All Blog Posts from Tech Talk

Did the Obama administration walk into a technological Dark Age or are the reports of a digital dearth at the White House simply over-stated drama? The truth, as always, probably lies somewhere in the middle.

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First, full disclosure: I fall smack in the middle of Gen X. You can do the math (that was never my strong suit). So while I'm not that far removed from Gen Y, as I pointed out yesterday I'm more of a "digital immigrant" (or "digital nomad") than a "digital native." There are many terms for this generation -- Gen Y, millenials, digital natives -- but the point is that someone born after 1980 likely grew up with a mouse in their hand. Using a computer came naturally, and the transition from school to the workplace didn't involve learning new ways to search for information (Dewey Decimel System vs. Web browsing) or adopting different methods of communicating (faxes vs. instant messaging). Bottomline: exactly what has this lifelong immersion in technology done to Gen Y's social skills? Admittedly, it's a broad question, but we try to answer it (at least in part) tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

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If you've never fallen into the tar pit of drunk dialing or drunk e-mailing -- let's not forget drunk eBay'ing or drunk blogging -- then you may be in a minority (not that I'd know). Often the results of such actions are simply embarrassing but there can be rather unfortunate consequences. Well, for a moment forget getting to the moon or clean-energy alternatives or the G1. Google has a new challenge it is seeking to solve with Mail Goggles. And if you think I'm kidding, just open your Gmail account, click "settings" and then "labs" and there it is.

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A busy day here as we work to finalize our story on teleportation for tomorrow night's Evening News with Katie Couric. Also, I had an interesting conversation with the founder of ScienceDebate2008.com, which is worth checking out this election cycle. It's absolutely FREEZING cold with severe wind chills here in New York City, but BlackBerry users can keep their gloves on tonight since there's apparently a "critical" outage originating at the Research In Motion (RIM) servers. My BlackBerry hasn't received a message since about 4:15 p.m. this afternoon, but I've been near my computer all day. Had I been in the field it'd certainly be tricky to keep up with events in the news. No word from RIM on when service will be restored.

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Is it high-tech parenting or old-fashioned prying? For any parent concerned about what their kids are doing in the digital domain, dozens of software programs can log every keystroke, keep track of every Web page, read every e-mail, instant message, etc. Users can even set keyword "alerts," so if a child types or reads something they deem inappropriate an e-mail is sent to the person who installed the software. Sound scary? Orwellian? Handy? If you're under 18 years old then your parents may be reading this blog right now (although I doubt many of you are).

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Do you work at an e-mail-free Friday company? There’s an article in today’s USA Today that points out the growing trend. The idea being to encourage more phone calls or face-to-face meetings. I’m just as tethered to my inbox as the next person, but it seems to me productivity would drop dramatically. I could certainly see a decrease in stress, which would be welcome, but in the news business e-mail is necessary, and dropping it from the day’s communication tools would be detrimental to business. In an office environment with more internal networking, perhaps it might work better. But wouldn’t all those requisite social niceties really slow things down? Your thoughts? And now for a quick recap...

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This week Yahoo! announced it will begin removing the “you’ve reached your limit” signs with its Web-based e-mail service. That’s right –- they’re promising to turn your e-mail account into a bottomless pit of stored photos, videos, messages, and spam.

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