Marion Crain, JD, suggests looking at other legal models such as marriage law to more accurately respond to the realities of the employment relationship, particularly at termination. "The employment relationship possesses many attributes that we associate with marriage: emotional and economic investment, interdependence, and expectations that the relationship will endure absent bad behavior," she says.

"Small companies might turn to an out-of-box ESN like Salesforce (Chatter), while larger companies buy an ESN platform and then customize it to fit their needs.  But one of the biggest problems with ESN's right now is that developers and trainers don't account for culture."

"CEOs are sometimes rewarded for taking excessive risks - a practice that helped fuel the recent recession but could be altered if companies are more strategic in how they compensate their chief executives, a Michigan State University scholar argues in a new study."

"Focus groups can only tell you so much. Companies in the mobile business also need to know the right problems to solve, which involves understanding people's implicit needs and unknown desires. Ellen Isaacs, a user experience designer and ethnographer for PARC, explains the benefits of using ethnography to develop better mobile products."

"With an 8.1 percent August unemployment rate and 12.5 million Americans out of work, a new Temple University study examines a neglected area of research: how the unemployment process impacts the willingness of those laid off to endorse or return to their previous employer."

"With the rise of texting, instant chat and transcription apps, more people are ditching the venerable tool that once revolutionized the telephone business, displaced armies of secretaries and allowed us to eat dinner more or less in peace. The behavioral shift is occurring in tandem with the irreversible fading of voice calls in general, prompting more wireless carriers to offer unlimited voice minutes. In data prepared for USA Today, Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8 percent in July from a year ago."

"Australian-based collaboration design specialist Matt Cooperrider has begun to explore an idea that I think the GeekDad readership is more than well positioned to help with. As well as being one of those out-of-the-box thinkers and generally smart guys, Matt is also a role-player and geek at heart. He has begun a new project called Play to Decide which will research how role-playing games can be used to support organizations and communities in democratic decision-making and the collaboration that follows. "

Should you start Eric Decker or Demaryius Thomas? Those types of decisions, if made during the work day, could cost employers $6.5 billion in lost productivity, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called "PinPointing" that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn't work very well yet."

"We like to think that more information drives smarter decisions; that the more details we absorb, the better off we'll be. It's why we subscribe to Google Alerts, cling to our iPhone, and fire up our Tweetdeck. Knowledge, we're told, is power. But what if our thirst for data is actually holding us back? What if obsessing over information actually reduces the quality of our decisions? That's the question raised by Princeton and Stanford University psychologists in a fascinating study titled On the Pursuit and Misuse of Useless Information."

In March of 1961, nine years after the publication of Charlotte's Web, author E. B. White received a letter from a young fan named Cathy Durham who wanted to know when, if ever, his next children's book would see the light of day. His reply ultimately prompted another letter explaining information overload as it applied to a popular writer of kids books a half-century ago.

Suspended British journalist who criticised NBC's Olympics coverage is restored to Twitter, but the backlash shows the social network's growing pains

Guy Adams is The Independent's Los Angeles bureau chief. During the Olympics so far, he has carved out a nice spot on the how-much-NBC's-coverage-sucks beat. Now his Twitter account has been suspended-supposedly because NBC had it cut off after he complained

There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done.

Spoof site, or headline grabbing awareness campaign?  Whatever it is, Shell and Greenpeace are fast becoming a Twitter trend today. The bogus Arctic Ready web site, has been inviting crowdsourced headlines for its 'Shell in the Arctic' 'campaign'.  The associated Twitter account @arcticready claims to be committed to clean and safe Arctic energy. Contributors are invited to add captions to images of the Arctic.

Logos surround us in digital and physical space, but we rarely examine the thought and artistic thinking that goes into the design of these symbols. Utilizing a silent vocabulary of colors, shapes, and typography, logo designers give a visual identity to companies and organizations of all types. From cave painters to modern designers, artists throughout history have been reducing the complex down to simple ideas that communicate with the world.

The Baltimore City Fire Department plans to implement new social media guidelines after Chief James S. Clack said he found that firefighters and officers were "crossing the line" by posting inappropriate or sensitive information online. The social media website Twitter has become a forum for griping about City Hall policies in 140 characters or fewer - the maximum allowed in postings. The new policy comes after fire personnel have written a number of heated, politically charged barbs aimed at the department, Clack, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the City Council over a recent budgetary decision to close three fire companies in the city

Every day, Google run a daily puzzle on Wired GeekDad challenging the geeky masses with a search puzzle. The previous day's answer is posted when the new puzzle is published. 

It's an age-old tale: CNN anchor meets girl by harassing her on Twitter; girl refuses to accept anchor's further advances; anchor has a Twitter temper tantrum. On Sunday, Piers Morgan joined thousands of Twitter users in mocking 21-year-old Georgia Ford for tweeting, "'Is Wimbledon always held in London?"

Humans are pretty good at rolling with short bursts of pressure, but chronic uncertainty throws us for a loop. Anticipating a major stressful event can be worse than the actual occurrence itself, research shows.  When we fear the hatchet will fall, when the future is a fog, when we're paralyzed by powerlessness, we start to flip out. We pile on more work than we can handle. We don't take sick days when we need them. We start fueling up on coffee and cigarettes, and dropping the things that are good for us, like leisure activities and trips to the gym. Under chronic stress, our immune systems start to buckle from "overresponsivity."