Technology allows us to do everything faster except think. There is very little in technology that is not both blessing and curse. E-mail makes communication faster and easier. It also makes us sloppy and, like speed dialing where we forget what a person's phone number is, email leads to an inability to spell. Rather than being funny, we insert a smiley face to show we meant to be funny. The speed with which we can email also leads to carelessness, and we sometimes write things we're sorry for after hitting "send."

Most employees know they can be fired for sending offensive (in any sense) email, and almost eighty-five percent of companies where email and Web browsing can be done by employees have policies regarding its use. What about blogs?

A "blog" is an online diary, a chronological log of personal thought on the Web. It's akin to the company's water cooler or Web-based "chats" where thoughts are expressed or questions asked, followed by a string of other bits of wisdom or ignorance. By some accounts, there are over five million blogs on the Web, made possible by personal Web pages offered by service providers as well as companies catering to employees. Other than those devoted to pictures of the kids and the doings of the family, many are those dedicated to venting about jobs, organizations, bosses, or work in general.

What many don't realize is that you can be fired for things that you say about your job, boss, company, or other employees on your own blog. Why that surprises people surprises me. With cries of infringement of First Amendment rights, these employees claim that they can say and post anything they want on their own Web site. Wrong. The First Amendment protects us from the federal government, not from corporations.

There are at least four prominent cases regarding termination and blogs. The most cited is that of Ellen Simonetti, a flight attendant for Delta Airlines who was terminated last September because she discussed Delta's financial difficulties, and also because "she posed suggestively" in uniform in a Delta plane. I've seen the picture. Maybe in Atlanta, that is "suggestive," but the only thing it evoked in me was, "Jeeze, even on their bigger jets, there's still no leg room." However, since there were other photos which I have not seen, perhaps there was a better reason for her dismissal. In any event, it doesn't really matter: the company has no sense of humor and has the right to terminate with or without cause... if you'll remember the dictates of at-will employment. (For those of you who are curious ... if only about what a blog looks like, you can see Ms. Simonetti's at http://queenofsky.journalspace.com.)

Michael Hanscom was a temp employee with Microsoft. One day he spotted Apple computers being off-loaded at the Microsoft campus where he was working. Think it funny that Microsoft would be using Apples, he snapped a picture, and posted it on his blog. Microsoft saw it, and without giving him the opportunity to take the picture down, just terminated him for a "security violation."

Mark Jen was an employee at Google and was fired for posting his thoughts about life in the company. Evidently, Google isn't quite as liberally minded as it has been portrayed.

Peter Whitney was an employee of a Wells Fargo subsidiary. He complained in his blog that he didn't want to contribute for a birthday card for a manager. The manager read his blog and wasn't pleased. Wells says that there's more to the story than that. (We would certainly hope so.) And Whitney says that his blog was for his family and friends, a comment which brings up what should be the primary revelation for bloggers: the blog is public. Anyone can read it, and its contents can lead to claims of defamation and libel and just plain hurt feelings. Discretion is the better part of valor; when it comes to blogs, it's the better part of venting, though bloggers tend to be younger and less circumspect than older, sometimes wiser folks.

There are many other instances of such terminations. These four are infamous in blogging circles and newspapers probably because they are the ones with the most information from the employees and the least from the companies. Whether the companies have overreacted is moot. They have the right to terminate at will, and most would have cause because their employees lacked common sense or judgment when posting their thoughts about the company or their bosses or policies and procedures.

There have been related terminations. Before blogging, there have been cases of defamation of a corporation's reputation. In 1999 a California judge rules in favor of Xircom, a modem manufacturer, who was trying to find out from Yahoo who was anonymously posting critical comments about the company. Yahoo refused to reveal the identity citing free speech, but the judge rejected the argument stating that "there is no right to free speech to defame."

The concept goes back farther than that. In 1985, I was involved in a case where one of my clients terminated an individual for defaming the company by telling customers what a terrible company it was to work for and how mismanaged it was. The employee filed a claim of wrongful discharge and summarily lost.

For employees, my advice is simple: it's a bad idea to publicly criticize fellow employees, your supervisors, management, or the company. Keep your comments to yourself or your closest friends and family. It should go without saying that you should never discuss a company's finances or products in a blog, and probably not even in an email. In other words, don't say anything for which you'll have to apologize later.

Employers have a different problem. Though I have mentioned at-will employment, in every one of the four articles in which I've fully discussed the tenet, I have said that it is not foolproof or failsafe. Never rely on at-will when terminating an employee. And that leaves the question of whether or not you should have a written policy regarding blogs. The answer is ... in the subscriber's version of this article.