Cyberpsyche

Email is so easy, but more often than not it is not the best way to communicate. As researchers writing the the IEEE Computer point out email volumes are set to grow. Email becomes less useful as traffic increases and inboxes are polluted: important emails get lost in mountains of dross. To limit pollution they recommend:

• No more reply to all: They found this to be the largest source of pollution. Disabling the reply to all button causes thought of who to send the reply to.
  
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I've been reading about work life balance and flexible working. The Sloan Work and Family Research Network has a lot of statistics about working hours and the feasibility having flexible working hours. The research suggests that if employers provide flexible working patterns that:

• At least 50% of employees report high levels of life satisfaction.
• Studies suggest that employees with flexible working patterns suffer less from mental health problems
  
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British Telecom recently bought Ribbit a silicon valley telecommunications company. Ribbit produced a platform to integrate telephony with web technology. Interestingly part of their stack is Skype, SIP-based VOIP, open chat protocols alongside the traditional telephone network. This technology fits nicely with what BT has been doing with webservices: web21c their webservice api to the telephone network. This technology means that the telephone network can be accessed from the browser.

What would a teacher teach if he really knew he was about to die?

The alice project

Are internet freedoms important?

BBC Radio 4 recently had a programme Word of Mouth on the words we use (BBC Radio 4 FM, 11:00pm Monday 28th July). It's interesting to find out that a lot of words in English have their roots in the Romani language. The programme found that Romani was a dying language in the UK until recent immigration from Europe which has brought about a revival.

One thing I found interesting were the origin of some words that are in common use that are of Romani. I've looked around the web and here are some of the words that are originally Romani:

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I recently came across The School of Everything socially networking students and teachers. Want to learn a new skill, you can find someone in your area that can teach you. It's never been a better time to learn. Their vision sounds like a manifesto for a new education, bottom-up education.