What makes you happy in this internet age?

Interesting article here Social Networking loses Friends – about how reliance on social networking sites and internet is leading to a worrying decline in social skills such as meeting people and getting to know them face to face.

So many friends on Facebook but people still feel lonely.

As a teacher I have seen students whose academic career has really suffered because of some form of internet addiction. Internet addiction is probably worst for video gaming which can be all absorbing for (mostly boys). In addition social network sites like Facebook, Bebo and Twitter can become very addictive causing users to spend many hours a day.

Internet Addiction Problems

• Internet addiction can lead to various problems such as:
• Lost time / missed study
• Fear of making real social contact
• Irregular sleeping patterns – disrupted health
• Lack of exercise leading to obesity.
• Inability to focus on other things.

When challenged, many internet addicts admit that they spend too long on computer and wish they could have a more balanced life. Heavy internet use doesn’t give any lasting feeling of satifaction and users can often develop low self-esteem and become reclusive from normal social activities.

Cures for Internet Addiction

Take away the computer. Lack a heroin addict who can no longer take heroin, this measure will encounter resistance. But, living without a computer is best way for users to realise life can exist without a computer screen. SPending time without computer will force people to find alternatives.

Physical Exercise

Dump your kid on a mountain top and let them walk home. The adventure will do them good.

Encourage Self-Esteem

Losing yourself in a computer world can be a way to avoid real life issues. Boosting kids self-esteem may encourage them to go back into the real world. Don’t tackle the problem by saying they are a real loser for spending all the time on the internet.

Support any Other Activity.

Maybe your child used to be very good at some kind of sport or music. Keep talking about this as a way to motivate them to go back to old habits and old activities.

People often associate email marketing with spamming customers. But, a good email marketing campaing can be an excellent way of engaging existing and new customers, leading to new sales. It is vital to play close attention to even small details as minor changes to your email marketing strategy can make a big difference to click through rates.

Email Marketing Strategies

Choose Good Title.

The title of the email is vital. It has to be interesting and catch the imagination of the receiver. It should giver the receiver a good reason to click on the email and actually read it. A bad title will lead to many emails just being deleted. In the title avoid the hardsell, suggest a benefit to the customer.

• Example of Good Email Title – “Free Sample of Our Latest Product Development”
• How to Improve your Cycle Training e.t.c.

Make sure the title doesn’t trigger off spam filters. Avoid words like sex and “Massive Sale”

The First sentence is vital.

The trick is to engage people early. Give a reason for people to keep reading. Offer them a benefit to reading this email, looking at this product. Otherwise it will not be mentioned

Personalise the Email.

It is vital to be able to address people by their names. Dear Tom, is much better than Yo!. IF you address people by their first name, it creates a feeling that there is already a relationship. It also reassures the recipient that it is not spam. A good email proivder like Aweber enables you to do this.

Choose a Good Email Provider

Don’t be tight and try to get by on a free email sender. A good email sender like Aweber will save alot of time and hassle.

Relevance.

The key to a good email marketing campaign is building up a targetted email list and sending out on topic emails. It is not numbers that is important but subscribers who will have an interest in your products.

Be Focused

In emails don’t try to do too much. Keep it to one or two products at most. Make it clear what you have to offer and how they can participate

Easy click through.

The key is to get people to click through and visit a targetted landing page. Instinctively people are most used to clicking on underlined dark blue links, so click on these.

Repeat Emails

If you have a really good product / service. It may be appropriate to send two or three emails. It is often on the third email that people will actually click through

Provide useful Information not just Selling tactics.

If you have an email list that sends out great tips with no selling involved, they will be more receptive to your emails that recommend a product. Get a good balance between selling and informing.

Best Time For Sending Emails.

The Best time for sending emails is thought to be Tuesday and Wednesday. In middle or early part of the day. Internet useage really drops off by Friday and at the weekend. The difference in visitors is often 50% lower at the weekend. Whenever you send emails, make sure you keep to a regular sending pattern.

We write countless emails everyday. Because they are quick to write we often fire them off without enough thought about the appropriate way to write them.

These are some Basic Email Etiquette Rules.

1. Be Brief and to the Point. Don’t give your life history or fill your email with off topic complaints. Keep it simple and keep it to the point.
2. Acknowledge Receipt of Important Emails. If someone answers a question or gives you a useful piece of information, it is polite to acknowledge receipt with a simple, thank-you. If you’re not sure whether you need to acknowledge receipt. Try to position yourself as the sender, if you sent that email, would you appreciate acknowldegement. Also, read the email and pick up whether the sender expects a reply or not.
3. Be Polite. Sarcasm, criticism and off beat humour can easily be misunderstood.
4. If it is very important find a better communication channel.
5. Don’t Be Angry, aggressive or obnoxious in sending emails. It can really create problems.
6. Don’t write emails for the sake of it. No one likes to have endless emails coming through their inbox. Try to limit the number you send. Keep emails for important things.
7. Have a clear sense of purpose. A good email should be no more than two paragraphs. It should focus on one issue at a time. If you need to talk about unrelated emails, send more than one email.
8. Make sure the title is descriptive and matches the content of the email. If it is important, add to title, but, use this rarely.
9. Write in good, reasonable English. People don’t expect perfection, but unless your writing to your fourteen year old niece, abbreviations like OMG, ROFL, WTF, and shortened words like tx thx are not good.
10. Don’t Be obliged to respond to emails. If you receive a heated email that leaves you disturbed, sometimes it is better not to respond at all. Perhaps letting the issue cool off before sending a completely new message or speak to the person.
11. Be careful about forwarding on someone else’s message. If your co-workers writes to you complaining about something. Don’t forward this onto your boss without their permission. Also, be careful off ccing their message to more than workers.
12. Be very careful of replying to all. There is a big difference between replying to all and replying to an individual.
13. Don’t write anything, you wouldn’t be happy to say to the person if they were standing right in front of you.
14. Emails should be treated like a postcard in terms of security. Always imagine that your email could end up being read by someone you didn’t intend to read it.
15. Don’t Spam. Sorry if this is obvious, but, you can do your company reputation alot of damage by sending unsolicited emails.

Related

• Art of writing good emails
• Rules for sending emails
• Tips for writing effective emails

If you find yourself writing many emails, see if you can create some email templates. These are excellent ways to make writing emails more efficient and streamlined. Why keep repeating your writing efforts when you could create templates which are easy to modify?

Email Templates can help:

• Answering similar questions.
• Save Time
• Create a professional, carefully thought out answer, which you can use again and again with minor personal touches.

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How about this for a bad sentence:
It is a comment from the Association of Chief Police officers in response to the Government’s Green Paper

“The promise of reform which the Green paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customized to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.”

It has been nominated for a gobbledegook award.

When it comes to writing sentences, I suggest you don’t follow the bad example of so called literary giants and philosophers. I remember reading ‘On Liberty’ By John Stuart Mill and despairing at the sheer length and complexity of his sentences.

Some simple tips for writing sentences

• Noun and Verb. ‘Jesus Ran’ Is the shortest sentence in the Bible and is perfectly adequate.
• It is better to start off with simple sentences and write longer, more involved sentences as you develop as a writer. This is a better strategy than starting with long sentences.
• Don’t try to include too much into one sentence. Two separate ideas should be separated.
• For variety, occassional consider using a semi colon; this allows you to expand on the initial idea, but, it should be related. Often semi colons could be turned into two sentences, but, their use can just give an additional fluidity to writing.
• Be wary of complicated sub clauses. which lead the reader off on a tangent.
• If you can express an idea with less words, then that is good.

The New Uxbridge English Dictionary is now available for sale.

Following on from the very popular Uxbridge English dictionary, the new version offers a range of new words and an interesting take on their meaning.

Cursory; A place where children learn to swear

Mumps; Heaps of unwanted mothers

Halitosis; Bad breath brought on by a comet

Baccanalian; To bet on a martian

Chiropractise; To get ready for a trip to Egypt

Senile; What to do whilst in Egypt

Canape; Scottish inability to settle bills

Canneloni; Scottish refusal of your request for an Overdraft

Acne; A dyslexics walking stick

Warming; A Geordies chinese vase

Binmen; Post-op Transexuals

Groin; The ‘GO’ light in Birmingham

Thesauras; A disorder following consumption of curry

Amish; Similar to an Arm

Caesarian Section; Part of a salad

Navigate; Scandal involving road menders

at Amazon.co.uk

The Real Meaning of words – examples from original book

“You know..” There are many words which we use unnecessarily.

We use them subconsciously without realising:

• How frequently we use them
• How they add nothing to the conversation
• And how they can irritate people.
• How they can sound condescending

A common example is adding ‘you know’ to the start of sentences. ‘You know, people speak too much.’

Examples of Unnecessary Words

• Actually,
• I mean
• Well,

All these words can also convey a kind of condescension.

I am making a big effort to remove these unnecessary words. Speak less, say more. Silence is good.

Jeremy Paxman (University Challenge, BBC2): What is another name for “cherrypickers” and “cheesemongers”?

Contestant: Homosexuals.

Paxman: No. They’re regiments in the British Army who will be very upset with you.

Phil Wood (BBC Radio Manchester): What’s 11 squared?

Contestant: I don’t know.

Phil Wood: I’ll give you a clue. It’s two ones with a two in the middle.

Contestant: Is it five?

Answer: 121

Richard Madeley (Richard and Judy): On which street did Sherlock Holmes live?

Contestant: Er…

Richard: He makes bread.

Contestant: Er…

Richard: He makes cakes.

Contestant: Kipling Street?

Answer: Baker Street

Question (BRMB Radio): What religion was Guy Fawkes?

Contestant: Jewish.

Host: That’s close enough.

Answer: Roman Catholic

Steve Le Fevre (The Biggest Game in Town, ITV): What was signed to bring World War I to an end in 1918?

Contestant: Magna Carta?

Answer: Treaty of Versailles

Phil Wood (BBC GMR): What ‘K’ could be described as the Islamic Bible?

Contestant: Er…

Phil: It’s got two sylla-bles… Kor…

Contestant: Blimey?

Phil:Ha ha ha, no. The past participle of run…

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Contestant: Silence

Phil:Okay, try it another way. Today I run, yesterday I…

Contestant: Walked?

Answers: Koran&ran

Melanie Sykes (The Vault): What name is given to the condition where the sufferer can fall asleep at any time?

Contestant: Nostalgia.

Answer: Narcolepsy

Steve Wright (Radio 2): Johnny Weissmuller died on this day. Which jungles-winging character clad in a loin cloth did he play?

Contestant: Jesus.

Answer: Tarzan

Chris Searle (BBC Radio Bristol): In which European country is Mount Etna?

Contestant: Japan.

Chris: I did say European country… I can let you try again.

Contestant: Er… Mexico?

Answer: Italy

Paul Wappat (BBC Radio Newcastle): How long did the Six Day War between Egypt and Israel last?

Contestant: (long pause) 14 days.

Answer: Six days

Daryl Denham (Virgin Radio): In which country would you spend shekels?

Contestant: Holland?

Daryl: Try the next letter of the alphabet.

Contestant: Iceland? Ireland?

Daryl: It’s a bad line. Did you say Israel?

Contestant: No.

Answer: Israel

JAMIE THEAKSTON: Where is Cambridge University?

CONTESTANT: Geography isn’t my strong point

JAMIE THEAKSTON: There’s a clue in the title

CONTESTANT: Leicester?

LINCS FM DJ: Which is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world?

CONTESTANT Barcelona

LINCS FM DJ: I was really after the name of a country

CONTESTANT; I’m sorry, I don’t know the name of any countries in Spain

GWR FM DJ: What happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963?

CONTESTANT I don’t know, I wasn’t watching it then

ROCK FM PRESENTER: Name a film starring Bob Hoskins that is also the name of a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci

CONTESTANT Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

BEACON RADIO DJ: What is the nationality of the Pope?

CONTESTANT I think I know that one. Is it Jewish?

BAMBER GASCOIGNE What was Gandhi’s first name?

CONTESTANT Goosey?

JAMES O’BRIEN, LBC: How many kings of England have been called Henry?

CONTESTANT Er, well, I know there was a Henry the Eighth.. er, er, three?

LOTTERY HOST: What is the world’s largest continent?

CONTESTANT The Pacific?