Addicted to technology

While all this technology we have at our fingertips is great, there are some pitfalls:

Blackberry thumb! But seriously, many people are using sites like Facebook or Classmates and reconnecting with first, or lost loves and wreaking havoc in their lives. Back in December, a Pembroke Pines Charter High school student was suspended for talkin' smack about her teacher online. More recently, a British teen was fired for an online posting where she described her job as "boring".

Now, people are leaving online goodbyes when they leave a job. Sometimes your departure is on the side of hasty, so you aren't able to express your feelings, good or bad. Well, not anymore! You can post whatever you'd like, but beware, once you post your feelings, it's there forever.

There's a great article about cleaning up your Facebook page to make sure it doesn't end up embarrassing you, or getting you fired.

In the past 24 hours, both CBS4 and NBC6 have aired segments about the dangers of social networking sites. There's also a worm invading various sites; it's a new variant of the "koobface" worm that attacked the sites last year.

One author has written a book about the rise of nastiness online; in Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining Our Conversation, author David Denby laments the bullying that's become rampant, especially on the Internet.

If you've ever run out of printer ink at an inopportune time, or dropped your cell phone in the commode, try these low-tech fixes.