Outgrowing user names
Sure, cell phone number portability is great, but I know a lot of people who've also struggled with finding a truly permanent e-mail address. You know, one that's not dependent on their current employer or ISP, that some long-lost friend can still use to contact them years from now.
It hadn't occurred to me that this might be a very "adult" desire, something you seek only after you reach a certain stage in life. But an interesting piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suggests that changing e-mail addresses has now become part of the constant process of reinventing ourselves that we go through as we grow up:
Teenagers often strive for an e-mail persona with punch, something that's simple but sassy, creative but not cloying.
But what seems like a cool e-mail address when you're 16 can make you shrink with embarrassment a few years later. And those witty screen names are gaining a wider audience than ever before, as more students apply to colleges online and use e-mail to correspond with everyone from college admissions counselors to prospective employers.
Signs of intelligent life?
It's taken as a truism that leveraging the collective and collaborative power of Internet users is a great thing. It is, after all, the whole idea behind the wiki.
Allowing the general public to peruse photos from Mars for signs of life, however, does not bear that out. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on some of the amusing "discoveries" people have made in A NASA snow job, or just a lot of flakes?
Cybersense, Horsey-style
Check out David Horsey's Sunday cartoon on The Hazards of Online Voting.
