After a long day at the office, imagine logging onto Facebook to see what your friends have been up to, only to have your boss or colleague message you about an urgent work matter.

Aside from the fact that you are officially off duty, is it appropriate for your co-worker to reach out to you through a social networking forum? Was it wise to accept a colleague or higher-up as a "friend" to begin with? And -- perhaps more importantly -- in this day and age, when people are seemingly available around the clock because of smartphones and our endless appetite for all things online, is anyone ever really "off duty?"

This 22-slide presentation discusses what it takes to be a succcessful business and corporate blogger.

Once upon a time, people mailed their holiday wishes to the North Pole and hoped for a reply on Christmas Day. Nowadays they are sending their wishes into cyberspace and are apt to get a reply in minutes.

America’s first Twitter Christmas got under way in earnest on Friday. Across the land, retailers and their customers used the social networking site to talk to one another about bargains, problems, purchases and shopping strategies.

Nielsen's research states that 18% of time spent online is spent on social networking sites and services. At first glance, this seems a bit high - especially considering the figure is 3x's greater than last year.

This 13-slide presentation covers the basics of e-mail etiquette.

Here's a story of American Airlines seeming to go out of its way to respond poorly to a situation -- after someone from the company had first responded well.

It started with a blog post written by Dustin Curtis, complaining about the poor user interface design of American Airlines website (including a suggested redesign). He didn't expect much of a response, but actually received a nice and detailed email from a user design person at American Airlines explaining why it was often tricky to good design at large companies, due to all of the different interests, but says that some good stuff is coming, even if it may take some time.

Now, that's a good response. It's human. It explains the situation without PR/marketing speak that a recipient would know was bogus. It is the type of response that makes someone feel good about American Airlines (mostly). So, how did AA respond?

It fired the guy.

The advent of the backchannel is a tremendous opportunity for presenters. The backchannel is an online conversation that takes place at the same time as people are talking live.

Audience participation didn’t use to scale easily beyond a small group. Now, the backchannel allows every audience member, whatever the size of the group, to be an active participant. However, if you plan to use a backchannel proactively in your presentation, it may be better to use a backchannel tool other than Twitter. This is because:

Whether its sales presentation, business communication, or communication management software, team communication software is highly needed in order to tear up the barriers to effective communication.

Do you feel like your cell phone's text message bill is getting higher every month? You're not alone. By some accounts, text messages cost more per megabyte to send than do messages from outer space to Earth. But you can email and Instant Message texts to phones for free. Here's how.

Office workers find themselves drowning in e-mail and interrupted by IM yet spend one day a week searching for people and information. Within an organization, it is hard to ask questions when you don't know who to ask, and it's hard to get answers without interrupting others. But over the last couple of years, a new model of communication and knowledge discovery has emerged on the web: microblogging (as popularized by Twitter).