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Ten habits of highly effective E-mailers

As a young idealistic web designer (cut to black and white visage of the author with golden locks fluttering in the spotlighted breeze) I dreamed about working on the very cutting edge of web design, helping push the boundaries of the emerging online world. Little did I realise that over 50% of my time, ten years in the future, would be spent reading emails. With the other half sending emails. I’m sure I’m not alone in becoming a slave to and I’m amazed that while there are all sorts of terrible and expensive courses on anyway here are some suggestions for happy email existence (Some of which are MS Outlook focussed but similar features are available in other software).

 

(Oh and before anyone comments.... yes of course I have at some point in the past failed to follow each of the below. But wasn’t it St. Francis of Assisi who said something about to err is human? To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure, but here are the tips...).

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The 12 Months of Christmas

Grannies, tabloid newspapers and the chronically under-employed seem to constantly gripe that Christmas gets earlier and earlier every year. Come the end of Summer the shops start filling up with manically grinning plastic snowmen, the-best-of-some-band that’s about to split and also inexplicably those golden waving toy cats that you see in Chinese restaurants. Myself, I don't have a problem with that. Who doesn't like mince pies, Christmas parties and at least one solid day without email? Anyway what these people fail to work out is that if the festive season starts earlier and earlier every year that eventually it will all get back to normal. I think....

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Asking about ASK.com

Anyone watching TV recently won’t have failed to notice the new adverts for search engine ASK.com. With shaky, blurry camerawork and looking like cross between an avant garde Marcel Marceau and the really scary bits from “The Ring” it seems a somewhat predictable volte-face for a company that until recently had a cartoon butler called “Jeeves” in their logo. But this is the Internet and Stalinistic style airbrushing of the past can easily be achieved nowadays with the simple copying of web server files.

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Speeding up Outlook 2007

We recently installed Office 2007 on our workstations across all our offices. Like most M$ upgrades we were expecting a few teething troubles but even I was a bit taken aback by some of the drawbacks of the new suite.

 

Yes, yes, yes it all looks very different but making everything cuddly and “Mac-like” does not a productive environment make. Besides I still have my XP computers setup in “classic” Windows 2000 mode because I think user interface designed peaked in the mid nineties (along with music and car design).

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Protecting merchants from online credit card fraud

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