th place last year, and overcoming larger cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

#3 New York
The number of New Yorkers who check their work e-mail over a typical weekend rose to more than 70% this year, while 24% of New Yorkers think they are addicted to e-mail -- the highest number of self-confessed addicts in any city included in the survey.

#4 San Francisco
San Francisco won the top spot in last year's e-mail addiction survey, but this year slipped to number four. Still, the number of San Francisco residents who use portable devices to check e-mail has more than doubled since last year, reaching 25%.

#5 Houston
For the third year in a row, Houston has made the top 5. Residents are checking their PDAs in some pretty interesting places too. 53% admit to checking their email in the bathroom; 41% are emailing while they drive; and 19% are emailing in church.

Rounding out the top 10:

#6 Los Angeles

#7 Seattle

#8 Orlando

#9 Denver

#10 Miami


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E-Mail: America's New Drug

by Switched Staff, posted Aug 3rd 2007 at 12:01PM


In our exclusive video investigation, Switched.com hits the streets to document just how hooked Joe Public has become on the old inbox.

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BlackBerrys and Cell Phones Turning Americans Into E-Mail Addicts

by Tom Conlon, posted Jul 26th 2007 at 9:23AM

The Great American E-Mail Addiction
This past June, AOL conducted a survey of 4,025 Internet users to study the behavior of we humans and our relationship to e-mail. The survey covered everything from how many e-mail accounts people have, to how they feel when they're busted checking personal e-mail at work, to where they check e-mail on portable devices (church, the bathroom and from behind the wheel were all answers given).

The results were surprising. Even though teens seem to be gravitating towards instant- and text-messaging as their primary form of communication, adults are e-mailing more than ever. One of the big reasons seems to be portable devices, since the survey revealed that the number of people checking their e-mail on portable devices (like BlackBerrys and iPhones) has more than doubled since 2004. The survey showed that the average e-mail user checks his or her e-mail five times a day and that 59 percent of those with said portable devices check every time a message arrives.

And that's just during the day: A whopping 43 percent of survey respondents bring their BlackBerrys or handhelds to bed with them, so they can check messages at night! Crazy. Even we don't do that here at Switched.

Meanwhile, the most e-mail addicted city in the country turns out to be Washington, D.C., followed closely by Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, and Houston. (Surprisingly, tech-centric city Seattle scores 7th in the rankings.)

In the coming days, Switched.com will bring you the full exclusive results of the survey. We'll be posting every day, so come back to this page to find out more. To kick things off, we present the following:

43% of E-Mail Users Sleep With Their Cell Phones
Step aside ham and cheese sandwich, there's a new midnight snack in town!

E-Mail Addiction: Battle of the Sexes!
Which sex do you think is more likely to refer to its inbox as 'The Chronic'?

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