While we would want to know whether we are addressing a lady or a gentlemen while networking online and using online business networking portals like LinkedIn [ openBC is discounted here because they carry photographs ], in my opinon, it does not make sense to include identifying characteristics.
While we would want to address a lady with added respect and politeness, I don’t see how that affects online business networking communication.
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Wouldn’t we want to be courteous with “everyone”?
Wouldn’t we want to use the same language with everyone?
How would it matter if the person we were writing to was male/female?
If we did interact with someone with a generic e-mail, by the second or third e-mail we would have already been to their website and would have found out whether they are male of female anyway – so why bother with “features” that will tell you whether a particular member is male/female?
January 22nd, 2006
They have a Chief Networking Officer! Read more about Udo Hamm‘s new role as openBC’s Chief Networking Officer on the openBC blog
openBC now has a new Power Search feature where you can search for people who have recnetly changed the details in their “company” or “position” sections of their profile. It’s called “Contacts of mine whose company or position has changed recently” Now if only they would include this as an RSS Feed so I could access the details in my Inbox. On second thoughts, most of the Power Search features can be made more accessible by providing RSS feeds – for example, I’ll immediately know when someone clicks on my profile or visits my website! [ That would be a neat feature ].
Another feature introduced is “Mark message as unread” – the main utility I see of this feature is to allow me to get back to important messages. What I do right now to get back to important messages is to forward the message to my inbox.
January 20th, 2006
Wow! Who thought it would be so simple.
The only trouble I had was that I deleted the wp-config.php file and had to thus re-create it. Apart from that it was just the slow internet connection that kept me nail-biting, waiting to see whether Blix works on WordPress 2.0 or not!
And it works! Whoopee! [ Oops! Sorry! But even though this is quite a professional/formal blog, I can't help clapping with glee at how easily the WordPress team makes me feel like I'm a geek 
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January 3rd, 2006
