- You use ELM on a VT220.
- You use Emacs and Gnus.
- Corporate standards force you to use Microsoft Outlook and you don’t even mind.
- You use Gmail for all work and personal email.
Documents
- Quill and parchment.
- XEmacs.
- Microsoft Word with 37 macros.
- Microsoft Excel for all documents .
- Google Documents for all correspondence.
Newsgroups
- What are newsgroups ?
- You use Emacs and Gnus.
- Your company doesn’t run an NNTP server for security reasons.
- Newsgroups are just another data source mashed into your aggregator.
Home Page
- Blank - just like your mind.
- SourceForge
- Personalised Google home page.
- Multiple Firefox tabs that take 4 mins to initialise.
Browser
- Lynx on an amber VT220.
- Emacs and W3
- IE 6.0
- IE 7.0 - feverishly hunting for the File menu.
- Firefox 3.0 (alpha)
O/S
- Ubuntu Linux with self-modified device drivers for wireless support on an old 386.
- Emacs.
- Windows XP - to provide technical support to all your relatives.
- OS X because all your trendy Mac friends can’t be wrong.
- Vista because you really do need to manage all those photos of your cat.
Social networking tools
- Five-a-side followed by the pub.
- Emacs mailing lists.
- You are a fan of Ajax but only to clean the sink.
- You have gold membership on Flickr.
- You spend more on Skype than your landline.
- A ‘mash-up’ is when you play with your food.
- You finally book an appointment with your GP about your ’long tail’.
- You think TechCrunch is a breakfast cereal.
- You think ‘First Tuesday’ is an investigative TV program hosted by Trevor McDonald.
Blogging platform
- Large text file in Emacs.
- Embryonic, unused corporate Wiki.
- Blogger Beta (101 Oracle bloggers can’t be wrong).
- Hosted WordPress with Snap plugin.
- Self-hosted WordPress with custom theme and 347 useless plugins.
- Irritating tendency to send humourous 3MB attachments on a Friday afternoon to colleagues, friends and family.
- Wooden crate in corner of Hyde Park.
Employment
- You have 10 years service for a large IT company and a silver pen to prove it.
- You are a successful, highly paid company director, err, well a mercenary Oracle contractor.
- You demand money to mind visiting fans’ cars at the City of Manchester Stadium.
- You have founded four failed startups but, undeterred, are contemplating the next.
Answers: Mainly 1 - you are stuck in an 80’s timewarp. Mainly 2 - you probably have a beard and may well be Richard Stallman. Mainly 3 - you are a technology Luddite. Mainly 4 - you are a Web 2.0 aficionado. Mainly 5 - you count Matt Mullenweg and Robert Scoble as close friends.