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We've talked about this before but yet another study says do not put a smiley on your work emails , unless you want to be thought of as well, a jerk. According to newswise.com, people who pepper their emails with smileys, or any kind of emoticon, run the risk of being thought of as frivolous or flippy, or just not serious enough to do the job. A new study has found that a smiley is not regarded the same way as a smile, and can actually have a negative impact on the initial impression created in formal work-related emails. “While an actual smile has a positive impact on creating an initial impression, adding a smiley can harm the person who included it in their email,” explains Dr. Arik Cheshin of the University of Haifa, one of the authors of the study, the website reports. In recent years, physical work meetings in offices have been replaced by email correspondence and online textual interactions. In these types of communication, it is impossible to see facial expressions....

Have the kind of boss who thinks nothing of emailing you at 2 a.m. -- and expecting you to answer? Well, now, not so surprisingly, a new study done in France has found a link between organizational after-hours email expectations and emotional exhaustion.  Big deal, you might say.  But, big duh, it affects productivity.  Workplace technologies may be hurting the very people they're set up to help, according to newswise.com. Using data from 365 adults, researchers looked at the role of "off-hour" organizational emailing and discovered that it leads to burnout and diminished family life-work balance.  I could have told them that! Being the OCD person that I am, when I worked for a very large corporation that did a lot of this, I found myself checking my email every hour (or oftener) after getting home from work till bedtime -- and sometimes, even in the middle of the night.  Those who didn't were shamed and sometimes punished. Those who are exhausted but un...

Now this may shock you, as it did me.  When you're in love, experts say, it's better to email than to leave a voicemail. Huh? According to a new research study from Indiana University, people might be more successful in finding love if they get an email rather than a message. The research suggests that, in this digital age, an email can be more effective in expressing romantic feelings than leaving a voicemail message, newswise.com reports. Previous research and conventional wisdom suggested the opposite, that a voicemail message is a more intimate way to connect with others, but that may not be true, particularly among millennials. “The bottom line is that email is much better when you want to convey some information that you want someone to think about,” says one of the authors, Alan R. Dennis, the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems in IU’s Kelley School of Business.  Now keep in mind -- you can't take things back on email.  It's always th...

So what are we doing to reduce the hours our kids watch TV?  Not much, it turns out. A new poll  has found that a bout 25 percent of parents who have children aged two to five say their children get three or more hours of entertainment screen time a day, well beyond recommended limits, according to newswise.com. The news isn't all bad:  a little more than half of those parents do try to set some limits by location: banning media devices from places like the bedroom or at mealtime. Here's what the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) had to say about TV and kids: "T he AAP discourages any screen time for children less than two years of age. For older children, the AAP recommends no more than two hours daily. The AAP suggests keeping media devices out of children’s bedrooms, keeping family routines like mealtime screen-free, and setting screen-free days for the whole family." I've flunked about all of those.  My son, who'd much rather spend time on th...

So now I get it.  It's that electric jolt I get when my views top 75 (OK, only once, but come on, people, tell your friends about this blog!).  Facebook is our high. An op-ed in The Sunday Review put it the best:  we love the instant approval we get when we post something and our friends immediately respond.   The essay was mostly about the bad things Facebook encourages us to do, like pose in a thong, when  mommy panties make more sense, or post how much you hate your boss, or, to me, the worst, deface places like the Grand Canyon or saguaros in the desert just so you can post it online.  But as Jenna Wortham puts it, "That feedback loop of positive reinforcement is the most addictive element of social media." Whether you're a mom posting your son's championship baseball win, or your latest cedar-planked salmon, let's face it.  It feels good when friends come back with praise and accolades. “For people who get a lot of motivation out of knowi...