Sunday, September 29, 2013

[aaykarbhavan] Re: Wall Street Journal




Steps to Better Foot Health


Foot pain can signal big and small problems. Even how you get out of bed matters.

    By
  • ANGELA CHEN
[image] Stephanie Dalton Cowan
Are your feet healthy?
Even people who try to cover all the bases—avoiding fattening foods, hitting the gym and wearing sunscreen—may not be able to answer yes.
Doctors say people often ignore persistent but minor foot complaints, which can later develop into bigger problems, like lower back pain. Some common foot problems can mask underlying issues that are correctable if addressed early. Tender feet might be a sign of a pinched nerve, for example, or bunions might stem from weak arches. Other foot ailments, such as sores that don't heal, can point to a more serious condition, such as diabetes.
Podiatrists say foot ailments are a growing problem as more people get physically active. Running marathons, for instance, puts added pressure on the feet and can worsen existing issues that might be caused by genetics or poor footwear choices. Feet also must bear the burden from the growing numbers of people who are overweight or obese.
Many people don't wear shoes with proper support, which is especially harmful for active athletes, says Leslie Campbell, a spokeswoman for the American Podiatric Medical Association, a professional organization. "We see more young children coming in because they play sports like soccer and wear cleats, which are rigid, don't absorb shock, cause fatigue and should be worn as little as possible," she says. Dr. Campbell, a podiatrist at Presbyterian Hospital in Allen, Texas, recommends soccer players not wear cleats off the field and be sure to warm up adequately before playing so the joints are supple in the shoe.
Other sports, including football, basketball and tennis, require constant, quick side-to-side movements that increase the risk of ankle sprains. And long-distance running can cause overuse problems like heel spurs, pinched nerves in the ankle and excessive rolling of the foot, which is known as over- or underpronation.

SOLE STRESSORS

What feet endure:
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1. Heels
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2. Distance running
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3. Flimsy shoes
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Getty Images/Rubberball
4. Standing for long periods
People can check for pronation problems by looking at the bottoms of their shoes. Uneven wear means the foot isn't landing properly, which can cause a collapsed arch and lead to lower back pain, says Eugene Charles, a New York-based practitioner of applied kinesiology, an alternative medicine that combines elements of chiropractic, physical therapy and other disciplines. Orthotics are usually recommended in this case, he says.
Achy feet shouldn't just be explained away by old age or standing a lot, says Dr. Charles. Rubbing the feet after a long day should feel good. But if the feet are tender to the touch, this could reveal an underlying problem such as overworked muscles or weak arches. Often the wrong shoes are to blame, so try footwear with more support.
Sometimes a foot problem starts in another part of the body. If the bones in the ankle make a crackling sound when the joint is rotated, this could mean a major muscle located in the calf and foot, called the tibialis posterior, needs to be strengthened, Dr. Charles says. A weak tibialis posterior can cause tendon problems and shin splints. Standing on one foot or doing calf stretches and heel raises can strengthen the muscle.
Another routine stretch that wakes up the muscles in the feet should be done in the morning before getting out of bed, Dr. Campbell says. Sit with legs straight out in front of you and angle your toes toward your head and then away from it. This works the Achilles tendon and the fascial band, which connects the front and back of the foot.
"Jumping straight out of bed in the morning when the muscles are cold can harm the fascial band and cause plantar fasciitis, a very common and painful inflammation of the bottom of the foot," she says.
Other exercises include rolling your foot over a tennis or golf ball, which stimulates the nerve endings in the feet and protects from injury. Picking up marbles or towels with your toes strengthens the muscles in the toes and central part of the foot. And wrapping a rubber band around the toes and then expanding the toes outward supports the major muscles of the foot, Dr. Campbell says.
Elevating the feet whenever it is convenient is a good practice because it alleviates pressure, Dr. Charles says. Epsom-salt soaks and foot massages feel good, but usually don't address actual problems. If people need a soak every day for their feet to feel normal, there may be something wrong, he says.
Going barefoot isn't always a good idea. Shedding shoes on grass or on the beach can strengthen certain muscles, Dr. Campbell says. But walking barefoot on hard surfaces, which don't provide support, can cause muscle strain and misalignment.

Keeping Feet Fit

Regular stretches and exercises can strengthen muscles and help prevent some common foot problems.
  • Before getting out of bed, wake up the foot muscles. Sit with your feet extended and angle the toes toward your head and then away from it. This works the Achilles tendon and fascial band.
  • Rolling your foot over a tennis ball stimulates nerve endings and protects from injury. Picking up small objects like marbles strengthens muscles in the toes and foot.
  • Calf stretches strengthen major muscles in the lower leg that affect the foot.
  • Wrapping a rubber band around the toes and then expanding the toes outward supports foot muscles.
To prepare for a vacation that will involve lots of walking, Dr. Charles recommends getting the feet in shape by starting to take walks a month before the trip and gradually ramping up the workout length. He suggests alternating the speed—walk very slowly for one block, then fast for another—to work different muscles and strengthen the foot overall.
Some foot ailments can signal bigger problems, for which a podiatrist or orthopedic surgeon should be consulted. For example, pain in the big toe can be a sign of gout, a form of arthritis. Sores that don't heal can indicate diabetes and abnormal blood-glucose levels or peripheral artery disease. And soreness or a burning sensation in the ball of the foot can signal a pinched nerve.
Bunions and hammertoes are common ailments that are painful and usually indicate larger structural problems. Bunions are the bony bumps that form at the base of the big toe and hammertoes are toes with an abnormal bend in the middle joint. These can signal that the foot isn't receiving enough support, either because of ill-fitting shoes like heels, or genetics that cause the foot to be too mobile.
Neglecting foot health can lead to more complicated issues later. Ken Schimpf, a 54-year-old design consultant in New York, says he has had shoulder, neck and back pain for over 30 years. Recently he went to Dr. Charles and found that much of his troubles originated from a foot problem. Mr. Schimpf broke his foot decades ago and, during the healing process, started walking with his right foot splayed.
Mr. Schimpf's broken bone healed, but the ankle remained dislocated, Dr. Charles says. Over the years, the ankle caused muscle spasms that raised his right hip and caused alignment problems and pain in his upper body.
Dr. Charles has worked with Mr. Schimpf to manipulate the ankle back into place. "My back pain is much less and I don't have the same soreness or debilitating pain," Mr. Schimpf says. Although he has been physically active for years, now "when I hike and golf I don't have to fight through the pain."
Write to Angela Chen at angela.chen@wsj.com

A New Party Game: Who's Dishonest?


    By
  • DAN ARIELY
Dear Dan,
I'm turning 30 in December, and I want to have a "nontraditional" celebration. I'm thinking about re-creating some economics experiments at my party.
Here's the plan: Lots of alcohol and yummy appetizers at a fancy place here in Dallas. Computers scattered across the room with small apps, each running a different experiment. After all, how many parties do you go to where you get to have fun, have too much to drink and learn something about economics? Any advice?
—Virginia
I really love your idea—and here is a suggestion for an experiment relating to dishonesty. Give each of your guests a quarter and ask them to predict whether it will land heads or tails, but they should keep that prediction to themselves. Also tell them that a correct forecast gets them a drink, while a wrong one gets them nothing.

Have a dilemma for Dan?

Then ask each guest to toss the coin and tell you if their guess was right. If more than half of your guests "predicted correctly," you'll know that as a group they are less than honest. For each 1% of "correct predictions" above 50% you can tell that 2% more of the guests are dishonest. (If you get 70% you will know that 40% are dishonest.) Also, observe if the amount of dishonesty increases with more drinking. Mazel tov, and let me know how it turns out!
Dear Dan,
My daughter started dating a lazy, dumb guy. How can we tell her gently that he is wrong for her without preaching to her, causing her to ignore us or go against our advice?
—Concerned Mother
It seems that you are experiencing the same reaction most mothers around the world have toward their daughters' boyfriends. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you are, in fact, correct, and that your daughter's new boyfriend really is dumb, lazy and up to no good. Nevertheless, don't tell your daughter your opinion and instead ask her questions. Naturally, people tend not to ask themselves certain questions. But if someone else asks them, these questions get planted in their minds, and it is hard to keep from thinking about them. So thoughtful questions can make people think differently about what they want and how they view the world around them.
For example, you can ask, "How do you and your boyfriend get along? Do you ever fight? What do you love about him? What do you like less about him?" I admit it's a bit manipulative, but I hope it will get her to think about her relationship in more depth. And maybe she will reach the same conclusions you have.
Dear Dan,
My wife-to-be really wants to get a two-carat ring, but I'd rather get a smaller ring and spend the rest of the money for future expenses—house, wedding, etc.
Her view is that most of her friends have big rings, plus she's been dreaming about this for a long time. What do you think about this irrational behavior? Any advice?
—Jay
First, there is a difference between irrational and difficult to understand, and for sure it is irrational to call your future wife irrational in public. If you get her a ring, realize that comparison to her friends is part of the game you are buying into and try to get her a ring that will make her happy with this comparison.
At the same time, what if you could switch to a different jewelry category—maybe a wedding necklace or bracelet? In this case comparison will not be as clear, and you could probably get away with spending much less.
Finally, has it occurred to you that she may want this so much because you are so against it?
A version of this article appeared September 14, 2013, on page C12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A New Party Game: Who's Dishonest?.

Four Cauliflower Recipes

Whether in classic white or psychedelic shades of purple, green and orange, this versatile veggie is the sleeper of the season. Kitty Greenwald taps chefs on both coasts for ways to use your head

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(1) Sicilian Cauliflower Salad
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Ryan Liebe for The Wall Street Journal, Food Styling by Anna Kovel, Prop Styling by Stephanie Hanes
Sicilian Cauliflower Salad
David Gould serves this pretty salad at Roman's in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Active Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 1 hour Serves: 4
Preheat oven to 475 degrees. In a large bowl, toss 8 cups cauliflower florets (preferably a mix of green, white and purple) with 3 tablespoons olive oil and a pinch of salt. Spread florets across two baking sheets and roast until browned, about 25 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Place ¼ cup raisins in a small bowl and cover with white wine vinegar. Let sit 30 minutes. Rinse and drain ¼ cup salt-packed capers, place in a small bowl, cover with water and let sit 30 minutes. Meanwhile, spread ½ cup almonds across a baking tray. Roast until aromatic and darker in color, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and roughly chop. Set aside.
Strain raisins, reserving vinegar, and capers. To serve, arrange florets on a large serving platter. Garnish with raisins, capers, ¼ cup thinly sliced red onions, ½ cup torn mint leaves and Pecorino Romano shavings. Drizzle salad with 4 tablespoons olive oil, a few drops reserved raisin vinegar and lemon juice and salt to taste.
(2) Grain-Free Cauliflower Couscous
image
Ryan Liebe for The Wall Street Journal, Food Styling by Anna Kovel, Prop Styling by Stephanie Hanes
Grain-Free Cauliflower Couscous
This dish, adapted from a version by Mourad Lahlou of Aziza Restaurant in San Francisco, is great as a main course or with fish.
TOTAL TIME: 25 minutes Serves: 4-6
In a bowl, cover ½ cup currants with 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar and water. Set aside.
In a medium sauté pan over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Add 1 medium shallot , thinly sliced, and 1 clove garlic , thinly sliced, and cook until shallots are soft, about 5 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon curry powder, stirring until butter has melted. Transfer curry butter to a bowl and set aside.

The Off Duty Fall 50

From the best PB&J to no-sweat bike clothing, here are fifty ways to make your season more stylish
[image] F. Martin Ramin/The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas, Grooming by Cheyenne Timperio/ArtMix Beauty
In a food processor, pulse florets from ½ head of cauliflower (preferably orange Cheddar variety) in batches, until cauliflower breaks down to couscous-size grains. Strain steeped currants.
Wipe clean sauté pan used for curry butter. Set over medium-high heat and add 2 tablespoons grapeseed oil. Once hot, add ½ yellow onion , thinly sliced, and sauté until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add 3 garlic cloves , thinly sliced, and sauté until aromatic, about 2 minutes. Increase heat to high. Add cauliflower to pan and sauté, constantly stirring, until just tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in reserved curry butter, pickled currants, ½ Moroccan-style preserved lemon or ½ small fresh lemon , thinly sliced, 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves, ½ cup chopped toasted almonds and a pinch of chili flakes. Sauté until just warmed through, 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and season with salt.
(3) Whole Roasted Cauliflower With Anchovy Aioli
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Ryan Liebe for The Wall Street Journal, Food Styling by Anna Kovel, Prop Styling by Stephanie Hanes
Whole Roasted Cauliflower With Anchovy Aioli
Aioli brings lusciousness and savory tang to this recipe from Aimee Olexy of Philadelphia's Talula's Garden, Talula's Table and Talula's Daily.
Total Time: 25 minutes Serves: 2-4
Preheat oven to 475 degrees. In a large pot, combine 2½ cups dry white wine, ½ cup olive oil, ¼ cup kosher salt, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes, 1 tablespoon raw sugar, 1 bay leaf and 8 cups water. Set pot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, then add 1 cauliflower head, green leaves removed and base end trimmed. Simmer cauliflower, turning occasionally, until a knife pierces the heart easily, 15-20 minutes.
Transfer cauliflower to a rimmed, buttered baking sheet. Place on center rack of oven and roast, rotating halfway through, until cauliflower is browned all over, 30-40 minutes.
Meanwhile, make aioli: Use a Microplane to grate 1 clove garlic over a medium bowl. Add a pinch of salt, ½ teaspoon water and 1 large egg yolk to bowl, whisking to combine. While whisking constantly, slowly add ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 drop at a time, until aioli thickens and emulsifies. Stir in 5 finely chopped anchovy fillets and lemon juice and salt to taste.
Serve roasted cauliflower with a bowl of aioli for dipping and a knife for slicing off florets.
(4) Cauliflower Soup With Crème Fraîche
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Ryan Liebe for The Wall Street Journal, Food Styling by Anna Kovel, Prop Styling by Stephanie Hanes
Cauliflower Soup With Crème Fraîche
A swirl of crème fraîche makes this velvety soup, adapted from Jessica Boncutter of San Francisco's Bar Jules, a white-on-white beauty.
Active Time: 20 minutes Total Time: 1¼ hours Serves: 4
In a deep, wide pot over low heat, melt 6 tablespoons butter. Stir in 1½ cups thinly sliced yellow onions and 1 cup thinly sliced celery. Cook until onions are very soft, 15-20 minutes. Stir in 1 tablespoon toasted, ground coriander and 5 cups chopped cauliflower. Increase heat to medium-low and stew, stirring often, until cauliflower almost breaks down, about 40 minutes.
In a saucepan, warm 5 cups vegetable or chicken broth. Add broth to cauliflower mixture, increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
In a blender, purée soup in batches until smooth. Return soup to pot and bring to a boil. Turn off heat. Garnish with crème fraîche.
A version of this article appeared September 14, 2013, on page D7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: EatMoreCauliflower.

How Software Can Help Solve the Office-Layout Puzzle

Workspace-allocation software helps move employees and make the most of space


Where people sit matters.
Crafting a dynamic office layout that reflects a company's culture and image (think gleaming mahogany conference tables for a law firm, ping-pong tables for a quirky startup) can encourage collaboration, productivity and creativity, and lead to improved morale and reduced turnover. Doing it in as small a footprint as possible can save a company big bucks on rent.
But crafting the perfect office is tough work. Every time you rearrange people, you have to rearrange all the "stuff that goes along with them," says Katherine Jones, a lead analyst with research and consulting firm Bersin by Deloitte. That includes everything from copy rooms to coffee machines. Throw in additional challenges, such as remote workers who need a desk only once a week, and deciding where to carve out communal space and cluster desks quickly becomes a complex puzzle.
Luckily, as office technology has evolved, so has the technology to help set up offices. Software from companies such as OfficeSpace Software Inc., Qube Global Software Ltd. and Fox RPM Corp. has made it a whole lot easier to design office layouts and coordinate employee moves.
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OfficeSpace
Software like this program from OfficeSpace helps users deal with the complexities of managing office layouts.
ExactTarget, a digital marketing company owned by Salesforce.com Inc. CRM -1.67% and based in Indianapolis, used to use Excel spreadsheets and white boards to map out moves—a manual, labor-intensive process, according to Tami Koch, its director of corporate and global facilities. Ms. Koch sought a software solution that was "intuitive" and "sustainable"—something the average worker at the company could tap into.
She turned to OfficeSpace software, a highly visual, Web-based program that gives people across the company a bird's-eye view into the workplace. Employees can scout out emergency equipment or see how many seats are in a conference room. Facilities staff can point maintenance workers to the exact wall that needs to be painted. And Ms. Koch can coordinate moves—like one that shuffled 159 people from one building to another—by dragging and dropping workers from their old desks to new ones. That action triggers messages to the employees who are being moved, as well as their managers, and sends the necessary information to the facilities team. Since the company is expanding, it runs a space-usage report weekly to determine when it's time to push into a new floor or building.
The International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization with employees scattered across more than 40 countries, uses OfficeSpace to help deploy staffers to locations where crises have erupted. You can pluck a worker from a spot in the New York office and move him or her over to a desk in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, with a click of the mouse, says Adrian Grad, the organization's director of facilities and operations. It's easy to track and classify vacancies, she adds, enabling her to determine which seats are free for use by workers who may be in town for just a few days and which can house a long-term occupant.
By getting a better handle on the organization's vacancies, Ms. Grad was able to squeeze more work groups into existing space.
"Because of that, we were able to grow within our footprint and not take another floor in this building," she says, saving the organization money.
Ms. Grad says she can also easily group employees together who are working on a major project, testing out various scenarios with department heads and then settling on the one that works best. She considers worker habits and needs as she lays out the space: Many employees sit at long benches to encourage collaboration; others, like employees who meet with donors, need private offices.
Ms. Feintzeig is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. She can be reached at rachel.feintzeig@wsj.com .

Say Goodbye to the Password

New technology aims to offer security that is more convenient and more effective


    By
  • ANDREW BLACKMAN
Here's the fundamental problem with passwords: They are most effective in protecting a company when they are long, complicated and changed frequently. In other words, when employees are least likely to remember them.

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Google Director of Security Engineering Mayank Upadhyay, FIDO Alliance President Michael Barrett and Gartner Research Director Eric Ahlm discuss the end of passwords as we know them.
As a result, technology companies are rushing to provide solutions that are both more secure and more convenient. Many laptops now come with built-in fingerprint readers. Smartphones and other devices, too, are opening up biometric options such as facial and voice recognition.
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.71% last year acquired AuthenTec Inc., a developer of fingerprint-sensor technology, and on Tuesday it said its new iPhone will come with a fingerprint sensor. Microsoft Corp. MSFT +1.53% says its Windows 8.1 operating system, due out next month, is "optimized for fingerprint-based biometrics." Biometric authentication will be usable more extensively within the system, the company says.
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John Chuang
Berkeley Prof. John Chuang dons a headset that reads possible 'passthoughts.'
Google Inc., GOOG -0.20% PayPal Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd. 0992.HK +0.36% and others, meanwhile, have come together in an organization known as the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance, which is aimed at creating industry standards for biometric and other forms of so-called strong authentication.
Google is also experimenting with a new kind of hardware token, created by Palo Alto, Calif.-based Yubico Inc. Like the traditional hardware tokens that generate random numeric passwords and which companies have used for years, the Yubico devices generate temporary passwords to be used as a second form of authentication.
But instead of having to read the password off the token and retype it, employees can simply plug the token into a USB port or touch it on a mobile device using near-field communication, a technology through which electronic devices communicate by making physical contact.
Google is testing the tokens with employees this year, and plans to offer them to consumers next year as a way of logging into Gmail and other Google accounts more securely.
Mayank Upadhyay, a director of security engineering at Google, says the tokens are easy to use and have strong encryption.
"We believe that by using this token we've raised the standard of security for our employees beyond what was commercially available," he says. The token works with Google's Web browser Chrome, and "works very seamlessly for people in their day-to-day workflow here at Google," he says.
Risk Scores and Biometrics
Another new option, from RSA, the security division of EMC Corp. EMC -0.42% and creator of the widely used SecurID hardware tokens, is risk-based authentication.
This technology sifts through masses of user data from various groups at a company to establish "normal" behavior, then assigns risk scores to each user. If an employee does something unusual, like log in from a new location, use a different computer, or try to access a system other than his or her usual, the risk score will increase, and the employee may be asked to provide additional authentication, for example by verifying his or her identity over the phone.
Many people expect the security landscape to change rapidly as more and more employees bring their own smartphones and other devices to work. While the proliferation of individual devices is often seen as a security threat, some analysts suggest that mobile devices can improve security by making it easier to use biometric authentication. Most mobile devices feature a microphone and camera, and can pinpoint an employee's location as well.
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Yubico Inc.
Yubico's random-password token plugs into a USB port or can be touched to a screen.
"We think that biometric authentication is going to be significantly more popular, and the driver and enabler of this is mobile computing," says Ant Allan, research vice president at Gartner Inc. IT +0.47% of Stamford, Conn.
He explains that for large enterprises, installing new hardware for each employee can be very expensive, thus a system that draws on commonly owned personal devices has clear economic advantages. Moreover, employees with mobile devices are likely to find a fingerprint reader much easier to use than remembering and typing passwords.
Other developers of groundbreaking security tools include Agnitio SL of Madrid, which makes voice-recognition software used in law enforcement. The company has developed a system that allows workers to log in by speaking a simple phrase.
London-based PixelPin Ltd., meanwhile, wants to replace passwords with pictures. Choose a picture of your spouse, for example, and log in by clicking on four parts of her face in a sequence you've memorized. A photo is easier for people to remember than a text password, and harder for others to replicate, says company co-founder Geoff Anderson.
Here's a Thought
And, looking further into the future, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are studying the use of brain waves as authentication. Test subjects in the research wore a headset that measured their brain-wave signals as they imagined performing a particular task, and the researchers were able to distinguish between different people with 99% accuracy. In theory, an imagined task like this could become a worker's "passthought."
Most experts expect companies to use a variety of different measures. Saratoga Hospital, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., for example, uses fingerprint readers as a more secure alternative to passwords. But while they've solved many of the hospital's security problems, the print readers don't work for everyone. A few elderly volunteer workers struggle to hold their hand still, and the readers don't work when people are wearing gloves, or when their hands are too dry, says Gary Moon, security analyst at the hospital. Some employees also have refused to hand over their prints.
As a result, Mr. Moon says, the hospital is still using passwords as a backup security system.
"There really isn't any 'one size fits all' in authentication," says Vance Bjorn, founder of DigitalPersona Inc. in Redwood City, Calif., which supplied the fingerprint readers to Saratoga Hospital. Companies need access to a combination of different technologies, Mr. Bjorn says.
"One technology solves certain problems, but it might not be the right mix of security, convenience, cost and ease of deployment for everyone."
Mr. Blackman is a writer in Crete. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com .
A version of this article appeared September 16, 2013, on page R2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Stay Secure Without Passwords.

New Software Helps Manage Business Contacts

Programs offer ways to keep track of contacts and sync them among sites and devices

The rise of social networking has made meeting new people—both socially and professionally—easier than ever.
The same can't be said of keeping track of them.

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Open software standards mean the most popular services that store people's names, numbers and email addresses work on almost any device.
But these services don't always speak the same language. Translating a stack of business cards into digital profiles often involves hours of tedious typing. The task becomes even harder once complex data from social networks like Facebook Inc. FB +1.69% and LinkedIn Corp. LNKD -2.87% are added to the mix.
Making It Work
Developers at Google Inc., GOOG -0.20% Microsoft Corp. MSFT +1.53% and Apple Inc. AAPL -0.71% are aware of the mismatch and all provide ways to export contacts to other systems. Microsoft Outlook users, for example, can download their contacts to a "comma separated value" file that's palatable to Google applications like Gmail.
Most software providers also offer special programs or plug-ins that sync contacts automatically. Google, for instance, sends its contact information through a free-to-use format that devices like iPhones can read. Those iPhone users can configure their Mail application to translate Apple's address-book entries into Google-friendly data.
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn's CardMunch turns photos of business cards into digital contacts.
Yet even the solutions present their own problems. Syncing one set of names with another often causes duplicates that clog your directory.
Microsoft also charges other companies fees to use its well-established ActiveSync service, which usually works well on a technical level but sometimes inflames old turf wars: Google recently backed out of its Outlook-syncing program, restricting it to companies and institutions that pay for Google's apps. The decision left millions of casual Gmail users who also rely on Outlook in the lurch.
Third-Party Problems
One alternative is to keep contact information on social networks, which let users store much richer details—birth dates, family relationships, work histories and common friendships—than a business card ever could. But some services still aren't good at sharing. Facebook is unlikely to sync with LinkedIn's profiles, for example.
LinkedIn also owns CardMunch, a scanning app that gives users a less labor-intensive way to file hundreds of new business cards into directories with a simple snap from a smartphone camera. The service is only available for Apple devices, but CardMunch has already enhanced LinkedIn's value without needing too many users: The more than two million contacts scanned to date offer LinkedIn the chance to add even more names to its 238 million-member social network.
CardMunch has a low-tech twist: It relies on human beings to ensure its uploaded files' accuracy, which means a data-entry worker, not a line of code, puts contact information where it belongs. LinkedIn spokeswoman Julie Inouye says employees entering the data adhere to strict privacy rules.
Another solution: Third-party apps from wireless carriers and independent developers can sync phone contacts with Outlook entries and Google profiles. But these types of services carry risks that are less likely to dog larger software makers.
Giants like Apple or Microsoft can tweak their products and give independent developers little to no warning, causing glitches that punish those startups' customers. Third-party address books are also vulnerable to the realities of a cutthroat software market—as customers of the syncing services Smartr and Soocial recently discovered.
The developer behind Smartr, a contact aggregator for Gmail and iPhones, recently revealed plans to scrap many of its features next year after Yahoo Inc. YHOO +2.44% acquired the company. Soocial decided its best option was to shut down, using its data instead to serve as a resource for French social network Viadeo SA, which acquired the syncing service in 2011.
"We figured out that approach of just having an address-book manager wasn't something that people were going to be willing to pay for" en masse, Soocial co-founder Stefan Fountain says. "It was really too technical a problem for people to really care about."
Avoiding duplicate contacts—or names that fall through the cracks—depends on a central address book that other directories can use. If you're comfortable keeping hard-won contacts online, the Web is the best place to do that. Otherwise, a secure server is usually more secure than a smartphone or personal computer. That involves putting at least some of your eggs in one basket.
Mr. FitzGerald is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's New York bureau. He can be reached at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com .

How to Work Without Microsoft Office

There are more appealing alternatives than ever to the software nearly everyone uses


For decades, people at work have griped about one aspect or another of Microsoft MSFT +1.53% Office. Now, they can do something about it.

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The much used bundle of software—including Word to write documents, spreadsheet maker Excel and PowerPoint for presentations—won't lose its dominance in the workplace anytime soon. But there are more appealing alternatives than ever.
The contenders generally fit into one of two camps: services that let you ditch Office, and those that supplement Office, especially on tablets.
Microsoft Corp. says complaints about Office are inevitable given the huge number of users, but the company says customer satisfaction levels are very high.
Here are three common headaches people have with Microsoft Office, and some alternatives that may fit the bill.
Editing Files Together
Many cubicle dwellers work together on documents or PowerPoint presentations by emailing attachments back and forth with colleagues—and wishing for a better way to collaborate.
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Google Inc.
Collaboration is a Google Docs strength.
The Web-friendly Office 365 is more collaborative than prior editions of Office, but there are kinks. For example, in an online version of Excel, two people can't have the same spreadsheet open at once. (Microsoft says this feature is coming.) Co-workers can all type together into a single Word file, but you get locked out if you and a colleague try to edit the same paragraph.
Emily Davidson, a Web designer in Raleigh, N.C., uses Google GOOG -0.20% Docs. When she and her co-workers have a document open at the same time, each person's markups instantly appear in a different color and with the individual's name in the margin, and more than one person can work on the same paragraph. Google Docs is free for consumer versions. Corporate accounts start at $50 a person annually.
The Quip word-processing tool also stresses collaboration. When a worker checks off a completed item on a project task list, her colleagues on the project get an alert on their phones. Office doesn't have a notification function. Quip also will show you, for instance, that a colleague edited the task list 10 minutes earlier, with his added item highlighted in green. Quip is free for individuals, and businesses can sign up for $12 a person per month.
Working From Anywhere
Word, Excel and some other Office software don't fully work on iPads. (There is a stripped-down version of Office, called Office Web Apps, that Microsoft recommends people use on the Apple Inc. AAPL -0.71% tablet.) Deirdre Reid, a freelance writer, uses CloudOn software, which lets her access and edit Office files when she's away from home and back up everything on Dropbox, a service for saving documents online. Other services that work on iPads and iPhones include Apple's bundle of Pages, Numbers and Keynote software.
Complications and Expense
Tom Eid, a technology analyst with research firm Gartner Inc., IT +0.47% says many people never use some of the features packed into Office that sometimes make the software tough to navigate. He says low-cost or free alternatives may be good enough for some people.
Google Docs, Quip and free software called Kingsoft from Kingsoft Office Software Corp. are options for people who are happy with fewer features.
The newest version of Office to install on your computer costs $140 or more; Microsoft recently started selling a Web-friendly subscription edition for about $100 a year. And the stripped-down Office Web Apps is free.
Ms. Ovide is a Wall Street Journal reporter in San Francisco. She can be reached at shira.ovide@wsj.com .

Tools to Manage Workers' Mobile Devices

New software helps companies cope with their employees' use of mobile gadgets for work


Just three years ago, the only mobile access Owens Corning OC -0.34% employees had to the company's network was through company-owned BlackBerrys, and those were primarily used to manage email.

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Today, the company's employees not only can access their email on the go but also are increasingly able to use many of the applications they need for work. And 80% of the devices they use to do that are owned by the workers themselves and come from a wide variety of manufacturers.
It's a trend playing out at most companies, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets. Yes, it can cause some headaches for IT departments. But at the same time, many are finding some relief in software designed to help them cope with the challenge of getting all those devices to work with their network systems smoothly and securely.
Can't Stop It
Technology consulting firm Ovum recently reported that almost 70% of workers owning a smartphone or tablet use it to access corporate data. Other studies suggest that number might be even higher.
So, companies are finding that they need to open the door to employees using their own devices for work—and manage the process. "If they say no, users will do it anyway," says Phillip Redman, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc. IT +0.47% "There is too much risk" in allowing that to happen without any company oversight.
Owens Corning initially tried to cope with the flood of mobile devices on its own. But eventually the sheer number of users and devices and the complexity of different operating systems and worker needs led the building-products maker to seek help.
"It just got to the point where we could continue to manage it but it certainly wasn't as streamlined or efficient as we would hope for," says Steve Zerby, chief information officer at Owens Corning, which now uses software from AirWatch LLC to manage wireless devices.
AirWatch is one of several companies that specialize in mobile-device management software, or MDM. Other prominent MDM specialists are Good Technology Corp. and MobileIron. Bigger players like International Business Machines Corp., IBM -1.73% Citrix Systems Inc. CTXS -1.75% and AT&T Inc. T -0.73% also offer MDM software.
Off the Shelf
Many of the products are "off the shelf," meaning they can be bought and used by IT departments without any customization. Employees can easily download the software on their mobile devices.
The programs can manage both company- and worker-owned devices; most have the option of being cloud-based or running off of company servers.
The products generally can locate a device, which may help determine if it is stolen or simply lost. If the device can't be recovered or the worker has left the company, information relevant to the company can be erased remotely.
MDM software allows groups within a company to be managed differently, so that everyone's access can be limited to the information and applications they need and sensitive information can be strictly controlled. For example, the sales team may need different tools and information access than the human-resources department.
Having a dedicated mobile-device management program also helps the information-technology department focus on other issues. Blackstone Group LP BX 0.00% reports that 18% of the calls to its service desk relate to problems with mobile devices.
"Anything we can do to make that easier, we are going to do," says William Murphy, chief technology officer at Blackstone. "It is as much about centralization as it is about security."
Making the Choice
Blackstone, which uses software from MobileIron, made its decision after evaluating a number of options. While there are many similarities among the various MDM products, Mr. Murphy stresses that organizations need to find the best fit for their particular needs when going through the search process.
Mr. Zerby from Owens Corning says companies also need to have a broad game plan in place before implementing a new mobile-management program, making sure they have their device policies, security issues and financial decisions straight.
"This isn't something that the IT organization can just march off and implement," he says.
And of course, companies need to remain alert to new developments in the mobile market.
Smartphones and tablets are just the beginning of what companies will have to deal with, says Suresh Kumar, chief information officer at Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BK -1.14% which uses MDM software from Good Technology. Down the road, workers will want to use other mobile devices—Internet-connected cars, for one—to get work done, he says.
"This isn't the end of this; there is still plenty that is going to change," Mr. Kumar says.
Mr. Gryta is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. He can be reached at thomas.gryta@wsj.com .

Damage Control After an Office Showdown

Fallout can harm morale—or boost problem-solving; here's how to recover.

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Columnist's name

While office blowups can be cathartic, research shows that witnessing such a battle sparks a measurable decline in onlookers' working memory and creativity. Sue Shellenbarger and operational psychologist Dr. Michael Woodward discuss on Lunch Break.
Angry yelling is rare in offices these days. But almost every workplace—even the most well-run—will occasionally witness a showdown—a loud, public conflict between colleagues.
When a blowup takes place, the impact is often office-wide—today's open-plan workplaces offering little to shield listeners. On top of the damage to the participants' own careers, such incidents take a toll on co-workers' productivity and morale and drive customers away.
Still, the outcome depends partly on how the participants handle the aftermath. An argument can even be helpful if it brings problems out in the open to be solved.
Some 30% of executives and employees argue with a co-worker at least once a month, according to a recent survey of 1,000 workers by Fierce Inc., a Seattle leadership development and training company specializing in workplace communication. A small number of those arguments escalate into emotional screaming matches that no one can win, says Halley Bock, the company's president.
After the first reaction—"This is really awkward"—many bystanders are unnerved, says human-resource executive Gillian Florentine. At one office where she worked, co-workers called on her to break up a shouting match among colleagues. "Heads were popping up over cubicle walls like gophers," she says. Even days after the conflict was resolved, co-workers stopped by her office days later, asking, "Do we need to worry about that happening again?" says Ms. Florentine.
Merely observing rudeness in the workplace hurts bystanders' performance on both routine and creative tasks, according to research led by Christine Porath, an associate professor of management at Georgetown University. Witnessing conflict "robs people of cognitive resources, disrupts working memory and ultimately hijacks performance," says Dr. Porath, co-author of "The Cost of Bad Behavior." Moreover, only 20% of customers who witness rude behavior by a company's employees say they would buy its products or services, compared with 80% who see workers behave politely, she says.
Some conflict is healthy and speeds problem-solving. Tensions between Greg Nance and Han Shao, co-founders of ChaseFuture, a college-admissions and career-consulting firm for international students, erupted into an argument recently in front of three employees in the company's Shanghai office. Mr. Shao, the chief financial officer, told Mr. Nance that he was spending too much time on the road or on breaks pursuing his avid interest in mountain-climbing. Mr. Nance, the CEO, felt strongly about balancing his intense work on fundraising, marketing and recruiting with downtime for rejuvenation. But as head of operations for the fast-growing company, Mr. Shao says, "I was juggling a million projects and needed all hands on deck."
"We both lost our cool in the heat of the moment," Mr. Nance says, but quickly "reined it in…realizing we'd become theater at the office." The partners retreated to Starbucks to talk. Then they sought advice from Sebastian Marshall, a Taipei-based executive-development and profitability consultant. They now hold weekly "founders' meetings" to work through issues. And Mr. Nance has canceled two planned mountain expeditions to spend more time in Shanghai, he says.
Mr. Marshall says the dispute "helped them refocus on the long term" and their shared goals.
Office clashes shouldn't be allowed to remain unresolved. A few years ago, marketing executive Marta Garcia had a heated discussion in a meeting with another manager, as two employees looked on, and hard feelings lingered. About six months later, an employee tried to take advantage of the rift, playing them off against each other to get the schedule she wanted, Ms. Garcia says. Ms. Garcia invited the other manager to lunch and asked for forgiveness, enabling the two to present "a united front," she says.
"Time doesn't heal all wounds, it only makes them harder to repair," says organizational psychologist Mike Woodward, who has coached Ms. Garcia on resolving conflicts.
Showdowns tend to happen more often in high-pressure workplaces with technical or professional hierarchies, such as hospitals, says Steven Dinkin, president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego nonprofit that resolves about 2,000 disputes a year, including many in the workplace. Employees facing tight deadlines and intense competition are more prone to emotional warfare.
People who find themselves in a blowup should step back and find a way to cool off, says Mr. Dinkin, co-author of "The Exchange," a book on resolving workplace conflicts. Get out of the office for a while, or wait overnight if necessary. "When emotions are running that high, rational thinking is at its lowest point," Mr. Dinkin says.
When a combatant is able to refocus calmly on the underlying issues, Mr. Dinkin suggests trying to restart the conversation by focusing on the other person, acknowledging his perspective, asking questions aimed at understanding his frustrations, and paraphrasing his points to show you understood. Then state your viewpoint and try to find a compromise that will benefit the employer.
Some issues, such as pay or performance, are too hot to handle without a manager's help. When speaking to the manager, calmly explain the underlying issues in the dispute, and show you are willing to try creative solutions, Mr. Dinkin says. After settling a dispute, co-workers also need to agree on what to say to colleagues about it, he adds.
Bystanders often wonder whether to intervene in a showdown. "If you're the intern and a couple of senior directors are fighting, it is probably better to just turn around and go the other way," says Dr. Woodward, author of "The You Plan." But if peers start screaming in front of others, suggest a break or guide them to a private setting to calm down.
A manager should almost always break up showdowns between subordinates. When an executive at Steve Blue's company neared a blowup during a meeting with an overseas business partner, Mr. Blue stopped the conversation and "talked them off the ledge," he says. He took the executive outside for a walk. Then he met alone with the other man in the conference room. After he brought them back together and told both what he had said to each one, they settled the dispute, says Mr. Blue, a speaker and turnaround specialist who is currently chief executive of a Winona, Minn., manufacturer.
If clients are looking on, it is important to do whatever it takes to halt a blowup. At an accounting firm years ago, Dr. Woodward saw a showdown between his boss and a client. "They were two strong alpha personalities" whose argument was going nowhere, he says.
He stepped between them and said, "Let's stop and take a break." His boss later thanked him for it.
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

Make Sure You Know Who Will Inherit Your Twitter Account

Digital assets could be lost to heirs unless they are part of an estate plan

Who gets access to your Facebook, Google and Twitter accounts after you die? The WSJ's Eva Tam finds out.
People draft estate plans that carefully detail how their money and property should pass to their heirs after they become incapacitated or die.

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But what about our so-called digital assets, such as an iTunes account containing thousands of songs, or a Twitter account with hundreds of followers? Can people pass those on as well? And how do they ensure that heirs get access to password-protected bank and trading accounts that exist only online?
Questions like these are popping up with more frequency—and for good reason. A popular blog or Web domain, for example, can have great, or potential, value as a business. But if the owner doesn't take the proper legal steps ahead of time, their heirs may lose the rights to those assets. Photos, videos, email and contents of social-media accounts also may be lost.
Make a List
Justin T. Miller, national wealth strategist in the San Francisco office of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, a division of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., BK -1.14% says that clients often react with surprise when advisers ask about their plans for passing on things like online financial and social-media accounts. Even the technology executives he counsels, Mr. Miller says, have given little thought to how to provide their heirs with access to some of their online assets.
Katherine Dean, managing director of wealth planning for Wells Fargo Private Bank, San Francisco, says one couple worth around $20 million seemed abashed when she asked them to detail their digital assets in making a comprehensive financial and estate plan. She gave them a one-page checklist seeking information about such assets as photo and social-media accounts, Web-based games, and online-only banking and brokerage accounts.
"They said, 'Oh my gosh, we've got to go online to get this,' " says Ms. Dean. "Whenever we hear that, we take the time to have the conversation that this is very important."
The most important thing, estate attorneys say, is to establish procedures for protecting and granting access to passwords and for transferring assets and account ownership. The rules can vary widely depending on the vendor. While there is nothing in Twitter's company rules and conditions that says one of its accounts must close if the owner dies, Apple Inc.'s AAPL -0.71% iTunes says it doesn't have a policy that allows anyone to will or inherit an iTunes account.
But even where limits exist, by placing the license and necessary passwords in a trust, access to such accounts can be preserved, says Naomi R. Cahn, a professor at George Washington University Law School.
Ms. Cahn explains: Many digital assets are owned through a license that is limited to the account-holder and nontransferable. The license may cease to exist when the account-holder dies, so it can't be transferred in a will. But by placing the license in a trust, it is possible that the license will survive the death of its creator.
Wills play an important role, too, Ms. Cahn says, mainly in stating who should receive any digital property that is capable of being inherited. A will can also designate who will have access to digital accounts, although this may not be legally binding.
Estate advisers caution against listing digital assets and passwords in a will because the will can become public. Such information instead should go into a separate letter, says Lesley Moss, an attorney at law firm Oram & Moss in Chevy Chase, Md.
Looking for Legislation
A group of states is interested in drafting a law that would make it easier for consumers to bequeath online property by giving fiduciaries the right to manage and distribute their clients' digital assets.
Lawyers, judges, legislators and law professors from the Uniform Law Commission, a group appointed by state governments to draft and promote new state laws, met this summer to discuss such a proposal.
Currently only Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and Rhode Island give fiduciaries this right.
Ms. Dale is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. She can be reached at arden.dale@wsj.com.

Strike the Just-Right Degree of Wine Cool

Unlike proper wine glasses or the act of pairing wine with food, correct wine temperature isn't something that most wine drinkers think much about. They're making a big mistake

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Columnist's name

ONE OF MY EARLY wine mentors, the late, great wine writer Alexis Bespaloff, gave me a brief—but nevertheless valuable—piece of advice: "If the wine is too warm, put an ice cube in the glass, swirl it around for four seconds then take it out." His suggestion became what my friends and I called "The Alexis Bespaloff Four-Second Rule."
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Illustration by Edwina White for The Wall Street Journal
Over the years, I've passed the A.B.F.S.R. along to every wine drinker I know—or, for that matter, anyone I've ever encountered who complained that his glass of wine was too warm. It's a technique best suited to an overly warm red, as cooling a white takes a few seconds longer, but it will make any wine brighter, more refreshing, more vivid. Where as warmth can blur a wine's character, the right degree of coolness brings the wine more fully into focus.
Unlike proper wine glasses or the act of pairing wine with food, wine temperature isn't something that most wine drinkers think much about. Even some wine professionals don't seem to consider it overmuch, judging by the service and storage conditions I've encountered over the years.
I've been in restaurants where the wine bottles were stored at a temperature best described as "balmy"—stacked over the bar or lined up under lights on some very high shelves. I've even been served red wine in a glass that was taken straight from the dishwasher to the table and was literally too hot to touch. (This happened at a famous steakhouse in New York.)
Correct wine temperature—in both service and storage—is one of the most crucial aspects of the enjoyment of wine. A bottle that is too cold or too warm is a wine that's not going to be fully enjoyed. The ideal temperature for serving isn't actually that far from the one at which the wine should be stored. In both cases the answer varies according to the wine's color, type (sparkling or still) and even varietal.
For example, a sparkling wine should always be served much colder than a still one—in part because sparkling wines are generally high in acidity and a high-acid wine is particularly unpleasant to drink warm—but primarily because the cold preserves the carbon dioxide (aka the bubbles). The colder the bottle of Champagne, the more carbon dioxide is dissolved into its contents, and the longer the sparkle will hold. The inverse is true too: A too-warm Champagne is a Champagne that may well be flat. (While a refrigerator is a good short-term storage place for Champagne, long-term storage in a fridge can also make the wine flat, as such a dry environment will eventually dry out the cork.)
"I've even been served red wine in a glass that was taken straight from the dishwasher to the table and literally too hot to touch. "
Texture and acidity are important parts of the temperature equation. Non-sparkling white wines are best stored around 50 to 55 degrees (about 10 or 15 degrees warmer than the average fridge) and served a bit warmer if they are particularly full-bodied and rich. For example, a big Chardonnay can be served several degrees warmer than a Sauvignon Blanc—which in turn can be served a bit warmer than, say, a very light Pinot Grigio.
Red wines can be stored around 55 degrees or colder and served about 10 degrees warmer (60 to 65 degrees) though light red wines like Beaujolais or Dolcetto can be served lightly chilled (55 degrees, bearing in mind this is all an inexact science). The rule here is similar to that of white wine: The higher in acidity and lighter in body the wine, the lower the serving temperature. If you only have one place to store wine and are limited to a single temperature setting, the classic cellar is 55 degrees.
Too-cool has a price: When a wine is very cold, the flavors are muted, while other aspects like alcohol and tannins are likely to come to the fore. The aromas will be pretty much obliterated as well. Try drinking an ice-cold glass of red wine and see if you can tell much about it. If this is a good wine then you're missing a lot—of course, if it's a cheap wine it's probably just as well.
As for an oxidized wine (one that is flawed or flat due to excessive exposure to air), it's better served really cold, as a high-profile New York sommelier who preferred to remain anonymous, knows. He was confronted with a large number of oxidative Burgundies that had been flown over from France for a private dinner. The winemaker didn't have replacements for the flawed wines. "So we piled on the ice," the sommelier recalled. "It was the only thing we could do."
Wine temperature is also a matter of individual taste. Some people like their beverages very cold; some don't like anything on ice. Often this has to do with geography. Chris Baggetta, wine director of Quince and Cotogna restaurants in San Francisco and formerly a sommelier at Eleven Madison Park in New York, found that "New Yorkers like their whites colder and their reds warmer" than their Bay Area counterparts. Why was that? I asked. Ms. Baggetta speculated that San Francisco's "more consistent" climate allowed Bay Area diners to be more sanguine about temperature while New Yorkers were more accustomed to extremes in temperatures (not to mention in daily life).
San Francisco diners are more open to discussions about proper wine temperature, said Ms. Baggetta. "They're really curious and inquisitive about temperature variations," she said. They're also flexible; they will allow Ms. Baggetta to decide whether or not to leave the bottle on the table or to put it in a bucket with ice. New Yorkers, on the other hand, like what they like.

Off Duty's Half Full

I told Ms. Baggetta that I hate it when a sommelier puts my bottle of wine in an ice bucket. The wine gets too cold and it's usually somewhere far away, often out of sight. I worry that someone else is drinking my wine (yes, this has happened). Surprisingly enough, Ms. Baggetta agreed with my point; she said she doesn't like to have her bottle far from the table either.
Of course I would always choose too-cold over too warm. Around a decade ago there was a trend among New York sommeliers to serve white wines at room temperature. A sommelier would bring a body-temperature bottle to the table and ask in a disapproving tone, "You don't want this chilled, do you?" Clearly anyone who replied in the affirmative would be cast as a fool. I'd hedge my answer: "Just a bit." A friend who remembers that period said he would always respond, "Yes! Yes! I want it cold. As cold as you can get it"—an over-the-top response that he said made sommeliers think he was nuts and leave him alone.
Geoffrey Troy, proprietor of New York Wine Warehouse, a retail store and wine storage facility that is home to some great collections of Burgundy and Bordeaux, believes that cold is always best. He cited his father's personal cellar, which was set to a constant 48 degrees (seven degrees colder than the conventional cellar temperature).
The lower temperature kept his father's wines so well that "they taste years younger than the same wines," said Mr. Troy, who keeps his professional warehouse at 55 degrees in part because a lower temperature would cost much more. But if he could afford it, he would set his storage thermostat to 48 degrees too, he said. Consider it the Geoffrey Troy 48-Degree Ideal Cellar Rule.
Corrections & Amplifications
Non-sparkling white wines are best stored around 50 to 55 degrees (about 10 or 15 degrees warmer than the average refrigerator.) Earlier versions of this article stated that the temperature was 10 or 15 degrees colder than the average refrigerator. An earlier version of this article also incorrectly referred to Chris Baggetta as a male.
See wine videos and more from Off Duty at youtube.com/wsj.com.
A version of this article appeared August 31, 2013, on page D9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Strike the Just-Right Degree of Wine Cool.

Sentences to Make Life Worthwhile

P.G. Wodehouse published nearly 100 books. Where to begin? Which are the plums of Plum?


    By
  • MICHAEL DIRDA
'Myrtle Prosser was a woman of considerable but extremely severe beauty. She . . . suggested rather one of those engravings of the mistresses of Bourbon kings which make one feel that the monarchs who selected them must have been men of iron, impervious to fear, or else shortsighted."
There, in capsule form, are the Master's mature virtues: the humorous name, the curiously arch tone, the beautifully balanced syntax and elegantly contrived diction, the learned allusion, some re-purposed stock phrases, and a simile that slowly unfolds to a zinger.
During the middle 60 years of the 20th century, P.G. Wodehouse (1881- 1975)—familiarly known as Plum—was the finest writer of comic fiction in the English language. His novels and stories, especially those about sun-dappled Blandings Castle or the immortal duo of dimwitted but lovable Bertie Wooster and his formidable valet Jeeves, are nearly all masterpieces of intricate plotting and clockwork timing, packed with Keystone Kop action, outmoded slang, literary and scriptural quotation, and, not least, smile-inducing similes on every page:
Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
Just reading sentences like that makes life worthwhile.
In the course of his 93 years, Wodehouse published somewhere between 90 and 100 books, most of which have now been reprinted by Overlook Press in a uniform edition called the Collector's Wodehouse. While naturally grateful for such plenty, many an eager newcomer has nonetheless looked round and wondered: Where to begin? Which are the plums of Plum?
Sixteen years ago, I attempted to answer the latter question in a paper titled "Wodehouse and the Critics" (published in Plum Lines, the journal of the P.G. Wodehouse Society). When all the data were suitably mined, sifted and weighed, a clear consensus arose from Wodehouse's professional readers. Among the novels, the top tours de force were "Right Ho, Jeeves" (1934), "The Code of the Woosters" (1938) and "Joy in the Morning" (1947). Among the short stories the winners were "Uncle Fred Flits By"—in which Frederick, Lord Ickenham and his nephew Pongo impersonate increasingly improbable characters—and the touching "Lord Emsworth and the Girlfriend," followed by only marginally lesser classics such as "Sonny Boy," "Tried in the Furnace" and "From a Detective's Notebook." This last opens with a shock:
Looking back over my years as a detective, I recall many problems the solutions of which made me modestly proud, but though all of them undoubtedly presented certain features of interest and tested my powers to the utmost, I can think of none of my feats of ratiocination which gave me more pleasure than the unmasking of the man Sherlock Holmes, now better known as the Fiend of Baker Street.
These masterworks are, of course, only the tip of the oeuvre. What about those dozens of other titles? In general, it's true that Plum reached his peak between the early 1920s and the late 1940s, though there are a few outstanding later works, such as "Ice in the Bedroom" (1961). But what about the books in which the young author was still a journeyman, trying out various genres and styles? Are any of them any good?
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Chris Wormell
When asked to name his best novel, Wodehouse unexpectedly plumped for "Mike" (1909), and no less a critical mind than George Orwell agreed with this choice. Because of its length, the book—Wodehouse's longest—was later divided into two semi-independent works, "Mike at Wrykyn" and "Mike and Psmith" (and so published by Overlook). Wrykyn is an English public school modeled after Dulwich College, where Wodehouse enjoyed the happiest years of his life (and nearly overlapped with the slightly younger Raymond Chandler). The school had featured in two earlier novels, "The Gold Bat" (1904) and "The White Feather" (1907), and all these glimpses of an idyllic England soon to destroyed by the Great War revolve around school rivalries, cliques, pranks and epic sporting events.
In "The White Feather," for instance, the scholarly Sheen secretly takes boxing lessons to prove that he isn't a coward and, in the end, wins a lightweight championship, bringing glory to Wrykyn during an otherwise lackluster term. It is a light, easygoing entertainment and, as such, not to be despised in these harrowing times. What the modern reader will chiefly miss, though, are those snappy comparisons, sometimes known as "Wodehouse nuggets." There are virtually none.
They are absent from "Mike at Wrykyn," too. Mike Jackson, in other respects an ordinary boy and student, is a prodigy at cricket. Many excited pages are given over to descriptions of various hard-fought matches, each described in what, to an American, sounds like surreal gobbledygook: "He survived an over from de Freece, and hit a fast change bowler who had been put on at the other end for a couple of fluky fours." One does gain the gist of the matter: Mike, after successfully navigating a series of ethical dilemmas, triumphs on the field.
But that's only the first half of the original novel. In "Mike and Psmith," which takes place three years later, Mike's father—dismayed over his son's poor academic record—exiles the cricket whiz to a backwater school named Sedleigh, there to apply himself with a will to his Greek and Latin. Aggrieved over this decision, our disgruntled hero vows to say nothing of his cricketing prowess to his new schoolmates. But after another set of escapades and misunderstandings, Mike eventually does take the field and leads the hitherto despised Sedleigh team to victory over—you guessed it—Wrykyn.
In both halves of "Mike," Wodehouse gives his hero a witty, scapegrace roommate, first Wyatt (who is eventually expelled from Wrykyn and sent to South America) and then, at Sedleigh, Rupert Smith, who prefers to add a silent "P" to his last name. This is the first appearance of the man who will later star in "Psmith in the City" (1910), "Psmith, Journalist" (1915) and the Blandings Castle extravaganza "Leave It to Psmith" (1923). Languid and serenely self-possessed, the former Etonian sports a monocle, calls everyone "Comrade," regularly outwits the masters and naps at every opportunity. Even on Psmith's first night at dinner at Sedleigh, "his demeanour throughout the meal was that of some whimsical monarch condescending for a freak to revel with his humble subjects." To explain his presence at the school, Psmith tells Mike: "My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous. There's a libel action in every sentence." This could be a line from "The Importance of Being Earnest" or one spoken, with a lisp, by Evelyn Waugh's Anthony Blanche.
Along with E. Nesbit's contemporaneous books about the Bastables and the Railway Children, the Wrykyn and Sedleigh stories helped liberate children's literature from goody-goody Victorian moralism. And even when Wodehouse stopped writing them, many of his adult characters—notably Bertie Wooster and the various members of the Drones Club—continued to behave like carefree schoolboys, living for practical jokes, rags and silly competitions; afraid of fearsome aunts and authority figures; prey to puppy love rather than sexual passion.
Which is what makes "The Little Nugget" (1913) such a surprising book. In Wodehouse's short story "Honeysuckle Cottage," a tough-guy novelist inherits a rustic retreat that once belonged to a writer of shop-girl romances. Before long, he finds himself producing sentimental fluff à la Rosie M. Banks's immortal "Only a Factory Girl." By contrast, in the case of "The Little Nugget," one might almost imagine that Wodehouse had been possessed by the spirit of Henry James, for the novel is a study of crass and fine consciences, set against the backdrop of a caper.
Consider the plot elements: Five years before the main action, a rich young gadabout named Peter Burns had been lording it over his penniless fiancée, Audrey, who, in a bid for freedom, suddenly married another man, then disappeared with him to America. This shocked Peter into recognizing his heartless and callow nature, and he has gradually remade himself into a better human being. Now age 30, he has been unknowingly manipulated into becoming engaged to a beautiful yet secretly ambitious and deeply amoral woman named Cynthia. To test his love, she sweet-talks Peter into pretending to be an assistant schoolmaster so that he can kidnap 12-year-old Ogden Ford as a favor for her friend Nesta Ford. In divorce proceedings from her immensely wealthy husband, Mrs. Ford had lost custody of her son and now wants the repulsive little boy with her.
When Peter reaches Sanstead House school, he discovers that other, more venal kidnappers are also after "the Little Nugget" and that the boy's former governess, a Mrs. Sheridan, has been asked to keep an eye on him. This young woman's husband died three years previous, and she supported herself as a waitress and seamstress before taking her current thankless job. Mrs. Sheridan is, of course, Audrey.
Peter Burns narrates all this in a smooth Edwardian manner, albeit with occasional touches of humor. Yet foiling criminals can't disguise Peter's wrenching moral perplexities: Should he kidnap Ogden? Can he remain faithful to Cynthia? Does he deserve a second chance with Audrey? And what are her true feelings toward him? "The Little Nugget," despite its frivolities, sometimes recalls Jane Austen's most moving novel, "Persuasion." It certainly deserves to be as well known as, say, the brilliant solitaire that ushers in Wodehouse's great years, "A Damsel in Distress" (1919).
In this tale, the familiar manner emerges full blown: "Reggie's was a troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron." This dolt is the stepson of the widowed Lady Caroline Byng and the nephew of her younger brother, that ardent gardener Lord Marshmoreton of Belpher Castle. Though Reggie is smitten with the latter's highly efficient secretary, Alice, his stepmother wants him to marry Maud, Lord Marshmoreton's daughter. That romantic young woman pines, in turn, for an American she met briefly during a trip to Wales. Before long, in the hopes of seeing this prohibited beau, who has never written to her, Maud surreptitiously travels to London, but glimpsing her supercilious brother Percy on the street, she jumps into a cab and asks the young gentleman riding inside to hide her. In so doing the immensely successful composer George Bevan, our chivalric hero, falls in love at first sight.
It goes without saying that complications ensue. And more complications then ensue on top of those. There's a sharp butler named Keggs, a sassy kitchen boy, lots of weedy aristocrats, a chorine with a heart of gold and delicious aperçus on every page.
"Misery loves company, and seldom gets it."
"She looked like a martyr at the stake, who deprecatingly lodges a timid complaint, fearful the while lest she may be hurting the feelings of her persecutors by appearing even for a moment out of sympathy with their activities."
George realizes just how special Maud is when she leaves him a casual note: "What a girl! He had never in his life before met a woman who could write a letter without a postscript, and this was but the smallest of her unusual gifts."
The work of P.G. Wodehouse possesses many virtues, and one of them is inexhaustibility. There are always unfamiliar books to try—may I further recommend that perfectly constructed farce "The Small Bachelor" (1927)?—and old favorites to revisit. Thanks to Overlook Press, even the hard-to-come-by early titles are now readily, happily available. After all, to open almost any of Wodehouse's books is to open a door into endless summer.
—Mr. Dirda's latest books are "Classics for Pleasure" and the 2012 Edgar Award-winning "On Conan Doyle."
A version of this article appeared August 31, 2013, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Sentences to Make Life Worthwhile.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Investing

Financial crisis be damned—investors are still making the same mistakes the always have.


    By
  • KIRSTEN GRIND
It has been nearly five years since the depths of the U.S. financial crisis, and investors have learned a lot since then. Or have they?
Despite the downturn that left many investors reeling from losses on everything from real estate to the stock market, when it comes to investor behavior—those hard-wired instincts that drive us all—little has changed, say psychologists and financial advisers.
Investors still make the kinds of mistakes that have gotten them in trouble for decades. They are wooed by the hottest new trend, they want to follow the crowd—consequences be damned—and they just can't seem to pay enough attention to important details, such as the steep annual fees charged by many mutual funds.
"When it comes to money, we are operating as if we were in the jungle, having to deal with predators like tigers," says Brad Klontz, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of financial planning at Kansas State University. "We have a caveman brain."

Investing Sins

Dave Whamond
There are ways to avoid these pitfalls. Investors need a hard and fast plan of their investment goals, they need to find a trusted adviser or family member to help weed through decisions and they need to stop paying so much attention to the short-term events that drive media coverage.
Here are the seven deadly sins of investing, in no particular order, and how to protect against them.
Lust: Chasing Recent Performance
The belief investors feel that recent performance will dictate future performance—known as "recency bias" in psychology—is one of the biggest investor pitfalls, experts say.
"People tend to buy something that has done really well recently," says Terrance Odean, a professor of finance at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "They chase performance."
In the lead-up to the financial crisis, investors dived headlong into real-estate investments, convinced that rising housing prices would never falter.
image
Bloomberg News
Gold prices peaked in 2011 and are now trading about 26% below their record high.
The latest example: gold. The commodity went on a winning streak even before the financial crisis, and investors piled in.
A big factor was the heavy prominence gold suddenly received across the media—on commercials, in financial publications, on television shows and in books. Mark Berg, president of Timothy Financial Counsel, a fee-only financial advisory firm in Wheaton, Ill., says one otherwise rational client wanted to move her entire portfolio into gold after reading a book warning of another market crash.
To combat this behavior, financial advisers say it is important that investors study historical prices and performance of the latest popular investments. Historical charts, for example, will show the rise and fall of any investment over time.
Instead of looking just at prices over the past few months or a couple of years, look at the long-term history over periods extending back at least 10 years—and sometimes more. Gold, for example, had been increasing in price since 2001, but over the longer term has trailed stocks and barely kept pace with inflation.
Despite the multiyear frenzy, gold prices peaked in 2011 and are now trading about 26% below their record high.
Similarly, investor returns often lag those of the mutual funds they invest in, since many people buy funds only after their performance begins to overheat, then sell after the funds drop. As a result, the typical fund investor misses out on early gains and locks in the later losses—ending up falling behind the fund itself.
The average annual return for U.S. stock mutual funds over the past 15 years was 6.6%—while the average investor in those funds earned just 4.6%, according to investment research firm Morningstar.
While it is easier said than done, investors have to try not to pay attention to daily news reports and advertisements touting the latest popular investment.
Pride: Being Overconfident
Eric Glohr, 54 years old, new to investing at the time, planned to buy Microsoft MSFT +1.53% stock at its 1986 initial public offering at $21 a share—less than a dime in split-adjusted terms, according to FactSet. But on the first day of trading, the share price shot up to more than $27, still less than a dime in split-adjusted terms.
Mr. Glohr decided to wait until it sank lower again. He waited for years as the stock marched higher until he finally realized it would never dip to the lower price he had anticipated.
Its peak price, in split-adjusted terms, was $59.56 a share on Dec. 27, 1999, according to FactSet.
"I was worried about a couple hundred dollars and I missed out on close to a million dollars," he says.
Investors, especially ones new to the game, frequently believe they know far more than they actually do about a particular investment, say psychologists and financial advisers.
image
Reuters
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 15, 2008. What have investors learned since then?
"Our opinion of ourselves is much too high," says Mr. Odean, the finance professor. "We all need a healthy dose of self-doubt and humility."
The best way for investors to keep their overconfidence in check is to make sure they have an unbiased third party available to go over all investing ideas. That could be a financial adviser, or it could be a trusted close friend or relative who isn't directly affected by any decision.
Mr. Glohr, for his part, says he learned from his early mistake. Rather than trust his instincts entirely, he joined an investment club and now diligently researches each company in which he chooses to invest, bouncing ideas off the members of his group.
Sloth: Overlooking Costs
Investors often just don't pay attention to details. Consider their willingness to invest in expensive mutual funds that don't perform well, says James Choi, an associate professor of finance at Yale School of Management.
Investors, wooed by a fund manager's name or recent performance, fail to look at a fund's expense ratio before buying in. Rather than buy a cheap index fund that mimics a broad market index, such as the S&P 500, with an expense ratio of as little as 0.05%, investors will buy one managed by a professional stock picker that charges a much higher fee, Mr. Choi says.
But more expensive funds tend to underperform less expensive ones, says Mr. Choi, citing numerous studies.
It is the same with 401(k) fees. Investors often won't pay attention to their statements even though taking an active role in choosing their investments would likely save them thousands of dollars in the long run, say experts.
While a 401(k) investor doesn't hold much sway over the administration fees charged by the provider—or even the choice of provider—there are ways to manage costs, say financial advisers. Often 401(k) plans will give investors a choice of funds in certain asset classes, with expense ratios that vary. Mr. Choi recommends choosing the cheapest option.
"The expenses are much more predictive of future performance because there's so much randomness in past performance," he says.
Envy: Wanting to Join the Club
What is better than a great deal? A great deal available only to you.
In the run-up to Facebook's FB +1.69% initial public offering in May 2012, financial advisers say they were slammed with calls from clients who wanted to get in on the stock before it made its debut. The fact that there were a limited number of shares available to retail investors only drove the frenzy, advisers say.
It is the same reason investors were so willing to believe in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, experts say. They were part of a small group making a lot of money; Mr. Madoff reportedly only accepted a limited number of clients.
"A lot of that has to do with that sense of exclusivity," says Meir Statman, a professor of finance at Santa Clara University who focuses on behavioral finance.
The desire to be part of an exclusive offering often drives people to throw money into an investment that doesn't fit into the overall goals of their portfolio, against their better judgment. Investors who poured money into Facebook just after its launch watched as the company's stock fell below $20 a share several months later, far less than its $38 IPO price. (The stock is now trading at about $41.)
Susan Strasbaugh, owner of Strasbaugh Financial Advisory in Colorado Springs, Colo., which has $100 million in assets under management, says she recommends clients set up a separate "Vegas" account for hot investments like Facebook that don't fit into a client's portfolio.
She says clients should invest no more than 5% of their portfolio in the Vegas account, and treat it like gambling—hence the name.
Wrath: Failing to Admit Failure
People hate to lose money. Along with her investing club, Lori Towers-Hoover, 54, bought shares of home builder Meritage Homes at about $32 a share in 2007. Ms. Towers-Hoover and her club in Howell, Mich., had thoroughly researched the company and believed in its strong financials. But the stock already was on its way down, and by early 2009, it was trading at less than $10 a share.
Ms. Towers-Hoover and her club hung on. They waited for another year as the stock hovered around $20. Finally they sold. "We just made the decision it's not going to rebound and we're not going to get our money back," she says.
Loss aversion, as it is called by psychologists, isn't hard to spot. Investors held on to tech stocks as they plummeted during the crash of the early 2000s, as they did to financial stocks during the crisis, and as they continue to want to do today.
"We don't want to be honest with ourselves and admit the loss," says Mr. Klontz, the psychologist.
That type of thinking can be dangerous for investors. If they regret a decision, they may sell too soon, but if they can't accept their loss and move beyond the "sunk costs" of an investment, they may hold on too long, say psychologists.
Instead of just researching the financials of a particular stock, investors need to understand the economic environment as much as possible, say financial advisers and experts. If a company is dependent on a job-market or housing-market recovery to perform well, investors need to fully understand the outlook for those sectors and plan their investment accordingly. Too often investors will base their decision to buy or sell solely on the strength of a company.
Of course, economic predictions aren't always correct. Ms. Towers-Hoover says her club's decision to sell Meritage was based on predictions that the U.S. wouldn't fully recover from the 2008 downturn until 2016. But, buoyed by a housing-market recovery, Meritage stock began to rise in mid-2011 and is trading around $40 a share now.
That stock's recent tear taught Ms. Towers-Hoover another lesson: It is impossible to time the market.
Gluttony: Living for Today
Let's face it: There are a host of activities more interesting than monitoring your 401(k)—and a host of temptations to spend money on today. But investors' tendency toward apathy is damaging, particularly when it comes to retirement savings.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers surveyed by the Employee Benefit Research Institute earlier this year reported less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments, not counting their house or defined-benefit retirement plans. The lack of preparedness has led experts to deem it a crisis.
Often workers aren't saving early enough because they view retirement as a far-off event, leading to apathy toward putting money away, say financial advisers and psychologists.
The key for investors, Mr. Klontz says, is making retirement less abstract. Investors should ask themselves a series of questions about how they want their lifestyle to be when they retire: How old will they be? Where will they live? What will they be doing?
Mr. Klontz also uses a measuring tape to make this point, marking it at an investor's age and then again at the age an investor expects to live until, based on the longevity of other family members. When an investor is looking at a length of tape that is only, say, 20 or 30 years long, that can be a stark realization of the lack of time he has left to save.
Often, Mr. Klontz says, this encourages investors to add more to their 401(k) contributions or ratchet back spending.
Greed: Following the Herd
When the stock market tanked during the 2008 financial crisis, many investors fled, some abandoning their entire portfolios and putting the money into cash. The same phenomenon is happening now in the bond market as investors, worried about the effect of rising interest rates, are fleeing bond funds.
Investors yanked $11.7 billion from the funds in July, according to Morningstar, following an outflow of $60 billion in June. As investors pull money, it encourages more investors to do the same.
To battle the fear that inevitably comes with a market decline or other adverse events, financial advisers say it is crucial that investors have a detailed portfolio plan that they stick with regardless of short-term events. The plan should outline investors' targeted holdings in bonds, stocks and other investments, and be based on their retirement goals.
"Right now, bonds are bad in the minds of investors," says Chad Carlson, a wealth manager at Balasa Dinverno Foltz in Itasca, Ill., which has $2.6 billion in assets under management. "Our clients will say, 'I want to be out of bonds entirely.'"
Rather than encouraging an "all or nothing" approach, Mr. Carlson recommends that investors adjust their portfolio a small amount. For example, a client who previously held 40% of his portfolio in bonds would reduce that exposure by several percentage points.
That move tends to reassure investors and helps them avoid rash decisions, he says.
Write to Kirsten Grind at kirsten.grind@wsj.com



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