Personal Technology Contingency Plan With Nearly Every

Personal Technology Contingency Plan

With nearly every aspect of modern life dependent on electronic devices, there has never been a more important time to have a personal technology contingency plan. Smartphones and their many contacts, applications and customized options often represent hundreds of hours of time invested in getting them configured to a person's specific preferences. Multiply this by the number of devices and laptops that many people are relying on in their lives and to do their jobs, and the impact of losing all this data can readily be seen. It would bring anyone's life to a screeching halt and lead to days of chaos as the information, applications and specific settings were regenerated from memory. Too often human memory and effort is the default technology contingency plan (Young-Jai, 2001).

The most common scenarios that lead to lost data include lost or stolen devices, corrupted data and disk storage on systems, or the application and operating system corruption (Young-Jai, 2001). Large scale disasters including earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and tornados often destroy tens of thousands of devices and lead to billions of dollars in information assets being destroyed. While the risk of these larger-scale events are not as great as a device being stolen or failing over time, the common denominator to solve this problem is to have automated backups of personal data to cloud-based storage systems. Over a decade ago Web-based storage systems were considered ideal for contingency plans (Young-Jai, 2001) and today they include advanced authentication and security features (Tang, Lee, Lui, Perlman, 2012). Using a cloud-based platform to create a more device-independent strategy of data protection and backup makes more economic sense than local storage, as cloud-based systems can propagate backup and recovery options across a multiple of personal devices (Tang, Lee, Lui, Perlman, 2012). A personal technology recovery plan needs to be based on a solid foundation of automated backup, data verification and authentication options to get data assets completely independent of their hardware dependencies that are often the downfall of data recovery efforts (Young-Jai, 2001). Focusing on how devices and their data can be backed up transparently and with no added steps can assure both data and configuration options are successfully captured for later retrieval in the event of a disaster.

Part II -- Effective Online Communications

The paradox of email is prevalent in the millions of messages sent daily that don't get read or if they are read, often get misinterpreted and lead to misunderstandings and telephone calls. The premise of e-mail etiquette could streamline the many long, verbose and ponderous e-mails people write without often considering their audiences' time and attention (Spinellis, 2009). E-mail abuse is rampant as people often write more to hear themselves than to serve others. There is good news however for how to break out of myopic, meandering e-mails. Practicing e-mail etiquette can make someone more effective in personal and professional communications, creating shared experiences, and over time, trust.

The informality of e-mail is often a trap people fall into, choosing to go on long discourses rather than keeping their notes short, succinct, and to the point (Spinellis, 2009). The essence of e-mail etiquette is respecting the person's time you are writing to and also their intelligence. Informali8ty needs to have dignity and consideration of others to be effective as a means to communicate. E-mails need to say just enough to cover a topic and be informative, avoiding long, rambling test is critical.