if you're still using aol, you can stop bothering with botox

the best part of technology moving really fast is that it timestamps everything, including people. sort of like reading rings on a tree or carbon dating, just check out what e-mail provider someone is using, and you can probably guess their age.

aol/ameritech/anything provided by a cable service: these are people who were young enough to be early adopters of comprehensive internet access in its commercial infancy (10 years ago or so) but also be old enough to afford it and also old enough to not embrace change. the ones who use ameritech or comcast finally wised up to cable (dialup? YARGH), but didn't understand web-based mail. average age: 44

yahoo/hotmail: this is the first generation of college e-mail users. they hung onto their .edu addresses for as long as possible, but then when forced to switch, used the most prominent free providers out there. this is before the popularity of crazy flashing banner ads, and once locked in (with shitty slow service) they never bothered to change. newsflash: tagging and mail forwarding. average age: 31

gmail: college class of 2004 and younger. since it launched april 1, 2004, and was created by the near-holy google, everyone ditching their college e-mails needed the newest and best thing out there. gmail is the standard, and besides facebook, is clearly the only way to communicate while at the office. average age: 23

this age-identifying system could be applied to almost all tech type stuff, such as social networking site of choice (friendster? really?) or IM client (does anyone under the age of 30 use ICQ?) and the only reason i decided to say anything about it was because i noticed someone on one of my football teams is using juno. JUNO. wow. lady, not only are you old, but maybe you're also senile. start taking the alzheimer's meds now.