Great reminiscences. Friday saw me out with an old school friend. Who'd have thought young David in his shorts would now be a university professor?

And Saturday brought together an eclectic mix of Keele graduates. According to Deidre (who's been in publishing for n years and should know) an emerging trend will be "publishing on demand."  Gone will be the days of out of print books. Soon we will be able to call (or probably email) the publisher  and ask them to print us off a copy.

I'm constantly delighted by developments like this - useful applications of technology. The computer we had back in the 70's at Keele had no screen (all output was printed) or indeed a keyboard (all input was via punched cards).

Given that was only 30 years ago, where are the next 30 going to take us?  (Please email Expert Messaging to let me know your thoughts). 

If you're having an affair (and this is not a recommendation, by the way) lay off the texting and blackberrying.

According to divorce lawyers Pannone, excessive texting and emailing is now the most frequently-quoted cause of suspicion that your "significant other" may be straying.

While the previous pole-position was held by too many nights working late at the office, this is now behind the sudden flurry of texts and emails that can be generated by a new affair.

We always knew that excessive emailing wasn't good for you - but we now have confirmation that it isn't good for your personal relationships either.

Oh, and 20% of young people claim to have dumped their partner by text message. 

Email Expert Messaging if you've dumped someone in this way - and we'll give you a free lesson on how to be more sensitive.

A big "thank you" to one of London's councillors (we won't mention her name to spare her blushes) who provides us with another fantastic illustration of the dangers of email.

She was accused of racism after she sent an email wishing that Indian people should be taught that throwing rubbish out of windows of a particular block "is not acceptable behaviour." Given there is no evidence of Indian people behaving like this, the leader of the Labour group said, "This shows her inherent prejudice."

We think this also shows her inherent lack of understanding of the dangers of email. A private email (or as the councillor called it, "an ill thought-out, stupid, personal email.") is not private. It can end up in the press all too easily. Or in someone's blog.

As we say in our email best practice sessions: if you don't want someone to fly-post your email all over the country, don't send it.  

Just reading a fascinating book called "Fooled by randomness" by Nassim Taleb. It looks to statistics and mathematics to explain what is happening in the world.

One topic he discusses is that for an idea, "age is beauty" - the longer a concept has been around, the more likely it is to be useful (a somewhat Darwinist approach to information). He takes the position that most "news," "breaking news" or "new news" is just sensational noise designed to sell newspapers rather than inform. (Does this sound like a lot of the emails arriving in your inbox?)

Taleb says he doesn't read papers any more as they are so full of this noise. He believes that if a story is big or important enough, he will get to hear about it through another channel.

This came home to me strongly last night with both of the free London evening papers writing of the fuel crisis. One proclamied, "Forecourts swamped in fuel fenzy." while the other soothed "Fuel crisis: 20% fall in pump sales."

Which one's "noise"? Email Expert Messaging to register your vote..

A delightful and apposite suggestion from a session delegate in Dublin.

When asked to think of ways to disseminate information throughout an organisation (other than sending an email), one chap suggested resurrecting the internal memo.

Excellent! For some types of non-urgent information, why not put it on one sheet of paper (low resource use) with a distribution list, ask people to read it then forward the memo to the next person on the list?

Another suggestion was to instal rolling LED message screens above the urinals. While admittedly creative, this idea would cost more to implement and probably miss out the half of the organisation who don't use urinals. 

So generally another splendid visit to Dublin - only slightly marred by the fact that all pubs now just seem to serve the "cold-flow" Guinness rather than the slow-pour, room-temperature pint that was such a treat (not that I visited all the pubs, you understand).

If you find yourself flying out of Stansted airport (sorry, "London Stansted") do try and sit on the right-hand side of the plane in the middle seat.

As the plane hurtles down the runway for take off, just when it hits the point of no return, engines are blasting, wings are straining and all bolts are shaking - take a look out of the window. You'll see the smoke-blackened shape of the aircraft evacuation simulator, looking like the plane that didn't make it.

If you've picked your seat and timing, you can point this out to your neighbour and say, "I bet they wished they'd flown from Gatwick."

And if you fly with Ryanair, do please write to me about the quality of your landing. It may be complete coincidence, but all the flights I and colleagues have taken recently have landed with an almighty thump - in contrast to gentler touch-downs with other airlines.

I know Ryanair pride themselves on a fast turn-around and good time-keeping, but I wonder how much time they save by slamming into the runway rather than floating in.

A lawyer colleague insists that the disclaimers some companies put at the end of their emails are not worth the paper they would be printed on. She would be delighted to hear (via BBC Radio 4's News Quiz) of this one from the Institute of Actuaries (reproduced verbatim)...

"Any opinions contained within are not necessarily those of nor a wholly owned subsidiary thereof nor authorised or regulated by the Financial Services Authority and are intended as general guidance only and do not constitute advice or a contract in law. Help! I'm being held prisoner by the Institute of Actuaries. They keep me in a windowless office and make me stuff envelopes all day. If I don't stuff enough they beat me. Please help."

I wonder how many people received it and didn't read it.

Northern Ireland is beautiful right now. The May blossom is out in full and Antrim is looking its idyllic best. Sitting around, chatting with some people - one chap asks an excellet question - "Do you remember your first email?"

OK, it's probably not as memorable as your first snog or your first whatever, but it's quite interesting hearing people reminisce about the "early days" and how "modern" it was to start emailing. I also find it interesting when working with groups to ask people if they have ever had a job without email. This really sorts the sheep from the goats, though I'm not saying if the older group members are sheep or goats.

As an emailing culture, we are in constant transition. Early emailers thought of email like a memo ("What's a memo, grandad?") and "fresh-out-of-schoolers" think of it more like text messaging. While neither position is right or wrong, it's probably good to realise the balance is shifting - and sooner or later the "memo-brigade" will be the minority.

And how does email best practice manage this transition? Don't be attached to a style of emailing - be flexible enough to write in the style that will produce the best response in your reader.

More on attachments later.

My sister writes from New Zealand - but on paper this time. She had "A very nice Russian chap" in to speed up her computer. Sadly he wiped her address book so she has had to write by snail mail to all her contacts to get their email addresses back.

This makes me think of two things:

1) If we’re backed-up automatically at work, it’s easy to forget that the home pc needs a back up too. Either that or you need the Zen Backup Policy (see below).

2) When you reply to an email here, it prefixes the subject line with "Re". On Russian systems the prefix is "Ha". So an extended email exhange on English-speaking systems produces "Re: Re: Re: Re;" - on Russian systems it’s the more entertaining "Ha: Ha: Ha: Ha:"

And the Zen Backup Policy is, "I’ve lost all my data. I don’t have a backup. Oh well." (Ha Ha Ha Ha)

A colleague sends this picture from Vienna which tickles me.

While I was there, I saw an advertising campaign for mobile phones  with the slogan "Sprich mit Bob" ("talk with Bob"). As a "Bob" myself I found this much more entertaining than a lot of the other "Bob" references sent my way. (I do not know how many more times I can hear small children singing "Bob the builder" to me without me fixing them.)

Anyway, the "Sprich mit Bob" campaign also had phrases in colloquial German which were impossible for me to translate. I`m guessing they’re the equivalent of phrases like "pay through the nose" which cease to have meaning as soon as you think about them.

So today’s thought is: when communicating with other cultures, watch out for colloquial english. A phrase like "it went over my head" might just go over theirs.

Just back from Vienna to the new blog going live, so this seems as good a place to start blogging as any.

If you have not been there, I do recommend Vienna. The people are friendly - and they allow you to practise rusty German on them. I find this refreshing when compared with, say, Germany itself. If you walk into a Berlin shop, almost before you finish saying, "Guten Tag," the other person says "This conversation will be much more efficient if I speak my excellent English instead of us both suffering your schoolboy German."

And as Vienna has an excellent cafe culture, the cafes compete with each other by offering free wifi. How much nicer than paying through the nose, firstly for CostaBucks coffee then for wifi access on top.

The net result is you can sit drinking good coffee on a pleasant European pavement checking your emails at your ease. (Though, obviously,  if you are on holiday you should not really be checking your work emails.)

So generally, a big thumbs up to Vienna, but just to give a balanced view of their otherwise tasteful culture, here is a picture of a siamese-cat toilet-brush holder.