This afternoon, I checked in to a place on Foursquare that I’d never actually go visit in person. Nothing against interesting establishments … but the problem was, I wasn’t there – I was on a plane.

I had just landed at the Kansas City International Airport. The place I didn’t visit and the airport that I did visit share similar names on Foursquare (Kansas City International Airport, and Kansas City International Airport Glory Hole), and the full name of the second place doesn’t display on the iPhone Foursquare app (see the screenshot in this post). Not paying much attention, I checked into the wrong place (and quickly received multiple Twitter replies and DMs, kindly suggesting that I perhaps checked into the wrong place).

Anyone ever done that before? Signed up for an app on Facebook, only to spam your friends list? Suddenly found your Twitter account asking everyone to “click here” when all you did was try out a new service? Or, like me, click something, and then realize that’s not what you wanted to do … but too late to take it back? This has the potential to be pretty embarrassing (thinking about the time I clicked a link in an email from someone that I had been waiting for an email from, only to watch in horror as my email account started spamming everyone in my contact list … including all library staff email accounts).

Yep. Been there, done that. And it’s bound to happen to some of us with our organizational accounts, too. Many of you no doubt have found tools like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite extremely useful – you can log into multiple accounts, both personal and organizational, at the same time. It ends up saving a ton of time … until you accidentally forget to turn something off. Then, much embarrassment and backpedaling ensues.

When this inevitably happens… what should you do?

• First – don’t panic. It was a mistake, and we all make them.
• Second – simply publicly admit the mistake. Say something like “oops – wrong account.” Or “How did that happen? Sorry about that” or something similar.
• Third – delete the mistake if you can (I couldn’t until hours later, and I decided to let the accidental check-in stand. I find it mildly humorous)
• If you sent out something potentially malicious (like one of those rogue spammy Facebook apps), you should send out a message warning your followers/friends to not click the link, it’s spam, and add a quick “sorry about that.” They’ll understand – most likely, they have done it themselves, too.

And…

How can you avoid having this happen to you?

• Look before you tweet – make sure you are sending what you think you are sending … before you send it!
• Check for spelling oddities (auto-correct on the iPhone can do strange and amusing things to seemingly innocuous words).
• If it’s an interesting-sounding app or tool, you might do a quick search in Google or Twitter first, to see what others thought about the app. This can quickly help weed out spammy apps.
• Think about keeping your work accounts and your personal accounts separate. Meaning don’t put both on the same Tweetdeck install. Maybe use Hootsuite for work and Tweetdeck for personal, for example.

What else should I add here?

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A couple weeks ago, I was wondering how much email I received and dealt with in a day. So I counted, and here’s what I ended up with – two email accounts, one day:

Gmail account:

• 75 emails received
• 13 emails already in my inbox
• What were they?
  • 7 twitter requests
  • 6 things I needed to know
  • 2 replies to something I had sent the day before
  • 7 things I had to do or respond to
  • the rest was junk I deleted (discussion list things, subscription spam, etc)

During the day, I sent out 14 emails from this account, and ended up with 1 email in my inbox.

Work email account:

• 55 emails received
• 12 things already in my inbox
• What were they?
  • 9 things I needed to know
  • 2 interesting things
  • 12 helpdesk emails
  • 2 discussion list messages
  • the rest was junk I deleted

During the day, I sent out 7 emails from this account, and ended up with Zero Inbox!

Total email received = 130
Emails sent by me = 21
And I think this was a SLOW email day for me!

Of course, email wasn’t the only thing I did all day long. There were meetings. There were projects I’m working on. There was at least one call to a vendor. Etc.

The point is this – I do real work via email. I’m guessing you do too. Decisions get made, projects get additional thoughts. Things I need to see get seen. Questions get answered (or asked). It really IS my In Box.

How about you? Is email an irritation you have to deal with so you can DO your “real work” … or do you see email (and the thoughts behind those emails) as part of your “real work?”

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Check out Generations Online in 2009, the newest Pew Internet report. Go read it – there’s alot of good stuff in it.

Here are some tidbits that I found interesting:

“Contrary to the image of Generation Y as the “Net Generation,” internet users in their 20s do not dominate every aspect of online life. Generation X is the most likely group to bank, shop, and look for health information online. Boomers are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online. And even Silent Generation internet users are competitive when it comes to email…”

Wow. Interesting tidbit from page 2: “The biggest increase in internet use since 2005 can be seen in the 70-75 year-old age group. While just over one-fourth (26%) of 70-75 year olds were online in 2005, 45% of that age group is currently online.” – Did you see that? What a HUGE jump – now, almost HALF of 70-75 year olds are online. Amazing.

“… email remains the most popular online activity, particularly among older internet users. Fully 74% of internet users age 64 and older send and receive email, making email the most popular online activity for this age group.” (see my post about email reference and think about how you can update that service).

How’s your health info online (and at your reference desk)? – “In particular, older internet users are significantly more likely than younger generations to look online for health information.”

And etc… good stuff (9 pages worth).

Pic by fran**

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I’m slow to some things, believe it or not. I am just getting to testing out Feedburner’s Subscribe by Email option on RSS feeds. What’s that mean? It means that you can now subscribe to my blog using your email account rather than using RSS feeds and feed readers, if you so desire.

Of course, I’ve subscribed to myself doing this, so we’ll see what I get once I hit the publish button on this post. Eventually, my idea is to offer this service on my library’s website. Let’s see what happens!

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I have a Yahoo email account (honestly I don’t check it too often). But Trillian (IM client) sends little “reminder” messages to me once in awhile that I have mail in the inbox of my Yahoo account. So I decided to go clean it out today.

When I did, I was greeted with a chance to try the beta version of their new email app. It’s very nice – lots of Ajaxy goodness, like dragging and dropping emails into folders, single click/double click things, etc – it pretty much works like the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook.

But when I chose to use the beta product, I was immediately dropped into a brief training session. And that’s what I’m really blogging about today. ‘Cause they did a great job in the training session!

Take a peek at the screenshot to the left. They provided a little animated guy that guided me through the training session, complete with easy-to-do tasks (ie., dragging and dropping email to a folder) that quickly taught me what I needed to know about the beta product.

There was also a bar at the bottom of the screen that showed me how far along I was in the training session (presumably there so I could see that I was almost finished), and the animated guy was nice – he “said” encouraging things as I moved along in the tutorial.

And then, when I completed the tutorial, the animated guy did a little dance, and confetti fell! Seriously (take a peek at the pic). How cool is that?

I think libraries could learn a few things from this little moment in my life:

1. Make training fun! – The Yahoo session provided training, but did it in a light, fun way. Can our library training sessions and our online training sessions and tipsheets be fun, too? I think so
2. Celebrate success – Yahoo encouraged me by telling me I was doing a good job during the session, and celebrated (by dancing and confetti) after the session. Not sure our bibliographic instruction librarians should start dancing after a training session… but I think we CAN make our materials and our teaching moments positive. We can be encouraging – in person, on paper, and online.
3. Offer Proactive training – This Yahoo session popped up before I entered the new email app. We need to make sure we offer training on a new product BEFORE it’s released! That goes for OPAC upgrades, new blogs, or even offering RSS feeds for the first time. Make sure to train both your staff and your public, so they know what to do with the new product or service.
4. Offer help when needed – Yahoo figured some people would need a little more guidance, so they created a way to offer that guidance – when it was needed. They also provide a Help link if I need more help later on. Again, I think libraries can do this, too.
5. Provide “just enough” teaching – This training session lasted 2-5 minutes, and provided just enough information so that I could read and manage my email. They didn’t include the history of Yahoo, show me changes to Yahoo email over time, etc. They gave me just what I needed and nothing more. Library training can do much the same thing – for example, why not create a quick, 5-minute screencast on how to do a basic search in the catalog – and then provide pointers to further instruction if needed? That way, everyone gets just what they need to do a search, and they’re given the option to get more help if/when needed.

Just some thoughts (mainly caused by that little dancing dude from Yahoo…

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Like everyone else with a gmail account, I have 50 Gmail invites to give away. So if someone wants a gmail email account, email me (davidleeking [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com).

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