The Gent's Cheat Sheet » Technology

Know What Your Email Address Says About You

Trey — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:48:15 +0000

The email address you choose–and even the provider–can send strong signals. Do you know which messages you’re conveying? Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker brought up several good points in a recent post. His general premise is this:

“Like your clothing, your hair style, and your manner of speaking, your email address is part of your personal image. Certainly it’s a type of prejudice that a hiring manager might look over you because you have an “antiquated” email address or a “stupid” username, but that’s not entirely different than a hiring manager being unimpressed that you showed up to a job interview sans a neck tie. Sure it might be unimportant or silly to you and you might say “I wouldn’t want to work at a company that uptight anyhow,” but it’s worth taking into consideration because whether or not a prejudice—big or small!—is fair or reasonable, it is still out there.”

A couple of major points:

The username you select is vastly more important than the provider you use. Firstname.lastname@aol.com is preferred to and more respectable than sexkitten2010@aol.com—cutesy, offensive, or unprofessional nicknames are big mistakes.

Domains are important, especially in technology-related fields. An AOL address might be just as serviceable as any other address when it comes to sending and receiving mail but to most people in tech fields it says “Hi. I’m from 1996. What is this internet you speak of?”

I don’t have much to add since Jason does a pretty good job of covering the topic. The internet continues to blur the line between the personal and professional spheres, but we still have a certain level of control over the image we project in each. The choice of an email address is as a good a place to start as any.

Manage Your Online Reputation

Trey — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:35:38 +0000

There once was a time when the best approach for managing your online reputation was to make sure that people couldn’t find you at all. These days, that’s all but impossible.

So like it or not, your personal information is probably out there and available for anyone to find. The problem now isn’t making things go away (if something’s out there, someone with enough time and dedication can probably uncover it). The objective today should be to ensure that the things that DO appear are exactly what you want someone to find.

Granted, one part of this might actually include asking people to take down content painting you in an unfavorable light. The most critical aspect isn’t data elimination, however: it’s proactively publishing content consistent with the image you want to project. The Official Google Blog explains:

For example, if someone posts a negative review of your business on a restaurant review or consumer complaint site, that site might not be willing to remove the review. If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either. Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business. If you can get stuff that you want people to see to outperform the stuff you don’t want them to see, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of harm that that negative or embarrassing content can do to your reputation.

Lifehacker has previously discussed the importance of using your own web domain as an online business card, and this is one of the most important aspects of proactive content posting. Even if there isn’t anything embarrassing out there, not having any negatives isn’t the same thing as having a good reputation—it’s just having no reputation at all. A domain name is a great first step towards building the online reputation you want, and it’s easier than you might think.

Bottom line: You can’t control what others say about you (at times it’s hard enough to even control what YOU say about you!), and if you’re doing anything that matters not everyone is going to have a favorable opinion. So rather than worry about what’s out there, project yourself in a positive manner and let others say what they might. The easiest way to deflect attention from a flawed painting isn’t to scrape paint off a canvas—it’s to create more paintings.

At the end of the day, you—and only you—are responsible for your personal brand. Make sure it’s a good one.

The Official Google Blog

Lifehacker

Are Dictionaries Obsolete?

Trey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:05:47 +0000

That’s the question posed by an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Do we still need dictionaries in the age of Google?

Dictionaries are, after all, giant databases of words compiled by lexicographers who investigate word usages and meanings.

These days, however, Google is our database of meaning. Want to know how to spell assiduous? Type it incorrectly and Google will reply, in its kind-hearted way: “Did you mean: assiduous”? Why yes, Google, I did.

Google then spits out a bunch of links to Web definitions for assiduous. Without clicking on any of them, the two-sentence summaries below each link give me enough to get a sense of the word: “hard working,” and “diligent.”

And here I was thinking assiduous meant something else…guess I need to find new adjectives!

My first impression is that yes, Google seems destined to kill off dictionaries (like everything else). Why pull out a book when a two-second search is all you need? It’s not like you’re trying to read a novel on your computer screen. Of course, I’d be tempted to say that dictionaries have the benefit of being portable, but I finally got my iPhone 3GS this summer—so there goes that argument. Speaking of which, anyone know of any good dictionary apps?

Tell me if I’m off base here, but I just can’t see any way they can survive.

So long, dictionary. At least the paper kind.

-tg