Q: What is the email etiquette in this situation?
I emailed my colleague who happens to have about 4 different email addresses. I used the one she was using a few months ago……but I have a feeling she doesn’t check that one anymore. I sent the email 2 days ago but I still haven’t gotten a response. Should I email her using her “primary” email account even though she asked a few months ago to use the other one? How long should I wait without sounding annoying/desperate in case she did receive the original email and is just thinking about what to write back.

A: Until everyone in the world realizes that multiple email accounts makes as much sense as multiple physical addresses, you have to work around everyone’s annoying tendency to open a new address at the drop of a hat. I would recommend sending an email to all of her addresses in a single email, that way she can see that you have no idea which one to send it to. If they complain that you sent it to an old address, ignore it and just pay attention to which one they prefer.

Email is so new that most people have no idea what to do in terms of etiquette. Best thing to do is just cover all of your bases.

Why? Microsoft wants you to. IE6 has many issues with security and display. Comedy Central wants you to. Once you upgrade to FireFox (Windows or Mac), or IE7 (Windows), you’ll get faster download times, smoother animations and better looking pages.

All of the new browsers have useful new features that IE6 doesn’t, such as tabbed browsing (multiple pages displayed conveniently in a single window).

Click on any of the links above to upgrade to the latest version of one of the browsers mentioned for FREE!

Social networking is about to start replacing television stations. Not all of them, of course, but many stations will lose regular viewers to people who are spending more and more time fiddling about on social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, etc. After all, most of the programming is becoming harder to watch, the commercials are forever getting longer and longer, and the majority of television just doesn’t entertain certain people anymore.

As these sites get bigger and as their interfaces get better, their popularity increases dramatically. Just look at what Second Life is doing right now. When the site is user-friendly enough that you don’t have to be a geek to use and enjoy it, the masses will start flocking to the site. And when the masses flock to a site, that means they’re spending less time watching television.

Even if this isn’t the case, which is entirely possible, it’s undeniable that social networks are quickly becoming the preferred form of entertainment for millions of people.

To answer my cousin’s question, there are an almost infinite number of ways to earn money in Second Life. Some people create and sell things, some people perform duties and earn it, and some people just simply ask for it or give it away. From a designer/artist/creative perspective, it’s really cool because you can create just about anything and people will buy it in L$. Then you take your money and do whatever you want with it, including selling them for US$.

For example, a couple days ago I created several virtual framed prints out of pictures that I either made in Photoshop or snapped with my camera. I put them on display and yesterday a guy came through and bought two of them. He can now take them and put them in his virtual home, or a virtual art museum, or take them out and just look at them, or just throw it on the virtual ground…whatever he wants. They’re his prints, so I don’t care what he does with them. For me, the money I made paid for my rent and then some.

You could, for example, create a theater for people to watch a film you created. Charge an entrance fee (just like a real theater), and the user can sit in your theater and watch the movie. Charge L$20 for each person who wants to watch it, and they can watch it at their leisure, and you don’t have to do anything but set it up. The money is earned whether or not you’re there to receive it, and it starts to build up. And eventually, you just sell your L$ for US$. (It’s also important to note that they can’t download your films because they’re streaming through Second Life, not streaming to their hard drive like watching it in a web browser.)

Well, I have a small but annoying complaint with Internet users right now. Did you know that almost every website, you don’t have to type www. before the domain name? Seriously, it’s a complete waste of time. If it doesn’t work, it just means that the person who set the site up didn’t do it correctly. But I digress.

When you see someone typing www. before the domain, it’s like they’re calling their next door neighbor and entering the area code (and the parentheses) before they dial the actual number that matters. If I was telling my neighbor my phone number, I used to tell them 4879. But typing www. is like me telling them my phone number is, “Open parentheses, eight zero six, close parentheses, eight nine four, four eight seven nine.” They would just roll their eyes while I told them the area code and the prefix.

All I’ve gotta say is, don’t be that person online…