Triage is the method of quickly poring over a variety of items and allocating them based on what needs to be handled immediately, what can be handled later, and what can be ignored altogether, he explains.

“First, you want to eliminate the inane; this includes all forms of spam,” declares Davidson.

After eliminating junk, proceed to “pick out which e-mails you can place in a holding folder, bin, or file.” He cautions that some messages may be entirely worth saving but simply not urgent; for example, you may want to read at leisure mails from friends and loved ones, or those that don’t insist on a reply.

“The final category is comprised of those email messages you receive that require immediate action,” the author continues. “The number of messages that fall under this heading should be small.” While some of these may not be urgent, prompt action may be warranted.

If you’re able to respond to a request quickly and effortlessly, why waste time parking it, asks Davidson. “If the message is staring you in the face, all you have to do is hit the reply button, type a few words, and then send it.”

Productive read.

It is in ‘the seventh night’ that you meet Balram Halwai, busy exploring Bangalore. “The city was full of outsiders. No one would notice one more,” he narrates, as the protagonist in The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga ( www.harpercollins.com), the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008.

Balram decides to hear Bangalore’s voice by sitting in a coffee shop on M.G. Road, with a pen and paper to write down everything he overhears.

Here are the snatches: “I completed that computer program in two-and-a -half minutes.” “An American today offered me four hundred thousand dollars for my start-up and I told him, ‘That’s not enough!’” “Is Hewlett-Packard a better company than IBM?”

Everything in the city came down to one thing, outsourcing, feels Balram. “Which meant doing things in India for Americans over the phone. Everything flowed from it – real-estate, wealth, power, sex. So I would have to join this outsourcing thing, one way or the other…”

Racy style.

Never base your opinions of your colleagues’ intelligence on their English-language skills, says Mary Murray Bosrock in European Business: Customs & Manners ( www.macmillanindia.com). Remember, English may be their second or third language, she adds.

Another tip in the country-by-country guide is to try using the colleagues’ language in salutations and closings. A personal closing can also help.

An important insight from the author is that your colleagues may judge a brief, to-the-point letter or email as unimportant. “A German professor once told me about a short e-mailed proposal an American had sent him.

He said, ‘Obviously, this is not important information, if it can be summarised so simply.’ Meanwhile, I’m sure the American had congratulated himself on his brevity!”

Bosrock is not in favour of using acronyms and abbreviations such as FYI, ASAP, nite, 4U and so on, in e-mails. Reason: “North Americans regularly use these informal shortcuts in electronic communication, but Europeans may not understand them.”

And, what should you do if a message you have just received upsets you? Calm yourself completely before responding, the author counsels.

Telephone the sender for clarification, she suggests. Because, “verbal communication can help prevent ‘nasty-gram’ correspondence.”

Suggested addition to your travel kit.

With over 30 years of experience and being utilised in over 25 industries and approximately 35,000 companies, it is estimated that SAP has about 12 crore users in more than a hundred countries, informs Glynn C. Williams in Implementing SAP ERP Sales & Distribution ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com). “SAP was founded in 1972 in Walldorf, Germany.

The name is an acronym for ‘Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung,’ meaning ‘systems, applications, and products in data processing.”

The book is ‘a compilation of notes, tips, and tricks,’ that the author learned in various implementations while on assignment in over 17 countries, as the preface states. “After completing these projects I found myself with a whole spectrum of knowledge, gleaned from day-to-day investigations and tasks as well as from the wonderful individuals I have had the pleasure of working with…”

For the hands-on developers and avid users.

While notions of information processing or constructivism are well known, the ICT (information and communications technology) community has not kept up to date with those views that emphasise the social dimension of learning, bemoans an essay included in Knowledge and Practice: Representations and Identities edited by Patricia Murphy and Robert McCormick.

The essay’s authors foresee that the use of ICT may entail three levels of change in current practice, viz. to improve efficiency of conventional teaching, to extend the reach of teaching and learning, and to transform teachers’ and learners’ conceptions of the subject itself.

On how ICT improves efficiency, here is an instructive citation: “When the children used databases and spreadsheets they didn’t just draw graphs, they could go on to interpret them. And when they worked together with a word processor, they started talking with zeal, not the usual gossip, but about science. Children who were challenged by doing things ‘the old way’ were able to move on. The tools that started life as information processing tools became really special tools to enhance our teaching. These were tools for the mind… (Frost, 1998).”

Well-researched.

Log files may prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that person X did bad thing Y, but to a court it is all just hearsay evidence, say Evi Nemeth et al. in Unix System: Administration Handbook, third edition ( www.pearsoned.co.in). Protect yourself with written policies, the authors urge.

“Log files sometimes include timestamps, which are useful but not necessarily admissible as evidence unless your computer is running the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to keep its clock synced with reality.”

You may need a security policy in order to prosecute someone for misuse, the authors advise.

A sample statement in such a policy can be: “Unauthorised use of University computing systems may involve not only transgression of University policy but also a violation of state and federal laws. Unauthorised use is a crime and may involve criminal and civil penalties; it will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Another piece of advice is about putting a warning of your snooping policy in /etc/motd (the message of the day file), thus: “Your keyboard input may be monitored in the event of a real or perceived security incident.”

Recommended addition to the system administrators’ shelf.

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

Tailpiece

“IT made it possible for us to deliver the pink slips almost instantaneously, except…”

“To those who were out on a protest march?”

“No, to the ones who had black-and-white screens!”

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