Copywriter, technical writer, translator (FR>EN, ES>EN, IT>EN), journalist

TechnoZen

What’s Google Wave?

In 2009, Google created this thing called Wave. Google tried to explain what Wave is for, but their explanations and blog fall a little short for me. That’s why I’m glad authors Gina Trapani and Adam Pash chose to demystify Wave by writing and publishing The Complete

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Threading email

top level of an email thread

Anybody who uses Google Mail knows what threads are – “chains” of emails related by topic and usually ordered by date. They differ from the ordinary “inbox view” where emails appear ordered by date of arrival, “From” address or other criteria. Why are threads useful? Threads (or

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What iPads Did To My Family

Plenty of buzz surrounds Apple’s new iPad, even though many people ask “but what is it for?” If you don’t know what it’s for, check out this amusing blog post, “What iPads Did To My Family.” Less techie readers might want to skip the “Some Context” part

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Insight on complexity

So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things. This blog, Signal vs. Noise, caters to a techier audience than the one I’m aiming for with this blog. That said, the above quote applies to so many things beside software that

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What is the cloud?

The Arctic Obiter, a publication of the Law Society of the Northwest Territories, reprinted an article of mine about law practice management using software as a service (SaaS, aka cloud computing). While I wrote this two-page article for lawyers, the business concepts surrounding SaaS that I discussed

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Organizing email folders (mailboxes)

Top-level email folders

Like file folders on your computer (Windows Explorer or the Finder on the Mac), you can put folders in other folders in your Mail program. Why would you do this? Consider these possibilities: You deal with 20 clients whose email you keep in their own client folders.

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Taming your inbox – filing email

Why does your email so often bother you? There’s spam, there are unwanted jokes and chain email, there’s the hassle of checking it all, and probably a dozen other reasons. Maybe the main reason email gets on your nerves is this: you keep every email you get

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Taming your inbox – creating basic email rules (filters)

Now you have new folders into which you can put your email. But why not have your computer file your email for you? All popular email software – Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, Mac Mail and others – let you tell them how to handle incoming email using rules

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The end of my subscription to BusinessWeek

Again last week, BusinessWeek sent me a subscription renewal notice. And again, the notice went into the shredder. I won’t toss my issues after the notice. BusinessWeek holds to pretty high editorial standards. (I read widely enough to know this.) Having said that, the business press still

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Free tools for freelancers

There’s a culture of free on the Internet, and it’s spawned plenty of really useful stuff for freelance writers. Here’s a quick list of no-charge tools that can supplement the software you pay for – and in many cases, replace it entirely. While many of these products

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