Photo: Thinkstock

The sun eking through the curtains, the perfectly night-smushed pillow, the promise of a shower and breakfast: Morning can be a very good time. Nothing’s gone wrong yet. Unless, that is, you’re my husband and I’ve just tried to convince you that it’s the middle of the night and to put our child back to bed even though she’s trying to prove to us that it’s 6:30 am and time to get up and ready, which it is. Oh well. For the most part, as long as they're far away from me, people wake up happy.

That’s right, scientists have performed yet another study in order to prove something we kind of already knew: people all over the world wake up in a good mood, which fades throughout the day, and returns in the evening.  According to The Atlantic, researchers used Twitter to gauge the moods of 2.4 million people in 84 countries over two years. Positive tweets peak early in the morning and around midnight; in other words, before people get to work and after they’ve gotten home. There are also more happy tweets on the weekend. What’s really interesting about this study is that the patterns were consistent across cultures and countries. Apparently, work bums people out.

Is it futile to try to hold on to that happy feeling throughout the workday? Or can we perhaps convince the midday mood-dip that it’s not the right time, and to just go away? Since we're told happiness is contagious, maybe a grassroots happy-tweet program is order...

Get happy with these mood-lifters:
5 easy ways to feel happy right now
End your day on an high note
5 mood-mending movies

Illustration: Thinkstock

It's time to talk about your email inbox. You've got, what, 27 unread messages and 38 notes flagged for follow up? And every two minutes there's another disruption, from office-wide announcements about procedures for booking the conference room on a floor you've never even visited to spammy emails from that site where you once bought shoes that were half a size too small and not nearly as cute as they looked in the photo.

While it's easy to blame your junior colleague and her emoticon riddled meeting reminders or your boss whose nickname might as well be "Looping in an innocent bystander," we might have more control over the problem than we think. That's because, as entrepreneur and TED curator Chris Anderson argues in this insightful Washington Post op ed, "to fix a communal problem, a community needs to come together and agree to new rules." So he, along with his colleague Jane Wulf, opened the question up to the commons and created this amazing email charter with their help.

Full of gems like "respect recipients' time" and "ending a note with 'No need to respond' or NNTR is a wonderful act of generosity,'" their 10 commandments of email are actionable steps anyone can take to make her inbox—and the inbox of anyone else around her—more manageable.

"How to stop email overload? Think before you hit send" (Washington Post)
Email Charter

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Here are some things I know how to draw: Stick figures, the sun, clouds, flowers, boxy houses, boxy cars and actual boxes. Trust me, these skills are very impressive to a three-year-old cousin who's still working on the motor skills required to hold a pencil. Not so much when it comes to a Pictionary team of competitive, adult friends who have 45 seconds to use those clues to guess Sense and Sensibility (Emma Thompson version). Enough evenings like that and a person might bolt for the nearest exit at the mere mention of Pictionary.

So I was surprised to find myself giggling at my desk this morning as I sketched "Sleep with the fishes johnny," a prompt from a complete stranger on the site Teledraw. Like Pictionary—or Telephone, from which it borrows part of its name—the game starts with a phrase provided by one player that is then drawn by another. But here's the twist: instead of an angry mob relying on my ability to accurately sketch a Godfather quote, my doodle was turned over to a third player who described what he saw ("man on flotation device while goldfish wait to devour him") that then became the clue for another player to interpret. And so on. Once you've submitted your work, you can trace the chain back to its source or forward until people are stumped by it.

Photo: Thinkstock

Twenty-nine years ago, a man named Scott Fahlman introduced an invention that changed the world. The smiley emoticon.

Fahlman had noticed "lengthy diatribes" on message boards from people taking offense at misunderstood posts, so he proposed the use of a smiley— :-) —to indicate a joke or sarcasm, and the smiley's fraternal twin— :-( —to indicate something to be taken seriously.  MSNBC has a fascimile of the (very funny) original smiley-introducing exchange in context.

As we now all know, Fahlman's innovation spawned a whole complex universe of emoticons (how does my mother-in-law know how to text me a heart? It really looks like a heart!). Fahlman's smiley has probably clarified millions of the uninflected jokes that boing around the Internet every day. But what I love most about this is the "of course!" of it all, how Fahlman created something so brilliantly simple that it seems inevitable, as if it must never have been invented at all. Which is what makes it such a smart innovation. There must be a word for that phenomenon. Or perhaps an emoticon.

Other brilliantly simple innovations:
A simple idea, inspired by her kids' shoes, turned this mom into a millionaire.
The evolution of an everyday object.

Photo: Thinkstock

One of our all-time favorite authors, Alice Walker is about to hit a tablet device near you. The Color Purple—and ten more of her books—will be released (finally!) as an ebook, by Open Road Integrative Media, with personal extras like interviews and photographs.

 Walker told the Associated Press that her reason to go digital was due to "a sense, lacking often in publishing, of connectedness with the author, of all of us being in this adventure together, wanting it to be the best."

For those of you who need a Walker fix immediately, check out this GalleyCat video of Walker talking about her life's work or just go hug all your old tear-stained paperback versions—and read them one last, wonderful time (cry, sniffle).

More bookishness:

What would it take to change your life for the better? It may be less than you think—we've got mini-makeovers to help you upgrade everything from your workout to your weekend. #24: Bargain shop in a whole new way.Quit clipping coupons! Thanks to the popularity of sites like Groupon, flash sales (limited edition deals) are oh so of-the-moment. Four sites to suit any shopping style:

What would it take to change your life for the better? It may be less than you think—we’ve got mini-makeovers to help you upgrade everything from your workout to your weekend. #23: Yes, your iPad can be in the kitchen while you're cooking your messiest recipes.

Photo: Gregor Halenda

Tired of gunking up your iPad screen with tomato sauce while trying to follow a recipe for spaghetti Bolognese? The Chef Sleeve is the splatterproof, smearproof, and smudgeproof answer: The thin, food-safe film encases your tablet but doesn't interfere with touchscreen functions. Reusable (but also recyclable when they get too gross), the sleeves are sold in packaging that doubles as a convenient countertop iPad stand. (chefsleeve.com)



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What would it take to change your life for the better? It may be less than you think—we’ve got mini-makeovers to help you upgrade everything from your workout to your weekend. #17: If you never want to hear the words "Please enter your password then press pound" again, we have a solution.

Photo: Thinkstock

The last time you dialed in and listened to a voice mail was... when, again? Delete the hassle of message retrieval with Google's free voice mail service. After a quick setup, it automatically transcribes incoming messages and sends them to you as e-mails or text messages. Do a quick read and get on with your life.

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