Eric Lee

Those of us trying to use email as a campaigning tool are running into some serious problems these days. Getting heard over all the background noise is becoming more difficult. Inboxes are filling up rapidly. At best we skim, and don’t read, the hundreds of messages we receive every week. And that’s the messages that actually get through our spam filters.
Unions need to find a way to cut through that noise and reach their members. Members need an alternative to the spam-filled, overflowing inbox. Everyone needs messages to be brief and to the point.
Twitter may offer a solution.

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One of Canada’s largest unions, the 340,000 member National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), has joined the battle to defend net neutrality. The fact that most trade unionists won’t even understand what that means underlines how significant NUPGE’s decision actually is.

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A recent column by web useability expert Jakob Nielsen should be of particular interest to trade unionists. Nielsen is an internationally recognized speaker and author who has pioneered studies in how people actually use the Internet, leading to some major shifts in the way websites are designed.

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I’ve posted a handful (literally) of reviews on the Amazon website. I didn’t even remember that I had, but I just now had to post one about the new James Bond book so I returned to the site.
In looking over my reviews, I see that I posted a one sentence review of Microsoft Excel a year ago. Here’s what I wrote:

“Why would anyone pay over £170 for a piece of software which does nothing more than Open Office.org does — and OpenOffice.org is completely free of charge?”

Nearly a year later, someone posted a comment on my review (I didn’t realize you could do this). It’s worth repeating here:

“This is so true – I dowloaded openoffice on reading this and it is very good. converts all your old word or .xls files and is easy to use with the same functionality of office. plus I am quids in as was about to spend £180 on Excel. Major mistake if I had done that! Great post Eric.”

One more convert to free software — won over by a review on Amazon. I wonder what else we can use Amazon reviews for?