Reading 2: Google, Tug-of-war and Branding

In the "tug-of-war" article the writers make particular note of Edward E. Whitacre's comments about the internet companies "bull___." I tend to agree with him.

While his tact may have been off he makes a good point. For years the internet companies have been benefitting from the phone line labor and maintenance, putting the burden of speed on them and usurping their bandwidth.

Immediately when you talk about charging the internet companies there is a public uproar. Charging them means charging us. I'm a poor college student and I love things being as cheap as possible, but I can't ignore the fact that the phone companies are being run up the wall

As for the article about developing a brand image; I agree that with the ease of internet information there is a growing trend of individualism, but mostly in the area of opinion writing and maybe features. I only notice the by-line of maybe one-tenth of the news articles I read.

Reading 1:Ettiquete

While the writers for "Netiquette" were more colorful in their presentation, both sites essentially said the golden rule: treat others how you would want to be treated.
Emailreplies.com offered more detailed information-recalls, cc's and Bcc's, font and text formating etc.-but essentially e-mail etiquette comes down to common sense. Be polite, be professional, and be considerate.

One point that Netiquette brought up is that e-mail and internet correspondence is becoming increasingly impersonal. Networkers are too used to dealing with lit screens instead of human faces, and using BTW's and LOL's instead of English. Our vernacular is actually changing to incorporate internet slang into daily speech, which I find disgusting.

I do dissagree with emailreplies recomendation of leaving the conversation thread. Obviously there are some cases where you would want the conversation history, but for the most part e-mail programs, gmail for example, thread the conversation automatically; leaving past correspondence in the body of the text only serves to clutter up the space and sometimes bury the information. A good subject line should serve to remind what the content is about, instead of 40 lines of past-sent typeface.

Moral of the story, check what you're writing, check who you're sending it to, and try to be as informative and brief as possible.