technology

Early in my programming career, when I started dealing with customers, a wise marketing fellow passed on this pearl of wisdom, “No one needs a drill. People need holes. Sell the ability to make the holes they need.”

This was in response to my feeble attempt to explain to a non-computer user, which was almost everyone in 1988, why this scheduling software was worth purchasing. I needed to sell the ability not to miss anything important, not the software.

I’m telling you this because web search is dead. It doesn’t know it yet, but it is.

Recently a friend asked me about managing online access in a house with young children. The internet is an astonishing and amazing thing filled with wonders to fuel your children’s imagination, but also contains stuff that parents will want to manage their access to.

Over the last 16 or so years, I’ve written a few columns about good password practices. Logging in to web services with an email address and password has become ubiquitous and good passwords are still key (please don’t reuse them) but I haven’t mentioned the email address side.