Dave the Dealer on email signatures, horse blinkers and retail therapy

Occasional CRN columnist ponders how you seize the day via email

There's a lot of debate about the best way to sign off emails. Some keep it simple, playing it safe with a "thanks", a "cheers" or an inoffensive "best". Others opt for something more stately, such as "kind regards".

But yesterday morning I noticed one person, a Dodgi employee who shall not be named, had signed off a company-wide email in a way that I have never seen in my many, many years in the business.

At the bottom of an email, this individual flamboyantly signed off with the Latin phrase "carpe diem".

Although I can appreciate their attempt to stand out from the crowd, next time I would prefer a more up-to-date and less traditional version of the ancient maxim. Perhaps consider YOLO for any future correspondence.

I will also make the point that, in addition, the loftiness of a phrase like "carpe diem" didn't match up to the contents of the email. I'm sceptical about whether a company-wide memo about a scheduled office clean next week could really inspire our workforce to seize any kind of day.

Blinking mad

There's been a lot of talk about making the modern office environment a more efficient place. Britain has a huge productivity problem. We spend too much of our working day in meetings or carrying out banal tasks such as clearing out our inboxes.

As technology develops, more mundane tasks can be automated, freeing up staff to spend more time on critical business matters or coming up with new ideas.

But Panasonic has taken workforce optimisation into entirely uncharted territory. The Daily Mail reports that the vendor has developed horse blinkers - for humans.

The device - which wraps around the back of a person's head like something you might see in a dystopian sci-fi film like The Matrix - is designed to narrow your field of vision using a "horseshoe-shaped wall of dark material".

Named the Wear Space, the headgear also features noise-cancelling headphones to make sure your colleagues' chatter doesn't disrupt your zen-like concentration.

Each device will put a £200 dent in your wallet, along with a somewhat more noticeable dent in employee morale.

Panasonic claims that the device acts as a giant "do not disturb" sign for staff who just want to get on with their work. I find that locking my office door from the inside and closing the blinds works just as well.

Not angry, just disappointed

The World Wide Web is to be loved and loathed in equal measure. But the Web's creator, Tim Berners-Lee, recently told Reuters in an interview that he is "disappointed" with the way in which his brainchild has turned out.

Berners-Lee said he was saddened by the current state of the internet, pointing to recent scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media to spread hate.

Much like Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's classic, it seems the father of the internet feels only despondence at how his beautiful creation has morphed into something ugly and hideous and is now on the rampage.

"If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred, you feel it actually propagates much more strongly," he told Reuters.

I strongly agree with Berners-Lee's evaluation of Twitter. One need only take a look at Dodgi's account to get a flavour of how hateful people can be. Unfortunately, my head of communications has changed Dodgi's Twitter login details and banned me from the site as she deemed my tweets in response to these haters "inappropriate".

The loneliest number

I've become increasingly aware of the consumerisation of traditional holidays and celebrations. Just as Valentine's Day has become a marketing ploy to indulge our significant others with disingenuous cards, expensive dinners and corny oversized heart-shaped balloons, Christmas has become equally as consumer-driven. And with the surge in popularity of US exports such as Black Friday, retailers have more occasions to rub their hands with glee than ever.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has meanwhile been slowly popularising another excuse to buy unnecessarily expensive gifts for no apparent reason, with the invention of Singles' Day.

Singles' Day is on 11 November, or 11/11. The four ones act as a nice reminder for all the lonely hearts out there that they're on their own.

The idea is that single pringles should treat themselves to something extortionately expensive, with Alibaba as well as others such as JD Sports offering huge discounts on this "special" day.

The day is even more popular than Black Friday, with twice as much being sold over the 24-hour period than the entire five-day event from the US, according to Bloomberg.

It's a worrying development. Just the other night, I caught Her Indoors browsing Singles' Day sales online, and, when I casually asked what she was doing, she jokingly suggested that she'd already put the new holiday in her calendar.

■ Dave Diamond-Geezer, director of Digital Online Deals and Global Integration (Dodgi) of Dagenham Ltd.