It’s almost the New Year so I think now would be a good time to check in.
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!
Some of you might have seen that toot last week. Plus a few others this week.
Mix those Windows toots with the Mac hate posts from last week and you started drawing conclusions. To which I can only say.
Man, you guys are easy!
First, I would like to take this chance to remind everyone that I am, still, effectively unemployed. This means I have no funds to purchase a new computer right now, let alone keep my bills current or my cell phone on.
Second, while the thought of having an inexpensive PC that is twice as powerful as any Mac for the same price interests me, they still run Windows. They still have IE installed on them and everything still doesn’t look as nice as it does on the Mac.
Then why all the Windows toots? It was time for my grand dad to retire his 7 year old HP with something new. Here are the spec.
- Quad core AMD processor @ 2.4gHZ
- 750GB hard drive
- 8GB RAM
- Super Duper Crunchy Windows Vista Home Ultimate 64bit
- 512MB nVidia Video
- 16X DVD do-it-all drive
Plus everything else you can image. 2 firewire ports, 6 USB ports, a spot to plug in another eSATA drive, all that. It’s pretty nice for the most part, but it doesn’t run nearly as fast as I would expect. That much processor and that much RAM I would expect a machine to be quite snappy. This one, while it’s fast, isn’t snappy.
I will have more on what I have had to do it to make it work for my Grandfather later, just wanted to clear up a few things with all y’all first.
Suckers 
