Category: technology

From Mrs. Doubtwire to Techs in the City: Regina Lewis tells us what wired women want

For those of you who think techno-gadgetry is a man’s domain, think again. The average woman owns five electronic gadgets, according to a CBS report about how women approach technology.

And lest you think classifying tech users into cute, condescendingly termed demographic niches is also solely a male pursuit, think again there too. For the Saturday Early Show segment about women and technology, CBS talked to AOL’s trend-spotter, Regina Lewis, for insight into what wired women want. Lewis breaks the gender into three groups and gives each its own punny label:

First, there’s Mrs. Doubtwire. This is not a male posing as a female in an AOL chat room. The Mrs. Doubtwires of the world are “a little slow to warm up to technology,” Lewis says on her blog. They’re focused mainly on “doing the email thing and maybe a little web surfing, but not much more.” But as “the family memory keepers,” the Mrs. Doubtwires are likely to purchase digital cameras.

Next comes the pragmatechs, the “more career-focused and more tech-savvy” women. “The key for this group of users is functionality. How will the device make their life better, easier, more productive? One thing tech companies are finding out — if you’re going to appeal to this crowd — you have to do more than make a product in pink or candy apple red.”

Finally, there’s the group Lewis calls — brace yourselves — Techs in the City. These are “the tech trendsetters” who see gadgets as fashion accessories. “The ‘cute’ or ‘cool’ factor plays a very big role with them,” Lewis writes. “Tech gadgets are as much something they wear as something they use.” In addition, these users “are big into text messaging and social-networking — think Myspace.”

So, there you have it: tech-savvy women fit into three neat categories.

Another take on taming the email monster

At the beginning of the week, I posted about a move afoot at some companies to declare “email-free Fridays” in an effort to give workers a break from their overloaded inboxes. This morning, at the end of a work week and hundreds of email messages, meeting “invitations,” spam and one “mailbox full” notice (which necessitated a quick purge of large attachments this morning), my view hasn’t changed. An email free day — or some other approach toward taming the email behemoth — is a good idea.

But not everyone agrees. Judi Sohn of Web Worker Daily suggests that email is getting a bad rap. And it seems many workers agree. As proof, Sohn links to a Wall Street Journal report about U.S. Cellular’s attempt to impose no-email Fridays. (U.S. Cellular is also mentioned in the USA Today story I cited earlier in the week.) Email is the bane of many an office worker’s 8-to-5 existence. “But withdraw it even for a day,’ writes Sue Shellenbarger in the WSJ story, “and some employees fight back like recovering smokers in a nicotine fit.”

“Yes,” writes Sohn, “we’re sending and dealing with more email than ever, but we’re also getting a lot more done on our own timetable. I say: Cut email some slack. … Personally, I find those who interrupt my concentration with an unnecessary phone call (or face-to-face drop-in) to be far more annoying and stress-inducing than those who send 30 messages a day.”

Sohn makes a good point, and maybe on one of those days when I can get away from my inbox long enough to think clearly, I’ll be in more of a mood to agree with her. But today is not that day.