instant messaging

My parents signed us up for AOL's first dial-up service when I was twelve. Since then, I've managed to hold onto my first screen name (a reference to my then-favorite band which is too embarrassing to share here), even though I don't use it. In college, my friends and I laughed over our screen names, chosen as adolescents but too close to our hearts to give up. I eventually switched to a work-friendly AIM account name, but a few times a year I'll sign online with my screen name of yore.

Plenty of my friends have original names, most featuring band or celeb names, often with a lot of Xxs or other characters for design effect, and always good for a giggle. Have you held onto yours? Brave enough to share it?

And, if you're in the market for a new screen name, be sure to check out this handy screen name generator.

A friend of mine IM'd me the following:

"You have got to be kidding me. My mother just emailed me the following message: Hi honey, I'm going to call you later. Love, Mom"

I've written about my family's technical blunders before, from a niece who learned the Wii as fast as my sometimes tech-unsavvy Grandma. And my friend's experience is no different. My mother has definitely sent me short emails during the day to remind me that she'll be calling later. When you think about it, it is a little funny, but it's also kind of industrious. After all, mom knows that I'm more apt to check my email (or, in my dad's case, my Facebook wall) than catch a missed call on my phone. The only irony: if I emailed my mother to tell her I'd be calling later, the chances of her receiving the email before the phone rang later that night are pretty low.

Are your parents or grandparents as tech-savvy as you? Do you have a funny story to share? Then tell us about it by posting to our Funny Tech Stories group! You (and your fam) could end up on GeekSugar.

Although iChat allows me to video conference with up to three people at the same time, sometimes I just want to have an iChat party with more of my friends or family. Same goes for those who work from home and need to video with other co-workers in a conference. And with SuperIM, you can now video chat with up to 10 people. Amazing!

All it takes is a free account with Paltalk and a quick download of SuperIM, and you're on your way to chatting with 10 of your buddies from around the world who have an Internet connection. But it's not just video, you can also text IM with Paltalk too. So if you're having a bad hair day, no one has to know.

Electronic communication can both help and hurt a relationship. On one hand, it encourages constant communication and may make you feel closer to one another. On the other — this constant communication may make you feel suffocated.

This happened recently to one of my friends. She started seeing a new guy, and intentionally only gave him her phone number — no email address, no Twitter handle, no AIM screen name. She wasn't trying to hide anything, she was just trying make sure things progressed slowly. After a few weeks and a very brief exchange over Gmail — bam! — there he was in her list of Gchat contacts. She didn't think about it until the next day at work when, with the familiar "ding" that accompanies a new message, a "hi!" from her guy.

"I am not ready to Gchat!" she complained to me (via, of course, Gchat). I told her to ignore the Gchat window long enough that her name would display as idle, and then to either log out or turn on the "invisible" option — a quick fix for the moment, but by no means a permanent solution.

She's not the only friend of mine this has happened to. After including her instant messenger name (that she uses for work) on her Facebook profile, one friend was attacked with a flurry of instant messages from someone she was casually dating. So, how do you prevent a new date from e-stalking? That's what I'll cover on this edition of Tech Dating 101. To read the advice I gave to her, read more

I'll admit it: technology has made the early stages of dating a lot easier. For instance, you no longer have to work up the nerve to call a guy you're into — just fire off a witty text message or IM and avoid awkward pauses on the phone altogether! It's a lot easier to type out something you might have trouble expressing in a face-to-face situation. (Exhibit A: Texts From Last Night. Do you think half of the things said via late-night text would ever see the light of day in a face-to-face or phone call situation?)

Another admission: it's a whole lot easier for me to talk to a guy online than it is in person. And if it's easier for me, I assume it's easier for a guy, too. But that creates a whole other set of issues. What happens if you connect great with someone while chatting online or via text, but there's still a ton of in-person shyness and awkwardness. It's happened to me more than once, but I was able to overcome it. To find out how, read more

The men of Swingers championed a rule that fundamentally changed how fellas of the '90s plotted post-date communication. They said a man should wait three days after a date to call a woman so she would want them more. Preposterous, right? Today the possibilities for contact are so varied — email, work email, IM, gChat, Facebook, Twitter, text and so on — that it can be harder to gauge interest or commitment based on the time frame and way someone reaches out. In this installment of my Tech Dating 101 series I will address how technology and texting have changed the moments and days after a good first date. To see what I think (spoiler alert: it's complicated), read more