Email Etiquette Part 3: Dealing with those Cc’s and Bcc’s

By Adam Booth on October 19, 2010 at 9:24 am in Email,Technical

emailetiquette2We send and receive emails all day, but does everyone really know about some of the extra options for sending out emails?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple years, I would hope that it’s safe to assume that you understand what should go in the “To:” and “Subject:” fields, so I won’t dig too deep into either of those options.

In this post, I’m going to address how to properly use the Cc and Bcc fields. Many people are aware of these fields, but they are often misused. Although email etiquette doesn’t seem like a big deal, I think it’s important to address some of these problems for our everyday sanity as well as security issues that can potentially arise.

“Cc:” field or “Carbon Copy”

This is used to include other people in an email even if the email is not necessarily intended for them specifically.

emailetiquette-cc2For example, if I send an email saying, “Hey we miss you!” to a far away friend, I could CC all of my other friends who might also feel the same way so that they are included and are aware that I sent the email.

Our far away friend would be able to see that I Cc’d all of our friends and would have the option of replying to only me or choosing “reply all”, which would be delivered to my inbox as well as everyone else Cc’d.

It is also worth mentioning that it is proper etiquette for the recipient to “reply all” so that all people CC’d also receive their reply. This keeps everyone updated at all times and cuts out steps of having to resend emails to people who didn’t receive it.

“Bcc:” field or “Blind Carbon Copy”

emailetiquette-bccThis is very similar to Cc except for one major difference: the recipient would not be able to see the other friends included in the email.

This is much more secretive because there is no way for the recipient of this email to see who all was included. Because they have no way of knowing who all was included in the email, they are unable to choose the “reply all” option and can only reply to the sender.

Bcc definitely has its perks, but should be used tastefully and not to “spy” on people. It can, however, be used for security purposes when forwarding messages. Instead of Cc’ing your whole address book when you forward a message, you can put them in the Bcc field to keep their email addresses private from spammers. For more information on this, visit here.

Hopefully this has been fairly helpful to those of you who were wondering about some of the finer details of how sending emails work. If you’d like to learn even more about email etiquette, be sure to check out these other great posts here and here. Cheers!

The New Twitter

By Elyssa Dolinger on October 8, 2010 at 9:14 am in General,Reviews

newtwitterTwitter is in the process of rolling out its new design. Everyday I see people rejoicing or lamenting the new design. But what are some of the new design perks? I present a smattering of the new Twitter features. I doubt that I’ve found every gem, but this should give you an idea as to what the new Twitter is like.

They’re finally implementing some of the conveniences that third party applications have been providing. It may be too late to bring people back to the browser, but it sure can’t hurt to try.

The first thing you might notice is that the sidebar got huge. At first it was a turn off to have two equally sized viewing panes, but soon enough the reason for the right side’s expansion becomes clear. Added functionality. Everything you love about Twitter is still there. Well, maybe except the background. A measly 40 pixels of safe area is left on either side, though, if your browser supports, the right side bar should be semi-transparent.

favtweet

Twitter now even has a favorite tweet button. To choose a tweet to “favorite,” hover over the tweet you like. An option with a star and the word favorite next to it should pop up. Click it and the tweet will now feature a gold half star on the corner, as well as be listed on your right panel under the favorites option.

retweeted

retweeted-by

Retweeting? A two-shade green retweet label appears in the upper left corner of a tweet that has been retweeted. The number of times it has been retweeted is listed as well as a parade of mini icons of users that have retweeted by you.

userthumb

Click on a tweet and the right side panel changes. It now holds all kinds of useful information about tweets that you never knew that you never knew you needed to know. It can embed certain video and image links which is handy when it works. You can even see where tweets were made if tweeters want to be stalked.

embedded-imagethumb

If someone is mentioned in the tweet, it gives an abbreviated profile and link to their account as well as other tweets mentioning that account. If there are any replies to that tweet, they are listed in the side bar. Same deal for hashtags.

The new sidebar makes it easier to follow conversations, but you’d better hope you can find the first tweet. It doesn’t seem smart enough yet to track back to the first tweet of a convo.

Above all the tweets, the tabs at the top help navigate some new and old options, one of which is the ability to save searches. Also, when you search, you’ll have the option to filter for only those tweets with links or only those close to your location.

top-tabs

All in all it was a nice effort, Twitter. But I’m staying with my third party application, TweetDeck. (Though I have to admit, the keyboard short cuts, including “.” to refresh, are pretty sweet.)

keyboardshortcuts

The secret to guaranteeing yourself a job at T&S

By Tim Priebe on October 1, 2010 at 8:13 am in General

timatcomputerWhat do you need to know to get a killer job at T&S Web Design? Read on to find out.

We recently decided to take a new policy towards filling positions here at T&S: We’re not doing it any more. Other than internships we have in the summer and during the school year, we’re no longer interviewing to fill specific positions.

Instead, we are interviewing people constantly. Whether it be for sales, programming or designing, we are always willing to interview candidates. This is going to do two things:

  1. Let us take time hiring for any position, because we’ll be interviewing before the need is there.
  2. Let us find those really, really awesome people even when we don’t have a position available.

As Jim Collins puts it in his legendary book Good to Great, we’re all about getting the right people on the bus. And we believe this is the way to do it.

So what is the secret to make sure you’re the right person for the T&S bus? (This really applies to any company you might apply to.)

Research T&S and our employees.

What technologies are we using? What do we do for fun? Who works here? Check out our website, Facebook page and Twitter account. Google us. Find and check out the accounts of our employees as well.

Adjust accordingly.

Learn the technologies we’re using. Learn about our hobbies. Make yourself a linchpin before you even get here.

Do you think you’re the right person for the T&S bus? Are you a programmer, designer or salesperson looking to to start somewhere new? We’d love to chat! Just contact us, and if we think you might be a good fit, we’ll schedule an interview.