First one is I am going to attempt to do a Flickr 365. It’s perfect. I spend a little time thinking about the shot then take it. Bonus if I can do it with my phone, then I don’t have to offload photos from a memory stick everyday.

The ‘rents are out again (hi Mom!). That usually provides a pretty good level of distraction as well which I am welcoming this time around. Thursday night for example Mom showed me her photos and is bummed that she can’t upload all of them to her Flickr. Pro account for her birthday? I think so. Or Mother’s Day.

After that, I showed them the goodness that is Hulu.com. All of this happened after I gave them both a full tour of the new site I’m working on. Sorry, it still only lives on my computer, but you’ll hear about it as soon as it goes live.

Yet another distraction that I have right now is the gym. Getting there is a distraction that I’ve been missing this week and, as it turns out, scheduling time to get there is quite the distraction as well.

I’ve also been distracted by Apple stuff. Primarily the coolness that is the new iLife and the holy-shit-are-you-kidding-me pricing of the new 17″ MacBook Pro. I built one yesterday that came to almost $6,000! Big thanks to everyone for making fun of my toot typo/missed letter last week too. That was not nearly as awesome as you think it was. Really.

Speaking of, you might have noticed the toots have been a little light this week. Between being fairly busy and not really being able to fully appreciate the replies they have been getting either on Twitter or Facebook, I’ve slowed down a bit. Yet another distraction, this one very much unwanted.

Finally, I have 2 websites that I need to finish that aren’t work related and 1 that still needs the WP upgrade. So if I’m not around much for the next week or so, you’ll know why.

The Technology Challenge

You remember this from late ‘07, right?

And, while you are making your new years resolutions this year, pick someone close to you and introduce them to something new to use the internet for. If they got a digital camera for Christmas, help them with a flickr account. Show them how RSS works and help them set up a Google account. Introduce them to Podcasting. Show them the wonders of Craiglist. Anything. Just pick one and try to make it happen. It’s time these people find out that the web is more than email and banking!

How’d you do?

Wait! Before you tell me how well you did, let’s see if you can beat me.

• Mom got a new digital camera (like mine) and flickr account. Ok, so there are only 2 photos, but it’s there and I will be getting her to use it more this coming year.
• Mom is an MMS sending fool. Sounds and photos from her camera to anyone in her contacts list on her phone. Oh, and she is even emailing them to herself on her phone.
• Grandad is now rockin’ a hot new computer with Office ‘07 and Vista. Sure this counts. Have you seen the changes from XP to Vista? From Office 2K to ‘07? From Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail? I totally get credit for this.
• I got Jeannie to turn her new laptop on!
• I got someone to switch from Windows to Mac. Verified.
• Fireball Tim started a blog.

So, I think I did pretty good.

I believe that 2009 is going to be the year for RSS for my users. I thought it might be the year of Twitter, but I think I’m going to continue to keep that to myself. Besides, Mom gets really frustrated when trying to send a text message.

Ok, your turn. Belly up. How did you get your users to use technology? Or did you fail? It’s ok, you can tell us, we are all friends here. Besides, someone might have a suggestion to get you started!

Let us jump back to last week when it all started. If you watched the latest video hour, you know that I thought this coming Thursday was the 4th. If you caught the post I made here or at 3 other sites, you saw that I thought this coming Thursday was the 4th as well. As I sit here now, looking at iCal, I’m still having a hard time thinking that this coming Thursday is not the 4th.

As we all know, it is in fact the 6th. Thanks to everyone for correcting me.

Now we can jump back to Sunday. That was the morning I woke up at 6:00a thinking it was 7:00a and was working at what I thought was 8:00a. Of course I was wrong there too. It’s ok, because I needed the early start, but that might have been a little too early.

Usually the disorientation only lasts a few days. I do want to point out that it has never happened early, which is very strange. It could be the time change or it could be the fact that, for whatever reason, I think of Election Day in the US as being on November 2nd. Doesn’t matter the reason, I’m still concerned. Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I’ve posted a few new photos to the Flickr. Click that or the photo above to check them out!

We’ll be recording audio, I will, again, attempt video. Plus I’ll be posting a bunch of photos to my Flickr. And, if I can, I will be posting to Twitter.

Posts here from Thursday to Monday might will be lighter than usual.

On another note, later this week I will be giving the pressd section it’s very own Wordpress install right here at w(t)f. New feed and everything. I will post when that happens.

Cameras will be with me all week too. Hopefully I will get some stuff posted before MTTS.

If you’ve already seen this at dbmini, WRR or MF, no need to click through because it is exactly the same. I will say that I will be fairly sparse around here for the next week and change starting Thursday.

Can you believe this actually starts this week? Here at WRR we are getting pretty excited as you can imagine. Hopefully we’ll be able to share most of that excitement with you as well!

Before going further, do make sure you have registered for the MTTS event you are going to be attending. Besides saving $10, you will get a bag of swag for sure and the proceedes go to local charities. Win-win in my book!

Now, to keep up with all of the action.

• All photos will be on my Flickr, in the MTTS 2008 Flickr group and on Todd’s Flickr
• All videos will be posted to Whiteroof.tv for download and Vidder to watch
• Updates, as they happen, will come from Twitter, including when we broadcast live via uStream.tv
• All audio will, of course, be up on WRR for download with a player on Motoringfile.com.

To make things easier, I have set up a special RSS feed (actually it’s ATOM, but it will work in any reader) that will aggregate Twitter, Flickr, WRR and WR.tv. You can subscribe to that here.

I have already posted our possible live schedule here in case you missed it. Keep in mind that this is very tentative and is very much subject to change. This is where twitter will come in handy to keep up-to-date should things change.

Stay tuned! things are just getting warmed up!

Mine will be getting Mom to use Flickr. She just bought my camera (her first Amazon.com purchase) and she really digs seeing my shots on the webernets. And she is a bit of a tech junkie. So Flickr is a perfect fit. Keeping in mind that I couldn’t get her to switch, I think I’ll be able to pull this one off no sweat.

The other night I’m sitting around with teh Lad watching Transformers again and my phone rings. It’s Mom. She’s trying to figure out how to setup an account at Yahoo! so she can use Flickr! Of course I helped her and about 1/2 hour later I had an email from her Flickr account saying she had pictures for me to view. Of course, I couldn’t see them since she had them marked Friends and Family and didn’t add me as a contact. I called her back and got that part sorted out and voila!

Mom is using Flickr. Sweet!

Time to come up with another challenge. Maybe a switch from AOL to Gmail?