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Putting a price on friendship
Jun 20, 2010 | Relationships
I'll give you $2 for the guy you talked to at an office party last week. The friend you play hockey with every weekend, on the other hand, is worth $75. Your college roommate? She'll net you a cool $1,000. If the idea of assigning a price tag to each of your friends...
How to find support online during life’s big passages (for Oprah.com)
Jun 18, 2010 | Relationships, Oprah.com, Top Relationship Posts
Friends are there to share your celebrations, support you through difficult transitions, and mourn your losses. Social media enable that sharing and support in new ways, across distances that would formerly exclude people who are far away but dear to your heart. Find out how to get the support you need online.
A practice to make your online friendships more meaningful
Jun 18, 2010 | Relationships
I wonder if technology and social media has compressed our relationships into a process that we can barely recognize? That question is at the heart of Rhett Smith's thoughtful blog post, Technology: Connected, Yet Lonelier Than Ever. He argues that by making it so...
Techsperiment days 3 & 4: going out without Twitter
Jun 18, 2010 | Family
Our effort at keeping devices off during family time -- roughly three hours a night -- continues. The biggest challenge of day 4 came when I realized it was 5 pm, and I'd yet to log day 3. Would I grant myself an exception, and blog for a few minutes so that day 3...
Popplet brings mind mapping to the iPad
Jun 17, 2010 | Productivity
"It's only for content consumers, not content creators." That charge was leveled at the iPad even before it hit the stores. Now that it's in all our grubby little hands, there seems to be some truth to the argument. My husband has gotten great mileage out of his iPad...
5 questions that will change how your grown (or little) kid thinks about technology
Jun 16, 2010 | Family, Top Family Posts, Zone
If you want to affect your kids’ relationship to technology, you need to do it through conversation, and not by handing down edicts or advice. Here are five questions you can ask your kids to start a meaningful conversation about technology, whatever their age.
How to use your RSS reader to enhance community
Jun 16, 2010 | Zone, SIM, Community, How to build community online
How to use your RSS reader so that it strengthens your connection to community, and helps build the kind of society you want to live in.
Your social media friends are your real friends
Jun 15, 2010 | Relationships
Diana Adams is one of a growing number of social media junkies who have experimented with taking some time off from the web. She describes "hitting a wall" with her social media use and online relationships, and taking 8 days off from the net so that she could put...
Techsperiment day 1: the difficulty of unplugging with kids
Jun 15, 2010 | Family, Tech advice
24 hours into our vow to unplug -- for just 3 hours a day! -- and I am the weakest link. We've sworn to give up computers, iPhones and iPads between 6-9 every night ("family time") but it's day one and I'm already struggling. And that's after our daughter did a good...
How to unplug as a parent: a techsperiment
Jun 14, 2010 | Family