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Notes If wireless became the standard, as it threatens to evolve into, all that is wired may seem
too weird to accommodate.
Etiquette for the e-men

An anecdote: “A young married woman sent her husband an e-mail, recounting the
pleasures of their preceding night in some detail. It was an innocent and romantic gesture.
Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t the only one to read it.

The e-mail went public somehow — the ‘how’ doesn’t matter — and before she knew it,
15 million around the world knew the full story of her romp with her husband, all because
she broke the cardinal rule of e-correspondence: e-mails are public documents.”
This is from Peter Post’s Essential Manners for Men, a book from HarperCollins
(www.harpercollins.com) . This is no IT book, one might say, but, like it or not, tech stuff
has gone into lingo and communication.
Speed kills is a traffic warning that could apply to electronic missives. The speed we love
about e-mail is also an insidious danger, Post warns. “The problem with any immediate
response is that it invariably will be much more about your anger than about solving the
problem at hand. When penning any sort of message, take your time.” Remember, you
are what you write, warts and all. “Typos, misspellings, malaproprisms, grammatical
errors — they all stand out. These mistakes reflect on you, so make a point of carefully
reviewing everything you write, even informal notes.” How about quick despatches to
the boss? Won’t he look at the ideas you present rather than frown at the undotted i’s and
uncrossed t’s? Wishful thinking, according to the author. “If you send your boss an e-mail
containing misspelled words, your boss is likely to focus on and remember those
misspellings — and the content you worked so hard on will be compromised as a result.”
Elsewhere in the book, Post lays down e-mail rules that include the suggestion to use the
‘draft’ or ‘send later’ facility so that you can proofread and reread your cyber-
communication before sending. Use fonts that have serifs, is another advice. “They help
the reader to scan the line. Also, avoid using all capitals in your e-mails. They indicate
yelling and are also difficult to read.”

Another child of technology, the cell-phone can do with a good measure of lessons in
etiquette. “Commuters are starting to rebel against cell-phone users who insist on talking
on a railway car or bus,” states the book. “If someone’s cell-phone use on a public
conveyance is disturbing you, make your complaint to management. Never try to approach
the offender directly.”
Good read for women too, if only to see what they can expect of well-mannered men.
Route to recovery
Whether there is life after death is not so important a question for computer users. They
would be keener to know if there is recovery after a crash. Data loss and disk crash are
accidents to live with if you dabble with bytes and files, PCs and other comps. To reduce
the trauma, here is Do-it-yourself Data Recovery in easy steps by Saurabh Gupta, and
brought out by Ranee Publications (raneepublications@vsnl.com). It is “intended to help
you recognise, react appropriately to and resolve a data emergency,” and has inputs on
data storage technology, types of file systems, data loss situations, and loss prevention
techniques.
Two don’ts that the book begins with are: “Do not write anything onto the drive containing
the important data that you just deleted accidentally. Do not try to write data that you
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