Life Style

Like most people the only mail I enjoy getting are personal letters, invitations and birthday cards. Like most people I also hate getting bills.

They’re inefficient, a waste of paper, postage and labour. I also hate lining up to pay them, and don’t hang out for “personal interaction” with the lady at the Post Office.

I also never remember to find a post box and when I have something to send by mail usually find it in the bottom of my hand bag ten days after it was due.

Continue reading "Bring on the death of paper billing and paying in person" »

Today on The Punch we are running a special package on social media with a focus on Twitter.

At the moment news outlets are red hot with stories about Twitter and other social media platforms.

From reflective pieces about why Twitter is slowly sucking away our ability to communicate with each other in real life, news stories about its role in the Iranian post-election protests to authors looking to use the platform as a gimmick to publish their bad novel about “a San Francisco family forging its place in history”.

Continue reading "Twitter special: why The Punch says it’s okay to Tweet" »

For something that’s so easy to use, it’s suprisingly hard to explain exactly what makes Twitter so great.

But after sticking by a personal pledge to avoid Facebook for two years and having suffered the reeling effects of this decision on my diminished social life (why can’t people just email photos and invites anymore?), Twitter caught my attention straight away.

Furiously fast paced and jam packed with information, the 140 character tweets can bring out the best in succinct news reporting, people’s creativity or just a damn fine sense of humour.

Continue reading "Twitter: a guide for the uninitiated" »

If our linguistically challenged forefathers had the option to Tweet their grunts and moans, I’m almost certainly positive they would.

OK, maybe not. But I’m sure cavemen and women used to lay awake at night, stone and chisel in hand, thinking about the self-absorbed things they could etch for people in far away villages they would probably never meet.

Hi, my name is (@newsbee) Lanai – and I’m a Twitterholic.

Continue reading "My name is Lanai and I’m a Twitterholic" »

When the Opposition Leader has time to Twitter about his pet dog’s blog, you’ve got to worry that this newfound obsession with social networking is being taken too far.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a self confessed Twitter/Facebook junkie, hell, friends have to confiscate my iPhone to have a decent conversation with me over lunch these days.

And I’m the first to defend Kevin Rudd, or @KevinRuddPM as he is known in Twitter-land, for resorting to new-media to talk to voters.

Continue reading "It’s okay Malcolm, we don’t need to know about the dog" »