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Email is the New Snail Mail
From: www.writerswrite.com

" For the young, email is a big bore, associated only with authority and school. The younger generation uses text messaging when they want to communicate with someone interesting; email is reserved for parents and teachers.

E-mail is so last millennium. Young people see it as a good way to reach an elder -- a parent, teacher or a boss -- or to receive an attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The shift is starting to creep into workplace communication, too.

"In this world of instant gratification, e-mail has become the new snail mail," says 25-year-old Rachel Quizon from Norwalk, Calif. She became addicted to instant messaging in college, where many students are logged on 24/7. Much like home postal boxes have become receptacles for junk mail, bills and the occasional greeting card, electronic mailboxes have become cluttered with spam. That makes them a pain to weed through, and the problem is only expected to worsen as some e-mail providers allow online marketers to bypass spam filters for a fee. Beyond that, e-mail has become most associated with school and work.

"It used to be just fun," says Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate who studies social media at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now it's about parents and authority." It means that many people often don't respond to e-mails unless they have to. Boyd's own Web page carries this note: "please note that i'm months behind on e-mail and i may not respond in a timely manner." She, too, is more easily reached with the "ping" of an instant message.

That said, no one is predicting the death of e-mail. Besides its usefulness in formal correspondence, it also offers the ability to send something from "one to many," says Anne Kirah, a senior design anthropologist at Microsoft who studies people's high-tech habits. That might include an announcement for a club or invitation to a party. Quizon e-mails frequently in her corporate communications job at a hospital, and also uses it when she needs documentation -- for instance, when dealing with vendors for her upcoming wedding. In those cases, she says e-mail "still holds more clout."

GameSetWatch:Lucky Wander Boy was praised by many people for doing the unthinkable and combining contemporary fiction and gaming culture - why do you think this is so rarely done, and what inspired you to attempt it?

DB Weiss: I'm glad they liked it, wherever these people are. I think it's probably a natural thing that videogames are a relatively new subject for fiction, being the youngest popular artistic medium. I wanted to write about them because they've permeated my life, along with books, music and movies. As more people for whom this is the case come of age, I think we'll see more videogame cross-pollination.

After starting out in comic books, Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, I, the Jury, in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included The Killing Man, The Girl Hunters and One Lonely Night. Many Hammer books were made into movies, including the classic film noir Kiss Me, Deadly and The Girl Hunters, in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series Mickey Spillane?s Mike Hammer and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials. Besides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.

*****

Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America. Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn?t care about reviews. He considered himself a "writer" as opposed to an "author," defining a writer as someone whose books sell.

"This is an income-generating job," he told The Associated Press during a 2001 interview. "Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood." "Thanks Mickey for giving the world so much pleasure during your time with us," actor Stacy Keach, who portrayed Hammer on TV in the 1980s, said in a statement Monday. "We shall miss you, but we are comforted by the knowledge that your work and Mike Hammer will live forever."

Mathew alleged that beginning in the 1980s, he "created and wrote a number of original works including drawings, screenplays, outlines, blueprints, storyboards and other original materials" for what he termed a "Super Natural Pirate Movie." Material filed with the U.S. Copyright Office included drawings depicting a pirate ship named Black Pearl, the suit claimed, adding the material was also pitched in Hollywood.

Disney denied the allegations. "The suit has no merit," Disney studios spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said without elaboration. Bruckheimer's publicist Paul Bloch had no comment, referring calls to Disney. Messages left Friday for Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a unit of Disney, were not immediately returned. The film raked in $305 million domestically at the box office. The sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, earned a record $135.6 million in its opening weekend beginning July 7.

Mathew is seeking unspecified damages, and a permanent injunction against the movie or "other infringing works," according to the lawsuit. Messages left for his attorney, Stephen Thomas, were not immediately returned.

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

After weeks of rumors and speculation, the sale of Vibe magazine is reportedly a done deal and Mimi Valdez is officially out as editor-in-chief.

According to the New York Daily News, the urban culture publication ? launched by Quincy Jones and former Time Inc. President Robert Miller in 1993 ? has been sold to the Wicks Group, a private equity firm focused on selected segments of the communications, information and media industries.

In the corporate shift, Vibe editor Mimi Valdes is being replaced by former Vibe editor Danyel Smith, whose husband, Elliott Wilson, is the editor of rival urban magazine XXL.

Coen, senior vice president and director of forecasting for Universal McCann, now predicts that Internet spending, excluding search, will surge to $9.705 billion this year, marking a 25 percent increase from 2005. In the first quarter alone, online ad spending grew more than 19 percent from last year, according to Coen. Last December, he projected that online ad spending for the year would total $8.669 billion, representing a growth rate of just 10 percent.

Coen routinely excludes search from his calculations of online ad dollars; the Interactive Advertising Bureau pegs search as representing about 41 percent of online ad revenues.

Some other forecasters have predicted that online ad spending, including search, will total around $20 billion this year. PQ Media Tuesday pegged this year's total online ad spend at $19.96 billion--a 26 percent surge from 2005; TNS Media Intelligence president-CEO Steven Fredericks also recently estimated that overall Web ad spending will amount to around $20 billion. eMarketer forecasts a slightly more conservative $16.7 billion online ad spend for this year.