Email

Email is bad for you, says a US study that showed just five days away from that familiar ding in your inbox will result in a more varied heartrate. Now you might think that is an indication of stress, but according to this study, it’s actually a sign that you’re in a relaxed state of mind. 

Frankly, this is terrible news. And it’s misinformed, oversimplified and plain untrue. In fact, I completely reject this entire study on the basis of my own relationship with email - a relationship that is best described as a love affair.

Email is my favourite form of communication, second only to the text message. And the reason is simple: They both provide an excellent alternative to actually talking to people on the phone. Oh how I loathe the telephone.

Continue reading "An overflowing inbox is the least of your worries…" »

In 1945, an intelligence officer wrote a letter to his three-year-old son on Hitler’s personal stationery.

“The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe,” he wrote in elegant cursive. “Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins.”

Last year, the letter became a permanent addition to the CIA’s private museum in Langley.

Continue reading "This year we should all go a little bit postal" »

I kissed my boss yesterday. It felt weird. I regretted it immediately. But I’d already clicked “Send”.

There was no way back. At least it was only one kiss. I’ve received work emails from people of all ages, gender, and sexual persuasion with up to three kisses. Not to mention one xoxoxo.

At first I thought it was confined to women under the age of 25 working in public relations. Then I realised it was seeping into all workplace correspondence.

Continue reading "My confession: I kissed the boss! ;-) xoxoxo" »

Yesterday, a private email from British woman Carolyn Bourne to her prospective daughter-in-law went viral. The father of the bride-to-be has since replied, mouthing off big time at Carolyn Bourne. The aggrieved bride-to-be has not yet made a statement or sent a reply email. But if she did, we imagine it might go a little like this…

My Dear Lady Snootybuttocks III. Oh wait, you’re actually a commoner like me, innit ya stuck up bitch? Let me start again. “Dear Carolyn”. Actually, “Dear Mum” Yes, that will do nicely. Because make no mistake, I am marrying that hot stepson of yours.

Here’s the thing, Mum. You think I’m trashy, like one of those “brash” celebrities whose lives you breathlessly consume through all those trashy mags in the conservatory. That’s right, I’ve seen the pile of OK magazines hidden underneath the Horse & Hounds.

So perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me why celebrities, whose lives are full of glitz and glamour, can get married in castles, but the rest of us can’t dare to dream? It wouldn’t be because you dreamed and failed, would it? Or is it simply because your knickers are tighter than a Scotsman’s fist?

Continue reading "A considered retort to the mother-in-law from hell" »

As you can probably guess it was me who hacked into the email accounts of ten senior federal ministers.

I hacked into Julia Gillard’s because I wanted to know what it was like to run a country, I hacked into Kevin Rudd’s because I wanted to know what it was like to run the world, and I hacked into Stephen Smith’s because…well, I just really wanted to get some sleep.

But what I found was deeply shocking and in yet another extraordinary exclusive I can now reveal their explosive contents for the first time…

Continue reading "EXCLUSIVE! I hacked the Government’s emails" »

Email turns forty this year which makes it at least as old as Black Sabbath, Tina Fey, Andre Agassi, the floppy disk and the Post-it-Note but its reign as our mainstay of office communication could be over if Mark Zuckerberg gets his way.

At a press conference in San Francisco last night, the fresh faced Facebook CEO announced the launch of the company’s new messaging platform that while specifically described as “not email” evidently seeks to eradicate the need for it anyway.

Continue reading "What would you do to improve email?" »

Spam. When not moonlighting as a revolting pork-based processed meat encased in a can, it is by definition unsolicited, electronic junk mail.

Or in layman’s terms on an average day at work just a real pain in the backside. Usually containing an unlikely combination of Russian mail order brides, destitute African students or a muddled-up jumble of pornographic type meshed with random rhetorical questions and bad spelling.  All irrevocably destined for the Outlook trashcan.

Except of course when it’s really funny, like this one sent to The Punch this morning:

Continue reading "How stupid do spammers think people are?" »

For someone who now works almost solely on the internet I have very little love for the web.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate its applications and implications, I just don’t care about, for lack of a better word, the internet as a culture. My feelings towards the internet are similar to those I have toward my gas stovetop: as long as I have it I don’t really care about what gas stovetop I have and I don’t think about what the gas stove does when I’m not cooking.

Yet when I received the ten year anniversary letter from Hotmail I was filled with an unexpected kind of nostalgia for the free email service.

Continue reading "Oh Hotmail, you are truly the fairest of them all" »

Please, don’t regard me warmly. I’m not that nice. And why are you offering your best wishes? It’s not my birthday.  I enjoy ‘cheers’, but it makes me feel like a drink, even in the morning (and that can’t be good).

How you sign off your emails shows more about your personality than you realise.

‘Warm regarders’ tend to be touchy-feely types who used to watch Oprah (but are now ‘turning’ for Ellen), do scrapbooking and believe in reiki.

If aged over 40, she’s an eccentric middle-aged lady, draped in purple, muttering quietly to herself.

Continue reading "Email sign-offs: Cheers, best, farewell, get a mullet up ya" »