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Businessweek has run an article on Communicating with Twentysomethings. Ignoring the truly awful term "EmpowerME generation" for one second (at least the author didn't use "iPod generation", I suppose) it lays out five rules for effectively managing those of us born between 1978 and 1988.

Four of the rules are essentially cleverly named ("Don't assign, explain", "Don't dictate, solicit") ways to paraphrase the simple sentence "talk to your employees", which is surely sound advice if a little obvious. But then there's number two:

Cold Stone Creamery is one of the largest franchises in the U.S. What sets it apart from other ice cream chains is simple. When customers throw a tip in the jar, employees sing a song. While the chain offers high-quality ice cream, its attraction is the experience. Most of its employees are teenagers. When I spoke to leadership at Cold Stone, they acknowledged that a 16-year-old doesn't dream of scooping ice cream into her 30s. The Cold Stone approach is to encourage them to use the position to learn life skills regardless of their chosen careers.

I am currently between the ages of twenty and thirty. If I went to an ice cream stall knowing that a tip would solicit an impromptu singalong from the staff, I would not tip. Or rather, to avoid not tipping I'd simply not purchase anything - I'd go elsewhere or, indeed, just not eat ice cream at that particular time. If I were looking for a job and applied for one in an ice cream parlour only to be told of this rule, I would walk away and do just about anything else. I find it very hard to believe that anyone my age - or, for that matter, older than maybe 12 - could find the whole singing nonsense anything other than asinine.

More to the point, on what planet is learning to sing a song in response to a coin being dropped in a jar a "life skill" unless, of course, one plans a later career as a busker? The whole ice cream example reeks to me of a writer in desperate search of a case study without enough time to find anything really suitable - apart from anything else, said business employs teenagers, not the twentysomethings who are supposedly the focus of the article.

Anyhow, without further ado, my top tip for communicating with twentysomethings: just talk to us. Normally. It's really not difficult. But then, when being paid by the word, perhaps it's tempting to overcomplicate matters.

Bookmarklets (or favelets) are bookmarks that use Javascript to do something more than simply opening a static page. They're particularly handy if you regularly search the same websites: rather than opening the website in question, clicking in a search box, entering a term and clicking another button you can simply click a button on your browser, type the search term then press enter. Here's a sample bookmarklet that searches Google Product Search.

Anyhow, here's a tool to make your own.

Finding the search address, the geek version:

Paste in everything that you want to appear in the URL before the search term. This is normally the website address, plus a bit of querystring, so something like http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=

Finding the search address, in English:

To find the search address, go to the website and search for something. Look at the address of the webpage that this produces. If you go to Google.co.uk and search for "banana", for instance, you'll get a page with an address like this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=banana&btnG=Search&meta=

Look at the information included after the main address and you'll see the word you searched for. Now select and copy everything that's listed before this word. In this case, we'd copy:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=

This should be the search address. If you're not sure, try pasting it into the address bar, typing another word on the end, then pressing Enter. For example, we added "typewriter" to give this address:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=typewriter

This took us to the page of results for "typewriter", so we know that we've correctly identified the search address.

After the angry rant I added earlier, it's now time for something different. Specifically, a recipe for ersatz-jambalaya - sort of like the Cajun dish, but adjusted for incompetence, ignorance and ingredients found in SE London. It was created using my patented method of watching a recipe on TV, forgetting to make any kind of notes then trying to recreate it from my hazy memories at a later point - but unlike the legendary "sweaty lamb balls" (don't ask) it worked out pretty well. Anyhow, here goes:

First, heat olive oil in the biggest pan you can find (here, a less than traditional wok). Cook smoked sausage (random Polish stuff) until it smells all smokey and good. Add chopped onion, celery and green peppers, then paprika.

Next, add chicken and prawns and cook a bit. Then some chopped chilli and oregano. Finally, add half a pound of rice and about a pint and a half of stock. Wait 20-25 minutes, keeping cats away and stirring from time to time.

That's it. Attempt the above at your own risk, obviously.

No money for an iPhone? No problem!

1) Get drunk
2) Turn camera to maximim ISO
3) Take photo in dark room

Et voila - pictures with the "slightly blurry, slightly grainy, slightly crap" look that just screams "overpriced, underspecified cellular telephone camera". Email a few around, and the world need never know your secret telecommunications-related shame.